Introduction African-American pop culture and pop culture in general, may be researched by a lot of researchers but I still get the impression that its roots are badly overlooked. Pop culture isn’t only an entertainment but it has some great depth into it that makes it worth learning the subject. In my thesis, I want to give more attention to the development of the African-American culture throughout all these years from the very beginning. How only one race can make a significant changes, not only in their own nation but in the country they’ve been brought to ruthlessly. It’s amazing how the human race that used to be treated literally like animals, representing the lowest class, benefitted the ones that used them in the past with their creativity in more than one way.
Gender and Colonialism It was fascinating to see and be able to understand the comparison between Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood. What was more intriguing was being able to understand Africa’s history a lot more. Both books are fictional literature primary sources. Although the novels are not true, they take the audience on a historic ride. Readers get an insight of how Africans actually feel, experience everyday life, and are finally able to read something not written by the Europeans.
This timeline followed by the author leaves out decades worth of information on how the relationship became volatile. The following chapter then begins to talk about the conquerors and conquests of Africa. Not only did this not follow chronological order but this also changed topics from a topic of capital to a cultural topic. This could easily confuse
(Achebe 129)” Chenowa Achebe speaks his thoughts on imperialism here by saying that even though the white imperialists thought they were doing good, they didn’t bother to even try to understand the natives’ feelings towards them. Although imperialism brought government stability and education, the long term effects of imperialism in Africa were negative because natives were made slaves, borders were poorly placed, and European religion/education was forced upon them. All in all, British Imperialism hurt Africa much more than it
The people making up this continent speak a multitude of languages (around 2000), they have different beliefs and they belong to many different cultures and traditions, and hence have very different literatures. “The fact that they share a common history of colonialism and exploitation is not enough to just lump their literatures into a single pigeon-hole” (Saro-Wiwa 155) because by doing so, those that have little knowledge about the continent and its people are enabled to think of Africa as a continent of people who share a common literature and culture hence not fully expressing the continent’s diversity. When describing the literatures of the African people, Achebe uses the analogy of new-born infants to show how literatures found in the continent may seem similar but are actually different and hence should not be grouped together; he says “If you look cursorily one infant is pretty much like another; but in reality each is already set on its own separate journey” (Achebe 4). As can be inferred from Achebe’s analogy, it is very inaccurate to group African literatures into one category because doing so implies that the literatures are similar and uniform thus failing to express their
Interculturalization in African Cinema Day by day our world becomes increasingly interconnected. People migrate across continents and ,among materialistic belongings, bring their culture with them. Once in contact with other cultures they can clash, coexist or move one step further: interact with each other. This is known as interculturalism. While cultural conflicts have been covered intensively by scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington who predicts culture clashes to be the main source of conflict in the post-cold war world (Kirkus Reviews) and various books about coexistence have been written such as “Positive Examples of Coexistence from the History of Peoples and States of the South Caucasus” by Haykaz Hovhannisyan et al.
Just like Okonkwo, his village had high expectations for all its people, but those expectations were not kept for long. The colonization of Okonkwo’s home was the final part to push Okonkwo over the tipping point. However, for one to see how the colonization of Africa destroys Okonkwo’s morals they would have to look from the beginning to see the big picture. From the very beginning of Okonkwo 's life he had suffered from poverty due to his father’s, Unoka, debts and addiction. “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had.
If African history was not written by Europeans but by Africans, they would have perhaps have had different concepts and stories anthropologists (Mafeje 1971: 254). European colonialism brought with it certain ways of reconstructing the African reality, by regarding African societies as being tribal. This interpretation of African created a restricted view which made it difficult for those associated with the system to view these societies in any other light. There has been a sort of mental colonisation where European scholars in Africa and Africans themselves have started to have certain modes of thought despite the many important economic and political changes that have occurred in the continent over the last 75- 00 years anthropologists (Mafeje 1971: 254). When there is colonisation, the dominant culture extinguishes the native culture and it will only thrive to the extent to which the dominant culture allows (Biko 2004:51).
Given the fact that African American history is still a corrective – and often a highly political one, I personally understand why scholars choose to use most of their effort and time to foreground the voices of their actors to show how they perceived of the things that were going on around them and how they themselves interpreted their actions. To use one specific example: the WAP interviews are a highly controversial source basis that has been used a lot over the last few decades by scholars to better understand how African Americans experienced slavery and how they made a world of their own during slavery However, these interviews are a complicated source basis, as you certainly know. Often edited by whites – most of the former slaves were very young when slavery was abolished, and most importantly, African Americans, during the height of Jim Crow, with local whites potentially listening, were not very likely to disclose their opinions in a
African literature differs largely from French, Russian and English literature. Africa is a massive continent consisting of fifty one countries which has been subjected to colonial influences by English, French, Portuguese, German, Dutch and by numerous other colonizers and invaders. Each of them has left their indelible influences on those parts of Africa which they occupied. Nevertheless, Africa as a country has not lost its rich traditions like the oral literature which has maintained its texture and continues to this present day. This oral literature takes the form of poems, stories, legends, proverbs, riddles, dramas, folktales and songs.