Africana Collection: UG Titles

Now fully revised and updated, this classic text offers an illustrated and critical narrative introduction to the history of Africa from earliest times to the present. Beginning with the evolution of mankind itself, the book traces the history of Africa through the millennia of the ancient world to the centuries of medieval and modern Africa. The clear and simple language and the wealth of carefully chosen maps and photos combine to make an essential and accessible text.

Questions about how social conditioning and historical circumstances influence assumptions about who we are and how others perceive who we are have attracted wide ranging discussion across the disciplines in the arts, humanities and allied sciences. Simultaneously, since the Independence period, scholars have deliberated over the varied implications of new states emerging throughout Africa. The peer-reviewed selected papers for this anthology represent a cross section of the diverse perspectives reflecting research and cross-disciplinary collaborations undertaken by members of the University of Ghana faculty and graduate students working in archaeology, literary criticism of African as well as English and Russian literatures, economics, history, cognitive psychology, linguistics, dance, music, philosophy, sociology, and the study of religions.

Chinua Achebe's novel "Arrow of God" centers on the main character's battles with colonialism and Christian influences. Ezeulu is the chief priest of multiple Nigerian villages. During the 1920s, his country experiences political and social changes when the British uses colonialism to civilize the people. The Igbo people of Nigeria are the main characters of the story as they worship Ezeulu. The novel begins with a battle that Ezeulu and Umuaro causes with the Okperi people. A British overseer, T.K. Winterbottom, intervenes and resolves the battle. With this context in mind, Achebe structures the work to highlight the relationships between the Nigerians, the British, and Christian missionaries. A significant theme of the work is the Nigerians abandoning their traditional customs for Christianity, which stirs up much resentment between the villagers. Achebe injects conflict into the work when Ezeulu refuses to be a "white man's chief." Ezeulu's beliefs affect how the rest of the characters interact. By the end of "Arrow of God," the villagers lose their faith in Ezeulu.

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.

In this collection of short stories, Aidoo elevates the mundane in womens lives to an intellectual level in an attempt at challenging patriarchal structures and dominance in African society.

This play depicts the circumstances surrounding the trial of one of the leaders of the Mau Mau revolution, Dedan Kimathi.