AFRO-MEXICANS
Discourse of Race and Identity in the African Diaspora

By Chege Githiora
This book is about a little known branch of the African Diaspora—Afro-Mexicans. It discusses their conditions of arrival and establishment in Mexico within the context of Spanish colonialism, and the race-based socio-economic hierarchy known as sistema de castas which provided a basis for the contemporary socioracial terms that are the focus of the main study: indio, blanco, negro and moreno. Today, these terms are used ubiquitously in variable ways as tags of social identity in Mexican discourse. An ethnographic sketch of a representative Afro-Mexican community located in the state of Guerrero then provides

AFRICA AND THE THIRD MILLENNIUM,

Edited by George Klay Kieh, Jr.
There is a general consensus that Africa entered the twenty-first century plagued by multifaceted crises of underdevelopment evidenced by, among other things, abject poverty, the inadequacy of basic human needs, social stresses and tensions in the various major urban centers, environmental degradation and the devastating effects of violent civil conflicts. While there is no doubt that slavery and colonialism have contributed to the continent’s predicament, the failure of the neo-colonial state

EARLY SOYINKA

by Bernth Lindfors
This book contains half a dozen essays on writings by Wole Soyinka composed prior to publication of his first books in 1963. These early works reveal his precocious talent as a writer of stories, dramas, essays, letters, humorous sketches and jokes, the argument being that they cannot be dismissed as juvenilia or immature scribblings for they already exhibit an impressive command of language as well as dexterous handling of techniques of characterization and plot construction. Later essays deal with formal aspects of the plays he published between 1963 and 1973