Ama Ata Aidoo | The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa

Book Description:
These two witty and perceptive social dramas are sympathetic and honest explorations of the conflicts between the individualism of westernised culture and the social traditions of Africa. Both plays have been performed throughout the world.


About the Author:
Ama Ata Aidoo is Ghana's foremost playwright, poet and novelist, and has published many works. She has held distinguished appointments in Ghana and the USA and is currently Executive Director of Mbaasem, a foundation to support African women writers and their work.


Product Details:
Paperback: 124 pages
Publisher: Longman; 1st edition (June 15, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0582276020
ISBN-13: 978-0582276024
Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces

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Ama Ata Aidoo | Our Sister Killjoy

Book Description:

Out of Africa with her degree and her all seeing eyes comes Sissie. She comes to Europe, to a land of towering mountains and low grey skies and tries to makes sense of it all. What is she doing here? Why aren't the natives friendly? And what will she do when she goes back home? A profound version of the theme of self discovery, this novel explores the thoughts and experiences of a Ghanaian girl on her travels in Europe. It is a highly personal exploration of the conflicts between Africa and Europe, between men and women, and between a complacent acceptance of the status quo and a passionate desire to reform a rotten world.

About the Author:

Ama Ata Aidoo, one of Africa's leading feminist writers, was born and educated in Ghana. She obtained a B.A. degree in English at the University of Ghana and has taught at universities in Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya. Her concerns as a writer, a woman and a teacher of literature have encouraged her to travel and lecture extensively in Africa, Europe and North America. Ama Ata Aidoo continues to write short stories, radio plays and poetry.

Product Details:

• Paperback: 134 pages
• Publisher: Longman (August 29, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0582308453
• ISBN-13: 978-0582308459
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces 
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Ama Ata Aidoo | Changes: A Love Story

From Publishers Weekly

Aidoo ( Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint ) writes with intense power in a novel that, in examining the role of women in modern African society, also sheds light on women's problems around the globe. Esi, a woman living in Accra, Ghana, takes her career as a data analyst for the government seriously. An incident of marital rape, the result of her husband's anger at Esi's independence, leads to their separation. She is attracted to a married man named Ali who offers to make her his second wife. At first the arrangement appeals to Esi--she can make her work a priority--but eventually Ali's constant traveling and the way he puts off coming to see her begins to bother her. Aidoo makes use of different formats. Occasionally she provides an explanation in the form of a poetic note embedded in the text, and there are spurts of conversation in script form. In one such section Esi's mother and grandmother discuss her choice. Esi's no-nonsense grandmother says, "Leave one man, marry another. What is the difference?" Tuzyline Jita Allan, who teaches English at Baruch College, CUNY, provides an afterword that places Aidoo's work in a historical context and helps introduce this remarkable writer. First serial to Ms.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Despite its African setting, Changes mirrors universal feminist conflicts and concerns. Longtime friends and professional women Esi and Opokuya, who have been dealing differently with family issues, make attempts to juggle their many obligations to their husbands, their children, and their careers. Nevertheless, their sexist husbands, who are impervious to the feminist thinking of their wives, remain unsympathetic. Esi finally makes a statement by choosing divorce, career, and a polygamous remarriage--which ultimately becomes an exchange of one set of challenges for another. Prize-winning Ghanaian-born author Aidoo takes a satirical look at modern women and points out similarities in their lives--whether in Africa or anywhere else. Recommended for women's studies as well as general adult fiction collections.
- Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An informative, if a tad schematic, novel from Ghanaian writer Aidoo (Our Sister Killjoy, etc.--not reviewed) about women's identities and needs in contemporary Africa. The Stunning Esi Sekyi is, in fact, the very model of a modern African woman. She has a postgraduate degree, works for the department of statistics in Accra, and earns more than her schoolmaster husband Oku. And with only one child, she is free to travel to international conferences and advance her career. But African society and African men--despite their admiration of intelligent, educated women--still cling to the old ways. When Oku makes love to Esi against her will (his friends are laughing at him because ``they think I'm not behaving like a man''), Esi calls it ``marital rape''--a concept, she realizes, that African ``society could not possibly have an indigenous word for...[since] sex is something a husband claims from his wife as a right.'' She asks for a divorce, much to her family's dismay, and begins an affair with charismatic businessman Ali Kondey. Meanwhile, an old friend, Opukuya, a married nurse and mother, tries to be supportive, but she's torn between her conventional ideas about marriage and the realization that she envies Esi's freedom. Though Ali is married, he is a Muslin and can have more than one wife. And so he and Esi marry--a curiously old-fashioned decision for an apparently modern woman, since Ali spends more time with his other family than he does with Esi. Finally, the two drift apart, and Esi is left to wonder ``what fashion of loving was she ever going to consider adequate.'' Esi seems more foolish than victimized, but the attitudes of the society portrayed here are real enough--and do add a new dimension to an otherwise familiar story. (First serial to Ms. Magazine) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

Changes explores the complex world in which the lives of professional working women have changed sharply, but the cultural assumptions of men’s lives have not. Witty and compelling, Aidoo’s novel, according to Manthia Diawara, "inaugurates a new realist style in African literature."

"Aidoo writes with intense power in a novel that, in examining the role of women in modern African society, also sheds light on women’s problems around the globe."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Suggested for course use in:
African literature
African studies
Family Studies

Ama Ata Aidoo, one of Ghana’s most distinguished writers, is the author of two other works of fiction, Our Sister Killjoy and No Sweetness Here (The Feminist Press), as well as plays, poems, and children’s books. Tuzyline Jita Allan is associate professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY.

About the Author

Ama Ata Aidoo is a native of Ghana, Wet Africa, where she has been Minister of Education and an activist for human rights, women's rights, and African unity. One of Africa's most distinguished writers, she is the author of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and political and cultural commentary.


Product Details:

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY; 1 edition (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558610650
• ISBN-13: 978-1558610651
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
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Afro-Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic

Book Description:

In this comprehensive book, published to coincide with a groundbreaking Tate exhibition, leading scholars examine how “the Black Atlantic,” a key concept in post-colonial studies coined by British academic Paul Gilroy in 1993, applies to art, and in doing so confirms the centrality of artists of African descent to the formation of modernity. Topics explored include the early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde; the Harlem Renaissance; the cultural links between Africa and Brazil; contemporary and “post-black” art; and the way Paul Gilroy’s original concept of the Black Atlantic remains relevant to current discussions of migration and exploitation. The book includes works by leading artists from throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

About the Authors:

Tanya Barson is curator of international art at Tate Modern.

Peter Gorschlüter is head of exhibitions and displays at Tate Liverpool.

The contributors include distinguished scholars and curators from the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere.

Product Details:
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Tate Publishing (June 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1854379232
ISBN-13: 978-1854379238
Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 8.1 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds

Frank Bowling OBE, RA

Book Description: This is the first comprehensive monograph on the art of Frank Bowling OBE RA. Born in British Guyana in 1936, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney RA and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he had established himself as an original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements. Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style in which certain formal aspects of American painterly abstraction are assimilated to a treatment of light and space that consciously recollects the great English landscape painters, Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text Mel Gooding establishes Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his generation.


About the Author:
Mel Gooding is a professor at the Wimbledon School of Art in England, and an art writer, critic, and curator.








Product Details:

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Royal Academy of Arts, London (13 Jun 2011)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 1905711964
• ISBN-13: 978-1905711963
• Product Dimensions: 29.6 x 24.8 x 2 cm

Peter Minshall | Mas Man

Book Description

Peter Minshall was born in Guyana and raised in Trinidad, where the traditional carnival, pre-Lent festivals of street dancing and masquerade, or mas', captured his imagination. He left to study theater in England, only to become, in the early 1970s, one of the first designers to create mas' for London's now-legendary Notting Hill Carnival. A run of well-received theater design work in England and the United States brought him back around to the value and potency of Carnival's creative expression, and, gradually, he made it his principal medium. Minshall is now the head of the Callaloo company, which creates mas' productions in Trinidad, from human-sized costumes to 10-foot-tall creatures. Elements of that Trinidadian work have also made appearances at carnivals in Miami, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo and Kingston, Jamaica, and his designs for the opening ceremonies of more than one Olympics have been seen by millions. Minshall has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and has won an Emmy for costume design; Masman-Minshall: Trinidad Carnival Artist brings readers inside his costumes and masks.




Product Details:
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers (May 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3775717854
ISBN-13: 978-3775717854

Resonance and Inspiration: New Works by Magdalene Odundo

Magdalene Odundo 

Source: Victorian Fortune City

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/palette/722/page2.html




Magdelene Odundo

Magdalene Odundo was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950. As a child she lived in Kenya and India. From 1968 to 71 she attended the Nairobi Polytechnic in Kenya, while there she studied Graphic Art. In 1971 she left Kenya to attend Cambridge College of Art in Cambridge, England to continue her study in Graphic Design. Odundo grew restless with this medium and experimented with various mediums.

In 1973 she moved to Farnham, England to attend West Surrey College of Art and Design. At West Surrey she settled on ceramics as her medium. In that first year at West Surrey she had the opportunity to visit the Cornwall Workshop of renowned potter Bernard Leach. Leach was the father of the modern British studio ceramics movement in the 1920's. Marla Berns describes this movement, "as a tradition based on principles of simplicity and purity of form derived from Asian ceramic models."

Because Odundo grew up primarily in Nairobi she was not exposed to the traditional pottery of the rural areas of her country, it was not until she went to England that she became interested in this traditional African art forms.

In 1974 Odundo spent 3 months at the Abuja Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, Nigeria. She studied various techniques of pottery-making including hand-building from Gwari women potters like Ladi Kwali. Odundo went back to England to finish her classes at West Surrey, but returned to Africa in 1975 to do research for her thesis which was a comparative study of women's pottery techniques and of the ceremonial use of vessels. For this study she traveled to native Kenya to study her own people,the Abanyala, a subgroup of the Abaluyia living in Kenya and Uganda.

In 1976 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree form West Surrey. After graduation she traveled to California and New Mexico where she learned about Pueblo pottery, specifically San Ildefonso blackware and Maria Martinez the most famous San Ildefonso potter.

Odundo spent three years teaching at the Commonwealth Institute in London and then entered the Royal College of Art in London, England to continue her study in ceramics. She graduated with a Masters degree in 1982. In the 1980's Odundo exhibited often in Britain in such solo shows at ICA Galleries in London in 1983, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in '86 and in group exhibitions such as two shows with Craftsmen Potter's Association of London.

Odundo had her first solo exhibition in the United States in 1991 at the Anthony Ralph Gallery in New York. The show of 12 new vessels sold-out. Seven were purchased by museums with 2 going to the Smithsonian (Ceramics Monthly 30). The prices ranged from $5600 to $7200 at that show. Since that time she has exhibited in the U.S. in shows such as Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, organized by the Museum of African Art in New York, Contained/Uncontained: 4 Clay Artists at the African American Museum in Dallas and the solo exhibition Ceramic Gestures: New Vessels by Magdalene Odundo organized by the University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara. She also has had the opportunity to exhibit in solo and group shows in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, France, India, Malaysia, Canada and Kenya.

Almost everything I have read about Magdelene Odundo has championed her work, but 1989's comments by Paul Rice, in British Studio Ceramics in the 20th Century, do give a bit of a cynical viewpoint. 

He writes:


Magdelene Odundo has had no problem getting her work noticed. Long before Odundo graduated from RCA in 1982 she was being heralded by some as being the greatest potter to emerge since Elizabeth Fritsch. She has had the dubious distinction of being the most hyped ceramic artist in Britain. Prices for her work, which were very high when she was a student, have now reached a point where she is the most expensive potter of her generation in Britain. Naturally, this high-profile promotion in a craft world not used to such things has caused a great deal of discussion and not all of it favorable. If credit or blame is to be attached, then it probably more properly belongs to promoters than to Odundo. The controversy has tended to overshadow the fact that Odundo is an extremely fine potter. At her best, she has a tremendous command of form ... although Odundo has not yet lived up to her promotion, she certainly has the potential to do so. She has only been making pots (in very small quantities) for a comparatively short time. One hopes that her very early success will give her greater freedom to develop rather than putting her in a straight-jacket.

Odundo's vessels are coil-built, not thrown, on the wheel. They start with a blend of 75% red clay from Stoke-on-Trent England and 25% sandy yellow clay from southern England. The body of the piece starts with a cone of clay pulled upward while hollowing out the middle using a gourd or coconut shell scraper. The process is continued by adding coils of clay and scraping and smoothing the neck and head into shape. The leather hard vessels are burnished, slip is applied and burnished again to a luster. Burnishing is the act of rubbing the leather hard pot with items such as pebbles until the vessel is smooth and shiny. Adding slip--a thin mixture of clay and water--and burnishing again gives the pot a seamless, smooth high-gloss finish without using glaze.

    Book Description:

Resonance and Inspiration: New Works by Magdalene Odundo examines the beautifully restrained ceramic forms of one of the most highly regarded international ceramic artists. Odundo brings together the art of sculpture and the craft of pottery to create striking ceramic vessels, which have resonances that range from early Cycladic sculpture to traditional African pottery.
The catalogue was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the work of Odundo that was on display at the Harn Museum of Art September 5 to December 31, 2006.
The preface for Resonance and Inspiration: New Works by Magdalene Odundo was written by Harn Museum of Art Director Rebecca Nagy, with contributing articles by Susan Cooksey, Linda Arbuckle and Augustus Casely-Hayford.

About the Author

Susan Cooksey became the curator of African art in the Harn Museum in 2006 after serving two years as the associate curator. She has held various positions at the Harn Museum since 2001 and worked as a curatorial assistant for the University of Iowa Museum of Art from 1997-1998. Cooksey holds an M.F.A. from the University of South Florida, a masters degree in art history from the University of Florida and a doctorate in art history from the University of Iowa.

Product Details:

• Paperback
• Publisher: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976255227
• ISBN-13: 978-0976255222
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 9 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces