Cambridge Scholars Publishing South African Literary Cultural Nationalism―Abalobi beSizwe eMzansi―1918-45: Returning to the Source

This book is an intellectual history that uses Amílcar Cabral’s theory of the “return to the source,” to examine Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi, B.W. Vilakazi’s poetry, and A.C. Jordan’s The Wrath of the Ancestors within the broader context of African cultural nationalisms in the early twentieth century African Atlantic World. It shows the development of the idea of African equality with Whites in the face of prevailing ideas of White supremacy during Union-era South Africa. These authors were part of the New African Movement, which was one of eight literary movements among Africans and peoples of African descent in the Americas between 1915 and 1945, including the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude, Claridade in Cape Verde, and similar movements in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, and Belize. The text presents new models for interpreting Union-era African literature, and recasts understanding of the nature of interactions between Africans and Europeans, including Western Syphilization, Chiral Interdiscursivity, and the relationship between history and memory informed by a neurobiological analysis of memory. About the Author Nicholas M. Creary is currently an Assistant Professor of African and African American Histories, and Director of the Gloria Richardson Humanities Initiative at Bowie State University, USA, the oldest Historically Black Institution in Maryland. He is the author of Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879-1980, and the editor of African Intellectuals and Decolonization. He has published more than 35 articles in various journals, including the Journal of the African Literature Association, the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, and the Catholic Historical Review.