African Youth In Contemporary Literature And Popular Culture

Download or read book African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture written by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how African youth are depicted in contemporary literature and popular culture, and discusses the different ways by which they attempt to construct personal and cultural identities through popular culture and social media outlets. The contributors approach the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, looking at images in children’s and adolescent literature from Africa, and the African diaspora, from Nollywood and Hollywood movies, from popular magazines, and from youth cultures encountered directly through field experiences. The findings reveal that there are many stereotypes about Africa, African youth and black cultures, and that African youth are aware of these. Since they juggle multiple identities shaped by their ethnicities, race and religion, it is often a challenge for them to define themselves. As they also share a global youth culture that transcends these cultural markers, some take advantage of media outlets to voice their concerns and participate in political struggles. Others simply use these to promote their personal interests. Contributors ponder the challenges involved in constructing unique identities, offering ideas on how African youth are doing so successfully or not in different parts of the continent and the African diaspora, and thus offer new possibilities for youth studies.

Download or read book African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture written by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how African youth are depicted in contemporary literature and popular culture, and discusses the different ways by which they attempt to construct personal and cultural identities through popular culture and social media outlets. The contributors approach the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, looking at images in children’s and adolescent literature from Africa, and the African diaspora, from Nollywood and Hollywood movies, from popular magazines, and from youth cultures encountered directly through field experiences. The findings reveal that there are many stereotypes about Africa, African youth and black cultures, and that African youth are aware of these. Since they juggle multiple identities shaped by their ethnicities, race and religion, it is often a challenge for them to define themselves. As they also share a global youth culture that transcends these cultural markers, some take advantage of media outlets to voice their concerns and participate in political struggles. Others simply use these to promote their personal interests. Contributors ponder the challenges involved in constructing unique identities, offering ideas on how African youth are doing so successfully or not in different parts of the continent and the African diaspora, and thus offer new possibilities for youth studies.

Download or read book Youth and Popular Culture in Africa written by Paul Ugor and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The edited collection focuses on the links between young people and African popular culture. It explores popular culture produced and consumed by young people in contemporary Africa. And by "culture," we mean all kinds of texts or representations-visual, oral, written, performative, fictional, social, and virtual-created by African youth, mostly about their lives and their immediate societies, and for themselves, but also consumed by the larger public, and shared locally and globally. We proceed from the premise that cultural texts not only function as "social facts" as Karin Barber argues, but that they double as "commentaries upon, and interpretations of, social facts. They are part of social reality, but they also take up an attitude to social reality" (2007, 04). So, the work focuses specifically on what African youth produce as popular culture, under what conditions or contexts they produce such work, how they produce those texts, why they produce them, the aesthetic dimensions of these texts as cultural artifacts, and why these textual practices matter as social facts, as interpretive acts, and as cultural symbols of the general cultural activism of young people in a rapidly changing world, a world where the global cultural economy is the prime terrain for the relentless struggles over the meanings that come to shape political-economic and social systems"--

Download or read book Popular Culture in Africa written by Stephanie Newell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Karin Barber’s ground-breaking article, "Popular Arts in Africa", which stimulated new debates about African popular culture and its defining categories. Focusing on performances, audiences, social contexts and texts, contributors ask how African popular cultures contribute to the formation of an episteme. With chapters on theater, Nollywood films, blogging, and music and sports discourses, as well as on popular art forms, urban and youth cultures, and gender and sexuality, the book highlights the dynamism and complexity of contemporary popular cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on the streets of Africa, especially city streets where different cultures and cultural personalities meet, the book asks how the category of "the people" is identified and interpreted by African culture-producers, politicians, religious leaders, and by "the people" themselves. The book offers a nuanced, strongly historicized perspective in which African popular cultures are regarded as vehicles through which we can document ordinary people’s vitality and responsiveness to political and social transformations.

Download or read book Youth Language Practices in Africa and Beyond written by Nico Nassenstein and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Youth languages have increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and students of various disciplines. African youth languages are a vibrant phenomenon with manifold characteristics involving a range of different languages. This book is a first comprehensive study of African youth languages and presents fresh insights into various youth languages, providing linguistic as well as sociolinguistic data and analyses.

Download or read book A History of African Popular Culture written by Karin Barber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey through the history of African popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Download or read book Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature in the United States written by Donna L. Gilton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature in the United States addresses both quantitative and more qualitative changes in this field over the last decade. Quantitative changes include more authors, books, and publishers; book review sources, booklists, and awards; organizations, institutions, and websites; and criticism and other scholarship. Qualitative changes include: More support for new and emerging writers and illustrators; Promotion of multicultural literature both in the U.S. and around the world, as well as developments in global literature; Developments in the literatures described throughout this book, as well as in research supporting this literature; The impact of technology; Characteristics and activities of four adult audiences that use and promote multicultural children’s literature, and Changes in leaders and their organizations. This is still a single reference source for busy and involved librarians, teachers, parents, scholars, publishers, distributors, and community leaders. Most books on multicultural children’s literature are written especially for teachers, librarians, and scholars. They may be introductions to the literature, selection tools, teaching guides, or very theoretical books on choosing, evaluating, and using these materials. Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature in the United States focuses much more on the history of the development of this literature, from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book provides much more of a cultural and political context for the early development of this literature. It emphasizes the “self-determining” viewpoints and activities of diverse people as they produce materials for the young. Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature… describes organizations, events, activities, and other contributions of diverse writers, illustrators, publishers, researchers, scholars, librarians, educators, and parents. It also describes trends in the research on the literature. It elaborates more on ways in which diversity is still an issue in publishing companies and an extended list of related industries. It describes related literature from outside of the U.S. and makes connections to traditional global literature. Last, Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature, shows the impact of multiculturalism on education, libraries, and the mainstream culture, in general. While the other books on multiculturalism focus on how to find, evaluate, and use multicultural materials, especially in schools and libraries, this book is concerned over whether and how books are produced in the first place and how this material impact the broader society. In many ways, it supplements other books on multicultural children’s literature.