Description
Book SynopsisBetween the 1880s and the 1940s, the region known as British West Africa became a dynamic zone of literary creativity and textual experimentation.
Trade Review“This brilliantly original book opens up new ways of looking at the colonial West African press.
The Power to Name reveals the newspapers as sites of creativity and experimentation. Newell shows how West African writers, in a range of emergent genres, tried out far-reaching new conceptions of the public good, political allegiance and personal identity. An engrossing and fascinating read, and a landmark in West African cultural history.”
“This is a terrific book, creatively conceived, carefully written, deeply thought, and thoroughly original.… [It reveals] a whole wealth of insight into Africans’ agency, into the work that African writers did to criticize colonial government, define a public sphere, and develop new modes of civil discourse.”
“Called into existence by the rise of an indigenous newspaper press, African writers employed anonymity and allegory to criticize, slyly and archly, their colonial masters. In most cases we don’t even know their real names, but thanks to Stephanie Newell, they are no longer lost to history.”
“An innovative and truly interdisciplinary study.… In essence, the issue of anonymity in West African newspapers provides an original and useful probe in order to discuss and analyze ‘cultural histories of colonial societies.’”
