Writers Writing On Conflict And Wars In Africa

Many African countries are caught up in perennial or recurrent political conflicts that often culminate in devastating wars. These flaring conflicts and wars create harrowing economic hardships, dire refugee problems, and sustain a sense of despair in such countries. By their nature, these conflicts and wars affect writers in profound and sometimes paradoxical ways. On the one hand, literature-whether fiction, poetry, drama, or even memoirs-is animated by conflict. On the other hand, the sense of dislocation as well as the humanitarian crises unleashed by wars and other kinds of conflicts also constitute grave impediments to artistic exploration and literary expression. Writers and artists are frequently in the frontline of resistance to the kinds of injustices and abuses that precipitate wars and conflicts. Consequently, they are often detained, exiled, and even killed either by agents of state terror or by one faction or another in the tussle for state control. Writers, Writing Conflicts and Wars in Africa is a collection of testimonies by various writers and scholars who have experienced, or explored, the continent's conflicts and woes, including how the disruptions shape artistic and literary production. The book is divided into two broad categories: in one, several writers speak directly, and with rich anecdotal details about the impact wars and conflicts have had in the formation of their experience and work; in the second, a number of scholars articulate how particular writers have assimilated the horrors of wars and conflicts in their literary creations. The result is an invaluable harvest of reflections and perspectives that open the window into an essential, but until now sadly unexplored, facet of the cultural and political experience of African writers. The broad scope of this collection-covering Darfur, the Congolese crisis, Biafra, Zimbabwe, South Africa, among others-is complemented by a certain buoyancy of spirit that runs through most of the essays and anecdotes.

Nominated for the NYMAS Arthur Goodzeit Book Award 2013 Portugal's three wars in Africa in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (Guiné-Bissau today) lasted almost 13 years - longer than the United States Army fought in Vietnam. Yet they are among the most underreported conflicts of the modern era. Commonly referred to as Lisbon's Overseas War (Guerra do Ultramar) or in the former colonies, the War of Liberation (Guerra de Libertação), these struggles played a seminal role in ending white rule in Southern Africa. Though hardly on the scale of hostilities being fought in South East Asia, the casualty count by the time a military coup d'état took place in Lisbon in April 1974 was significant. It was certainly enough to cause Portugal to call a halt to violence and pull all its troops back to the Metropolis. Ultimately, Lisbon was to move out of Africa altogether, when hundreds of thousands of Portuguese nationals returned to Europe, the majority having left everything they owned behind. Independence for all th Indeed, on a recent visit to Central Mozambique in 2013, a youthful member of the American Peace Corps told this author that despite have former colonies, including the Atlantic islands, followed soon afterwards. Lisbon ruled its African territories for more than five centuries, not always undisputed by its black and mestizo subjects, but effectively enough to create a lasting Lusitanian tradition. That imprint is indelible and remains engraved in language, social mores and cultural traditions that sometimes have more in common with Europe than with Africa. Today, most of the newspapers in Luanda, Maputo - formerly Lourenco Marques - and Bissau are in Portuguese, as is the language taught in their schools and used by their respective representatives in international bodies to which they all subscribe. ing been embroiled in conflict with the Portuguese for many years in the 1960s and 1970s, he found the local people with whom he came into contact inordinately fond of their erstwhile 'colonial overlords'. As a foreign correspondent, Al Venter covered all three wars over more than a decade, spending lengthy periods in the territories while going on operations with the Portuguese army, marines and air force. In the process, he wrote several books on these conflicts, including a report on the conflict in Portuguese Guinea for the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology. Portugal's Guerrilla Wars in Africa represents an amalgam of these efforts. At the same time, this book is not an official history, but rather a journalist's perspective of military events as viewed by somebody who has made a career of reporting on overseas wars, Africa's especially. Venter's camera was always at hand; most of the images used between these covers are his. His approach is both intrusive and personal and he would like to believe that he has managed to record for posterity a tiny but vital segment of African history.

African writers and literary critics must account for the changing political terrain and how these contribute to creating new sources of conflicts and aggression toward women. This book brings insight and scholarly breadth to the growing research on women, war, and conflict in Africa. The aftermath of wars and conflicts initiates new forms of violence and related gender challenges. The contributors establish compelling evidence for the significance of gender in the analyses of contemporary warfare and conflict. Articulating war's consequences for women and children remains a major challenge for critics, policy makers, and human rights organizations. There is a need for deeper understanding of the new sources of violence and male aggression on women, the gendered challenges of reintegration in the aftermath, and the future consequences of gendered violence for the African continent. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers, instructors, students of literature in the humanities, women's studies, liberal studies, African studies, etc. at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It also offers interdisciplinary utility for readers interested in literary representations of women's experience in war and conflict.

Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. A Nigerian immigrant to Senegal explores the increasing influence of China across the region, a Kenyan student activist writes of exile in Kampala, a Liberian scientist shares her diary of the Ebola crisis, a Nigerian journalist travels to the north to meet a community at risk, a Kenyan author travels to Senegal to interview a gay rights activist, and a South African writer recounts a tale of family discord and murder in a remote seaside town. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa.

This book is a major new contribution to our understanding of war and international relations (IR). Divided into two sections, the first part surveys the state of war and war studies in international relations, security studies and in feminist international relations. The second part addresses a missing area of IR studies of war that feminism is well-placed to fill in: the emotional and physical aspects of war. The author examines a wide variety of conflict situations, such as the Israel/Palestine dispute, the Cold War, Vietnam, Nicaragua, wars of liberation in Africa, genocidal war in Rwanda; humanitarian interventionist war in the Balkans, the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 'war on terror'. Drawing on the latest feminist thinking, the author demonstrates how war is experienced as a body-based politics and in so doing provides an innovative and challenging corrective to traditional theories of war in international relations. This will be essential reading for all those with an interest in gender, war and international relations.

Trapped inside lorries or huddled aboard unseaworthy boats, irregular African migrants make for troubling headlines in western media, fueling fever pitch fears of an impending "African exodus" to Europe. Despite the increasing, albeit sensational, attention irregular migration attracts on both sides of the Mediterranean, little is known about what shapes and influences the lives of these Africans before, during, and after their “migratory projects.” By privileging migrants' narratives and drawing on evidence-based field research from different disciplinary backgrounds, the volume demystifies and dislodges many common assumptions about the human ecology of irregular African migration to Europe, arguably one of the most widely debated, yet least understood, phenomenon of our time.

Through poetry this book provides insightful reflections on the attributes of and imperative for human decency in one’s personal life and in the process of national development. Focusing on Liberia, the book illuminates aspects of the country’s history, particularly its war and postwar situation as well as the challenges for development. The book further advocates the need for patriotism, peace, knowledge, integrity and capacity building while conveying a message that development should not be regarded solely by the level of material wealth, but also by how it touches human life and whether it protects or undermines the dignity of people.