-
Marlon James, African and Caribbean Women Have Written Some Great “Geek” Books
Right after the publication of his most recent novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize – not too shabby), Marlon James appeared on the thoroughly superb podcast “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment,” hosted by writer buddies Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter. It was a great interview – those guys…
-
Haruki Murakami and Your Love Life as Metaphor
As usual, this year brought some Nobel buzz for Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who is best known in North America for works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. Also as usual, he did not win, much to the disappointment of his devoted fans. It so happens that I spent…
-
Motherhood: A Reading List
Appropriately, a helpful list of books covering the subject of motherhood was published the other day…on my due date, in fact… (Which has now past. Clock is ticking people. And seriously, don’t get me started…) I was in the middle of drafting my own list (assuming I am blessed with the kind of magic baby that…
-
I quit my job once and I want you to know about it
or Some Reflections Provoked by #QuitLit — Six years ago I found myself living in an idyllic midwestern college town, working anywhere from three to five jobs at a time. Here is a list of what my BA in French/comparative literature and recently completed MA in African Languages & Literature qualified me to do: serve coffee, sell books, rent…
-
what is an ‘invention’ ?
I’m still here, working away at the Bach Two-Part Inventions in a race against the baby clock. And the other day, while trudging through # 5 in E min (which, okay, is kind of difficult…ugh…stay in a *&^% key, Bach!), I realized that I had never encountered ‘invention’ as a musical term anywhere except in reference to…
-
Time in Two Parts
“I’ve recently started to finish learning Bach’s Two-Part Inventions.” This awkward sentence nudged itself into some of my written correspondence this morning, and I gagged a little when I reread it before sending. My first impulse was to emphatically land my finger on the delete key, and to retype something a bit more polished sounding. I’m revisiting…
-
Isidore Okpewho’s Myth in Africa (1983)
Some more Okpewho for you today…no introduction needed… Myth in Africa Isidore Okpewho London: Cambridge, 1983 Preface: Here, Okpewho takes the opportunity to drive in the point that he concentrated on in the previous work The Epic in Africa (1979), which is that the practices of oral literature are not solely related to religious ritual.…
-
Isidore Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa (1979)
After a fair bit of study during my undergrad and MA (the latter with Harold Scheub who has recently retired), I had almost entirely forgotten the fascinating body of work dedicated to African oral literature. Oral? Literature? Did I hear you right? Yes. Yes you did. Because despite not being written down, this rich body of tales,…
-
self-imposed leisure reading
Okay, I did it. I wrote a dissertation prospectus and passed the defense, which means that in order to be crowned DOCTOR, I have but one tiny, little, no-big-deal hoop to jump through called ‘writing a dissertation’… I also survived the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in New York City. (ACLANYC2014) These…
Indirect Libre
books etc., emphasis on the etc.
Indirect Libre 