Reading List of the...

Graduate Student Reading Group
Department of African Languages and Literature
University of Wisconsin-Madison

As founder and flag-waver for the grad student reading group, I offer the following listing of books once "discussed." There is usually some sort of rhyme or reason to the grouping of works though those supposed connections are not always borne out by the reading.

As primary flag-waver, I guess I ought to take responsibility for the group's demise as well. The Reading Group, always a tenuous one at best, sporting one to four members at any particular meeting, has collapsed, much to my chagrin.

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2000

• Collected Plays, Volume I & The Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagosian Kaleidoscope (Wole Soyinka) - 5 May

• To Every Birth Its Blood (Mongane Wally Serote) - 7 April

• African Stories (Doris Lessing) - 17 March

1999

• Woman of the Aeroplanes (Kojo Laing) - November 11

• Camwood on the Leaves & A Play of Giants (Wole Soyinka) - 8 October

• Segu (Maryse Condé) - August 18

• Distant View of a Minaret (Alifa Rifaat) - August 11

• Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Assia Djebar) - August 4

• Radiance of the King (Camara Laye) - July 28

• Labyrinths with Path of Thunder (Christopher Okigbo) - July 21

• Forest of a Thousand Daemons (D.O. Fagunwa) - July 14

• Petals of Blood (Ngugi wa Thiong'o) - July 7

• African Stories (Doris Lessing) - June 30

• To Every Birth Its Blood (Mongane Serote) - June 23

• A Season in Paradise (Breyten Breytenbach) - June 16

• Bloodknot and Playland (Athol Fugard) - June 9

• House of Hunger (Damdudzo Marechera) - June 2

• Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee) - May 26

• Sweet and Sour Milk (Nuruddin Farah) - May 20 (Rescheduled from May 10)

• The Joys of Motherhood (Buchi Emecheta) & Efuru (Flora Nwapa) - April 19

• The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) - March 22

• A Dance in the Sun (Dan Jacobson) - February 15

1998

• Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa (Christopher Miller), This Earth, My Brother... (Kofi Awoonor), Season of Migration to the North (Tayeb Salih) & Maru (Bessie Head) - December 7

• Harvest of Thorns (Shimmer Chinodya), Survive the Peace (Cyprian Ekwensi) & Secrets (Nuruddin Farah) - October 26

• The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin), White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (J.M. Coetzee) & Beyond Boundaries: African Literature and Literary Theory (Mineke Schipper) - September 28

• Without a Name (Yvonne Vera), Nehanda (Yvonne Vera) & Under the Tongue (Yvonne Vera) - August 11

• Nedjma (Yacine Kateb) - June 15

• Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness (Mongo Beti) & Jagua Nana (Cyprian Ekwensi) - May 18 (Rescheduled from April 20)

• Paradise (Abdulrazak Gurnah) - 16 March

• The Abandoned Baobab (Ken Bugul / Marietou M'Baye) - February 9

• In the Castle of My Skin (George Lamming) - January 20

1997

• Coming of the Dry Season (Charles Mungoshi) - December 2

• Anowa (Ama Ata Aidoo) - November 4

• I Saw the Sky Catch Fire (T Obinkaram Echewa) - October 14

• The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (Ayi Kwei Armah) - September 16

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