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Fifty Years On: A Conversation with Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones, Founding Editor, African Literature Today
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- By Pede Hollist
- Edited by Ernest N. Emenyonu
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- Book:
- ALT 37
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 02 April 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2019, pp 172-180
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Summary
I talked with Prof. Jones at his residence atop the Leicester Hills overlooking Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. In 2016, a few short months after his beloved Marjorie (co-editor ALT 15-24) died, a partial house fire engulfed their library, and with it a lifetime collection of African literary classics, including copies of the Bulletin of African Literature, which preceded ALT, and a copy of Polyglotta Africana, Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle's comparative study of over 156 West African languages. Despite these two life-changing events, Prof. Jones, 93, is remarkably present, as alert, witty, and charming as I remember him when I was a student in his class. Our conversation took place in the reconstructed library, now pared down to a cloth upholstered chair, a bookshelf on top of which sat a combination radio and audio cassette player (to listen to classical music), a few paintings, framed newspaper cuttings hanging on the walls, and a desk in front of which he sat in a black high-back office chair on a swivel. On the morning I walked into the library, Prof. Jones (henceforth EDJ) had been reading Shakespeare, in Braille, ‘to keep my mind sharp’, he explains, after which he told me he had voted in Sierra Leone's March 2018 presidential elections.
PH: How did ALT come about? Take us through the steps that led to the inaugural edition.
EDJ: The 1960s saw a good deal of activity among scholars teaching African Literature throughout Africa and the world, and this led to a series of conferences in African Literature. There was one in Dakar, one in Nairobi, and one in Freetown at Fourah Bay College. At this latter conference, talk gathered around the idea of communication between the various English Departments which took an interest in African Literature. We decided on a bulletin, which was just a kind of newsletter between departments saying what was going on. That lasted for a year or two and possibly it was that bulletin that showed the potential of this kind of communication. Heinemann, which had the largest list of African authors, took an interest in the bulletin. We talked about it and after that we started African Literature Today which was founded as a journal inviting articles on the works of African writers.
PH: Was there a set of scholars that made up this ‘we’?
Okonkwo's Revenge (Short story)
- from LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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- By Pede Hollist, Associate Professor of English at The University of Tampa
- Ernest N. Emenyonu, John C. Hawley
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- Book:
- ALT 36: Queer Theory in Filmand Fiction
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 March 2020
- Print publication:
- 16 November 2018, pp 220-231
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Summary
Reverend Jeremiah Smith clenched his jaw, inhaled, and patted the bulge in the right pocket of his trousers, as one would do to assure a wallet of crisp dollar bills had not been stolen. If the commissioner of Bible Technologies for the Global South project had been less agitated, he would have realized that the odds of his wallet being stolen were zero because his right leg was jammed next to the external wall of the medical office waiting room. He would also have realized that the other patients with faraway looks, bowed, or nodding heads had more sublime concerns than money.
Like them, Reverend Smith had been waiting for over an hour to see Dr. Ezinma Okonkwo, the internationally renowned New York psychiatrist. Her waiting room overflowed with patients. They had heard that she overbooked. But that she took whatever time was necessary with each patient. So few complained. Instead, they resolved to make up for the long wait by unburdening themselves when their turn came to talk to her. Such was Reverend Smith's resolve as he shifted his buttocks to ease the pain hammering his lower back. A transplant to the United States from a British missionary family, Reverend Smith saw the world in ones and zeros, and digital technologies were his weapons to slay the children of Baal. Until they beguiled and sent him on a downward spiral – a falling apart he hoped Dr. Okonkwo would arrest.
After shimmying his buttocks in an effort to relieve his back pain, Reverend Smith picked up Scientific American from the oversized coffee table and fanned the stale, hot air. The makeshift fan brought little relief, so he opened the magazine and began reading an article on the brain, about its plasticity, its capacity to create neural networks that enable people to learn new things. Dedicated to spreading God's Word through technology, Reverend Smith became entranced in a future world in which ignorant, lost, and dammed souls would be redeemed if he could use technology to saturate their brains with His Word.
‘Do you think he hanged himself?’ Reverend Smith said, surprised to hear his own voice questioning Dr. Okonkwo when she walked into the consulting room.