Sir James George Frazer - "The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3)"

Various - "Stories of Comedy"

Richard Jefferies - "Round About a Great Estate"

F.L. Morrison - "The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914 1918"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Man With Two Left Feet

P >> P. G. Wodehouse >> The Man With Two Left Feet




He sat up. Somebody helped him to his feet. He was aware of Sidney
Mercer at his side.

'Do it again,' said Sidney, all grin and sleek immaculateness. 'It went
down big, but lots of them didn't see it.'

The place was full of demon laughter.

* * * * *

'Min!' said Henry.

They were in the parlour of their little flat. Her back was towards
him, and he could not see her face. She did not answer. She preserved
the silence which she had maintained since they had left the
restaurant. Not once during the journey home had she spoken.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on. Outside an Elevated train
rumbled by. Voices came from the street.

'Min, I'm sorry.'

Silence.

'I thought I could do it. Oh, Lord!' Misery was in every note of
Henry's voice. 'I've been taking lessons every day since that night we
went to that place first. It's no good--I guess it's like the old woman
said. I've got two left feet, and it's no use my ever trying to do it.
I kept it secret from you, what I was doing. I wanted it to be a
wonderful surprise for you on your birthday. I knew how sick and tired
you were getting of being married to a man who never took you out,
because he couldn't dance. I thought it was up to me to learn, and give
you a good time, like other men's wives. I--'

'Henry!'

She had turned, and with a dull amazement he saw that her whole face
had altered. Her eyes were shining with a radiant happiness.

'Henry! Was _that_ why you went to that house--to take dancing
lessons?'

He stared at her without speaking. She came to him, laughing.

'So that was why you pretended you were still doing your walks?'

'You knew!'

'I saw you come out of that house. I was just going to the station at
the end of the street, and I saw you. There was a girl with you, a girl
with yellow hair. You hugged her!'

Henry licked his dry lips.

'Min,' he said huskily. 'You won't believe it, but she was trying to
teach me the Jelly Roll.'

She held him by the lapels of his coat.

'Of course I believe it. I understand it all now. I thought at the time
that you were just saying good-bye to her! Oh, Henry, why ever didn't
you tell me what you were doing? Oh, yes, I know you wanted it to be a
surprise for me on my birthday, but you must have seen there was
something wrong. You must have seen that I thought something. Surely
you noticed how I've been these last weeks?'

'I thought it was just that you were finding it dull.'

'Dull! Here, with you!'

'It was after you danced that night with Sidney Mercer. I thought the
whole thing out. You're so much younger than I, Min. It didn't seem
right for you to have to spend your life being read to by a fellow like
me.'

'But I loved it!'

'You had to dance. Every girl has to. Women can't do without it.'

'This one can. Henry, listen! You remember how ill and worn out I was
when you met me first at that farm? Do you know why it was? It was
because I had been slaving away for years at one of those places where
you go in and pay five cents to dance with the lady instructresses. I
was a lady instructress. Henry! Just think what I went through! Every
day having to drag a million heavy men with large feet round a big
room. I tell you, you are a professional compared with some of them!
They trod on my feet and leaned their two hundred pounds on me and
nearly killed me. Now perhaps you can understand why I'm not crazy
about dancing! Believe me, Henry, the kindest thing you can do to me is
to tell me I must never dance again.'

'You--you--' he gulped. 'Do you really mean that you can--can stand the
sort of life we're living here? You really don't find it dull?'

'Dull!'

She ran to the bookshelf, and came back with a large volume.

'Read to me, Henry, dear. Read me something now. It seems ages and ages
since you used to. Read me something out of the _Encyclopaedia_!'

Henry was looking at the book in his hand. In the midst of a joy that
almost overwhelmed him, his orderly mind was conscious of something
wrong.

'But this is the MED-MUM volume, darling.'

'Is it? Well, that'll be all right. Read me all about "Mum".'

'But we're only in the CAL-CHA--' He wavered. 'Oh, well--I' he went on,
recklessly. 'I don't care. Do you?'

'No. Sit down here, dear, and I'll sit on the floor.'

Henry cleared his throat.

'"Milicz, or Militsch (d. 1374), Bohemian divine, was the most
influential among those preachers and writers in Moravia and Bohemia
who, during the fourteenth century, in a certain sense paved the way
for the reforming activity of Huss."'

He looked down. Minnie's soft hair was resting against his knee. He put
out a hand and stroked it. She turned and looked up, and he met her big
eyes.

'Can you beat it?' said Henry, silently, to himself.

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