African Memoirs and Cultural Representations: Narrating Traditions

In this book, memoirs by West African writers are discussed as repositories of African communities, ranging from the traditional to the contemporary. Each memoir examined analyzes and sheds light on the inner workings of society via the individual, including the dynamic processes of African cultures, civilizations, and peoples.

Traditions and cultures represent a set of persisting or prevailing beliefs, social practices, oral, linguistic, and values that define an individual’s way of life. In other words, in memoir writing, the emphasis is often to propagate a unilateral need or embrace of self-identity. However, the dominant narrative and method of analysis in this study holds the notion and privileges that tradition and cultures imbibed by memoirists are sometimes subverted, refashioned, or reworked due to the strand of experiences or realities they encounter in different spaces as their narration develops. Thus, memoirists embrace indifference and open-mindedness, which is also greatly explored in the context of autobiography.

• | Author: Toyin Falola
• | Publisher: Anthem Press
• | Publication Date: May 13, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781839987748
• | ISBN-10: 183998774X