The Riddles Of Africa Folk Souls

About the Book We are living in a period where the old age is dying, and the new age is not yet born. We must ask ourselves these questions. What is an authentic lifestyle? What is the proper social order? These are significant questions, and as crucial as they are, they need answers and answers that are true. Rather, the consensus is that these answers are beyond the apprehension of Africans. Other questions covered in this book are: What is the human soul? Why do we suffer from the disintegration of the soul? Are we truly free or dependent on the iron rule of the machine world? What is cosmic thought and its relation to human soul? What is the problem of intuitive flash and the myth of Western modernity? What is national identity and values? These questions have their root in the symptom of disrupted historical period that plagued the world and the entire continent of Africa. The plague obliterated our ways of life, and it was replaced with a machine world which denied us of the mysteries of the living earth and the human soul. Currently, this plague continues to haunt us because post-colonial African states were born out of this plague. In this book, I believed that the problem of Africa could be resolved in placing it in a wider context of world historical consciousness because Africa is a part of the world and its crisis. About the Author Max O. Thompson-Eleogu is a native Nigerian, who lives and was schooled in the United States of America, for both his undergraduate program and graduate program. He authored the book AFRICA---THE ROAD TO AFRO-MODERNITY. He is a Distinguished Fellow and founder of NobbleAfriq Institute, a select and innovative think-tank, whose trajectory is the transformation of African politics and its people. He was trained as a philosopher with an unwavering interest in African philosophy, African American philosophy and Continental philosophy. His other interests include African Mysticism and Spiritualism.

Another book of quotations? Indeed there are numerous excellent extant anthologies of quotations, but these tend to be very broad, with a bias toward classical and well-known authors; those works which document the contributions of Black authors have tended to focus on African-Americans, considerable as their output is. Undeniable recognition of this prevalence is reflected in the title of the present volume which pays homage to W. E. B. Du Bois? classic work and in the preponderance of entries from American sources. Nevertheless, effort has been made to cast a wider net to capture under-represented and unfamiliar voices. Khemetic texts preserved in papyri and stelae are the earliest literature to have survived, followed by the writings of North African Romans and Ethiopian philosophers and clerics, and the lately recovered Timbuktu manuscripts from their repositories in the desert sands of Mali. The Transatlantic slave experience gave rise to the slave narratives and abolitionist literature from both sides of the Atlantic, which remained predominant right up to the 20th century. Post-Emancipation under colonial rule and white domination, Black poetry and prose emerged, adhering to prevailing standards, evidenced typically in the work of Phillis Wheatley and the sonnets of Claude McKay. With the Civil Rights and Black Power movements would come iconoclastic expressions of protest and identity. There is a sizeable body of literature by Black authors from Africa and the diaspora who speak to universal values and eternal verities. This anthology of their work focuses on the inner life, on personal development and self-actualization. 3000 quotations have been selected to inspire, enlightenand encourage; they have been arranged in 200 psycho-spiritual categories and in chronological order. The resulting timeline of thought in itself is useful and instructive as it demonstrates very clearly the evolution of consciousness evident in the contemporary thinking on particular subjects. Like its predecessor, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, this volume contains a full biographical index and bibliographical references. Much of the material is anthologized here for the first time.

This collection of essays emerged from a symposium held at Mercer University which examined the ways in which W. E. B. Du Bois's theories of race have shaped racial discussion and public policy in the twentieth-century. The essays also examine the application of Du Bois's theories to the new millennium, as well as his contributions to the study of the humanities.

In the olden days, after a days work in the farms, children and parents returned home feeling worn out. As a sort of evening entertainment, children of the same family, compound or village then gathered round a story-teller to listen to folk tales and riddles. This was common in every African home. The listeners participate with joy by joining in the songs and choruses. Sometimes the children were given the opportunity to tell stories that they had known while the adult story-teller listened attentively in order to add more details where necessary. In telling these stories and riddles, children were expected to learn something through all those activities connected with the customs, environment, language and religious practices of their people. This book provides children with stories, riddles and some proverbs that parents ought to have told their children at -home but have failed because of their present day busy schedules. Teachers will fill that vacuum at school as they guide the children in reading the stories, riddles and proverbs in their second language - English. As an instructional tool, this collection will foster literacy, promote cultural awareness and create situations where learners share with one another their personal experiences and traditions.

In this book, Stephanie J. Shaw brings a new understanding to one of the great documents of American and black history. While most scholarly discussions of The Souls of Black Folk focus on the veils, the color line, double consciousness, or Booker T. Washington, Shaw reads Du Bois' book as a profoundly nuanced interpretation of the souls of black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Demonstrating the importance of the work as a sociohistorical study of black life in America through the turn of the twentieth century and offering new ways of thinking about many of the topics introduced in Souls, Shaw charts Du Bois' successful appropriation of Hegelian idealism in order to add America, the nineteenth century, and black people to the historical narrative in Hegel's philosophy of history. Shaw adopts Du Bois' point of view to delve into the social, cultural, political, and intellectual milieus that helped to create The Souls of Black Folk.

Some adolescent women struggle to maintain positive self-identity, resilience, and personalized faith development on their journey toward adulthood. It is a contemporary crisis recognized by many, including ministry leaders of faith communities. In today’s fast-paced digital culture, concerns addressing challenges facing adolescent women are evident in research literature. To strengthen their spiritual well-being, emphasis is placed on spiritual formation practices that enhance faith, hope, and personal relationships amid social, peer, and media pressures pulling them into negative, detrimental, and dysfunctional lifestyles. Empirical research reveals a need to transform negative images and self-destruction utilizing stories of holistic well-being. Sowing Stories Deep in the Soul: Biblical Storytelling with Adolescent Women highlights biblical women touched by the holistic healing ministry of Jesus with deep soul-stirring experiences of God’s compassionate love. It meets the need as a spiritual formation ministry model focused on creativity, engaging study, internalized story learning, positive life connections, and performing biblical stories by heart. These expressive aspects form the ancient oral character of Bible stories internalized and voiced in repeated performances for compelling impact and action. Included are replicable results of action research using this model with adolescent women to encourage maintaining Christ-centered lives.

This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.

In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history.