Frank E. Smedley - "Frank Fairlegh"

Upton Sinclair - "The Second Story Man"

Caius Cornelius Tacitus - "Germania and Agricola"

Louisa de la Rame) - "A Dog of Flanders"

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.

Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases

P >> Perceval Gibbon >> Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases




"The moon gave me light, and I had watched Kornel often
enough to know how to go about the work. But the water, as
it flowed about my legs, bit me with a chill that made me
gasp, and the effort of the work, the constant bending and
lifting, tried every muscle in my body. I had seen the
cruelty of the work in its traces on Kornel, and knew how
little it gave and how much it took; but with this first
trial of it came the realization, never lost since, of how
gallant a man I had chosen to stand between me and the
world, and how much I owed him. I had not time to think a
great deal, for the torture of brick-making is partly in
the tact that while it wrenches the body, it joins the mind
to its infinite triviality. If you think, you do not pack
the mud as it must be packed, and the sun crumbles your
bricks to dust. It is no task for a real man at all; even
for a woman, it debases, it unmakes, it breaks.

"I worked hard at it, husbanding my strength, and within an
hour I was weak and foolish with the effort. Twice I had
left it to go in and see if all was well with Kornel, and
this rested me; but I was now resolved that I must rest no
more, if ever our debt was to be paid and bread earned for
the grim days to come. So I stayed in the bitter water and
worked on, till even the sense of pain was dulled and it
seemed that I was past the capacity of feeling.

"I was toiling thus (never mind my old troubles, Katje,
dear; this is years ago) when a sound came to my ears that
caused me to look up. It had been going on for some time,
persisting till it gained my notice, and suddenly I became
aware that there were men on our ground among the bricks. I
climbed half-way up the bank to look at them, where they
could not see me; and I saw several dark figures bent to
some business or moving here and there. I caught the sound
of hushed voices, too, though no words; and then the hot
wrath set my blood racing as I realized what was going on.
The Kafirs, who knew my man was wounded and helpless--the
very beast who had felled him--were stealing the bricks he
had labored so stoutly to make. My head swam with a
delirium of vivid anger at the meanness of the crime, and
without calculation, with no thought of fear, I scrambled
up and ran at them, shouting.

"I suppose they were surprised at my coming out of the
spruit, and some of them ran as soon as they heard me.
Others stood and waited ominously--you know what a Kafir is
with a woman,--and doubtless I should have met my last
earthly troubles then and there, but that from the road
beyond us there were other shouts, and men came running.

"I saw the forms of the rescuers as they raced up, and
marked one tall young man who ran past me with his arm
lifted before him. There was a flash and a bang, and I sat
down heavily as the white men shot at the Kafirs who were
now all running to cover. It took but an instant, and I
remember it as one remembers a thing seen at night by a
lightning flash, sharp and feverish.

"'Ye've no need to be feared,' someone said to me. 'They're
only my clerks, but they're a handy lot.'

"A short stout man was standing over me, and as I looked up
I saw it was old Pagan. Away in the darkness there were yet
cries and the sound of blows, where the white men pursued
the Kafirs.

"'Ye see,' continued the old man, 'I heard o' what had
happened, an' I counted on this. I'm a man o' experience,
Mrs. du Plessis, an' the very same thing happened to me
once. So I got a few o' my lads along, and we've been
waitin' for what ye might call the eventuality. I'm no'
exactly a negrophilist, ye ken. An' after seem' you
squatterin' about in the mud yonder, while yer husband was
sick a-bed, there was no holdin' the lads. No' that I
endeavored to restrain them, in any precise sense.'

"Away in the darkness a Kafir shrieked agonizedly.

"'There ye are,' said the old man. 'Yon's chivalry. If ye
had been a man, they'd never ha' put their hearts into it
like that.'

"He helped me to my feet and gave me an arm towards the
house.

"'There's just one thing,' he said, 'and it's this. I'm no'
quite the slave-driver ye might take me for--workin' in the
night to drag a pittance out o' me! For instance, I've a
job in the store that yer man can have, if it'll suit him,
and if you're willing yerself. It's no' a big thing, but
it's white. And for the present while, I dare say I can
advance ye enough to be going on with. And me and the lads
'll say no word about seein' you at yer work.'

"What is the use of carrying this tale on? It was there we
ceased to have the troubles that go to making tales, and
entered upon the ordered life of good industry and clean
living. But, Katje, of all that came afterwards, money and
success, and even children, there was nothing to knit us as
did the sorry months by the spruit, when my Kornel proved
himself the man I knew him to be. Be happy, Katje; be happy
at any rate."

I think she has been happy.

THE END

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