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WRITING
AFRICA: COMPARATIVE AFRICAN
AND WESTERN PALAVERS AND PERSPECTIVES
July9 - July 27, 2007(3 weeks)
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Documents
for Prospective Applicants
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Seminar
Information & Introduction
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Seminar
Writers
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African
Writers |
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CHINUA ACHEBE
Albert
Chinualumogu Achebe was born the son of Isaiah Okafo, a
Christian churchman, and Janet N. Achebe November 16, 1930
in Ogidi, Nigeria. He married Christie Chinwe Okoli, September
10, 1961, and now has four children: Chinelo, Ikechukwu,
Chidi, and Nwando. He attended Government College in Umuahia
from 1944 to 1947 and University College in Ibadan from
1948 to 1953. He then received a B.A. from London University
in 1953 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting
Corp. in London in 1956. MORE....
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AMA ATA AIDOO
Ama
Ata Aidoo has since the publication of her first
play in 1964 been an important and vocal figure in
the struggle for Ghanaian national liberation and
self-determination in the context of colonialism
and neo-colonialism, as well as the broader pan-Africanist
struggles against imperialism and racism generally;
at the same time she has been an outspoken proponent
for women's liberation in the national and international
contexts and an avid critic of the corruption and
hypocrisy of the national bourgeoisie in post-independence
Ghana. She has likewise made important contributions
to both the development of African literature and
literary criticism both as a writer and as a scholar. MORE....
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WOLE SOYINKA
Wole
Soyinka is among contemporary Africa's greatest writers.
He is also one of the continent's most imaginative advocates
of native culture and of the humane social order it embodies.
Born in Western Nigeria in 1934, Soyinka grew up in an
Anglican mission compound in Aké. A precocious student,
he first attended the parsonage's primary school, where
his father was headmaster, and then a nearby grammar school
in Abeokuta, where an uncle was principal. Though raised
in a colonial, English-speaking environment, Soyinka's
ethnic heritage was Yoruba, and his parents balanced Christian
training with regular visits to the father's ancestral
home in `Isarà, a small Yoruba community secure
in its traditions. MORE....
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Western Writers |
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BARBARA
KINGSOLVER
Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8,
1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the
part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse
farms and the impoverished coal fields.
Kingsolver
has always been a storyteller: "I used to beg my mother to let
me tell her a bedtime story." As a child, she wrote stories and
essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal
religiously. Still, it never occurred to Kingsolver that she
could become a professional writer. Growing up in a rural place,
where work centered mainly on survival, writing didn't seem to
be a practical career choice. Besides, the writers she read, she
once explained, "were mostly old, dead men from England. It was
inconceivable that I might grow up to be one of those myself . .
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MORE....
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JOSEPH CONRAD
Joseph
Conrad grew up in the Polish Ukraine, a large, fertile plain
between Poland and Russia. It was a divided nation, with four
languages,
four religions, and a number of different classes. A fraction of
the Polish-speaking inhabitants, including Conrad's family, belonged
to the szlachta, a hereditary class below the aristocracy, which
combined qualities of gentry and nobility. They had the political
power, despite their impoverished state. Conrad's father, Apollo
Korzeniowski, belonged to this class. He studied for six years
at St. Petersburg University, which he left before even earning
a degree. Apparently, he was physically unattractive and unpleasant.
Conrad's mother, Eva Bobrowska, was thirteen years younger than
Apollo and the only surviving daughter in a family of six sons.
MORE....
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Seminar
Director: Maureen N. Eke
Department of English
Central Michigan University
Mount Pleasant, MI 48859
Phone: 989-774-3117 or 989-774-3171
Fax: 989-774-1271
mailto:eke1mn@cmich.edu
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