Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post-Colonial Sierra Leone - by Sylvia Ojukutu-MacAuley & Ismail Rashid (Hardcover)

About the Book

Using Sierra Leone as a case study, this book examines the nature of knowledge production and interpretation of African history since the decade of African independence. This anthology provides critical reflections on major themes such as ethnicity, class, gender, identity for...

Book Synopsis

Using Sierra Leone as a case study, this book examines the nature of knowledge production and interpretation of African history since the decade of African independence. This anthology provides critical reflections on major themes such as ethnicity, class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict.

Review Quotes

In an ethos of endemic corruption, ethnic-based politics, degraded educational structures, environmental pollution, and praetorian ambiguity, this anthology identifies the way to renewal. It plumbs the disquieting tensions of the trenches, gives voice to the marginalized, and rescues us from the cynical narratives of elite interests and personages. We see grassroots potential for relevance and verve, and our editors supply a long-felt need for interpretations of complex phenomena of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class.

This collection of essays, showcasing the works of very accomplished and prominent scholars of Sierra Leone's history at home and abroad, seeks to reconfigure the western paradigms of engagement and interpretation of historical knowledge about Sierra Leone and re-center the conversation to include and reflect indigenous perspectives of the nation's past through exploring social constructs such as class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict. The writers' examination of the significance of these issues in recalibrating western notions of history and its sociocultural context illustrates the various paradoxes and transformative moments in Sierra Leone and West Africa.

About the Author

Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley is professor of history at Truman State University. She is also the director of the Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program at Truman. Ojukutu-Macauley has also taught at Fourah Bay College--University of Sierra Leone and the University of Ghana-Legon.
Ismail Rashid, is professor of history at Vassar College. He is the coeditor (with Adekeye Adebajo) of West Africa's Security Challenges (2004).