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Keorapetse Kgositsile & the Black Arts Movement
0 - Default Title
Description
The cultural configurations of the Black Atlantic cannot be fully understood without recognising the significant presence of writers and artists from the African continent itself. Among the most influential was South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, or 'Bra Willie', as he was affectionately known. Yet, until now, there has been no full-length study of his work.
Uhuru Phalafala's wide-ranging book reveals the foundational influence of Kgositsile's mother and grandmother on his craft and unveils the importance of the oral/aural traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, and cosmologies he carried with him into and after exile. It illuminates a southern African modernity that was strongly gendered and deployed in anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, and civil rights struggles. Using the original concept of 'elsewhere', the author maps the sources of Kgositsile's transformative verse, which in turn generated 'poetics of possibility' for his contemporaries in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements and beyond - among them Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tom Dent, members of The Last Poets, Otabenga Jones & Associates, and rapper Earl Sweatshirt - who all looked to his work to model their identities, cultural movements and radical traditions.
Product details
- Number of Pages:
- 226
- Release Date:
- 2021-10-15
- Publication Date:
- 2024-02-27
- Publisher:
- James Currey
- Languages:
- Original: English
- ISBN10:
- 1847012779
- ISBN13:
- 9781847012777
- GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
- [email protected]
- Weight:
- 508 g
- Height:
- 161 cm
- Width:
- 240 cm
- Thickness:
- 17 cm
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