View the H-Africa Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Africa's March 2002 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Africa's March 2002 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Africa home page.
<yafreder@mnstate.edu> For a freshman "World Literature"-type course, I have had great success with Tayeb Salih's _Season of Migration to the North_. It is the story of two Sudanese who study in Britain, rising to different levels of academic acclaim, then return to a village on a bend of the Nile to "fit in" (or, in most cases, not). It presents many possible topics of discussion, such as Otherness (as a disadvantage and as an advantage), the effects of colonialism, the effects of independence, tribalism, Islam vs. culture, and FGM/female circumcision. Since my students have had little exposure to any of these topics, it is a wonderful eye-opener. The novel's length--only 160 pages long--also makes it a workable length for my students. As a work of literature, it is almost dramatic in its tightness, with foils, parallel characters, "loops" in the plot, etc. Students tell me that they can't put it down. What more could I ask for?
|