Africa's Hidden Histories

Karin Barber is Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. She is author of The Generation of Plays (IUP, 2000), which won the Herskovits Award, and editor of Readings in African Popular Culture (IUP, 1997).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Hidden Innovators in AfricaKarin BarberPart 1. Diaries, Letters, and the Constitution of the Self1. "My Own Life": A. K. Boakye Yiadom's Autobiography—The Writing and Subjectivity of a Ghanaian Teacher-CatechistStephan F. Miescher2. "What is our intelligence, our school going and our reading of books without getting money?" Akinpelu Obisesan and His DiaryRuth Watson3. The Letters of Louisa MvemveCatherine Burns4. Ekukhanyeni Letter-Writers: A Historical Inquiry into Epistolary Network(s) and Political Imagination in Kwazulu-Natal, South AfricaVukile Khumalo5. Reasons for Writing: African Working-Class Letter-Writing in Early-Twentieth-Century South AfricaKeith Breckenridge6. Keeping a Diary of Visions: Lazarus Phelalasekhaya Maphumulo and the Edendale Congregation of AmaNazarethaLiz Gunner7. Schoolgirl Pregnancies, Letter-Writing, and "Modern" Persons in Late Colonial East AfricaLynn M. ThomasPart 2. Reading Cultures, Publics, and the Press8. Entering the Territory of Elites: Literary Activity in Colonial GhanaStephanie Newell9. The Bantu World and the World of the Book: Reading, Writing, and "Enlightenment"Bhekizizwe Peterson10. Reading Debating/Debating Reading: The Case of the Lovedale Literary Society, or Why Mandela Quotes ShakespeareIsabel Hofmeyr11. "The present battle is the brain battle": Writing and Publishing a Kikuyu Newspaper in the Pre–Mau Mau Period in KenyaBodil Folke Frederiksen12. Public but Private: A Transformational Reading of the Memoirs and Newspaper Writings of Mercy Ffoulkes-CrabbeAudrey GadzekpoPart 3. Innovation, Cultural Editing, and the Emergence of New Genres13. Writing, Reading, and Printing Death: Obituaries and Commemoration in Colonial AsanteT. C. McCaskie14. Writing, Genre, and a Schoolmaster's Inventions in the Yoruba ProvincesKarin Barber15. Innovation and Persistence: Literary Circles, New Opportunities, and Continuing Debates in Hausa Literary ProductionGraham FurnissList of ContributorsIndex

". . . the authors - remarkably - have made a long and tortuous story short and simple without smothering the complexities. Their grasp of the various intellectual themes is impressive, so is their even-handedness. The book should be prized among African Studies collections.Feb. 3, 2009"—Walter Gam Nkwi, University of Buea, Cameroon"Comprising an insightful introduction and fifteen richly textured essays, Africa's Hidden Histories is an important contribution to standing research on a range of topics in twentieth—century African studies. Literary scholars, educationists, and social, political, and intellectual historians will draw particular benefit and pleasure from the unhurried, penetrating studies—incorporating an abundance of engrossing illustrations and photographs—that mark the volume's status as a major archival and theoretical project."—African Studies Review"This is on many levels an exceptionally engaging book. . . . Africa's everyday writers can have no better introduction to the scholarly world than Karin Barber's exciting book. This is a volume that should command wide readership.Vol. 14. 3 Sept. 2008"—Derek R. Peterson, Selwyn College, University Cambridge