The letter expresses gratitude to the South African government, and people of South Africa, for hosting the Airistides. "We also heartily support the efforts of the South African government to assist President [Jean-Bertrand Aristide] and his family in quickly returning home," the signers state, noting that "Any delays to the Airistides' prompt travel to Haiti would be yet another disappointment to a people that have already experienced a long list of tragedies, disasters, and heartbreak."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
627 p, This study explores issues of race, racism, and strategies to improve the status of people of African descent in Brazil, South Africa and the USA. The authors provide in-depth information about each country, together with analyses of cross-cutting themes;
232 p., Calls attention to the renewed popularity of the epistolary novel among Africana contemporary women writers. This work investigates why, since the late nineteen-seventies, there has been a resurgence of this classic form among women writers across the Black Atlantic. The adoption of this genre among women writers in post-colonial contexts is especially significant because the classic epistolary novel was a medium that often endorsed notions of female submission and imperialist ambition. At the same time, the epistolary tradition connotes a revolutionary history. With this idea in mind, the author argues that an examination of how contemporary women revise the epistolary novel offers a crucial perspective regarding the struggles of women throughout various geographic locations and social strata in relation to nation, citizenship, and selfhood. This project focuses on how Sindiwe Magona, Nozipo Maraire, and Paulette Ramsay "reinvent epistolarity," using the epistolary genre to make interventions in the public sphere by depicting Africana women's experiences of education, marriage, inheritance, and health.
Gerard Sekoto (1913-1993), one of the pioneers of African Modernism, left South Africa in 1947 to further his art training in France and engage with the School of Paris that had been so influential in the development of South African Modern art. Having managed to overcome the colour bar in a society that was racially divided well before the advent of Apartheid, Sekoto found himself alienated in post-war Paris. A Black African with no command of the French language, stumbling against the Euro-centrism of the Parisian art scene, he found a sense of community with the French-speaking African and Caribbean Diaspora rallied behind the concept of Negritude.
