Introduction

This chapter delves into the intricate fabric of Yoruba transnationalism and the interwoven social spaces connecting their homeland, Nigeria, with their adopted land, Ghana. Amid the unfolding history of Tamale, Yoruba migrants stand as prominent architects who have significantly shaped the city's urban identity and developmental trajectory. Here, we explore the multifaceted dynamics of Yoruba migration, unraveling the roles they played in propelling Tamale's commercial and institutional evolution. The complex interplay of kinship ties and commercial identities emerges as a pivotal force in shaping the narrative of Yoruba migration to Ghana, particularly the vibrant city of Tamale.

Spanning across the northern belt and the Osun Division of colonial Nigeria, Yoruba migrants embarked on their journey to Ghana propelled by a spectrum of motivations. Some sought economic prosperity through trade, while others were impelled by family crises, indebtedness, spiritual quests, the specter of political persecution, and the allure of wealth. Their migration narratives resonate with a symphony of economic, political, and spiritual motives, each note contributing to a vibrant composition of Yoruba migration to Ghana. Throughout this exploration, we underscore the instrumental role that personal connections, not only in terms of kinship but also shared town affiliations, played in facilitating and shaping this migratory flow.

This chapter casts a spotlight on the entrepreneurial spirit of Yoruba migrants, whose commercial endeavors forged alliances with European firms and ignited a dynamic competition with traders hailing from Ghana and other corners of West Africa.

INTRODUCTION

Three witches were tried in a session of the regality court of Broughton on 18 July 1579: Christian Douglas, Janet Fulton and Janet Carswell. Douglas and Fulton were both from Leith, and Carswell was probably from there too (since she was tried by the same assize). Douglas and Fulton were both convicted and executed; Carswell was acquitted. Here we have the minutes of the court, but not the full dittays.

We have some suggestive and even vivid fragments of information about Christian Douglas's case, but the details are obscure because the scribe, in writing up the minutes, seems to have confused her with one of the other two accused persons. The central part of the record of her case makes ‘Cristiane’ the victim of the witchcraft of ‘Jonet’, with an apparent instance of sleep paralysis in which the victim and her husband spend the night of Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday being tormented. Perhaps this whole episode really belongs in the trial of Janet Fulton (the ‘Jonet’ who was convicted). Yet the episode is described as ‘conversance with the Devill’ on Christian Douglas's part. Whoever was being accused at this point, this case is thus a remarkably early instance of overtly demonic witchcraft.

Janet Fulton, alias ‘Fitlowne’, seems to have been a classic neighbourhood witch, being described as responsible for the deaths of several people over several years and as having had a neighbourhood reputation for witchcraft. She had previously lived in Prestonpans. While she was there, she had been summoned for witchcraft before a justice ayre at Haddington, but had fled rather than face trial – which the Broughton court treated as firm evidence of guilt.

Finally, Janet Carswell was clearly a magical practitioner. Several of her cures were described in detail, with unusual vocabulary.

Legends about the Egyptian princess Scota, daughter of the Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea in the days of Moses, and her husband, the Greek (or Scythian) Prince Gaythelos, after whom Scotland and Gaelic were supposedly named, were circulating in Ireland at least by the eighth century; these legends survived in many versions in Ireland and later in Scotland and were intended to show that the Gaelic Celts had an ancient and distinguished ancestry. ‘Scota’ was probably suggested to forge a connection to the anonymous daughter of Pharaoh who found the baby Moses in the bulrushes and saved him from her father's order to kill all males born to the Hebrews (Exodus 2: 1–10). Her name would have been invented to explain the etymology of the name of the people who settled Ireland and then Scotland (the Scots Latin Scoti or Scotti). By the early fourteenth century the legend had become an important part of the historical propaganda used in Scotland to argue for the antiquity of the country and its right to be independent of England.

Also early in the fourteenth century, the story of Albina, supposedly of Greek lineage, began to appear in Anglo-Norman, Latin and English chronicles produced in England, and it rivaled Scots’ claims to being the earliest inhabitants of the island and also to a distinguished descent from people of ancient civilizations.

Even the most casual viewer will recognize the road movie as the quintessential American genre. Closely related to the Western, the road movie features panoramic shots of traveling through the slowly changing landscape of the North American continent, often but not always by car—a long journey through a sublime nature that is unwelcoming to humans. As Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark point out in the introduction to their Road Movie Book: “The road movie is, in this regard, like the musical or the Western, a Hollywood genre that catches peculiarly American dreams, tensions, and anxieties, even when imported by the motion picture industries of other nations.” Typically, we find two people at the center of the story, forced to negotiate their differences in a confined space, while facing the travails of unforeseen events that any journey can bring: hostile law enforcement, quirky characters, breakdowns, and detours … . Indeed, countless “buddy films” begin with the accidental encounter of two seemingly diametrically opposed characters, only to end in bromance, newfound freedom, and a positive change in one or both characters.

After a brief overview of the genre in German and Austrian cinema, including dramatic films as well as comedies, this chapter will take a close look at German-language road movies that feature Asian characters on German and Austrian terrain, as well as characters, German or other, traveling in Asia. The overview will unpack the genre and the sources of its explicit and implicit constructs.

This chapter analyses a set of rarely utilised recorded interviews produced by linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner with formerly enslaved people in the 1930s. This chapter argues that through using oral history and memory studies methods, recorded testimonies provide historians with unique opportunities to consider formerly enslaved people’s memories about, and feelings towards, slavery. In their interviews, the elderly African Americans evidenced the complex long-term emotional legacy of slavery: the lingering emotional impact of violence, the communal fear of slavery’s return, the anger about exploitative labour regimes and the pride they felt in their labour achievements. Despite this complex emotional legacy, the interviewees composed their memories with statements of survival and hope, utilising these emotions as scaffolds to create a coherent narrative of their life from slavery into freedom. In doing so, formerly enslaved people created their own emotional framework to understand and document slavery’s impact, counteracting white people’s continued attempts to present slavery as a benevolent institution and restrict African Americans’ emotional expressions.

The number seven was important in the Middle Ages because it represented the creation of the days of the week, the Virgin's holy day on Saturday, and the seven subjects of the liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic of the trivium, and music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy of the quadrivium. The Espill's male readers would have been well aware of its significance because many of them were both religious and learned. This is why I have chosen to end my book with seven theses that encapsulate what I understand to be the consequences of readers’ evidence when it is examined critically from a feminist perspective and in dialogue with Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi. The number seven is a reminder of maternity's radical meaning and potential for women's liberation in the devotional model of creation, and is also distinctly connected to scholarship and study, through which many women have achieved freedom from sociopolitical constraints.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house

I have argued that readers’ annotations in the Espill's printed copies constitute evidence of how misogyny persists in society. The annotations do not indicate that readers rejected the book's antifeminist material and tone. Ignorance is bliss, and ignoring, minimizing, or explaining the Espill's misogyny through satire and irony allows for its continuation in the present and the future.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o encountered Lamming and Brathwaite in his twenties and recognised in them a model for his development as an African writer. Their influence was formative. Lamming’s appeal to the black writer to get to know his world intimately first before moving outward, and Brathwaite’s vision of the University of the West Indies as a site of self-knowledge, powered Ngugi’s move to place African literature at the centre of literary studies at the University of Nairobi. Inspired by their commitment to create an aesthetic reconnecting West Indian literature to its spiritual heartland, Ngugi set himself the radical task of spearheading an African literature written in African languages. Fanon’s ideas about the psychology of colonialism and his call for liberation through political and cultural mobilisation first came to Ngugi through Lamming and, in some instances, through Brathwaite. Like Lamming, Ngugi became a harsh critic of cultural imperialism and middle-class obstructors of decolonisation. Impressed by Lamming’s portrayal of the centrality of people in history, Ngugi magnified the community’s prominence in his works. Like Brathwaite, who strove to reverse the erasure of African history and tradition in the Caribbean, Ngugi reconnected the past to the present as a basis for the future, thus ‘re-membering’ Africa. Lamming and Brathwaite stimulated the liberatory thrust of Ngugi’s work.

This chapter analyses the work of Ngugi wa Thiong’o to examine how the East African novel of decolonisation critiques the homogenising impulses of official nation-building discourse. The nationalist impulse to construct a unified history and identity often results in the marginalisation of alternative histories and suppresses pluralistic identity formations. In the Kenyan context, this dynamic is evident in the reconfiguration of anti-colonial resistance as a minor narrative, subordinated to a state-authored nationalist history. As the symbolic legitimacy of the postcolonial nation erodes under neo-colonial conditions, the state increasingly relies on coercion to enforce allegiance to the nation, thereby transforming nation-building into authoritarianism. Focusing particularly on the novel Matigari, this chapter examines how literature functions as a site of resistance through the imagining of counter-nations and alternative political futures. Matigari, with its Gikuyu composition and oral narrative structure, is presented as a radical intervention in Kenya’s political discourse. Ngugi’s aesthetic choices in Matigari, along with its resonance among the popular classes, mark it as a pivotal text in his liberationist project. The novel’s portrayal of the Kenyan nation-state as a neo-colony and a betrayer of genuine nationalist ideals positions it as a powerful critique of post-independence statehood and its failed promises.

…from the tenth century on queens emerged in their own right. Whereas prior to that time the terminology used was “the queen of the king of Tara”, after that point the usage was simply “the queen of Tara”. Ó Corráin (1978) sees this as reflecting a major rise in the status of women. The queens of this time exercised considerable political and social influence (ibid.). It is clear from this that female images – whether they were goddesses or actual living people who took on a legendary character – were seen as powerful. Indeed women were believed to have special powers that men did not have (O hOgain, op. cit.).

Passed down orally from generation to generation and dating well into the Christian era, some goddesses were “gentle and protective” while others “instilled terror and panic in the opponent through magical powers and by their very presence”. Notable examples include: the sexual goddess of Connaught, Queen Maeve; the “pirate queen” Grainne Mhaol; and the goddesses of sovereignty who symbolised the land of Ireland. Although Gaelic society was certainly patriarchal during this time, the use of Brehon laws provided some freedoms to women. As noted by Fine-Davis, “women were granted extensive rights during this period, particularly with regard to marriage, divorce and property rights”. Partially overturned by the Norman invasion in the late twelfth century, Irish society was split into two communities: the Gaelic people who continued to live under forms of Brehon law; and Anglo-Normans who lived under the English Common Law.