Reviews for The Teaching of African literature

The average rating for The Teaching of African literature based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-23 00:00:00 Douglas Ault I got this book in 1980, when I was 13 years old. At the time, as a child, I had just grown up through the wondrous "Occult 70s", as TV and newspapers were alive with reports of Bigfoot and UFOs and The Bermuda Triangle and Ghosts and Disappearing People and Psychic Powers and on and on... I ate this all up with a spoon. I watched IN SEARCH OF, read UFO books and Bigfoot books and lake monster/sea serpent books. I was a careful reader and took note of names and, thanks to the Bookmobile and great scholastic scope books about the paranormal for kids (by people like Daniel Cohen), I was reading Charles Fort in grade school (Fifth Grade, I think). Books by JANET BORD COLIN BORD, Frank Edwards and John A. Keel blew my little mind and had a profound effect on how I see the world even now. I don't know where I heard about this book. An issue of FATE MAGAZINE or PURSUIT? I have dim recollection of seeing the author interviewed on TV but most likely I saw it in the bibliography of a Loren Coleman book. Anyway, this was a strange book for a 13-year-old to have and covet (my dear sister Susan, rest her soul, ordered it for me when she worked at Walden Books). Library Bound, hardcover, 1114 pages long, essentially it's an endless list (most probably gathered over Eberhart's lifetime and then fed into a computer) of reports of all kinds of weird and paranormal events (from ghosts to UFOS to Bigfoots to disappearances to falls of fish to folklore about lost treasure and mystery spots and the like) sorted by location of event (thus "geo-bibliography"). There's little to no explication of the event, just it's catalog entry heading (like, say, "Unknown Humanoid - Lizard Man"), location (sometimes, down to the street address!), date and the reference it was cited in. I had very little chance of actually reading the original reports (library microfilm helped, but do you know how crushing it was to a 13 year old to find out that all libraries *didn't* have copies immediately available of old magazines like DOUBT, the Journal of the Fortean Society from the 1940s, or FATE?) but that didn't matter. I'd pore over it intently and brood at the fact that someone once saw a UFO back in the 1950s just ONE TOWN OVER FROM ME! I've held onto this book all my life and still use it to fill myself with wonder and awe at the world around me. Every time I settle somewhere new I look at it to see if anything neat happened around there. Cracking it open right now, I see that a small town I pass through on my way to Central Pennsylvania from my home in Maryland, a town I've driven through a hundred times, has a churchyard where a ghostly black dog was reported. Perhaps I will check it out!

Review # 2 was written on 2014-04-07 00:00:00 Dana Herrera The name of the story that I read is "How Serval Got His Spots" and since this is a fable, there isn't a author. This fable was told by the Ndebele people which is a community of people in Africa. The genre of this book is Folklore and the sub genre of this story is Fables. I chose to read this story for my English Presentation, since our unit is about fables. This particular story is retold by Nick Greaves. This story explains how Servals got their spots. The setting of this book is In Africa, a long time ago. The central characters are a Serval and a snake. In this fable, Servals had no spots, and therefore were called 'Lion's Little Cousins'. Servals wished nothing but to have a beautiful coat like a Zebra. Then, one day when a snake got sick and no one else would help him, Serval was so nice to help him get better. To thank this act of kindness, the snake bit the Serval, and gave him spots. This story teaches me a lesson about being kind and helpful. The Serval helped the snake when he was sick and no one else would help him. Also I think this story teaches that you should be kind to others, or else not many people will offer to help you when you need help. I liked this story because I think it teaches you important lessons. Since this is a fable, the characters didn't seem real. (Animals can talk) All in all, I liked this story. 10 - 13