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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2020 edition

                                  World Literature: Africa

                                   History

     Key Events in African History, The African Diaspora, The Atlantic World: 1450-2000, Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage, Encyclopedia of the Yoruba, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, Igbo in the Atlantic World: African Origins and Diasporic Destinations, A History of Nigeria, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir, Toyin Falola

     Wonders of the African World, Henry Louis Gates Jr

     The African Genius: social & cultural history, African Civilization Revisited, Africa in History, Basil Davidson

     A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present, Jason Thompson

     The Civilizations of Africa: a history to 1800, Ehret

     Encyclopedia of African History, Shillington ed.

     An Atlas of African History, Fage & Verity

     North Africa: a history, Barnaby Rogerson

     The Fate of Africa, Martin Meredith

     Encyclopedia of African Religion, Molefi Kete Asante, Ama Mazama (Editors)

     Favorite African Folktales, Nelson Mandela editor

     The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa, Clyde Ford

     Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy, Robert Farris Thompson

     Turn Up the Volume: a celebration of African Music, Bader & Freis

     The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics, Craig & McClendon eds.

     A History of South Africa, Thompson

                       Literature

     An African Testament: The Heart of the Kebra Nagast in a Modern English Version, Simon Webb

     The Epic of Son-Jara, Johnson & Sisoko

     Chaka, Thomas Mofolo

     The Travels of Ibn Battutah

     African Poetry of the Living Dead: Igbo Masquerade Poetry, Romanus Egudu

     Two Thousand Seasons, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, The Healers,     KMT: in the House of Life, Ayi Armah

     Tales of Amadu Koumba, Birago Diop

     The Ochre People, Noni Jabavu

     Things Fall Apart, Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe

Achebe’s World: historical and cultural context, Wren

     Road, A Dance of the Forests, Kongi’s Harvest, The Interpreters,  The Lion and the Jewel, The Beatification of the Area Boy : A Lagosian Kaleidoscope, King Baabu, Death and the King’s Horseman, Opera Wonyosi,  Idanre & other poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I have Known, Mandela’s Earth, Requiem for a Futurologist, Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World,  Myth, Literature and the African World , Ake and You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir,  Wole Soyinka

     Palm Wine Drinkard, My Life In The  Bush of Ghosts, Feather Woman of the Jungle, Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle, The Brave African Huntress,

Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty, The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town, The Village Witch Doctor and other stories. Amos Tutuola

     The Guardian of the Word, The Dark Child, The Radiance of the King, Camara Laye

     Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol, Two Songs: Prisoner & Malaya, Okot P’Bitek

     Senghor: prose & poetry, Reed & Wake eds

     Jagua Nana, Cyprian Ekwensi

     Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela

     Mating Birds, Underground People, Mandela’s Ego, Nadine Gordimer, Writing Home, Lewis Nkosi

Still Beating the Drum: critical perspectives on Lewis Nkosi

     Xala, Sembene Ousmane

     Dispossessed, The Marabai Dance, Modikwe Dikobe

     Dusklands, In the Heart of the Country, Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K., Foe, Age of Iron, Master of Petersburg, Elizabeth Costello, Doubling the Point: essays & interviews, J.M. Coetzee

A Companion to the works of J.M. Coetzee, Mehigan ed.

     Serowe, Maru, A Question of Power, Bessie Head

     Down Second Avenue, Africa My Music, Eskia Mphahlele

     A Dry White Season, Death’s Valley, The Other Side of Silence, The Blue Door, The Cape of Storms, Imagings of Sand and The Rights of Desire, Philida,  On The Contrary, Andre Brink

     To Every Birth Its Blood, Gods of Our Time, History is the Home Address, Rumors, Mongane Serote

     Lifetimes: stories 1952-2007, July’s People, Sport of Nature, Nadine Gordimer

   A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir, Matigari, Memiors: (Dreams in a Time of War, In the House of the Interpreter, Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening), Wizard of the Crow, Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, The Perfect Nine, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

     Branching Streams Flow in the Dark, Charles Mungoshi

     Dust, The Dragonfly Sea, Yvonne Owouri

     Graceland, Chris Abani

     The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna

     The Book of Chameleons, A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa

     Half a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus, Adiche

     The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment, Infinite Riches, Stars of the New Curfew, The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age, Ben Okri & Rosemary Clunie (Illustrator), Ben Okri

Ben Okri: Towards the Invisible City, Robert Fraser

     Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

     The Madonna of Excelsior, The Sculptress of Mapungubwe, The Whale Caller, Little Suns, Zakes Mda

     Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah  

     This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga 

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jayofdollhousepark

I am a former counselor, teacher, and debate coach who loves to read and write, and a student of literature, psychology, history, philosophy, and languages who loves to travel. Help me celebrate the lives and works of our great authors as a common human heritage. I can also be reached at jayofdollhousepark@gmail.com. Regarding my literary criticism on Dollhouse Park Conservatory and Imaginarium: My initial project was to celebrate the authors whose work I love on their birthdays, by reading something of theirs and writing an appreciation. I've now come full circle and completed the calendar year. These are the authors whose works have been my companions through life, and some new discoveries. Many of their books are ones I also taught in high school English classes; works thoroughly lived with. I also include reading lists by national literature, a Modern American Literature group of lists, and Best Books of the Year lists and reviews. There will occasionally be my own poetry as well; you are warned. I hope that you may also find books which will help you through life and bring depth and joy to your days. As to my aesthetics, I envision the mission of creating civilization as a game played by figures which represent conserving and revolutionary forces, as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot may serve as paragons of their sides of the board and reflect each other as partners in the great game of reimagining humankind, a result of the early influence of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Yasunari Kawabata’s The Master of Go, which I read during seventh grade, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, which I read the following year. Each of us, as with every author, musician, artist, scientist, or public figure, plays the Great Game on one of these dyadic teams. The function of conservatism is to buffer order from the shock of the new and withstand stresses and changing conditions without losing ourselves or undergoing morphogenic change, the loss of identity as structural form, or ruptures to our prochronism, the memory and history of our choices, successful adaptations and strategies of survival as expressed in our systemic form, the loss of our culture and traditions. The function of revolution and innovation is to capitalize on chaos as adaptive potential in dynamically unstable conditions, to adapt and shape ourselves to future needs and to transform, create, and discover new forms, meanings, and values. We need both conserving and revolutionary forces to envision and enact a thing of beauty, be it a person, story, song, film, theory, or any creative artifact of authentic human imagination and experience. A beautiful political structure may be judged by the same criterion as a beautiful poem; so also with humans and the values their actions embody. Thank you so much for your company on this journey. Regarding my daily political journal on Torch of Freedom, a voice of progressive democracy and the antifascist Resistance: I stand for liberty, equality, truth, and justice; a free society of equals. My America is a torch of Liberty and a beacon of hope to the world. I stand for the absolute structural and systemic equality of all human beings, and for the Rights of Man everywhere on earth. I am on the side of Prometheus; rebellion, chaos, anarchy, resistance, transgression, revolution, and the frightening of the horses. Herein I write as an agent of Chaos and Transformation whose goal in life is to become a fulcrum and change the balance of power in the world. For thirty-nine years now I have been engaged in antifascist action, democracy activism, and revolutionary struggle against tyranny and state terror for the liberation of humankind, wherever men hunger to be free. And so I offer to all of you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me in Beirut 1982 by the great Jean Genet as he formulated it in Paris 1940, in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of force and darkness, in a last stand and an act of defiance beyond hope of victory or survival; “We swear our loyalty to each other, who answer tyranny with Liberty and fascism with Equality. We shall resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.” Resist and fear not, O my brothers and sisters, for in resistance we seize our freedom and become Unconquered.

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