The African Image by Ezekiel Mphahlele. London. 1962. Faber & Faber. 240 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - ‘I personally cannot think of the future of my people in South Africa as something in which the white man does not feature. Whether he likes it or not, our destinies are inseparable. I have seen too much that is good in Western culture - for example its music, literature and theatre - to want to repudiate it.' It is in the context of this personal declaration that Ezekiel Mphahlele examines the political and cultural aspirations, not only of his countrymen, but of Africans in general; particularly as formulated in concepts as 'Negritude', 'The African Personality' and Pan-Africanism. Experience of social conditions in both South Africa and Nigeria as well as his own keen intelligence enable him to discuss these concepts and their background with an incisiveness which leaves little room for complacency on the part of black or white. second half of the book pursues the enquiry in a literary context, being a much-needed critical survey of the black man's image in white and non-white fiction, ranging from William Faulkner to Amos Tutuola, Richard Wright to Doris Lessing.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.
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