The Atlantic Sound is a 2000 travel book by Caryl Phillips. It was published in the UK by Faber and Faber and in the US by Knopf. In the words of the Publishers Weekly review: "Journeys, as forces of spiritual and cultural transformation, bind this trio of nonfiction narratives, which explores the legacy of slavery in each of the three major points of the transatlantic slave trade." [1]
Geoffrey Moorhouse, assessing the book for The New York Times , wrote: "Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, but he's been an Englishman almost from the start, and has since become nearly as much at home in New York as he is in London. He is uncommonly well placed, therefore, to ponder the relationship between people of his own ancestry and those of Europe and North America, as well as that which has lately and self-consciously been pursued by black Americans and West Indians anxious to reclaim their stake in Africa. Because he's a writer and not an academic or a polemicist, he has done this lyrically in The Atlantic Sound, with an extremely balanced assessment divided into five episodes, each casting further light on the intricate patterns and prejudices of race." [2]
Exploring what constitutes "home", Phillips repeats a journey he made as a child in the late 1950s on a banana boat from the Caribbean to Britain, then visits three cities pivotal to the African diaspora: Liverpool in England, where many ships involved in the triangular trade departed; Elmina on the coast of Ghana, site of the most important slave fort in Africa; and Charleston in the US south, where one-third of African Americans were landed and sold into bondage, [3] and where Phillips makes a pilgrimage to Magnolia Cemetery to lay flowers at the grave of Julius Waties Waring, a white judge who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. Writing in The Guardian , reviewer Maya Jaggi notes: "It is characteristic of Phillips's vision that, in excavating the hidden history of this antebellum tourist centre, he draws imaginative links between diasporic wanderers and a white man whose moral stand made him an outcast in his own hometown." [4]
The book was described by Kirkus Reviews as: "A splendidly honest and vividly detailed venture into some of history's darkest corners—by a novelist who is also a superb reporter." [5] Comparisons have been drawn between this work and Looking for Transwonderland, by Nigerian writer Noo Saro-Wiwa. [6]
Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.
Kenule "Ken" Bornale Tsaro-Wiwa, also known as Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr, although he himself chose to use the name Ken Wiwa, was a Nigerian journalist and author. The eldest son of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, he worked as an adviser to three Nigerian presidents.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
Caryl Phillips is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels, Phillips is often described as a Black Atlantic writer, since much of his fictional output is defined by its interest in, and searching exploration of, the experiences of peoples of the African diaspora in England, the Caribbean and the United States. As well as writing, Phillips has worked as an academic at numerous institutions including Amherst College, Barnard College, and Yale University, where he has held the position of Professor of English since 2005.
Kadija George, Hon. FRSL, also known as Kadija Sesay, is a British literary activist, short story writer and poet of Sierra Leonean descent, and the publisher and managing editor of the magazine SABLE LitMag. Her work has earned her many awards and nominations, including the Cosmopolitan Woman of Achievement in 1994, Candace Woman of Achievement in 1996, The Voice Community Award in Literature in 1999 and the Millennium Woman of the Year in 2000. She is the General Secretary for African Writers Abroad and organises the Writers' HotSpot – trips for writers abroad, where she teaches creative writing and journalism courses.
Sukur or Sukur Cultural Landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located on a hill above the village of Sukur in the Adamawa State of Nigeria. It is situated in the Mandara Mountains, close to the border with Cameroon. Its UNESCO inscription is based on the cultural heritage, material culture, and the naturally-terraced fields. Sukur is Africa's first cultural landscape to receive World Heritage List inscription.
Crossing the River is a historical novel by British author Caryl Phillips, published in 1993. The Village Voice calls it "a fearless reimagining of the geography and meaning of the African diaspora." The Boston Globe said, "Crossing the River bears eloquently chastened testimony to the shattering of black lives."
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and writer. She writes in English, though she also draws on Shona, her first language. In 2016, she was named African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper. In 2017 she had a DAAD Artist-in-Residence fellowship in Berlin.
Zina Saro-Wiwa is a Brooklyn-based video artist and filmmaker. She makes video installations, documentaries, music videos and experimental films.
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is 33 years old, and recounts the years she lived in Accra, Ghana. The book, deriving its title from a Negro spiritual, begins where Angelou's previous memoir, The Heart of a Woman, ends — with the traumatic car accident involving her son Guy — and closes with Angelou returning to America.
Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May 14, 2013, by Alfred A. Knopf.
The European Tribe is the first book of essays by Caryl Phillips, published in 1987. Characterised by Andrea Lee in The New York Times as "part travelogue, part cri de coeur", the collection chronicles the author's journey through multiracial Europe of the 1980s, "guided by a moral compass rather than a map" and "seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe". Maya Jaggi of The Guardian has called it "a coolly indignant dissection of the 'sickness in Europe's soul'".
Maya Jaggi is a British writer, literary critic, editor and cultural journalist. In the words of the Open University, from which Jaggi received an honorary doctorate in 2012, she "has had a transformative influence in the last 25 years in extending the map of international writing today". Jaggi has been a contributor to a wide range of publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, New Statesman, Wasafiri, Index on Censorship, and Newsweek, and is particularly known for her profiles of writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and others. She is also a broadcaster and presenter on radio and television. Jaggi is the niece of actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey.
Noo Saro-Wiwa is a British-Nigerian author, noted for her travel writing. She is the daughter of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Ferdinand Dennis is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s. Dr James Procter notes: "Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background, Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots. This is foregrounded in much of his fictional work, notably his most recent and ambitious novel to date, Duppy Conqueror (1998), a novel which moves from 1930s Jamaica to postwar London and Liverpool, to Africa. Similarly, Dennis' non-fiction centres on journeying rather than arrival, from Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) to Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000)."
Trans Wonderland is an amusement and theme park in Ibadan, Nigeria.
The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest is a 2002 book by Aminatta Forna about her childhood and an investigation into the execution of her father, Mohamed Forna. It was serialised as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and was runner-up for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize.
Pelu Awofeso is a Nigerian journalist, travel and culture writer, based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a winner of the CNN/Multichoice African Journalists Awards in the Tourism Category. He is often described as "Nigerian foremost travel writer." He is also a published author.
Faber Caribbean Series was a series of books published by Faber & Faber with the stated aim "to publish the finest work being produced in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora, in the four major languages of the region: English, French, Spanish and Dutch." Launched in 1998, the series was edited by Kittitian-British writer Caryl Phillips, and aimed to familiarize Anglophone audiences with writers such as Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Maryse Condé and Pedro Juan Gutierrez.
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria is a 2012 non-fiction memoir and travelogue by Noo Saro-Wiwa. In it Saro-Wiwa travels across Nigeria, re-discovering the country of her birth. The book has been compared to those of many other diasporic writers.