The Writer, Resistance, and Anticipation of Freedom , livre ebook

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Drawing on the ever contentious and antagonistic relationship between the writer and the state, especially in the postcolony, the chapters assembled in this collection delineate Bill F. Ndi, the poet and playwright’s arduous and sometimes dangerous role as a custodian or guardian of the socioeconomics and politico-cultures of the Cameroonian postcolony and Africa at large. The chapters insist that granted The Cameroons’ quadruple experience of colonialism (through the Germans, the French, the British and La République du Cameroun), Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons’ history needs to purge itself of the epistemic and ontological violence of Francophonecentric historiography.


“Bill F. Ndi possesses a unique and powerful voice within the Cameroonian literary scene and this apposite volume of critical essays attempts not only to situate him properly within that domain but also to significantly augment his already considerable stature.” Sanya Osha, University of Cape Town, South Africa “Bill F. Ndi is an unapologetic and committed firebrand writer with a position that refuses to seek validation from the same who oppress and blackball black writing. Hassan Yosimbom’s book is a testimony to Ndi’s resolve to resist anything that stands in the way of his people’s freedom.” Koua Viviane, PhD. (Comparative literature, Limoges: France), College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, Auburn Alabama. “This book is a work of the utmost importance to understand the subtleties and complexities of the anglophone Cameroonian crisis and ongoing civil war in the Cameroons.” Professor Aghi Bahi, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire


 “In this book, Yosimbom delves into the intricate impact of imperialism by examining the works of Bill F. Ndi, a modern postcolonial writer of British Southern Cameroons extraction. The book is a compelling analysis of the relationship between writers and the state. It stresses the need to challenge Francophone-centric views and empower the marginalized and oppressed Anglophones in the Cameroons. Brought to the limelight is the rootedness of this historical imbalance and its perpetuation by Francophone-dominated regimes and the complicit panhandling Anglophone elites. Addressed are the themes of peace, identity, autonomy, resilience, and resistance…” Maimo Mary Mah, Development Communication Specialist/Consultant

Drawing on the ever contentious and antagonistic relationship between the writer and the state, especially in the postcolony, the chapters assembled in this collection delineate Bill F. Ndi, the poet and playwright’s arduous and sometimes dangerous role as a custodian or guardian of the socioeconomics and politico-cultures of the Cameroonian postcolony and Africa at large. The chapters insist that granted The Cameroons’ quadruple experience of colonialism (through the Germans, the French, the British and La République du Cameroun), Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons’ history needs to purge itself of the epistemic and ontological violence of Francophonecentric historiography.

“Bill F. Ndi possesses a unique and powerful voice within the Cameroonian literary scene and this apposite volume of critical essays attempts not only to situate him properly within that domain but also to significantly augment his already considerable stature.” Sanya Osha, University of Cape Town, South Africa “Bill F. Ndi is an unapologetic and committed firebrand writer with a position that refuses to seek validation from the same who oppress and blackball black writing. Hassan Yosimbom’s book is a testimony to Ndi’s resolve to resist anything that stands in the way of his people’s freedom.” Koua Viviane, PhD. (Comparative literature, Limoges: France), College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, Auburn Alabama. “This book is a work of the utmost importance to understand the subtleties and complexities of the anglophone Cameroonian crisis and ongoing civil war in the Cameroons.” Professor Aghi Bahi, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire


 “In this book, Yosimbom delves into the intricate impact of imperialism by examining the works of Bill F. Ndi, a modern postcolonial writer of British Southern Cameroons extraction. The book is a compelling analysis of the relationship between writers and the state. It stresses the need to challenge Francophone-centric views and empower the marginalized and oppressed Anglophones in the Cameroons. Brought to the limelight is the rootedness of this historical imbalance and its perpetuation by Francophone-dominated regimes and the complicit panhandling Anglophone elites. Addressed are the themes of peace, identity, autonomy, resilience, and resistance…” Maimo Mary Mah, Development Communication Specialist/Consultant


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Date de parution

09 mars 2024

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1

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9789956553594

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English

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3 Mo

The Writer, Resistance, and Anticipation of Freedom: The Works of Bill F. Ndi Editor Hassan Mbiydzenyuy YosimbomL a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda
Publisher:LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon Langaagrp@gmail.com www.langaa-rpcig.net
Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective orders@africanbookscollective.com www.africanbookscollective.com
e-ISBN-13: 978-9956-553-59-4
©Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher
Notes on the Authors Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom holds a BA in English with a Minor in Linguistics (1996) and an MA in Comparative Literature (2000) both from the University of Buea, Cameroon; and a PhD in African Literature (2016) from the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. He was a 2019 ARUA Mellon Fellow at the Centre for Urban Management Studies (CUMS), University of Ghana, Legon where he researched “Mobility and Sociality in Africa’s Emerging Urban”; a 2021 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for African Studies (CAS), University of Cape Town, where he investigated “Entanglements, Mobility and Improvisation: Culture and Arts in Contemporary African Urbanism and its Hinterlands”; a 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town where he explored “African Intellectual Biographies”; and Visiting Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, Japan where he researched “Comparative Studies of Literature and Anthropology. His research interests include multiplelayered identity formations and performances, mobility, postcolonial studies, and cosmopolitanism. He is also keen on researching Latin American epistemological foundations such as transmodernity, coloniality, decoloniality, and pluriversality and how they could be used to de-/re-construct postcolonial African societies. Some of his recent publications include: “Uncoupling Spectres of coloniality in postcolonial Cameroon: literary explorations,”Cultural Dynamics(2022); “Poetic Explorations in Bill F. Ndi’sWorth Their Weight inThorns: (De)Constructing Hegemonic National Integration and Debating Francophonecentric National Governance,”CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture(2021); “Francis B. Nyamnjoh’sTheDisillusioned African: Rigidizing Cosmopolitan Borders, Binarizing Cosmopolitan Opportunities,”Comparative Literature: East & West(2021) and “The tyranny of normative hedonism in postcolonial Cameroon: literary explorations,”Journal of the African LiteratureAssociation(2021). In 2021, he co-editedBeing and Becoming African asa Permanent Work in Progress: Inspiration from Chinua Achebe’s Proverbswith Francis B. Nyamnjoh and Patrick Owusu. His latest publication isYearning for (Dis)connections: Fictions and Frictions of Coexistence in Postcolonial Cameroon(Langaa 2023).
Adaku T. Ankumah, formerly Professor of English at Tuskegee University, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her areas of interest include women’s literature (with a focus on African and Diaspora women) and the short story genre. Professor Ankumah’s recent research interest includes the writings of women in the African diaspora. This includes research on memory in literature and its role in helping those dealing with painful, fragmented pasts forge a wholesome future in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker. She has also examined memory and resistance in the poetry of South African performer and writer Gcina Mhlophe. Amongst her notable works isNomenclatural Poetization & Globalization.She also co-edited, with Bill F. Ndi, Benjamin Hart Fishkin and Festus Fru Ndeh,Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature, and with Bill F Ndi and Benjamin Hart Fishkin: Fears, Doubts, and Joys of not Belonging, The Repressed Expressed,andLiving (In)Dependence:Critical Perspectives on Global Interdependence. Antonio J. Jimenez-Munozis lecturer at the University of Oviedo, Spain. His research takes on the influence of Romantic literature and culture upon the present. His main line of research deals with the influence of Romantic legacies in modern poetry and art and particularly the material continuity of Romantic modes of expression in contemporary art-forms. His fields of interest are Literary Criticism, Theory, and World Poetry. Before his current position, he was a Teaching Fellow at the universities of Kent at Canterbury-UK (2001-2004) and Hull-UK (2004-2006), after graduating in English Studies at the University of Cordoba (Spain) in 2001. Emmanuel Fru Dohholds a Ph.D. from the University of Ibadan and has taught in colleges and universities in Cameroon and the United States since 1990. Poet, novelist, social and literary critic, his research interests, with a remarkable interdisciplinary approach, include Africa’s literatures, cultures, and politics; the African diaspora; and colonial and postcolonial literatures. Besides fictional and poetic works, Doh has published numerous substantial scholarly works, includingAfrica’s political Wasteland: The Bastardization of Cameroon,andStereotyping Africa: Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions, Anglophone-Cameroon Literature: An Introduction,The Obasinjom Warrior: The Life and Works of Bate Besong. He is currently teaching in the Department of English at Century College in Minnesota.
Kailah Trice, a Jamaican-American writer from Atlanta, Georgia, received her bachelors of science degree in sociology from Tuskegee University, and currently she is an MFA fellow at the University of Alabama in pursuit of MFA in Creative Writing Poetry. Her work centers on her upbringing in Jamaica and America, and she writes children’s poetry. She has been published in Wingless Dreamer’s Breathing Poetry, the online vlogGirls Write Shit, online onGirls Write Now’swebsite. Richard Evans, formerlyassociate professor of English at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, was educated in the classics at the University of South Carolina, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and Columbia University, Dr. Evans holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature with research interests in ancient and medieval literatures, theories of translation and linguistic relativity. He has published numerous academic book reviews, essays promoting the study of Classical Greek in schools, and articles on Greek and Roman authors in the Dictionary of Literary Biography and articles on various topics in classical literature.
Dedication To my late Father, Alhadji Isa Yosimbom, for all the conversations we used to have from the 1990s till his demise in 2020, many of them related to everything I write when I had not even dreamed of ever taking writing so seriously.
Acknowledgements Coupling a collection from one’s own and other people’s diverse essays on the poetry and drama of a multiperspectival writer such as Bill F. Ndi is a fraught undertaking with two risks: that of trying to be more inclusive and comprehensive and then ending up with a large loose baggy monster and vice versa; and that of some critics of his works feeling unjustifiably left out. While these two risks hung over me like the Damocles sword, I was privileged to benefit enormously from the support of Professor Francis B. Nyamnjoh and Dr. Nana Genevoix who have relentlessly pushed me out my comfort zone, fired my imagination and contributed to my thinking and writing. At my behest, Professor Ndi generously provided the poetic and dramatic raw materials for mine and other critics’ critical excursions. My Visit to Kobe University, Japan, tremendously helped me in putting together the essays. I wish to thank Professor Umeya Kiyoshi and the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, Japan, for providing a very comfortable space and facilities that challenged me to assemble this collection. I am most grateful to Professor Aghi Bahi for kindly accepting, at short notice, to do a preface for this book. The moral support I received from my family and friends has been unfathomable. Like an unshakable pillar, Habibti Mbulle Rabbatul Bait stood by me teasing and challenging but urging me to soar up to the iroko tree of critical creativity.
Table of Contents Preface ......................................................................................xi Introduction: The Writer, Custodian of Resistance and Freedom in the Postcolony ...............................................1 Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom Chapter 1: (De)Constructing Hegemonic Integration and Francophonecentric Governance in Bill F. Ndi’s Worth their Weight in Thorns ........................29 Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom Chapter 2: Aestheticizing and Weaponizing Dissent for Development with liberation: A Critical Reading of in Worth Their Weight Thorns..............63 Emmanuel Fru Doh Chapter 3: Deuniversalizing Francophone Pedigrees and Pluriversalizing Anglophone Contagions in Bill F. Ndi’s Peace Mongers at War .................85 Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom Chapter4: Changing the Status Quo from the Margins in Bill F. Ndi’s Gods in the Ivory Towers ...........117 Adaku T. Ankumah Chapter 5: Bill F. Ndi’s Social Angst and Humanist Vision: Politics, Alienation, and the Quest for Freedom in K’cracy, Trees in the Storm and Other Poems .................................................133 Emmanuel Fru Doh Chapter 6: All in a Name: Nomenclature in Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Travail of Dieudonné and Bill F. Ndi’s Gods in the Ivory Towers .............................155 Adaku T. Ankumah Chapter7: Rising from the Ashes: Conflict and Repression in Bill F. Ndi’s Poetry.....................................177 Antonio Jimenez-Munoz
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