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Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us: By Robert D. Hare, PhD.
"Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please..." In Without Conscience Robert Hare argues convincingly that "psychopath" and "antisocial personality disorder" (a psychiatric term defined by a cluster of criminal behaviors) are not the same thing. Not all psychopaths are criminals, he says, and not all criminals are psychopaths. He proposes a psychopathy checklist that includes emotional/interpersonal traits such as glibness, grandiosity, lack of guilt, and shallow emotions, as well as social deviance traits such as impulsiveness, lack of responsibility, and antisocial behavior. His writing is lucid and illustrated with numerous anecdotes. The final chapter, "A Survival Guide," is especially recommended: as Hare writes, "Psychopaths are found in every segment of society, and there is a good chance that eventually you will have a painful or humiliating encounter with one." --Amazon.com
Product Description
Most people are both repelled and intrigued by the images of cold-blooded, conscienceless murderers that increasingly populate our movies, television programs, and newspaper headlines. With their flagrant criminal violation of society's rules, serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are among the most dramatic examples of the psychopath.
Individuals with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and know the difference between right and wrong, yet they are terrifyingly self-centered, remorseless, and unable to care about the feelings of others. Perhaps most frightening, they often seem completely normal to unsuspecting targets--and they do not always ply their trade by killing.
Presenting a compelling portrait of these dangerous men and women based on 25 years of distinguished scientific research, Dr. Robert D. Hare vividly describes a world of con artists, hustlers, rapists, and other predators who charm, lie, and manipulate their way through life. Are psychopaths mad, or simply bad? How can they be recognized? And how can we protect ourselves? This book provides solid information and surprising insights for anyone seeking to understand this devastating condition.
Reviews:
"The book is written in a sincere and easily readable fashion for a general audience. The research and clinical literature is described in nontechnical terms with a minimum of jargon, making the work accessible to a wide audience." -- Canadian Psychology
"A fascinating, if terrifying, look at psychopaths....Hare makes a strong case for the view that psychopaths are born, not made....A chilling, eye-opening report--and a call to action." -- Kirkus Reviews
-- Review
"If you know an individual who falsely accuses you of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that are not yours; blames you for anything and everything that ever goes wrong, you need to read this book. These are the defining traits of a psychopath who projects his/her flaws onto others and never takes responsibility for any of his/her actons. A significant number of individuals in American society are psychopaths. According to some sources, approximately 30% of American males and 10% of American females are psychopaths. Psychopaths do not have conscience nor feelings of empathy and compassion for others. They are predators who charm, manipulate, lie, deceive, and take advantage of others without the slightest sense of guilt, shame or regret. They are impulsive, and have insatiable greed for power, control, prestige, money, and sex. They rob you of what is rightfully yours."--Singh
"
If I had known what a Psychopath was, and had already read this book, I would have known to avoid the individual at all cost. This book covers every thing to help us make an intelligent decision about the type of person we may be dealing with. If you have doubt of any person in your life, read this book. Better safe than sorry."--M. Clifton
"
Empty, pathetic and destructive, they run the gamut from the emotionally frozen, disengaged, cruel parent to the serial killer -- all marked by one thing, their inability to relate empathetically to others." -Fox
"
What is sobering about this study is that our understanding of the condition is poor compared with other mental illnesses. Psychopaths do not respond to treatment and if incarcerated and set free, are more than likely to re-offend. As treatment is not an option at this time, the best we can do is have the knowledge to identify the psychopath and apply survival strategies to ensure the least amount of damage to others and ourselves. Hare gives us a "survival manual" at the back of the text, including an extensive bibliography to continue our personal research into the condition...This book is a must read for anyone working in welfare, legal, rehabilitation and education, including law enforcement. All too often we are appalled and confused by certain behaviours, and this information clears this confusion and provides tools to deal with it. Excellent resource."--C. Middleton
Indigokafe: Portal for African Literatures, Writers and Films
Bright
with armpit-dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,
wearing white light about her;
and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moolight.
So brief her presence-,
match-flare in wind's breath-
so brief with mirrors around me.
Downward...
the waves distil her:
gold crop
sinking ungathered.
Watermaid of the salt emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.
By Christopher Okigbo.
News from Home: By Sefi Atta
Synopsis:
From Zamfara up north to the Niger delta down south, with a finale in Lagos, this collection of stories and a novella respond to and amplify the newspaper headlines in a range of Nigerian voices. Men, women, and children speak out to us from these stories, from immigration centers and police barracks, from street corners and maternity wards. Ghanaian writer Mohammed Naseehu Ali says, Sefi Atta "writes like one who has lived the life of each single character in her dazzling collection of short stories."
Review
"With this collection of stories, Soyinka Prize-winning author Sefi Atta consolidates her position as one of the leading writers of her generation. The stories... are written with quiet virtuosity... What we get from Atta are compulsively readable tales, leavened with a sly wit and a generous vision."--Teju Cole, author of Every Day is for the Thief --Teju Cole
"Sefi Atta is a brilliant artist, who writes as if she knows her characters personally...great stories. I have been very touched by the beauty and diversity and depth of these stories"--Uwem Akpan, author of Say You're One of Them --Uwem Akpan
Winner of the 2009 NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa
About the Author
Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
"Find me. I will wait. Capture my heart. I will capture yours. Take this moment to tell me one secret. Breathe this life into your soul. Angels come when we are ready. Find me." Repeatedly, throughout this moving and extraordinarily objective memoir, author John Moriarty returns to this simple and beautiful mantra. It appears at moments of exhilaration as he climbs steadfastly toward meaningful sobriety, and re-appears in the darkest moments of hopeless addiction. From a childhood of fear and rejection, Moriarty fled into adulthood fueled by ever-increasing doses of alcohol, cocaine, and prescription drugs. Frenzied all-nighters of booze and sex led to gray mornings of virtual incapacity. Friendships withered, relationships failed, yet solace and safety could always be found and reality postponed in another bottle of vodka. Until he died. And awoke. And realized. That somewhere inside him lay a life, wasted but aching to begin. Liquid Lover is a story of recovery, not just from addiction, but from the ghosts of the past that seek to hold us. From self-hatred, particularly that of gay men. From desiring to escape to longing to engage. A blisteringly real account of survival and triumph, dramatically written and utterly devoid of self-pity, John Moriarty's accomplished memoir serves not as a cautionary tale but as a call to action for anyone with demons to battle.
"John Moriarty has been able to put down on paper what a lot of people are afraid to admit to themselves -- It's hard to fix yourself when you are so broken, but it is not possible. This book made me understand that I am not alone. It made me realize that the feelings that I have felt while growing up, growing into myself, were not unique. I would recommend this book to every kid growing up - regardless of their preferences or problems. We all need to remember that it's okay to screw up, it's okay to forgive ourselves for screwing up and we must never stop trying to get better at finding ourselves"--Amazon.com
About the Author
John Moriarty is a freelance writer living in Kansas City, Mo.
Toyin Falola: This website is about the universe of Africa and Toyin Falola's place in it: the projection of a continent; the celebration of a community of ideas; service to people; and the various definitions of our shared future.
Sade: Soldier of Love
Sade (pronounced shar-day) was born on January 16, 1959 as Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria where her Nigerian father (Adebisi) was an economics professor and her English mother (Anne Hayes) a nurse. After her parents separated, Sade moved to London with her mother, where she was educated, and as a young woman worked as a fashion designer and (briefly) a model. Although Sade originally began studying fashion design, her desire for music led her to become a backup singer with the British Jazz-Funk/R&B band; Pride. She formed a writing partnership with Pride's guitarist/saxophonist Stewart Matthewman . Together, backed by Pride's rhythm section, they began doing their own sets at Pride gigs. Sade's elegant, exotic look and the cool, jazz-inflected approach of her low-keyed singing immediately garnered her considerable attention. In 1983 Sade and Matthewman split from Pride along with keyboardist Andrew Hale and bassist Paul Denman and formed Sade; they got a record deal late that year. Sade, the woman, and Sade, the band, became staples on the pop and R&B charts from the mid-80's and into the 90s. By selling millions of LPs around the world, Sade brought a level of class and a smooth jazz sound the ears of pop radio, always maintaining a high level of quality. The longevity of Sade's music best represents the uniqueness of its sound.--Net Biography
Letter Home
in the fourteenth year
Where the largeness of the dream
is touched by the smallness of one's England
there are travel guilts a wayfarer sheds
like loose feathers or discarded skin.
The flight so far is full of fret.
This island is a perch to many birds,
home of sorts to the travel worn,
lost in transit, storied swallows
and things out of touch with their beginnings,
harried between exclusions and inclusions,
tortured by absence,
as spoiled for options but without choice.....Poetry
Kevin Snipes exhibits nationally and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2006. He completed his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994 and his MFA from the University of Florida in 2003.
Kevin's artwork is a combination of atypical pottery forms and quirky figurative drawings. His pieces are influenced by an array of traditional and nontraditional art forms, including street art, architecture, contemporary painting, the avid love of art history and even children's drawings. His work has an underlying sophistication, which is based in existentialist thought.
(from the press release)
Kevin Snipes' ceramic work speaks eloquently about our culture. His narrative drawings are about race, ethnicity, color, all those things that we find difficult to talk about. Yet when placed as a narrative on a vessel, the work transcends those artificial barriers. Kevin is a masterful ceramic artist and elegant draftsman. His vessels serve as an eloquent discourse on our contemporary culture.
By Kevin Snipes
Love Apart
The moon has ascended between us,
Between two pines
That bow to each other;
Love with the moon has ascended,
Has fed on our solitary stems;
And we are now shadows
That cling to each other,
But kiss the air only.
By Christopher Okigbo
Dreams in a Time of War: By Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Synopsis
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author of Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a father whose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The man who would become one of Africa's leading writers was the fifth child of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of his mother's eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning.
In Dreams in a Time of War , Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; and the troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middle class and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armed struggle for Kenya's independence against the British informed not only his own life but also the lives of those closest to him.
Dreams in a Time of War speaks to the human right to dream even in the worst of times. It abounds in delicate and powerful subtleties and complexities that are movingly told.
About the Author
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University
Summertime: J.M. Coetzee
Synopsis
Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize
A brilliant new work of fiction from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year
A young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father-a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. Never having met the man himself, the biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee well, including a married woman with whom he had an affair, his cousin Margot, and a Brazilian dancer whose daughter took English lessons with him. These accounts add up to an image of an awkward, reserved, and bookish young man who finds it hard to make meaningful connections with the people around him.
Summertime is an inventive and inspired work of fiction that allows J.M. Coetzee to imagine his own life with a critical and unsparing eye, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being. Incisive, elegant, and often surprisingly funny, Summertime is a compelling work by one of today's most esteemed writers.
About the Author
J.M. Coetzee 's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Foe, and Slow Man , among others. He has been awarded many prizes, including the Booker Prize (twice). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
An epic tale of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia's revolution. This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement—a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and indelibly tragic, Beneath The Lion's Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut. From the Back Cover Advance praise for Beneath the Lion's Gaze:
“With words that make ‘a faint, tender bruise' on the page, and a compassionate imagination that transforms everything it touches on, Maaza Mengiste delivers an important story from a part of Africa too long silent in the World Republic of Letters.”—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
"What a beautiful book! After a few chapters I felt I was a member of this family, a citizen of Ethiopia. Maaza Mengiste is talented and bold and fresh. Already, I'm looking forward to her next book."—Uwe Akpan, author of Say You're One of Them
"Literature from the margins is often too poorly lit for us to see, but Mengiste takes us through this dark political hunt with the night vision of a lion. A novel both tender and brutal, fearless, it is accomplished beyond a first book.”—Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and The Flowers About the Author Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was named “New Literary Idol” by New York magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Graphics
The Education of a British-Protected Child (Essays): By Chinua Achebe
Synopsis
From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in more than twenty years.
Chinua Achebe's characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart , the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama's election. In “The Education of a British-Protected Child,” Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its “middle ground,” recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In “Spelling Our Proper Name,” Achebe considers the African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know “from whence he came.” The complex politics and history of Africa figure in “What Is Nigeria to Me?,” “Africa's Tarnished Name,” and “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature.” And Achebe's extraordinary family life comes into view in “My Dad and Me” and “My Daughters,” where we observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of raising “brown” children in America.
Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.
Biography
Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, Nigeria, the son of a teacher in a missionary school. His parents, though they installed in him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture, were devout evangelical Protestants and christened him Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. In 1944 Achebe attended Government College in Umuahia. Like other major Nigerian writers including Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi, John Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, and Cole Omotso, he was also educated at the University College of Ibadan, where he studied English, history and theology. At the university Achebe rejected his British name and took his indigenous name Chinua. In 1953 he graduated with a BA. Before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos in 1954 he travelled in Africa and America, and worked for a short time as a teacher. In the 1960s he was the director of External Services in charge of the Voice of Nigeria.
Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over 15 years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short-story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.
Welcome
In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Synopsis In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother—and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth-Amazon
Reviews
"Surreal and Provocative....Highly Recommended."-Editor, Cafeafricana
"Along with the impertinent funny stuff that peppers the text, this book is above all a philosophical tale that gives a caustic critique of contemporary civilization through a distorting mirror."-Le Devoir
"Exhilarating and instructive. . . . This is a powerful, courageous, inventive novel."-Le Matricule des Anges
About the Author:
Abdourahman A. Waberi was born in Djibouti in 1965 and has lived in France since 1985. He has published numerous books, articles, and stories. His first collection of short stories, Le Pays Sans Ombre (published in English as The Land without Shadows ) won Belgium's Royal Academy of French Language and Literature Grand Prix.
David and Nicole Ball, both independent translators in Northampton, Massachusetts, have published several translations separately, as well as together, including Lascaux: A Work of Memory . David Ball won the Modern Language Association's prize for literary translation in 1996. Percival Everett, professor of creative writing at the University of California–Riverside, is the author of many novels, including, most recently, The Water Cure .
Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 2
News
Dambisa Moyo
Questions for Dambisa Moyo: The Anti-Bono
Interview by Deborah Solomon
Q: You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
A: Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.
Photo: Unknown artist
Books
White is for Witching: By Helen Oyeyemi
Synopsis
As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there's the family house in Dover, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda's father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But The Silver House manifests a more conscious malice toward strangers, dispatching those visitors it despises. Enraged by the constant stream of foreign staff and guests, the house finally unleashes its most destructive power.-Amazon
With distinct originality and grace, and an extraordinary gift for making the fantastic believable, Helen Oyeyemi spins the politics of family and nation into a riveting and unforgettable mystery.
About the Author
Helen OyeyemiI is the author of The Icarus Girl and The Opposite House , which The Times (London) named as one of “best novels of the year” and was recently shortlisted for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction. She is currently at work on her fourth novel.
Helen Oyeyemi reading an extract from White is for Witching
"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." — Franz Kafka.
Links
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted 40 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003, she was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, a post she held until 2007, when she left the government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, Matthai has been honored around the world for her work, including a recent appointment to the Legion d'Honneur by France and the Order of the Rising Sun by Japan. She is the author of two previous books: The Green Belt Movement and Unbowed , a memoir, and she regularly speaks to organizations around the world. Maathai has three grown children and lives and works in Nairobi.
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai argues that well-intentioned aid to Africa may have unexpected negative consequences. She draws from Sharon Stone's pledge to buy anti-malaria bed nets in Tanzania to explain why money alone will not solve Africa's problems.
Poetry
Wole Soyinka: Abiku.
Also: Olayimika by Toyin Adewale, Ode to James Baldwin: By Andrene Bonner, Black Woman: By Leopold Sedar Senghor, Requiem: 5: By Wole Soyinka, Love Apart: By Christopher Okigbo, Art Santuary: By Nikki Giovanni, Olokun: By J.P. Clark.
THE PORTAL FOR AFRICAN LITERATURES, WRITERS, AND FILMS
African continent is replete with brilliant writers, and filmmakers that are world-renowned. The main objective of indigokafe is to showcase and present African literatures, writers and filmmakers worldwide.
Exclusive Interview
M.K. ASANTE, JR.
Exclusive Interview with Poet, M.K. Asante, Jr.
Q: What is central to your poetry?
A: Struggle is central. I struggle to write, grapple with ideas, and fight with the pen. For me this is the only way. The poet Lamont Steptoe once told me that if I’m not struggling with my work, then I’m wasting everyone’s time – mine own included. So there is a genuine sense of struggle there. Another thing which I hold central is the duality of being alive. The title speaks to this to some extent; the dual nature of existence. It can even be related to Duboisian idea of Double Consciousness.
Image: Courtesy of M.K. Asante, Jr.
For more information on M.K. Asante, Jr., visit www.asante.info.
Vladimir Horowitz
Mozart Sonata in C Major K; Ist Movement
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.
'Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a Nigerian feminist who fought for suffrage and equal rights for her countrywomen long before the second wave of the women's movement in the United States. She also joined the struggle for Nigerian independence as an activist in the anticolonial movement'--Odim and Mba.
Events Calendar
African Art at LACMA
LACMA
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90036
tel 323 857-6000
tel 323-857-0098 (TDD) publicinfo@lacma.org
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, filmed in 1986
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ken Saro-Wiwa: 1941-1995.
'Nigerian television producer, writer of satirical novels, children's tales, and plays. In 1994 Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned by order of the dictator Sani Abacha. He had strongly defended the rights of the Ogoni people and criticized the government's oil policy with Royal Dutch/Shell. Despite wide international protests, Saro-Wiwa was hanged after a show trial with other eight Ogoni rights activists in Port Harcourt, on November 10, 1995'--www.kirjasto.com
'My lord, we all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginilization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.'--KEN SARO-WIWA'S CLOSING STATEMENT TO THE NIGERIAN MILITARY APPOINTED TRIBUNAL. Photo: unknown artist.
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Films
Abderrahmane Sissako
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Abderrahmane Sissako was born in Kiffa, Mauritania, in 1961 and raised in Mali, his father¹s homeland. When he returned to Mauritania in 1980, the emotional and financial difficulties of adjustment made him turn to literature and film. A study grant allowed him to attend the Institute of the University of Moscow. Le Jeu (1990), first presented as a graduation assignment, won the prize for best short at the Giornate del Cinema Africano of Perugia in 1991. In 1993, Octobre was shown at Locarno and won prizes the world over. His latest film, Waiting for Happiness , was screened at Cannes 2002 and was winner of the FIPRESCI award for best film in the Un Certain Regard section. It was also shown at the New York Film Festival in 2002 and won the Grand Prize at FESPACO in 2003.--Through African Eyes.
Films: Waiting for Happiness, Bamako, Life on Earth, Le Jeu, Octobre
MoMA focuses on Award-winning African Director Abderrahmane Sissako for its Anuual Flaherty Series June 20 through 26, 2009, at Colgate Universtiy, Hamilton, New York
"These men are not merely evil, I thought. They are the mindlessness of evil made flesh. One should not ever stumble into their hands but seek the power to destroy them. They are pus, bile, original putrescence of Death in living shapes. They surely infect all with whom they come in touch and even from this insulation here I smell a foulness of the mind in the mere tone of their words. They breed themselves, their types, their mutations. To seek the power to destroy them is to fulfil a moral task."--Wole Soyinka. Excerpt from The Man Died (1972), Pg. 225: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka.
"It was a bit of a lie that universities were self-governing institutions. Nevertheless, what universities, suffered during the 1980s and 1990s was pretty shameful, as under threat of having their funding cut they allowed themselves to be turned into business enterprises, in which professors who had previously carried on their enquiries in sovereign freedom were transformed into harried employers required to fulfil quotas under the scrutiny of professional managers. Whether the old powers of the professoriat will ever be restored is much to be doubted."--J. M. Coetzee. Excerpt from Diary of a Bad Year (2007), Pg. 38.
Yo-Yo Ma plays the prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1
Kwame Nkrumah
The Late Kwame Nkrumah
OSAGYEFO DR. KWAME NKRUMAH (1909-72) Founder and Father of the Nation Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, stands out not only among the Big Six but also among the greatest statesmen of history. It was he who canalized the discontent of the people of the Gold Coast Colony into the highly organized movement of protest against British rule, and within a relatively short period won political independence for Ghana on March 6, 1957. With Ghana independent, Nkrumah worked to liberate the whole of the African Continent. He supported and financed liberation struggles and nationalist movements throughout the continent. His efforts soon yielded dividends as the majority of countries on the continent gained independence. Then he turned his efforts to forging a common union of African states--NiicaAfrica.
Bamako 2006
A film by Abderrahmane Sissako
Plot: An historic trial is taking place in a residential courtyard in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. African citizens have taken proceedings against such financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whom they blame for perpetuating Africa's debt crisis.--Amazon.
Capt. Mbaye Diagne
Capt. Mbaye Diagne
He was a hero.
'From literally the first hours of the genocide, Capt. Mbaye simply ignored the U.N.'s standing orders not to intervene, and single-handedly began saving lives.' PBS "Ghosts of Rwanda'. Photo: Unknown artist: Courtesy of PBS.
African Music
African Music Around the World...Research, Library, Archives....
Haruna Ishola, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Yusuf Olatunji, Miriam Makeba, Agidigbo, Apala, Madam Comfort Omoge, Madam Mujidat Ogunfalu, King Sunny Ade, Angelique Kidjo.... Photo: Unknown artist
Drummers: Lagos, Nigeria
Jazz Legends
Joshua Redman
Joshua Redman was born February 1, 1969, in Berkeley, California. By the time of Joshua's birth, his father, noted saxophonist Dewey Redman, had moved to New York and was playing with Ornette Coleman. Young Joshua's only contact with his father was hearing his records around the house, and during his infrequent visits to town with Ornette, Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams and others. His mother Renee Shedroff, a dancer and librarian, was the driving force that nurtured his creativity. Redman's formal music training began at age five, when his mother enrolled him in Indonesian and Indian music classes at the Center For World Music. These unique art forms, along with the recordings of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Dewey Redman were his early influences. Joshua soon learned to play the recorder, guitar and piano. He listened to popular music, with James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, the Commodores, Parliament-Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles topping the Shedroff household playlist---afgen.com
Photo: Unknown Artist.
"Superb."--Editor, Cafeafricana
Joshua Redman Quartet - Headin' Home (Live)
Classical Music
Akin Euba
"Akin Euba was born in Lagos, Nigeria on April 28, 1935 and spent his early years there. He is a member of the Yoruba ethnic group. His biography is Akin Euba: An Introduction to the Life and Music of a Nigerian Composer by Joshua Uzoigwe. It is a 1992 publication of the Bayreuth African Studies Series, edited by Prof. Eckhard Breitinger. It explains that his father was an amateur musician:
Akin Euba's father, Alphaeus Sobiyi Euba, was in his youth an active musician (although music was not his profession). He was a chorister at the Olowogbowo Methodist Church (now Wesley Cathedral) Lagos and also played the clarinet in the Triumph Orchestra, a Lagos dance band in which Fela Sowande (who later became internationally famous as a composer)was the pianist. Akin Euba's mother, Winifred Remilekun Euba, née Dawodu, was a teacher by profession."-AfriClassical.com
KATHLEEN BATTLE - KARAJAN (Frühlingsstimmen - J. Strauss II)
African Cooking and Recipes
"The African kitchen is traditionally outside or in a separate building apart from the sleeping and living quarters. By far the most traditional and to this day the most common sight in an African kitchen is a large swing blackpots filled with meat, vegetables, and spices simmering over a fire. The pot usually sits on three stones arranged in a triangle, and the fire slowly consumes three pieces of wood that meet at a point under the pot"--Africaguide.com. Photo: Unknown Artist
Wine of the Month:
1999 Lamarque: Product of France.
Wine List: CafeAfricana.
1989 Domaine du Pesqier Grande Reserve. Product of France.
1998 Cabernet Sauvigno-Malbec Maule: Product of Chile.
1996 Lacryma Christi Del Vesuvio, Mastroberardion: Product of Italy.
The Keys to Great Wine Service-Wine Spectator
Don't drink and Drive.
'Good wine is a necessity of life for me.'--Thomas Jefferson.
“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.” – Eknath Easwaran
Robert Hughes
in action
Museums
Painting: Facing Streets Ahead by David Chinyama
'African art embodies one of humanity's greatest achievements--fusing visual imagery with spiritual beliefs and social purpose. Its technical achievements and artistic perfection bear witness to the creative ingenuity of its makers'.--NMAFA.COM.Painting: Lonely Boy by an African artist:
Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Rare early footage (shot by Ginger Baker) featuring Fela & Afrika 70 performing in the rainy southeastern town of Calabar, shortly after the the Nigerian civil war
Country Profiles
From Algeria to Zimbabwe:
Libya: Murzuq castle, from which sultans of Fezzan once ruled, southern Libya
'Libya has it all: ancient cities of rare and exquisite splendour, the Sahara that you thought existed only in your imagination and the unmistakeable cachet of being ruled by one of modern history's most iconic figures, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.'--www.lonelyplanet.com.
Image:Unknown artist.
Grants
Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie Corporation of New York is a general-purpose, grantmaking foundation established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie "for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States." Subsequent charter amendments have allowed the Corporation to use 7.4 percent of its income for the same purposes in countries that are or have been members of the British Commonwealth. Overseas grants are currently concentrated in Commonwealth Africa. Grants in "noncharter" countries are occasionally made when their substantial purpose is the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States.--Carnegie Photograph/Logo: Property and Courtesy of Carnegie Foundation of New York.
About Us
The main objective of CafeAfricana is to showcase the best of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. CafeAfricana is about culture, arts, politics, news, community and lifestyle.
On DVD: City of God, Artemisia, Goya, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Belle Du Jour, 8 Women, Shall We Dance...
Chief Awolowo, a lawyer, publisher and politician, served as Premier of the self-governing Western region from 1954 until Nigeria achieved full independence from Britain in 1960. He played a major role in the constitutional conferences in London and Lagos that paved the way for independence.
Chief Awolowo was opposition leader in the first post-independence Parliament and came to be regarded as leader of the Yoruba tribe. The Yorubas are one of the West African nation's three major ethnic groups and live mainly in the south and west.
In 1979 and 1983, Chief Awolowo was the Unity Party's presidential candidate, losing to the northern-based National Party of Shehu Shagari. When the Shagari Government was overthrown by a military coup Dec. 31, 1983, Chief Awolowo returned to private life.---The New York Times.
Contact Us
The Art of Living: Watching art-house films from The Auteurs and Criterion Collection
Image: Wild Strawberries-Directed by Ingmar Bergman (1957)
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