Cropping Sentiments from Sierra Leone

In “The Development of Sierra Leone Writing,” an essay [Eustace] Palmer wrote in 1975, he finds it puzzling that Sierra Leonean artists, a small crop of intellectual elite of the 1950s and 60s, did not display a strong sense of African consciousness, a trait he had discovered in the work and impulses of artists such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye. Because the krio community identified more with the British colonizers (in their eyes their liberators from slavery) than with the indigenes of their new country, the community, not surprisingly, produced an artistry that reflected its sentiments.
--Iyunolu Osagie, "Theater in Sierra Leone," forthcoming from Africa World Press


Today, I am proofing a collection of five popular plays from Sierra Leone, edited by Iyunolu Osagie--it's a beautiful, short volume of emotive, thought-provoking breadth.


[Photo of Freetown, Sierra Leone]

The Politics of Imagining, Subversively and Otherwise

No doubt, I remain an avid reader of the works of Bessie Head and those who critically engage her novels. See the highly academic work, _Living on a Horizon: Bessie Head and the Politics of Imagining_**, by Desiree Lewis, one of my very own authors. A fairly recent article in African Studies Review (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4106/is_200804/ai_n27997181/pg_1) underscores not only the subversive relevance of Bessie Head, but also the beautiful critical mind of Lewis herself.

**I've also been informed that the book has been nominated for an award in South Africa. We await even better news.

Reality, Altered Negatively