>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Marshet Girma
> (301) 319-9777
>
>
>WHO IS KEN SARO-WIWA?
>
>Presenting Dr. Okello Oculi
>Sankofa Meet the Writer Summer Series
>Book Signing and Lecture
>Saturday, May 6, 2000 2:30 PM
>
>Sankofa Video and Book Store is Innaugurating its Summer series of "Meet the
>Writer" events with African thinker, social scientist and playwright Dr.
>Okello Oculi of the Ahmadu Bello University, in Zaria, Nigeria. An, Ugandan
>national, currently a visiting lecturer at Howard University will revive the
>name of Africa's most recent martyr in a presentation titled:
>
>WHO IS KEN SARO-WIWA?
>
>He will also introduce and sign his most recent book, "Discourses on African
>Affairs", a collection of essays on issues ranging from food security and
>African agriculture to the new neocolonialism and the Diaspora. Discourses
>brims with that cutting commentary on African affairs that can only emanate
>from being immersed in Africa's daily life, practiced Africannes, while
>being thoroughly familiar with the rhetoric waxed by distant
>interventionists. Every sentence, begs to be quoted.
>
>The lecture and book-signing takes place:
>
>Saturday, May 6, 2000
>2:30 PM
>Sankofa Video and Books
>2714 Georgia Avenue
>Washington, D.C. 20001
>For Info: (202) 234-4755
>
>Recommended reading: Discourses on African Affairs
> Africa World Press, Inc., Trenton, N.J., 2000
>Before I Am Hanged : Ken Saro-Wiwa--Literature, Politics, and Dissent;
>edited by Onookome Okome. Africa World Press, Inc., Trenton, N.J., 1999
>
>
>
> >From the Back Cover
>This is a full-length study of Kenule Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni Minority and
>Human Rights activist who was judicially murdered on November 10, 1995. One
>remarkable feature of the essays selected for this volume is the intensity
>of each contributor's voice to the very controversial man whose judicial
>murder has come to signify the extent of misrule in Nigeria.
>Questions of nationhood, ethic minority and power politics in Nigeria are
>discussed as each contributor examines the corpus of this literary and
>political ideas, pointing out the direction of this thought and the enduring
>contribution this writer and social critics have left behind on Nigeria's
>literary and political arenas.
>
>Ken Saro-Wiwa, a controversial figure in both life and in death, was hanged
>for his political views on the position of the majority/minority discourse
>in Nigerian politics. Those who find in his political tactics upstart from
>that "small minority" revile him, yet his name calls up problems faced by
>decimated minorities of the Niger Delta areas of Nigeria.
>For some, Ken Saro-Wiwa is the epitome of what must be scourged and recycled
>into the abyss of a forgotten life. For others, especially those who feel
>aggrieved by the economic and political situation in Nigeria, Saro-Wiwa has
>become a model.
>
>Far beyond the personality of Saro-Wiwa, the essays discuss Nigeria-the
>state of its nationhood, ethnicity, its new political literature-as well as
>the possibility of dissent and the consequences of dissent. Contributors
>include Harry Garuba, Azubuike Ileoje, Grace Okereke and Felix Akpan.
>
>About the Author
>Onookome Okome teaches Cinema and Theatre Studies at the University of
>Calabar, Nigeria. He has edited a volume of essays on the subject of sound
>in cinema and theater productions, The Sight of Sound: Sound in the Media
>and Theater. He currently edits ASE: Journal of Nigeria Life and Literature.
>Excerpted from Before I Am Hanged : Ken Saro-Wiwa--Literature, Politics, and
>Dissent by Onookome Okome. Copyright ) 1999. Reprinted by permission. All
>rights reserved
>
>
>Please e-mail all responses and comments to [log in to unmask]
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