Stories about Literature from March, 2007
South Africa: Busisiwe, Rest in Peace
Earlier this month, the South African blogosphere lost a blogger, writer, artist and poet, Busisiwe Sigasa (25). She started her blog, My Realities, at the end of last year with the help of Sokari Ekine. Busisiwe, whose name means “the Blessed One” in Zulu, was also known as Latifah. She...
Russia: Tolstoy's Diary
De Rebus Antiquis Et Novis notes that Leo Tolstoy's diary turned 160 years old yesterday: “In the complete set of his works the diaries occupy 13 volumes.”
Ukraine: Book on Chernobyl
MoldovAnn reads Piers Paul Read's 1993 book on Chernobyl (Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl) and discovers that she has been to a few Ukrainian towns mentioned in it: “Sometimes I forget what my colleagues lived through, that they themselves are first-hand witnesses to the Chornobyl...
Trinidad & Tobago: Abolition of the Slave Trade
As the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is celebrated today, Roi Kwabena posts a poem that “tries to show the links between the nexus of the human condition”.
Martinique: Owing De Beauvoir
Says Blog de Moi[Fr]: “I am not sure that young women of today are fully aware of what they owe an author such as Simone de Beauvoir and to feminism in general given how hard some of them work to distance themselves from it.”
Sierra Leone: claiming Ishmael Beah
A Siera Leonean blogger claims Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, “However, as a Sierra Leonean, I don’t want Ishmael to be a Universalist. I want very badly to claim him as Sierra Leonean and to own his experience as part of...
Colombia: Garcia Marquez Honoured
Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his “extraordinary literary career” were the toast of the fourth Congress of the Spanish Language held in Colombia. The Latin Americanist gives details.
Peru: Plagiarism at Every Level
There is no doubt about what has captured the attention of many Peruvian bloggers these past two weeks: the plagiarism of a local blog's content by the daily newspaper, La República [ES]. Though this isn't the first time such a thing has happened, this time we find much more repercussion....
Small taste of Chilean writers and poetry part I
Chile is well known as a country of poets, including Nobel Prize Winners Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1945) and Pablo Neruda, one of the most influential poets of the 20th century (1971). Gabriela Mistral (ES) was not only a poet, she...
El Salvador, Chile: Roque Dalton and Roberto Bolaño
Venezuelan-American poet Guillermo Parra, recently in San Salvador to research Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton (1935-1975), describes the interests in leftists politics and experimental fiction shared by Dalton and the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. A follow-up essay, “Poor Poets: Roque Dalton and Roberto Bolaño“, goes into further detail about the lives...
Jamaica: The Digital Revolution
Geoffrey Philp refers to a post by Kenneth Goldsmith highlighting possible implications of the digital revolution.
Cameroon: literary giant dies
Dibussis Tande announces the death of the Cameroonian literary giant, Bate Besong: To many Cameroonians BB was an inspiration, a teacher and mentor. He was an iconic figure who gave meaning to the cliché, “Man of the People”.
China: Officer dismissed for blogging
In China, there's more precedent for blogging getting people in trouble with the police than there is for blogging in itself getting one getting fired. So what happens to cops who blog? Check out Hubei-based Soho Xiaobao blogger Wu Youming‘s most recent post, ‘Confessions of a canned cop‘, dated March...
Palestine: Free Speech
Palestinian blogger Amal A posts an interesting question which spells out the difference between the English and Arabic language readers of a news website. I wonder what the 8000 enlightened people who approved the burning of the book would say if they were asked, “Do you support the burning at...
Bahrain: A better literary life for civil servants?
We begin this week's review of Bahrain's blogs with Lulu's review of Bahrain's second annual Spring of Culture. Regarding the music/poetry/dance performance headlined by Marcel Khalife, and which caused controversy because of the dance element, she says: I'm all for the arts & freedom of expression, of course, but if...
China and Japan: Sino-Japanese Studies Journal Online
K. M. Lawson from Japan History group blog announced the digitization of the Sino-Japanese Studies Journal. The full journal is available online at ChinaJapan.org
Nigeria, Cameroon: Purple Hibiscus
Cameroonian Sanaga Peregrinations writes [Fr] of Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Purple Hibiscus: “Important questions are raised in this book, between respect of tradition and conformity to christian teachings, does the fight against sin justify damnation on earth through corporal punishment?”
Trinidad & Tobago: New Shakespeare play?
“How this previously unknown Shakespeare play came to be in the West Indian Reference Library in Port of Spain I don't know,” writes blogger Jeremy Taylor, as he runs an excerpt from the aforementioned work, which describes events bearing “an uncanny resemblance to events in Trinidad and Tobago this last...
Jamaica: What makes a work memorable?
Jamaican writer Geoffrey Philp asks: “what makes a work of literature memorable right now.”
Mexico: New Outlet for New Translations
C.M. Mayo announces the first edition of the Tameme chapbook ~ cuaderno. Meant to “celebrate and disseminate new writing and translation in an attractive and affordable format,” the inaugural issue features the story “Carne verde, piel negra ~ An Avocado from Michoacán” por ~ by Agustín Cadena, which won Mexico's...
