Ozikoro
OzikoroArchive

Subject

African writers

4 records filed under this subject

Professor Ernest Nneji Emenyonu: The Voice That Traced Igbo Literature Back to 1857

“Okwu bụ ndụ.” (Words are life). The old proverb could well summarise Emenyonu’s life’s work. To him, literature was not simply art;  it was history, language, and identity woven together like the intricate threads of akwete cloth. From Umuahia to the World Born in Umuahia, Abia State, in the heart of Igboland, Ernest Nneji Emenyonu grew…

Mazi F. C. Ogbalu and the Birth of Modern Igbo Language and Literature

Asụsụ bụ mkpụrụ obi nke mmadụ ( Language is the soul of a people).  In the decades after World War II, Nigeria was alive with political awakening. Yet among the Igbo, another revolution was quietly taking place,  not on the battlefield or in parliament, but in the classroom and on the printed page. At its…

Okigbo at Makerere: Poetry, Power, and the CIA’s Cultural Cold War

A na-agba ọsọ ndụ, ma onye na-agba ọsọ n’ezie, bụ onye maara ebe ọ na-aga(In the race of life, only he who knows his destination truly runs). The Stage at Makerere, 1962 In June 1962, the Makerere Writers’ Conference in Kampala gathered the brightest young minds of a newly decolonized Africa. Among them stood a…