#South African farm novel

[justforbooks]

James Earl Jones

American actor hailed for his many classical roles whose voice became known to millions as that of Darth Vader in Star Wars

During the run of the 2011 revival of Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy in London, with Vanessa Redgrave, the actor James Earl Jones, who has died aged 93, was presented with an honorary Oscar by Ben Kingsley, with a link from the Wyndham’s theatre to the awards ceremony in Hollywood.

Glenn Close in Los Angeles said that Jones represented the “essence of truly great acting” and Kingsley spoke of his imposing physical presence, his 1,000-kilowatt smile, his basso profundo voice and his great stillness. Jones’s voice was known to millions as that of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film trilogy and Mufasa in the 1994 Disney animation The Lion King, as well as being the signature sound of US TV news (“This is CNN”) for many years.

His status as the leading black actor of his generation was established with the Tony award he won in 1969 for his performance as the boxer Jack Jefferson (a fictional version of Jack Johnson) in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope on Broadway, a role he repeated in Martin Ritt’s 1970 film, and which earned him an Oscar nomination.

On screen, Jones – as the fictional Douglass Dilman – played the first African-American president, in Joseph Sargent’s 1972 movie The Man, based on an Irving Wallace novel. His stage career was notable for encompassing great roles in the classical repertoire, such as King Lear, Othello, Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, the son of Robert Earl Jones, a minor actor, boxer, butler and chauffeur, and his wife Ruth (nee Connolly), a teacher, and was proud of claiming African and Irish ancestry. His father left home soon after he was born, and he was raised on a farm in Jackson, Michigan, by his maternal grandparents, John and Maggie Connolly. He spoke with a stutter, a problem he dealt with at Brown’s school in Brethren, Michigan, by reading poetry aloud.

On graduating from the University of Michigan, he served as a US Army Ranger in the Korean war. He began working as an actor and stage manager at the Ramsdell theatre in Manistee, Michigan, where he played his first Othello in 1955, an indication perhaps of his early power and presence.

The family had moved from the deep south to Michigan to find work, and now Jones went to New York to join his father in the theatre and to study at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg. He made his Broadway debut at the Cort theatre in 1958 in Dory Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello, a play about Franklin D Roosevelt.

He was soon a cornerstone of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare festival in Central Park, playing Caliban in The Tempest, Macduff in Macbeth and another Othello in the 1964 season. He also established a foothold in films, as Lt Lothar Zogg in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1963), a cold war satire in which Peter Sellers shone with brilliance in three separate roles.

The Great White Hope came to the Alvin theatre in New York from the Arena Stage in Washington, where Jones first unleashed his shattering, shaven-headed performance – he was described as chuckling like thunder, beating his chest and rolling his eyes – in a production by Edwin Sherin that exposed racism in the fight game at the very time of Muhammad Ali’s suspension from the ring on the grounds of his refusal to sign up for military service in the Vietnam war.

Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs (1970) was a response to Jean Genet’s The Blacks, in which Jones, who remained much more of an off-Broadway fixture than a Broadway star in this period, despite his eminence, played a westernised urban African man returning to his village for his father’s funeral. With Papp’s Public theatre, he featured in an all-black version of The Cherry Orchard in 1972, following with John Steinbeck’s Lennie in Of Mice and Men on Broadway and returning to Central Park as a stately King Lear in 1974.

When he played Paul Robeson on Broadway in the 1977-78 season, there was a kerfuffle over alleged misrepresentations in Robeson’s life, but Jones was supported in a letter to the newspapers signed by Edward Albee, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman and Richard Rodgers. He played his final Othello on Broadway in 1982, partnered by Christopher Plummer as Iago, and appeared in the same year in Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard, a white South African playwright he often championed in New York.

In August Wilson’s Fences (1987), part of that writer’s cycle of the century “black experience” plays, he was described as an erupting volcano as a Pittsburgh garbage collector who had lost his dreams of a football career and was too old to play once the major leagues admitted black players. His character, Troy Maxson, is a classic of the modern repertoire, confined in a world of 1950s racism, and has since been played by Denzel Washington and Lenny Henry.

Jones’s film career was solid if not spectacular. Playing Sheikh Abdul, he joined a roll call of British comedy stars – Terry-Thomas, Irene Handl, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov – in Marty Feldman’s The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977), in stark contrast to his (at first uncredited) Malcolm X in Ali’s own biopic, The Greatest (1977), with a screenplay by Ring Lardner. He also appeared in Peter Masterson’s Convicts (1991), a civil war drama; Jon Amiel’s Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster; and Darrell Roodt’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), scripted by Ronald Harwood, in which he played a black South African pastor in conflict with his white landowning neighbour in the 40s.

In all these performances, Jones quietly carried his nation’s history on his shoulders. On stage, this sense could irradiate a performance such as that in his partnership with Leslie Uggams in the 2005 Broadway revival at the Cort of Ernest Thompson’s elegiac On Golden Pond; he and Uggams reinvented the film performances of Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as an old couple in a Maine summer house.

He brought his Broadway Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to London in 2009, playing an electrifying scene with Adrian Lester as his broken sports star son, Brick, at the Novello theatre. The coarse, cancer-ridden big plantation owner was transformed into a rumbling, bear-like figure with a totally unexpected streak of benignity perhaps not entirely suited to the character. But that old voice still rolled through the stalls like a mellow mist, rich as molasses.

That benign streak paid off handsomely, though, in the London reprise of a deeply sentimental Broadway comedy (and Hollywood movie), Driving Miss Daisy, in which his partnership as a chauffeur to Redgrave (unlikely casting as a wealthy southern US Jewish widow, though she got the scantiness down to a tee) was a delightful two-step around the evolving issues of racial tension between 1948 and 1973.

So deep was this bond with Redgrave that he returned to London for a third time in 2013 to play Benedick to her Beatrice in Mark Rylance’s controversial Old Vic production of Much Ado About Nothing, the middle-aged banter of the romantically at-odds couple transformed into wistful, nostalgia for seniors.

His last appearance on Broadway was in a 2015 revival of DL Coburn’s The Gin Game, opposite Cicely Tyson. He was given a lifetime achievement Tony award in 2017, and the Cort theatre was renamed the James Earl Jones theatre in 2022.

Jones’s first marriage, to Julienne Marie (1968-72), ended in divorce. In 1982 he married Cecilia Hart with whom he had a son, Flynn. She died in 2016. He is survived by Flynn, also an actor, and a brother, Matthew.

🔔 James Earl Jones, actor, born 17 January 1931; died 9 September 2024

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[biboocat]

I first heard about The Story of an African Farm (1883) by the South African writer Olive Schreiner in Vera Brittain’s memoir of the Great War, Testament of Youth. She and her fiancé, Roland Leighton were intensely interested in it, but its contents weren’t discussed, so I was curious to read it. Olive Schreiner wrote this debut novel when she was only in her 20s. The Story of an African Farm is set on an isolated farm in the South African veld. It is a coming of age story of the three children who live there, the two girls Em and Lyndall and Waldo, the farm manager’s son. Schreiner’s views are told mostly through Waldo and Lyndall as we follow their development and difficult quests. The novel is unconventional. Besides the traditional narrative sections it has the unusual features of an exposition (Times and Seasons) and an allegory as well as a lengthy letter. She describes Waldo’s spiritual journey from unquestioned religious belief to skepticism and apostasy and the replacement of the religious void with knowledge and an appreciation for the beauty and order of Nature. Olive Schreiner was raised by devout Christian missionaries but lost her religious faith after the death of her beloved 17 month old sister Ellie. Schreiner also raises the issue of gender inequality through Lyndall: the limitations on women’s education and their subservient roles in society, and she describes Lyndall’s desperate struggle for autonomy. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Olive Schreiner loved George Eliot‘s the Mill on the Floss and that she identified with Maggie Tulliver. Her views were quite progressive and controversial for her time, and the book was met with both wide appeal and opposition. I can imagine how it must have resonated with Vera Brittain’s own agnosticism and feminism. It’s a philosophical work that courageously challenges both the form of the Victorian novel and restrictive Victorian social conventions.

Memorable excerpts (among many):

“We must have awakened sooner or later. The imagination cannot always triumph over reality, the desire over truth…Now we have no God. We have had two: The old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated, and never liked; the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see what he was made of – the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and enthroned.”

“But we, wretched unbelievers, we bear our own burdens; we must say, I myself did it, I. Not God, not Satan; I myself!”

I came across a reference to Olive Schreiner in a review of Lyndall Gordon’s biographical work, Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. I haven’t read it, but it sounded interesting, and I have provided the link:

The edition I read is from the Limited Editions Club. The cover material is Ugandan bark cloth, Isak Dinesen provides the introduction, and it is illustrated by Paul Hogarth. I have also seen editions from Oxford World’s Classics, Penguin, Virago, and Modern Library.

Memorable excerpts :

It is a terrible, hateful ending, said the little teller of the story, leaning forward on her folded arms; and the worst is, it is true. I have noticed, added the child very deliberately, that it is only the made up stories that end nicely; the true ones all end so.

They did not understand the discourse (the charlatan’s false sermon), which made it the more affecting. There hung over it that inscrutable charm which hovers for ever for the human intellect over the incomprehensible and shadowy.

To the old German the story it was no story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the matters of his own life. He could not go away without knowing whether the wicked Earl relented, and whether the Baron married Emelina.

Times and Seasons is a very important chapter that outlines the course of one’s experiences with religious faith (if one is willing to think for oneself): belief, questioning, skepticism, disbelief, and finally the replacement of religion with knowledge and an appreciation of the beauty and order of Nature. Some excerpts from this chapter follow:

Is it good of God to make hell? Was it kind of Him to let no one be forgiven unless Jesus Christ died?

Is it right there should be a chosen people? To Him, who is father to all, should not all be dear?

We must have awakened sooner or later. The imagination cannot always triumph over reality, the desire over truth…Now we have no God. We have had two: The old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated, and never liked; the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see what he was made of – the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and enthroned. Now we have no God...

We do not cry and weep; we sit down with cold eyes and look at the world. We are not miserable. Why should we be? We eat and drink, and sleep all night; but the dead are not colder.

And we add, growing a little colder yet, ‘There is no justice. The ox dies in the yoke beneath its master’s whip; it turns its anguish-filled eyes on the sunlight, but there is no sign of recompense to be made it. The black man is shot like a dog, and it goes well with the shooter. The innocent are accused, and the accuser triumphs. If you will take the trouble to scratch the surface anywhere, you will see under the skin a sentient being writhing in impotent anguish.’ And we say further, and our heart is as the heart of the dead for coldness, ‘There is no order’: all things are driven about by a blind chance.’. p117

What a soul drinks in with its mothers milk will not leave it in a day. From earliest hour we have been taught that the thought of the heart, the shaping of the rain-cloud, the amount of wool that grows on a sheep‘s back, the length of a drought, and the growing of the corn depend on nothing that moves immutable, at the heart of all things; but on the changeable will of a changeable being, whom our prayers can alter. To us, from the beginning, nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not; to go to church or not; to say his prayers right or not; to travel on a Sunday or not. Was it possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is – the flowing vestment of unchanging reality? When a soul breaks free from the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves off in him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out...

Whether a man believes in a human-like God or no is a small thing. Whether he looks into the mental and physical world and sees no relation between cause and effect, no order, but a blind chance sporting, this is the mightiest fact that can be recorded in any spiritual existence. p118

Following this, the appreciation of the acquisition of knowledge and Nature’s own beauty and order fills the void of religion. pp119-121

We have never once been taught by word or act to distinguish between religion and the moral laws on which it has artfully fastened its self, and from which it has sucked it’s vitality.

But we, wretched unbelievers, we bear our own burdens; we must say, I myself did it, I. Not God, not Satan; I myself!

The secret of success is concentration; wherever there has been a great life, or a great work, that has gone before. Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing. Anything is possible to a man who knows his end and moves straight for it, and for it alone.

[mariacallous]

One hundred miles west of Johannesburg in South Africa, the Komati Power Station is hard to miss, looming above the flat grassland and farming landscapes like an enormous eruption of concrete, brick, and metal.

When the coal-fired power station first spun up its turbines in 1961, it had twice the capacity of any existing power station in South Africa. It has been operational for more than half a century, but as of October 2022, Komati has been retired—the stacks are cold and the coal deliveries have stopped.

Now a different kind of activity is taking place on the site, transforming it into a beacon of clean energy: 150 MW of solar, 70 MW of wind, and 150 MW of storage batteries. The beating of coal-fired swords into sustainable plowshares has become the new narrative for the Mpumalanga province, home to most of South Africa’s coal-fired power stations, including Komati.

To get here, the South African government has had to think outside the box. Phasing out South Africa’s aging coal-fired power station fleet—which supplies 86 percent of the country’s electricity—is expensive and politically risky, and could come at enormous social and economic cost to a nation already struggling with energy security and socioeconomic inequality. In the past, bits and pieces of energy-transition funding have come in from organizations such as the World Bank, which assisted with the Komati repurposing, but for South Africa to truly leave coal behind, something financially bigger and better was needed.

That arrived at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021, in the form of a partnership between South Africa, European countries, and the US. Together, they made a deal to deliver $8.5 billion in loans and grants to help speed up South Africa’s transition to renewables, and to do so in a socially and economically just way.

This agreement was the first of what’s being called Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs, an attempt to catalyze global finance for emerging economies looking to shift energy reliance away from fossil fuels in a way that doesn’t leave certain people and communities behind.

Since South Africa’s pioneering deal, Indonesia has signed an agreement worth $20 billion, Vietnam one worth $15.5 billion, and Senegal one worth $2.75 billion. Discussions are taking place for a possible agreement for India. Altogether, around $100 billion is on the table.

There’s significant enthusiasm for JETPs in the climate finance arena, particularly given the stagnancy of global climate finance in general. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries signed up to a goal of mobilizing $100 billion of climate finance for developing countries per year by 2020. None have met that target, and the agreement lapses in 2025. The hope is that more funding for clear-cut strategies and commitments will lead to quicker moves toward renewables.

South Africa came into the JETP agreement with a reasonably mature plan for a just energy transition, focusing on three sectors: electricity, new energy vehicles, and green hydrogen. Late last year, it fleshed that out with a detailed Just Energy Transition investment plan. Specifically, the plan centers on decommissioning coal plants, providing alternative employment for those working in coal mining, and accelerating the development of renewable energy and the green economy. It is a clearly defined but big task.

South Africa’s coal mining and power sector employs around 200,000 people, many in regions with poor infrastructure and high levels of poverty. So the “just” part of the “just energy transition” is critical, says climate finance expert Malango Mughogho, who is managing director of ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance Limited in South Africa and a member of the United Nations High-Level Expert Group on net-zero emissions commitments.

“People are going to lose their jobs. Industries do need to shift so, on a net basis, the average person living there needs to not be worse off from before,” she says. This is why the project focuses not only on the energy plants themselves, but also on reskilling, retraining, and redeployment of coal workers.

In a country where coal is also a major export, there are economic and political sensitivities around transitioning to renewables, and that poses a challenge in terms of how the project is framed. “Given the high unemployment rate in South Africa as well … you cannot sell it as a climate change intervention,” says Deborah Ramalope, head of climate policy analysis at the policy institute Climate Analytics in Berlin. “You really need to sell it as a socioeconomic intervention.”

That would be a hard sell if the only investment coming in were $8.5 billion—an amount far below what’s needed to completely overhaul a country’s energy sector. But JETPs aren’t intended to completely or even substantially bankroll these transitions. The idea is that this initial financial boost signals to private financiers both within and outside South Africa that things are changing.

Using public finance to leverage private investment is a common and often successful practice, Mughogho says. The challenge is to make the investment prospects as attractive as possible. “Typically private finance will move away from something if they consider it to be too risky and they’re not getting the return that they need,” she says. “So as long as those risks have been clearly identified and then managed in some way, then the private sector should come through.” This is good news, as South Africa has forecast it will need nearly $100 billion to fully realize the just transition away from coal and toward clean vehicles and green hydrogen as outlined in its plan.

Will all of that investment arrive? It’s such early days with the South African JETP that there’s not yet any concrete indication of whether the approach will work.

But the simple fact that such high-profile, high-dollar agreements are being signed around just transitions is cause for hope, says Haley St. Dennis, head of just transitions at the Institute for Human Rights and Business in Salt Lake City, Utah. “What we have seen so far, particularly from South Africa, which is the furthest along, is very promising,” she says. These projects demonstrate exactly the sort of international cooperation needed for successful climate action, St. Dennis adds.

The agreements aren’t perfect. For example, they may not rule out oil and gas as bridging fuels between coal and renewables, says St. Dennis. “The rub is that, especially for many of the JETP countries—which are heavily coal-dependent, low- and middle-income economies—decarbonization can’t come at any cost,” she says. “That especially means that it can’t threaten what is often already tenuous energy security and energy access for their people, and that's where oil and gas comes in in a big way.”

Ramalope says they also don’t go far enough. “I think the weakness of JETPs is that they’re not encouraging 1.5 [degrees] Celsius,” she says, referring to the limit on global warming set as a target by the Paris Agreement in 2015. In Senegal, which is not coal-dependent, the partnership agreement is to achieve 40 percent renewables in Senegal’s electricity mix. But Ramalope says analysis suggests the country could achieve double this amount. “I think that’s a missed opportunity.”

Another concern is that these emerging economies could be simply trapping themselves in more debt with these agreements. While there’s not much detail about the relative proportions of grants and loans in South Africa’s agreement, St. Dennis says most of the funding is concessional, or low-interest loans. “Why add more debt when the intention is to dramatically catalyze decarbonization in a very short timescale?” she asks. Grants themselves are estimated to be a very small component of the overall funding—around 5 percent.

But provided they generate the funding needed to bring emissions down as desired, the view of JETPs is largely positive, says Sierd Hadley, an economist with the Overseas Development Institute in London. For Hadley, the concern is whether JETPs can be sustained once the novelty has worn off, and once they aren’t being featured as part of a COP or G20 leadup. But he notes that the fact that the international community has managed to deliver at least four of the five JETP deals so far—with India yet to be locked in—shows there is pressure to make good on the promises.

“On the whole, the fact that there has been a plan, and that that plan is broadly in progress, suggests that on balance this has been fairly successful,” he says. “It’s a very significant moment for climate finance.”

[pret-a-porture]

Introduction: Fashion and Globalization

Throughout time, humanity has changed and adapted as a response to all things big and small; The significance of dress to humans means fashion follows. While it's impossible to determine all of the influences fashion has been shaped by throughout its history, it's clear that culture is the most recognizable and influential. Enter globalization; a concept that both unifies and divides culturally, but how is that possible?

Consider the two opposing views on globalization

 Globalization is important in understanding people of different cultures through exposure allowing for “better understanding of foreign values and attitudes. Less stereotyping and fewer misconceptions about other people and cultures”("Globalization Pros and Cons") Still, the loss and exploitation of cultures around us and power imbalance among nations is undeniably a problem due to globalization. ”The loss of traditions associated with globalization is cultural imperialism. For example, the Maasai, an ethnic group in East Africa, are historically pastoral and semi-nomadic. Throughout the past century, many Maasai have transitioned to farming or other occupations besides their traditional lifestyle.”(Garbuio) Perhaps we should aim to find a middle ground; to share cultures worldwide but with emphasis on respect towards the separate origins of the practices, art, and characteristics being shared. This means respecting the sacristy of certain practices towards a culture and knowing when and if participation would be respectful.

Globalization and Cultural Authentication

With an understanding in mind of globalization and its effects on culture comes the question of its relation to cultural authentication. While it’s arguable cultural authentication promotes globalization, a bigger case can be made for globalization’s prompting of cultural authentication. As we globalize, our lines of communication grow faster and more efficiently, allowing contact between people of cultures who wouldn’t have been able to interact with one another prior.  “As more cultures have cross-cultural contact, people begin to change aspects of their cultures by incorporating aspects of different cultures they come into contact with.”(Elder).  An example of this is globalization through immigration and economics between China and Africa. “As the Chinese population in Africa continues to increase along with China’s large economic involvement in Africa’s economy, local African dress styles are absorbing elements of Chinese culture to produce a novel and individualistic Sino-African look”(Liu). 

Studying Globalized fashion

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of globalization culturally, we can see advantages and setbacks of studying fashion through a global lens. There's benefit in studying cultural fashion on a global scale; it allows a better understanding of our textile, silhouette origins, and pattern usage in conjunction with culture. If respected, diversity can be incorporated into fashion, concerns arise when little care is taken to credit the origins. “The ministry said the companies had taken inspiration from designs created in the south-western state of Oaxaca and called for benefits to be awarded to the communities behind them.”(Marriott). There’s incredible beauty in sharing our ways of life with each other, but we can’t lose sight of the history and significance of our original cultures. Through acknowledgment we find respect, and it is through respect that humanity may continue to grow.

Sources Cited

Elder, Abbey K., et al. “Culture.” Dress Appearance and Diversity in US Society, 1 Aug. 2020, iastate.pressbooks.pub/dressappearancediversity/chapter/culture/#:~:text=As%20more%20cultures%20have%20cross,referred%20to%20as%20cultural%20authentication.

Garbuio, Caleb, and Ella Adams. “Opinion: Big Business Is Killing Cultures.” The Appalachian, 12 Feb. 2021, theappalachianonline.com/opinion-big-business-is-killing-cultures/#:~:text=The%20loss%20of%20traditions%20associated,occupations%20besides%20their%20traditional%20lifestyle.

“Globalization Pros and Cons: Economic, Cultural, Political.” Netivist.Org, netivist.org/debate/globalization-pros-and-cons-economic-cultural-and-political. Accessed 5 June 2023.

Liu, Si Ting (Jess). “The Authentication of Chinese Culture in African Fashion.” Fashion History Timeline, 16 July 2021, fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/chinese-culture-in-african-fashion/.

Marriott, Hannah. “Mexico Accuses Zara and Anthropologie of Cultural Appropriation.” The Guardian, 1 June 2021, www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/jun/01/mexico-accuses-zara-and-anthropologie-of-cultural-appropriation.

[moneeb0930]

The date of birth for Julia Ringwood Coston, one of the first black women to edit a magazine, is unknown. We do know that she was named after Ringwood farm in Warrenton, Virginia, where she was born. While she was still an infant, Ringwood moved to Washington D.C. with her family and attended public schools there. She had almost completed school when her mother died and she was forced to withdraw.

In the spring of 1886, Ringwood married William Hilary Coston, a student at Yale University who eventually became a minister and writer. They had two children, a daughter, Julia R. in 1888, and a son, W.H. in 1890. The family settled in Cleveland, Ohio where William Coston was pastor of Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church. William Coston was especially encouraging of Julia’s writing interests and gave her advice based on his experience as a writer.

In 1891, Julia Coston, realizing that white journals ignored black interests and themes, decided to create her own journal: Ringwood’s Afro-American Journal of Fashion. Concerned with the suffering and hopelessness of black women in the South, she believed that press editorials could be effective in protesting their inhumane treatment. The twelve-page journal, which had a yearly subscription fee of $1.25, provided advice on homemaking, etiquette, and fashion.

Ringwood’s Afro-American Journal of Fashion carried illustrations of the latest Paris fashions along with articles, biographical compositions of outstanding black women and promising young ladies, instructive articles for women and their daughters, as well as love stories. At the time, it was the only fashion magazine for blacks in the world.

The journal received tremendous praise from its readers and other noted publications. In 1892, Rev. Theodore Holly, then living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, wrote that Ringwood’s Afro-American Journal of Fashion was already the leading magazine in that nation while the Philadelphia Recorder declared the magazine a welcome addition to any home, white or black. Victoria Earle (later Matthews), a black New York society leader, wrote that the magazine was a major source for instruction and guidance in home organization.

Julia Coston strongly supported and encouraged women writers through her journal and allowed younger contributors to gain publication experience there. She also believed these writers were good role models for the journal’s target audience.

For two years, from 1893 to 1895, Coston published a second journal: Ringwood’s Home Magazine. It was not as successful as her fashion magazine though, and she eventually stopped publishing it.

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[lboogie1906]

Bessie Head (July 6, 1937 - April 17, 1986) was born at Fort Napier Mental Institution in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her mother, Bessie Amelia Emery suffered from mental illness and was confined there at the time. Her father was an unidentified Black male. The birth itself was a criminal act, extramarital sexual intercourse between Blacks and whites was illegal. Her biracial identity would come to occupy much of her future writings.

Abandoned by her mother’s biological family, she was sent to live with a foster family, Nellie and George Heathcote. By 1950, she was declared a ward of the state and sent to St. Monica’s Home, an Anglican mission school that served Coloured girls. She began attendance at Umbilo Road High School, where she trained for her teaching certification.

She worked as a primary school teacher but soon discovered that her passion was in writing. She moved to Cape Town and became the only female writer for the Cape Town newspaper, Golden City Post. She moved to Johannesburg, where she began to take an interest in South African politics and affiliated with groups like the Pan-Africanist Congress. She returned to Cape Town, where she began her Pan-Africanist newsletter, the Citizen.

She married Harold Head (1961-64) another journalist. They had one son. She worked for the journal New African, she wrote her novel The Cardinals, which was eventually published in 1993.

She and her son acquired one-way exit visas to Serowe in neighboring Botswana. She and her son were declared refugees in Botswana. After teaching for one year at the Tshekedi Memorial Primary School, she sought employment and shelter with the cooperative Bamangwato Development Association farm.

She acquired the collection of experiences that provided her with material for her first two published works: When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru. She returned to Serowe, partly because she began showing signs of mental illness.

She became the nation’s most famous novelist. Partly because of that fame, the government of Botswana granted her citizenship in 1979. She continued writing up until her death. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[education-nation]

Adolescent Literature, Annotated Bibliography · May 13, 2024

Animal Farm by George Orwell. Genre: Dystopian. Contemporary, Classic Fiction, Social Issues

Orwell, George. (1945). Animal Farm. London: Secker and Warburg.

YA Universal Theme: Power / Control, Equality, Hopes and Dreams.

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Tenth and Eleventh Grade 

Short Summary of the Highlights:

In this classic dystopian (and satirical) novel, Orwell details a farm that is overtaken by its mistreated and overworked animals who dream of a better life. Upon their success, new order is established and Napoleon - a nefarious boar - is elected leader of the newly proclaimed Animal Farm. However, Animal Farm soon becomes a totalitarian state filled with corruption, violence, and animals who are “more equal” than others. 

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Genre: Young Adult, Graphic Novel, Multicultural 

Yang, Gene Luen and Pien, Lark. (2006). American Born Chinese. New York City, New York. First Second. 

YA Universal Theme: Culture, Identity, Education, Bullying, Romance

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Seventh through Twelfth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

Yang’s graphic novel tells the story of Jin Wang, a young boy who moves to a new neighborhood and is the only Chinese-American student at his school. As Jin Wang tries to understand his own identity, he is conflicted by bullies and the love he begins to feel for an American girl. The graphic novel illustrates other stories that come together in an unexpected way that is modern, comedic, and full of action. 

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Genre: Play, Drama

Hansberry, Lorraine (1959). A Raisin in the Sun. New York City, New York: Penguin Random House (2002).

YA Universal Theme: Social Justice, Race and Ethnicity, Gender, Identity, Hopes and Dreams

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Eleventh Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights:

Hansberry’s play details the Younger’s racial and economic struggle as an African-American family in 1950’s America living in a run-down apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Determined to restore her family’s hope and livelihood, Lena “Mama” Younger purchases a new home in an all-white neighborhood, Clybourne Park, with money she received from her late husband’s insurance check. However, this move does not come without conflict and more heartache within both the home and the community. Amid these hardships, Walter Lee Younger, Lena’s son, must step into his manhood and make a difficult decision when his family’s dignity is on the line. 

A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman. Genre: Young Adult, Poetry

Venkatraman, Padma. (2014). A Time to Dance. North Carolina. Nancy Paulsen Books. 

YA Universal Theme: Culture, Disability, Romance

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Ninth through Twelfth Grade 

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

Veda is a classical dance prodigy from India. However, she unfortunately suffers a below-knee right leg amputation after a terrible car accident on her way home from a dance competition. Venkatraman’s heart-felt story is told through verse, and details a young girl who struggles with regaining her passion and finding peace. 

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. Genre: Historical-Fiction, Informational

Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2000). Fever 1793. Simon & Schuster. 

YA Universal Theme: Family, Hopes and Dreams

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

Anderson’s novel details the experiences of fourteen year-old Mattie Cook surviving the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia. Cook’s family owns and runs a coffee shop, but the success of their business is hindered by the epidemic, pushing her dream out of reach as her life is redefined by the struggle to stay alive during these times. 

I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai. Genre: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Informational 

Yousafzai, Malala and Lamb, Christina. (2013). I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. 

YA Universal Theme: Gender, Identity, Family, Religion, Education

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Seventh through Twelfth Grade 

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

This nonfiction, memoir piece shares the story of a young Malala Yousafzai who refused to be silent, and who fought for her education in speaking out against the Taliban after they seized control over Sway Valley, Pakistan. At the age of fifteen, Malala was shot in the head but miraculously survived and recovered. Malala’s story discusses the effect terrorism had on her family, gender, and her pursuit of education and freedom. 

“I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes. Genre: Poetry, Multicultural

Hughes, Langston and Carl Van Vechten. (2021). I, Too, Sing America. The Weary Blues. New York. Dover Publications. p. 77. 

YA Universal Theme: Race and Ethnicity, Identity, Hopes and Dreams

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Ninth through Twelfth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

In this poem, Langston Hughes explores themes pertaining to race, racism, and

African-American identity. This poem is a larger metaphor for the dream of ending segregation  as well as all people in America being able to come together regardless of their race and background. 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Genre: Classic Fiction. 

Salinger, J.D. (1951). The Catcher in the Rye. New York City, New York. Back Bay Books (2001). 

YA Universal Theme: Education, Coming of Age

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Eleventh and Twelfth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights:

Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school, Pencey Prep. Determined to find greater meaning in life, Caulfield explores New York city and finds comfort in transient encounters with various strangers. This novel is a classic coming-of-age piece, detailing teenage alienation and desire for connection and to be understood while transitioning from adolescence and into young adulthood (that is, for the 1950s of course). 

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Drama 

Hinton, S. E. (1967). The Outsiders. New York: Viking Press. 

YA Universal Theme: Coming of Age, Identity 

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights:

In this classic novel, Hinton writes about Pony Boy, a fourteen year old who struggles in society. To him, there are two only kinds of people: the Greasers (an outsider and otherwise someone who must always watch their back) and Socs (someone more privileged, has money, and can get away with anything). Believing that he is a proud Greaser, Pony Boy is conflicted when one of his fellow Greasers, Johnny, takes the life of one of the Socs. 

Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices by Kirstin Cronn-Mills. Genre: Nonfiction, Informational 

Cronn-Mills, Kirstin. (2015). Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books. 

YA Universal Theme: Gender, Identity

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Ninth through Twelfth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

This book details the personal stories and experiences of various transgender individuals: Katie, Kayden, Dean, Brooke, David, Julia, and Natasha. These stories are not only compiled to demonstrate transgender history, but to help readers understand what it means to be transgender in present-day America. Furthermore, these stories will discuss transition, as well some of the challenges transgender individuals face such as discrimination and violence. 

“Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Genre: Hip-Hop, Alternative

Macklemore, Lewis, Ryan and Lambert, Mary. (2012). Same Love. The Heist. (Publisher n.d.)

YA Universal Theme: Social Justice, Identity

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Twelfth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights:

Inspired by his gay uncle, Macklemore wrote “Same Love” during a time where the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans were still widely debated and not fully understood or recognized. Mary Lambert reminds listeners that, even if we tried, we cannot change who we are. Macklemore goes on to remind America – and the rest of the world – that regardless of who you are and who you love, we are all the same.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Genre: Classic Fiction, Tragedy

Shakespeare, William. (1597). The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. London: Iohn Danter and Edward Allde.

YA Universal Theme: Family, Identity 

Lexile Level / Grade Range: Secondary, Ninth Grade

Short Summary of the Highlights: 

In this classic play, Shakespeare details a violent world after two young teenagers from feuding families meet and fall in love at first sight. Young love is enduring as Romeo and Juliet are conflicted and unable to escape the applications of their last names, who they are as individuals, but will eventually take them to their grave.

[zoethewriter]

This is one of those novels that you can describe as beautiful. The writing is so evocative and ambient, and the characters, even through all their trials, are written with a calm lyrical hand. The setting of old wine estates and old farm houses, vast plains and high mountains, drew such a good picture of the story and you could see it unfold in such a clear way. The story of this South African family in 1927 was an interesting one, it was an interesting look at the past.

In short, a thoughtful, well researched novel with sprinkles of folklore and a lot of history and character, written like poetry.

[robynsassenmyview]

Little house in the garden

"Little house in the garden", a review of 'The Promise' directed by Sylvaine Strike, at the Market Theatre until 5 November 2023.

WHERE there’s a will, there’s a will: From left Anton (Rob Van Vuuren), Salome (Chuma Sopotela), Tannie Marina (Cintaine Schutte), the lawyer Cherise Coutts (Kate Normington) and Astrid (Jenny Stead). Photograph by Claude Barnardo, courtesy The Market Theatre. TAKE THE GENRE of the South African farm novel, throw it in the air with all its idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, violence and violation,…

[roamanddiscover]

The Secret Life of Bees Book Summary

The Secret Life of Bees Book Summary

The Secret Life of Bees is a widely acclaimed novel written by Sue Monk Kidd. It tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Lily Owens who is haunted by the death of her mother and is searching for answers about her past. The novel is set in South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement era in the 1960s. Lily lives with her abusive father, T. Ray, and her nanny, Rosaleen, who is an African American woman. After Rosaleen is arrested for attempting to vote and is badly beaten in jail, Lily decides to run away with her and they end up at the home of the Boatwright sisters – August, June, and May – who are beekeepers. Here, Lily discovers a world of beekeeping, honey-making, and spirituality, and begins to unravel the secrets of her past. The novel is beautifully written and is filled with symbolism, metaphors, and vivid descriptions of the surroundings. It deals with themes of racism, family, love, and identity, and explores the complex relationships between the characters. Readers are drawn into Lily's journey of self-discovery and her quest for forgiveness, acceptance, and freedom. The Secret Life of Bees has received critical acclaim and has been translated into 36 languages. It has won several awards, including the Book Sense Book of the Year Award and the Southeastern Booksellers Association Award for Fiction. The book has also been adapted into a movie that was released in 2008. The Secret Life of Bees is both a heart-warming coming-of-age story and an intense reflection on the dynamics of race and family in the American South during a tumultuous time in history.

Character Analysis

The Secret Life of Bees is a novel centered around a young girl named Lily Owens. The protagonist has to go through a journey of self-discovery, which takes place in South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement era. The novel features a diverse cast of characters with unique personalities and backgrounds. Some of the major characters in the book include Lily's nanny Rosaleen, the Boatwright sisters, Zach, and T-Ray, her father. Lily Owens is a fourteen-year-old white girl who has grown up on her father's peach farm in Sylvan, South Carolina. Rosaleen works as a maid for the Owens and is also a mother figure to Lily. August Boatwright, May Boatwright, and June Boatwright are African American sisters who keep bees and produce honey. Zach is a young, African American handyman who is also a friend of Lily's. The characters in The Secret Life of Bees are complex and have different emotions and motivations that drive the plot. Lily struggles with her identity, a lack of love from her father, and the guilt of accidentally killing her mother. Rosaleen faces severe racial discrimination and is often subject to physical abuse from white people. August acts as a surrogate mother to Lily, providing her with emotional nurturing and guidance. June is initially rude and distant towards Lily, but eventually warms up to her. May is a sensitive and kind-hearted person who battles with depression and has a tragic ending. The novel deals with themes of racism, family, love, and identity, and it explores the complex relationships between the characters. The author skillfully presents the characters' struggles, their growth, and their various interactions with one another amidst the social turmoil faced in the 1960s in the American South. Their experiences reveal the complicated realities of living in a society where racism, sexism, and violence are deeply ingrained in the culture. the diverse cast of characters in The Secret Life of Bees adds depth and complexity to the story as they navigate personal and universal issues during a tumultuous time in American history. The different perspectives and personalities of the characters lead to an engaging plot, making the novel an excellent addition to any book lover's library.

Analysis

The Secret Life of Bees is a novel that delves deep into the issues of racism, family, love, and identity. It touches on the harsh realities of prejudice and segregation that plagued the South during the Civil Rights Movement era. The story revolves around the complexities of the relationships between the cast of diverse and vividly drawn characters, each with their own unique story to tell. The protagonist Lily Owens, a young girl on a quest for self-discovery, discovers a new family in the Boatwright sisters, who own a honey business. The novel explores the bonds that form between the characters as they navigate their way through the difficulties of life, love, and loss. It tackles sensitive issues such as racism and discrimination, and highlights the importance of empathy and compassion in the face of adversity. The character development in the novel is exceptional, with each character having their own distinct voice and personality. The relationships between the characters are authentic and nuanced, adding depth and richness to the story. The writer, Sue Monk Kidd, demonstrates a keen understanding of human nature and the complexities of emotions. The themes of racism and identity are central to the narrative, making it an important work of literature for discussions on social issues. The story emphasizes the importance of viewing people beyond the color of their skin, and the value of acceptance and inclusion in society. The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful and compelling work that tackles important themes, explored through the lens of complex human relationships. It is not just a book but an insightful commentary on life and society, making it a must-read for anyone interested in deep, thought-provoking literature. Details The Secret Life of Bees is a novel that takes place in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement era in South Carolina. The setting in this tumultuous time in the nation's history offers readers an unforgettable glimpse into the challenges and struggles of the time. The book sets an excellent backdrop, showing the many ways racism and societal degradation can affect people from all walks of life. The book's author, Sue Monk Kidd, paints a vivid picture of the American South during this particular period, showcasing the various forms of oppression and hate that were pervasive in society. The book's characters are impacted by a range of societal factors such as racism, poverty, and sexism, and this layer of complexity makes them feel real and relatable. The novel portrays Lily Owens, the main character, as a young girl grappling with the impact of her mother's death and her father's authoritarianism. She is befriended by the Boatwright sisters, August, May, and June, who run a honey farm and offer her guidance and support. The sisters provide a nurturing environment that becomes a counterbalance to the trauma of Lily's past. The thick tension in the storyline makes it an engaging read, as we follow Lily and Rosaleen's journey seeking peace as black people living in the South. The complex themes, including identity, love, family, and race relations, offer readers a chance to see how societal norms and cultural narratives can intersect. The story goes even further, depicting how acts of kindness and a loving environment can change lives positively. The Secret Life of Bees delivers a highly rewarding read, immersing readers in an evocative and turbulent period in America's history. The books challenged the institutionalized discrimination of its time by featuring strong and intelligent black women, and it remains a classic must-read today. Reviews The Secret Life of Bees has been well-received by critics and readers alike. The beautiful prose, coupled with compelling characters, makes this novel a must-read for anyone interested in the power of literature to explore complex themes with poignancy and depth. The novel has been praised for its vivid portrayal of the American South during the Civil Rights Movement era. The author has been lauded for her ability to seamlessly weave together themes of family, love, identity, and racial strife into a cohesive and engrossing story that captivates readers from start to finish. Many have noted the attention to detail that is evident throughout the novel. Lily's journey of self-discovery is expertly crafted, and her relationship with her nanny Rosaleen is both heartwarming and meaningful. the relationships between the Boatwright sisters and the other characters in the book are depicted in a way that is both realistic and moving. The Secret Life of Bees has won numerous awards and has been included on bestseller lists since its release in 2002. Readers have hailed the book as a "must-read" and a "classic," and it has become a go-to choice for book clubs and classrooms across the country. The Secret Life of Bees is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that deserves the critical acclaim it has received. If you haven't read it yet, it's definitely worth adding to your list. Book Notes The Secret Life of Bees is not only a work of literature but is also seen as a valuable resource in classrooms and book clubs. The book presents themes, such as race, family, love, and self-discovery, that make it an excellent tool for promoting discussions on personal growth and overcoming societal barriers. Teachers and book club moderators can use the book as a launching point for discussions on the significance of race in contemporary society, exploring topics such as racial identity and understanding. The novel can also be a way to start a conversation about the dynamics of family relationships and love, with Lily Owens' journey to understand her mother being a primary focus. Furthermore, The Secret Life of Bees can be used to engage readers in introspection and self-discovery, inspiring them to reflect on their own paths in life, struggles, and sacrifices. The book also portrays the importance of mentorship and emotional support in the journey of self-discovery, making it a useful tool for individuals seeking personal growth. The Secret Life of Bees is a literary masterpiece that combines a powerful narrative with profound themes. It's a book that can spark meaningful discussions and lead readers in quests of self-discovery through relatable characters and compelling storytelling. It's no surprise that the book has made it to the bestseller list and captured the hearts of many readers worldwide.

News about The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees, the beloved novel by Sue Monk Kidd, was adapted into a movie in 2008. The movie starred Dakota Fanning as the protagonist Lily Owens and Queen Latifah as August Boatwright, one of the beekeeping sisters. It received generally positive reviews from film critics and audiences alike. The adaptation remained faithful to the novel's themes and characters, depicting Lily's journey of self-discovery and the relationships she forms with the Boatwright sisters. The movie also captured the novel's portrayal of the racial tensions and injustices of 1960s South Carolina. The Secret Life of Bees movie was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures and had a budget of $11 million. The movie's cast also included Alicia Keys as June Boatwright, Sophie Okonedo as May Boatwright, and Paul Bettany as T. Ray Owens, Lily's abusive father. The performances of the actresses portraying the Boatwright sisters were particularly praised by critics. Despite being a box office success, grossing over $39 million worldwide, The Secret Life of Bees movie received some criticism for simplifying certain plot points of the novel and for its lack of depth in exploring the characters' motivations. the movie adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees helped expand the novel's reach and brought its powerful themes to a wider audience.

Ratings

The Secret Life of Bees has earned its place as a bestseller since its release in 2002. The novel has an impressive rating of 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, with thousands of positive reviews from readers. The beautifully crafted story, compelling characters, and powerful themes have won the hearts of many. The book's success is a testament to its literary value and its ability to connect with readers on a personal level. The complex relationships between the characters, the exploration of identity, and the themes of racism, family, and love have touched the hearts of readers around the world. The Secret Life of Bees has also been used in classrooms and book clubs to spark discussions on these important topics. Its popularity among readers of all ages and backgrounds is a testament to its relevance and timeless themes. If you are looking for a good read that will leave a lasting impression, The Secret Life of Bees is definitely worth checking out. It is an engaging, thought-provoking, and beautifully written novel that will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Read the full article

[razxdigital-year2-semestersb]

Oscar Micheaux - First Black Film maker

Oscar Micheaux, the country's first major Black filmmaker, was a true pioneer of his time. Throughout his filmmaking career, he wrote and directed a total of 43 movies, which included 27 silent films and 16 sound features. Though not all of them were successful, some were so controversial that they were banned from theatres. Operating in the first half of the 20th century, Micheaux was committed to depicting contemporary Black life and complex characters in his films, countering the negative on-screen portrayal of Blacks at the time. His travels took him from Southern Illinois to the West, South America, and Europe, and his work and art brought him to live in Sioux City's West 7th Street neighbourhood.

Born in 1884, Micheaux had tried his hand at several vocations before embarking on a film career. After moving to Chicago from a small Illinois town at 17 years old, he shined shoes and worked in the meatpacking and steel industries before landing a job as a porter for the American railway system. This stable job allowed him to travel, save money, and make connections with wealthy people who later helped finance his films.

In 1904, Micheaux moved to South Dakota and became a successful homesteader amid a predominantly blue-collar white population. The government's Homestead Act allowed citizens to acquire a free plot of land to farm, but discrimination kept many Blacks from pursuing a homestead. Micheaux began writing about his experiences on the frontier, submitting articles to the press as well as writing novels. After setting up his own film and book publishing company, Michaeux released The Homesteader in 1919, a silent black-and-white film that featured a Black man who enters a rocky marriage with a Black woman played by the pioneering African American actress Evelyn Preer. The film received critical acclaim for depicting realistic relationships between Black and white people, with one critic calling it a "historic breakthrough, a creditable, dignified achievement."

Micheaux followed up his successful production with his second film, Within Our Gates (1920), seeking to challenge the heavy-handed racist stereotypes shown in D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation. In his films, the first by a Black American to be shown in white movie theatres, Micheaux portrayed racial injustice suffered by Black Americans, delving into topics such as lynching, job discrimination, and mob violence. Given the restrictions of the time, Micheaux's prolific career was ground-breaking.

Micheaux died in 1951 at the age of 67 while on a business trip, but his legacy lived on. Not only did his work empower African Americans and help break stereotypes, but it also influenced other filmmakers. Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Melvin VanPeebles often credit Micheaux as one of their greatest influences and as a true film pioneer. Today, Micheaux is recognized as a man ahead of his time, whose films challenged negative portrayals of Black people and contributed to the progress of the film industry.

HR - ( naacp.org. (n.d.). Oscar Micheaux | NAACP. [online] Available at: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/oscar-micheaux#:~:text=Micheaux%20used%20his%20films%2C%20the.)

HR - (Oscar (2016). Sioux City Public Museum. [online] Sioux City Public Museum. Available at: https://www.siouxcitymuseum.org/history-website/micheaux-oscar#:~:text=Not%20only%20did%20Micheaux.)

HR - (Chester J. Fontenot. “Oscar Micheaux, Black Novelist and Film Maker” Vision and Refuge: Essays on the Literature of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska Press, 1982, pp. 109-25.)

HR - ( Musser, C., Gaines, J.M. and Bowser, P. (2016). Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era. [online] Google Books. Indiana University Press. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=npbBCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=oscar+micheaux&ots=qFp32hiXsE&sig=ccRp1NwAGbEvhA0V1ovw7ib3o2w&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=oscar%20micheaux&f=false)

[fearsmagazine]

FEARSmag’s Conversation with director/co-writer Jaco Minnaar & co-writer/producer David Cornwell on the feature film debut PEACOCK (aka POU).

PEACOCK is a South African gothic horror tale that follows the journey of Anna Pohl, played by actress Tarryn Wyngaar. Anna is young woman on a journey into the dark recesses of the Afrikaner psyche and its compromised past. She is stuck in a puritanical institution known simply as The Foundation. When Anna transgresses The Foundation’s strict moral standards, she is sent away to care for Sarel, one of its founding members. Actor Johan Botha plays Sarel, an apartheid-era theologian living out his last days in demented paranoia on his isolated farm. He is suffering from visions and hallucinations as he is haunted by ghosts from the past. Suffering her own guilt, Anna gets sucked into Sarel's dark world and begins to see his apparitions. Anna realizes she must act on her deepest convictions if she is to save herself.

This new genre film is the feature film directorial debut of South African filmmaker Jaco Minnaar. Jaco grew up in the industrial wastelands of South Africa. He studied literature at University and learned directing at film school. He’s taught film theory and worked in the television industry. He’s exhibited photographic projects and experimental video works, and has made music videos and short films.

Co-writer and producer David Cornwell was born in Grahamstown and currently resides in Cape Town. When he is not working with Minnaar, he writes fiction, films and songs for his rock band Kraal. His writing has appeared in a number of publications, including the Mail & Guardian, Prufrock, Aerodrome, Jungle Jim, New Contrast, the Chiron Review and Quiddity International Literary Journal. His first novel, published in 2017 from Penguin/Random House South Africa, is “Like It Matters.”

PEACOCK  aka POU will be playing February 2023 as part of the Winter Film Awards Winter FEAR Awards Horror Film Competition in advance of the film coming to the SHUDDER platform later this year.

[melbournenewsvine]

Sheehan Karunatilaka wins The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Karunatilaka wondered what it would feel like to handle the ongoing trauma of war if the dead could speak, and she thought of writing a ghost story. Although he was reluctant to write about the war, he began working on it years later, around 2014. For a long time, he struggled with the tone. In the end, the narrative opens up as a dark comedy when he imagines the afterlife as a nice bureaucracy. He writes: “The afterlife is a tax office and everyone wants their deduction.” “This is perhaps a reasonable explanation for why Sri Lanka seems to be going from tragedy to tragedy, and that there are all these restless spirits and ghosts wandering around, confused, unsure of what they are supposed to do, and amuse themselves in whispers of ill-wishers,” Karunatilaka said in a video posted to Poker. e: “Thoughts are in people’s ears.” “I thought this was a useful way to explore this dark topic, but with a bit of lightness and a bit of fun too.” The first person novel was written in Colombo in 1989, when a war photographer named His Excellency Almeida woke up dead, without any idea how and why he was killed. He sets out to solve the mystery of his own murder, and the numbers that have been targeted because of his explosive photos. Almeida, a gambler, atheist and closed homosexual, tries to navigate the afterlife, and is said to have “seven moons” to find out who killed him and uncover his cache of images. Along the way, he encounters disfigured and maimed victims of sectarian violence. The novel, published in Britain in August by Sort of Books, an independent British publishing house, has drawn comparisons to the magical realist works of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. It will be published in the US by WW Norton next month. loading Critic Tomiwa Owolade wrote in Watchman. Karunatilaka is the second Sri Lankan-born author to win the Booker Prize since its founding in 1969, after Michael Ondaatje, whose novel English patient He won in 1992. Last year, Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam was shortlisted North Pass. The Booker, which comes with a cash prize of £50,000 ($90,000), is awarded annually to the best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. Previous winners have included literary giants such as VS Naipaul, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel, and the award has launched the careers of emerging novelists such as Douglas Stewart, Arundhati Roy and Aravind Adiga. While the prize was previously open only to writers from Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth and Zimbabwe, the judges changed the rules in 2014, opening them to all English-speaking authors whose work has been released in Britain or Ireland. loading Last year, the award was given to South African writer Damon Galgot for his novel The PromiseAbout the descendants of Dutch settlers trying to hold on to their family farm and status in post-apartheid South Africa. Karunatilaka received the award Monday night in London, during a star-studded gala featuring pop star Dua Lipa and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and wife of King Charles. Upon accepting the award, Karunatilaka said he hoped the novel would be read and taken seriously in his homeland, and that one day it would be seen as a work of pure fiction, rather than as political satire. “My hope seven moons It is this: that in the not-too-distant future, 10 years or whatever it takes, it is read in Sri Lanka that the ideas of corruption, ethnic seduction and nepotism didn’t work, and never will,” he said. “I hope you read in Sri Lanka and learn from its stories.” Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

[reelmmorg]

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Stars Ian Roberts.Ĭhildren's cartoon created by Spanish studio BRB Internacional. Historical drama about the Boer struggle during the Boer War with British imperialism, British scorched earth approach to Boer farms, and British Boer prisoner of war camps etc.

ADAM 12 TV SERIES TORRENT DOWNLOAD SERIES

The series was best-remembered for its titular vehicle, a futuristic six-wheeled combination RV and mobile laboratory.Īrende I, II and III. Red haired Anne, an orphan, is adopted by siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert.Īmerican live-action science fiction series aimed at children. The films were in turn based on a series of adventure novels by Anne and Serge Golon. Renaissance Pictures Universal Worldwide TelevisionĪmerican horror series created by Shaun Cassidy revolving around young Caleb Temple ( Lucas Black) and the town's corrupt sheriff, Lucas Buck ( Gary Cole).Ĭompagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographiqueĭubbed from a series of 5 French films starring Michèle Mercier as Angélique Sancé de Monteloup and Robert Hossein as Joffrey de Peyrac. Translated from German series Die WächterĪmerican television sitcom produced by Carson Productions starring Sherman Hemsley as Deacon Ernest Frye of the First Community Church of Philadelphia. TV drama series produced in South Africa, starring Marius Weyers. Stars Jan-Michael Vincent.Īn animated television series made by Walt Disney Television.Īn American science fiction sitcom wherein a furry alien crashes on Earth and is adopted by the Tanner family.Īmerican sitcom starring Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker.įrom the British Space: 1999 starring Martin Landau.

ADAM 12 TV SERIES TORRENT DOWNLOAD CODE

Universal Television Atlantis Communications MCA TVĪmerican action-adventure television series about a high-tech military helicopter, code named Airwolf, and her crew as they undertake various missions, many involving espionage, during the Cold War. Locally produced drama series starring Steve Hofmeyr. The series was filmed at Old Sydney Town (near Sydney), and at Warrandyte, Colac and Geelong and stars Mary Larkin and Jon English. It is a historical drama portraying both the British occupation of Ireland and the development of New South Wales and Australia. Stars Martin Milner and Kent McCord.įrom the original ITC British series Strange Report starring Anthony Quayle.Īustralian television mini-series. The series was produced in the US from (1968–1975). Ī police drama that followed the daily activities of a pair of LAPD patrol officers. Hugely influential on South African schoolboys who gave spirited renditions of "Howling Mad" Murdock and B.

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Local soap opera centered on the lives of the people who live and work in the fictional Hillside suburb in Johannesburg.Ī local comedy series featuring two girls who live in a flat in Hillbrow.Ī South African TV Series that Start with AĪmerican action-adventure television series about a fictional group of ex- Special Forces soldiers who work as mercenaries, usually pro bono publico. Pronounced "Sewende-laan", translates to "7th Avenue". Produced for TV3, later SABC2Ģ2 seasons, over 5000 episodes as of January 2021 Local environmental news and documentaries. Produced for e.tv, and hosted by Debora Patta. The series title is a reference to the call-sign designation for the LASD's search and rescue paramedic teams. These special agents infiltrate schools and colleges to catch troubled youths and discourage kids from drinking, committing hate crimes, using drugs, spreading racism, spreading homophobia, spreading AIDS, performing domestic abuse, and being sexually promiscuous. 0-9 South African TV Series that Start with 0-9Ī South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) commissioned series about a family divided between the two sides of World War IIĪ Canadian police procedural crime drama television series starring various teen idols including then unknown Johnny Depp as special agents.

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Zora Neale Hurston: Florida Woman

Zora Neale Hurston, the pride of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, was a quintessential Florida woman.

(Library of Congress)

Hurston was born in rural Alabama in 1891 and raised in Eatonville, Florida, a central Florida Reconstruction town with government run by Black and African Americans. She went on to become the first African American to earn a degree from Barnard College at Columbia University, studying anthropology under Franz Boas, in 1928.

Her 1937 magnum opus novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was loosely based on the events of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane that killed more than 2,500 people, many of whom were indigent farm workers on the lake’s south shore.

She worked as a writer and audiovisual producer from the late 1920s through the 1930s, including for the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin Roosevelt. Much of her work focused on rural African American life in Florida during the Great Depression.

Zora Neale Hurston’s videography of her anthropological fieldwork in 1928. (Public domain)

Hurston went on to publish an autobiography, “Dust Tracks on a Road,” in 1942.

She died destitute in 1960 at the age of 69 in Fort Pierce. Her remains laid in an unmarked grave until author Alice Walker raised funds to provide a headstone and grave marking in her honor.

“Barracoon,” Hurston’s last published work, was completed in 1931 and released in 2018. The work chronicles the first person recount of 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis in 1927, one of the last known surviving accounts of an African brought to America as chattel before the end of the Civil War.