[Review of] Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, and Cosmo Pieterse, eds. Summer Fires, New Poetry of Africa

When Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, and Cosmo Pieterse sat as judges for the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award of 1981, they were faced with some 3,000 entries from more than 700 contestants from which they were to award three cash prizes and a number of book prizes. In the introduction to the book which they subsequently edited, consisting of eighty-two poems from forty-five writers from thirteen countries in Africa, they explain that they had told all entrants they were looking for originality and imagination as well as evidence of technical skill. They state, also, that they strove to deliberate dispassionately ... without regard to geographical origin or to the author\u27s previous reputations. They conclude that the book represents the remarkable vitality of verse in English all over the continent, and leave their choices of poems to speak for themselves, as they do so well

[Review of] Mongane Serote. To Every Birth Its Blood

Mongane Serote is a poet of considerable merit; this I should have discovered from reading his novel, To Every Birth Its Blood, even had I not heard and seen him read his poetry to an African Literature Association Conference in 1975. The novel, however, is not obtrusively poetic; rather, its physical and psychological insights are apt and genuine parts of an integral whole, not ends in and of themselves. Yet a careful reader will respond most positively to such expression

[Review of] Sterling Plumpp, ed. Somehow We Survive: An Anthology of South African Writing

Somehow We Survive takes its title from an included poem by Dennis Brutus and is a collection of poems written in English by non-white South Africans. It is not a new book, having been published in 1982, but it still is worth the attention of Western readers, particularly of those who have not already become students of South Africa\u27s shameful history of apartheid and the growing resistance of black and colored persons, both in direct action and literary activity. As the book is now available in paperback, at a modest price, it is worth having, in spite of its limitations

[Review of] T. Obinkaram Echewa. The Crippled Dancer

At the end of The Crippled Dancer, Ajuzia asks, Was everyone coincidentally and inadvertently carrying a bag packed by other people? Like Browning\u27s Andrea del Sarto who says, So free we seem, so fettered fast we are, Ajuzia appears to accept the limitations fate and/or custom place upon the individual. Both men accept with reluctance, however, for both are free, creative spirits aware of the waste of their own talents

[Review of] Ngugiwa Thiong\u27o. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

This book, Decolonising the Mind, is my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From now on it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This declaration by Ngugi wa Thiong\u27o is one he has every right to make. Many of us, however, will hear it as a casting-off of the large and appreciative readership he enjoyed from the days when, as James Gugi, he instructed and enriched us with The River Between and other fine works of art. To be sure, one can sympathize with any African\u27s hatred of colonization, can feel with him a rage against the West, the whites -- Europeans and Americans -- even when he overgeneralizes and reifies his feelings. One may not agree with him, but one can understand his wish to hit back. One can also understand his desire to devote himself wholly to writing to and for his own people, to entertain and instruct them in their own language. One can understand these feelings even though one may not share them

[Review of] Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes, eds. African Short Stories

From time to time, collections of modern African short stories like the collection here noted should be published in order to keep an increasingly aware readership abreast of articulate literary production. When such collections are prepared, their editors would do well to be led by the general principles expressed by Chinua Achebe in a short, but very cogent, introduction: The indebtedness of modern African writing to its wealth of oral traditions is taken for granted by the editors and they see no necessity to demonstrate the link further by including traditional tales in this collection

Comparative Direct Analysis of Type Ia Supernova Spectra. IV. Postmaximum

A comparative study of optical spectra of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) obtained near 1 week, 3 weeks, and 3 months after maximum light is presented. Most members of the four groups that were defined on the basis of maximum light spectra in Paper II (core normal, broad line, cool, and shallow silicon) develop highly homogeneous postmaximum spectra, although there are interesting exceptions. Comparisons with SYNOW synthetic spectra show that most of the spectral features can be accounted for in a plausible way. The fits show that 3 months after maximum light, when SN Ia spectra are often said to be in the nebular phase and to consist of forbidden emission lines, the spectra actually remain dominated by resonance scattering features of permitted lines, primarily those of Fe II. Even in SN 1991bg, which is said to have made a very early transition to the nebular phase, there is no need to appeal to forbidden lines at 3 weeks postmaximum, and at 3 months postmaximum the only clear identification of a forbidden line is [Ca II] 7291, 7324. Recent studies of SN Ia rates indicate that most of the SNe Ia that have ever occurred have been "prompt" SNe Ia, produced by young (100,000,000 yr) stellar populations, while most of the SNe Ia that occur at low redshift today are "tardy", produced by an older (several Gyrs) population. We suggest that the shallow silicon SNe Ia tend to be the prompt ones.Comment: Accepted by PAS

Narrative constructions of anorexia and abuse: An athlete's search for meaning in trauma

Interpretive approaches to the study of eating disorders are scarce. Narrative analysis provides an attractive means to address this shortfall and is applied to the life story of Beth, a former elite athlete with experience of anorexia nervosa and, as she revealed, sexual abuse. Six unstructured life history interviews took place yielding more than 9 hours of interview data. Throughout our conversations, Beth constructed multiple, fragile, and sometimes contrasting narrative coherences indicative of a fragmented and uncertain understanding of her life. It is argued that how Beth makes sense of her trauma is consequential for her future experiences

Offenders' Crime Narratives across Different Types of Crimes

The current study explores the roles offenders see themselves playing during an offence and their relationship to different crime types. One hundred and twenty incarcerated offenders indicated the narrative roles they acted out whilst committing a specific crime they remembered well. The data were subjected to Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) and four themes were identified: Hero, Professional, Revenger and Victim in line with the recent theoretical framework posited for Narrative Offence Roles (Youngs & Canter, 2012). Further analysis showed that different subsets of crimes were more like to be associated with different narrative offence roles. Hero and Professional were found to be associated with property offences (theft, burglary and shoplifting), drug offences and robbery and Revenger and Victim were found to be associated with violence, sexual offences and murder. The theoretical implications for understanding crime on the basis of offenders' narrative roles as well as practical implications are discussed

Becoming a Performance Analyst : Autoethnographic Reflections on Agency, and Facilitated Transformational Growth

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Reflective Practice, on 3 September 2014, available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2014.900014.This paper features an autoethnographic approach in presenting and reflecting upon the story of one higher education student’s rapid vocational and academic transformation. Initially an inconspicuous undergraduate student, Andrew experienced an accelerated development that catapulted him to working in elite sport performance analysis (PA) environments, within a year. PA is a sub-discipline of sports coaching that involves using the latest technological advances to influence sporting performance, through the objective analysis of performance data. This autoethnographic piece is partly Andrew’s personal reflection upon that journey towards his newfound profession, which initially grew out of his experience of a generic sports degree at a university. Through stepping out of his comfort zone, and analysing sports previously unknown to him, extraordinary progress was made, and various vocational and academic opportunities arose. The initial catalyst for this developmental journey was facilitated by coaching lecturer David, who reflects upon how Andrew’s story links to his own educational philosophies. Andrew and David explore what these stories might mean to them personally, including potential links to the metaphor of learning as becoming, and notions around the concepts of learner agency, and educational facilitation. The paper ends by exploring the theoretical frameworks that guided this paper’s structure and focusPeer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio