Critical Edition of Haitian Writer Roger Dorsinville’s Memoirs of Africa

“This is a critical edition of the writings of Roger Dorsinville evoking Africa, focused on his appropriation of traditional storytelling form. It is divided into two parts: the first is Roger Dorsinville’s African Memoirs told in dialogical form, and published in 1990; the second is his unpublished collection of tales from Liberia’s hinterland, dated 1968. The core of the book is supplemented by an Appendix section that includes original archival material and critical assessments using a reader’s response approach. Finally, there is a selected bibliography relevant to the subject. . . . .a well-balanced, original, insightful and thought-provoking edition that provides new, critical avenues for our understanding of narrative in dialogical form. It is also a fine critical addition to Dorsinville’s own body of work that deserves to be made available to the English-speaking scholarly community.” – Marie Hélène Laforest

“The material is highly informative, is a corrective to our views of West Africans and conversely the views West Africans hold of the African Diaspora. . . . we have here a splendid opportunity for first-hand accounts of some of the views and experiences of one of Haiti’s most prolific and profound twentieth-century writers. . . . It should be also said that the translator and editor of these pieces, Max Dorsinville, has done a masterful job of preserving the voice and vivid descriptions of the French text and has managed to do so in smooth-flowing conversational prose.” – H. Nigel Thomas

Table of contents (main headings):
Preface: Foreword; Introduction
1.Memoirs
2.From the World of Tales
Appendices:
“The Sacred Bush,” excerpt from Martha/Bush to Nowhere by Roger Dorsinville
The Regulated World of Hinterland Dancing by Roger Dorsinville
“With Little Brushstrokes”: Storytelling and the Aesthetics of Fragmentation in Memoirs of Africa, article by Lukas Lhotsky
“The Door Open to Beauty”: The Power of Storytelling in Memoirs of Africa, article by Tracy Beck Fenwick
“Para Bailar la Bamba”: the Carnival Motif in Memoirs of Africa, article by Catherine Slakmon
Bibliography; Index

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