Isidore Okpewho

Professor of Africana Studies English and Comparative Literature Isidore Okpewho

"... its pages come alive with wonderful illustrative material coupled with sensitve and insightful commentary." —Reviews in Anthropology "... the scope, breadth, and lucidity of this excellent study confirm that Okpewho is undoubtedly the most important authority writing on African oral literature right now... "Â —Research in African Literatures "Truly a tour de force of individual scholarship... "Â —World Literature Today "... excellent... " —African Affairs "... a thorough synthesis of the main issues of oral literature criticism, as well as a grounding in experienced fieldwork, a wide-ranging theoretical base, and a clarity of argument rare among academics."Â —Multicultural Review "This is a breathtakingly ambitious project... "Â —Harold Scheub "... a definitive accounting of the evidence of living oral traditions in Africa today. Professor Okpewho's authority as an expert in this important new field is unrivaled." —Gregory Nagy "Isidore Okpewho's ÂAfrican Oral Literature is a marvelous piece of scholarship and wide-ranging research. It presents the most comprehensive survey of the field of oral literature in Africa." —Emmanuel Obiechina "... a tour de force of scholarship in which Okpewho casts his net across the African continent, searching for its verbal forms through voluminous recent writings and presents African oral literature in a new voice, proclaiming the literariness of African folklore." —Dan Ben-Amos "This is an outstanding book by a scholar whose work has already influenced how African literature should be conceived.... Professor Okpewho is a scholar with a special talent to nurture scholarship in others. After this work, African literature will never be the same."Â —Mazisi Kunene Isidore Okpewho, for many years Professor of English at the University of Ibadan, is one of the handful of African scholars who has facilitated the growth of African oral literature to its status today as a literary enterprise concerned with the artistic foundations of human culture. This comprehensive critical work firmly establishes oral literature as a landmark of high artistic achievement and situates it within the broader framework of contemporary African culture.

Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity

African Oral Literature

A young African American falls into periodic spasms and chants a text that nobody understands. His troubled family seeks help. The text, recorded by a psychiatrist and deciphered by linguists, is found to be a corrupted family chant from the Yoruba of Nigeria. The doctor advises a trip to that ethnic region. The spiritual voices that have been summoning Otis finally bring him to the spot where his ancestor was enslaved over a century before. Two years on, armed with a recovered identity and a chastened wisdom, Otis returns to the U.S. to join the 1960s civil rights struggle.

Call Me by My Rightful Name

Using stories he collected from narrators from the old West African kingdom of Benin, the author shows how the present mirrors the past in both folklore and political reality, suggesting that African states fail to create a level playing field for the plural identities within their borders, leaving marginalized peoples uncertain of their place in an uneven socio-political landscape.

Myth, Hegemony, and Identity

Once Upon a Kingdom

In this innovative study Dr Okpewho explores what he considers the essence of African traditions - myth - and examines its place in African life, literature and thought. Focusing on a number of tales from a selection of African countries, Dr Okpewho shows myth to be the basic imaginative resource from which the larger cultural values derive.

Myth in Africa

Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui

Carole Boyce Davies

* How black people established their identities in the African diaspora.

African Origins and New World Identities

The African Diaspora

"Isidore Okpewho has written another landmark study.... Written with exceptional clarity, accessible, yet vigorously argued and sparkling with illustrative insights, Once Upon a Kingdom is immeasurably delightful to read. Like anything Okpewho has ever written, the boook has set the terms for future studies in the field." --World Literature Today "Okpewho gives us yet again a work of outstanding scholarship that is also a joy to read." --Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart "Indispensable for collections of black or oral literature and history... " --Choice "An incisive analysis by one of the leading Africanist scholars that manages to be at once enjoyable, informative and challenging. This timely and authoritative book represents a new stage in the study of African narrative which will interest and challenge (or arouse) students of narrative whatever their geographical specialism." --Ruth Finnegan The communities that once lived in the pale of the West African kingdom of Benin still tell stories that show traces of their ingrained resentment of the kingdom. Isidore Okpewho uses stories he collected from narrators in these communities to reveal an effort by marginalized peoples to defend themselves and their place in an uneven socio-political landscape.

Presents critical essays on "Things fall apart" from a variety of perspectives, including ethnographic, pedagogical, and ideological ones.

A Casebook

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Nkiru Nzegwu

The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United States and Canada than had been forcibly brought here before the slave trade ended in 1807. The key reason for these migrations has been the collapse of social, political, economic, and educational structures in their home countries, which has driven Africans to seek security and self-realization in the West. This lively and timely collection of essays takes a look at the new immigrant experience. It traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. The contributors, most immigrants themselves, use their firsthand experiences to add clarity, honesty, and sensitivity to their discussions of the new African diaspora.

The New African Diaspora

The Oral Performance in Africa

How black identities were forged in New World cultures

Isidore Okpewho

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