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Black Orpheus (magazine)
''Black Orpheus'' was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier that has been described as "a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa".Kate Tuttle"Black Orpheus" in Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr (eds), ''Encyclopedia of Africa, Volume 1'', Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 189. Its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to ''Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache'', edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor. Beier wrote in an editorial statement in the inaugural volume that "it is still possible for a Nigerian child to leave a secondary school with a thorough knowledge of English literature, but without even having heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire", so ''Black Orpheus'' became a platform for Francophone as well as Anglophone writers.Quoted in Mark Wollaeger with Matt Eatough''The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malangatana Ngwenya
Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (6 June 1936 – 5 January 2011) was a Mozambican painter and poet. He frequently exhibited work under his first name alone, as Malangatana. He died on 5 January 2011 in Matosinhos, Portugal. Life Born in Matalana, a village in the south of Portuguese Mozambique, Ngwenya spent his early life attending mission schools and helping his mother on the farm. At the age of 12 he went to the city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) to find work, becoming ball boy for a tennis club in 1953. This allowed him to resume his education, and he took night classes, through which he developed an interest in art. He was encouraged by Augusto Cabral, a member of the tennis club, who gave him materials and helped him to sell his art, and also by Pancho Guedes, another member of the tennis club. In 1958 Ngwenya attended some functions of Nucleo de Arte, a local artists' organization, and received support from the painter Ze Julio. The next year Ngwenya exhibited publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilson Harris
Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. Biography Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in British Guiana, where his father worked at an insurance company. His parents were Theodore Wilson Harris and Millicent Josephine Glasford Harris. After studying at Queen's College in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, he became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannas and rain forests he gained during his twenty years as a land surveyor formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction. The experience of the Guyanese interior also shaped his approach to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birago Diop
Birago Diop (11 December 1906 – 25 November 1989) was a Senegalese poet and storyteller whose work restored general interest in African folktales and promoted him to one of the most outstanding African francophone writers."Biography of Birago Diop" , African Success. A renowned , diplomat and leading voice of the literary movement, Diop exemplified the "African renaissance man". Early life Son of Ismael and Sokhna Diop, Birago Diop was born on 11 December 1906 in |
Bloke Modisane
William Modisane (28 August 1923 – 1 March 1986), better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer, actor and journalist. Biography William "Bloke" Modisane, the eldest son of Joseph and Ma-Willie Modisane,Nelly E Sonderling (ed.), ''New Dictionary of South African Biography'', Vol. 2, HSRC Press, 1999, pp. 112–14. grew up in Sophiatown, a multiracial suburb in Johannesburg, South Africa. His father was murdered and his sister died of malnutrition. To make ends meet, his mother ran a shebeen. As Modisane would write in his autobiography: "My mother wanted a better life for her children, a kind of insurance against poverty by trying to give me a prestige profession, and if necessary would go to jail whilst doing it." He joined ''Drum'' magazine as a journalist and became one of "the ''Drum'' Boys" during ''Drum''s halcyon days in the 1950s, along with Henry Nxumalo, Can Themba, Es'kia Mphahlele and Lewis Nkosi. Modisane was also the jazz critic at ''Drums siste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
