Secrets, silences & betrayals

259 Pages·2015·2.431 MB·English

by  Ndi, Bill F

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R SECRETS, SILENCES
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and
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Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals is an invitation to readers to consider factoring in
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the often discarded or censored but useful information held by the dominated. I
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The book’s principal claim is that the unsaid weighs in significantly on the scale
E BETRAYALS
of semantic construction as that which is said. Thus, it legitimates the impact
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of the absentee in broadening and clarifying knowledge and understanding
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in most disciplines. In other words, just as exogenous epistemologies have
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underlain and explicated the basis for understanding diverse encounters— S
social, political, historical, cultural, literary, etc.—Secrets, Silences, and
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Betrayals challenges, from a pluridisciplinary angle, such highly dominant n
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approaches to investigating the origin, nature, ways of knowing, and limits

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of human knowledge. It thus yields to the deontological basis to critically
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reexamine our understanding of the world around us. It is in this regard that
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the present volume points towards the need for human history to become a
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cumulative record and re-recording of every human journey and endeavor in
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life; it brings together disparate voices illuminating topical issues that would Y
be or have been legated to posterity as nonexistent, partial, or half-truths. A
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BILL F. NDI is Associate Professor at Tuskegee University which he joined
in the Fall of 2011. His areas of teaching and research comprise among others
English Languages and literatures, French, Translation and Translatology,
Professional, Technical, and Creative Writing, Critical Thinking, and World
Literatures. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in these E
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and related areas. I
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DITED BY
Langaa Research & Publishing
Common Initiative Group Bill F. Ndi
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda
North West Region
Cameroon
Secrets, Silences & Betrayals

Edited by
Bill F. Ndi

Langaa Research & Publishing CIG
Mankon, Bamenda
PPublisher:
Langaa RPCIG
Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda
North West Region
Cameroon
[email protected]
www.langaa-rpcig.net

Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective
[email protected]
www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN: 9956-762-98-9

© Bill F. Ndi 2015

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording,
or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher

DISCLAIMER
All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.
Notes on Contributors

The Editor

Bill F. Ndi, Associate Professor of English and Foreign
Languages at Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama, USA,
earned his Doctorate from the University of Cergy-Pontoise in
2001. He is a poet, playwright, storyteller, literary critic,
translator, historian of ideas and mentalities as well as an
academic who has held teaching positions in several
universities in Australia, France and elsewhere. His areas of
teaching and research comprise among others English
Languages and literatures, French, Professional, Technical and
Creative Writing, World Literatures, Applied/Historical
Linguistics, Literary History, Media and Communication
Studies, Peace/Quaker Studies and Conflict Resolution,
History of Internationalism, History of Ideas and Mentalities,
Translation & Translatology, 17th Century and Contemporary
Cultural Studies. He has published extensively in these areas.
His publications include numerous scholarly works on Early
Quakerism and translation of Early Quaker writings. He has
also published poetry and plays in both the French and the
English languages. Professor Bill F. Ndi has 16 published
volumes of poetry of which 4 are in French, a play and 4 works
in translation. He is co-editor of Outward Evil, Inward Battle:
Human Memory in Literature with Adaku T. Ankumah, Benjamin
Hart Fishkin, and Festus Fru Ndeh as well as co-editor of
Fears, Doubts, and Joys of not Belonging with Adaku T. Ankumah
and Benjamin Hart Fishkin. Also, he has served as a National
Endowment for the Humanities’ scholar.
Contributors

Eleanor J. Blount is Assistant Professor of English at
Tuskegee University in Alabama. She specializes in the
literature of African Americans, especially of the slave era, and
also researches the history of antebellum America. The
nineteenth century Transcendentalist writers of New England
and fiction by and about diasporic Africans comprise some of
her related scholarly interests. Dr. Blount studied history,
journalism, professional writing, and creative writing at Paine
College, Kennesaw State University, and at the University of
Georgia where she composed neo-slave narratives as part of
her Ph.D. work in English and creative writing. She was at one
time a news reporter, and has taught English at Georgia
Perimeter College and Gainesville State College among other
places.

Rebecca A. Carte’s research examines indigenous and African
representation in Colonial and Modern discourses from Latin
America. Her work has been published in Latin American
Literary Review, Journal of the Southwest, and Studies in Latin
American Popular Culture. Her latest publication with The
University of Arizona Press, Capturing the Landscape of New
Spain: Baltasar Obregón and the 1564 Ibarra Expedition, examines
indigenous representation in the discourses of landscape in
Baltasar Obregón´s narrative report of explorations from the
northern borderlands of New Spain into New Mexico between
1564 and 1584. Other significant publications include
“Mapping an Occidental History: Taking Place in Baltasar
Obregón’s Historia de los descubrimientos de Nueva España (1584)”
in Journal of the Southwest 53 (2011). Carte earned her Ph.D. from
Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 2008 and currently
teaches at Cuyahoga Community College in her hometown of
Cleveland, Ohio.
Richard Evans is assistant professor of English at Tuskegee
University in Tuskegee, Alabama. Educated in classics at the
University of South Carolina, the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens and Columbia University, Dr. Evans holds a
Ph.D. in comparative literature with research interests in
ancient and medieval literatures, theories of translation and
linguistic relativity. He has published numerous academic
book reviews, essays promoting the study of Classical Greek in
schools, and articles on Greek and Roman authors in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography and articles on various topics
in classical literature.

Benjamin Hart Fishkin, Assistant Professor of English at
Tuskegee University specializes in teaching Nineteenth Century
British Literature. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of
Alabama where he served as a Junior Fellow in The Blount
Undergraduate Initiative. In his research, he has emphasized
Nineteenth Century British Literature through each phase of
his education. Prior to earning his Doctorate from the
University of Alabama in May of 2009, he obtained a BA in
English and Film from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
and an MA from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio where he
examined the interest of Charles Dickens in the theatre and
how the stage influenced his novel writing. He has published
The Undependable Bonds of Blood: The Unanticipated Problems of
Parenthood in the Novels of Henry James. He co-edited Outward Evil
Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature with Adaku T.
Ankumah, Bill F. Ndi, and Festus Fru Ndeh, and Fears, Doubts
and Joys of not Belonging with Adaku T. Ankumah and Bill F. Ndi.
His recent research interest now include, besides his growing
interest in Anglophone Cameroon literature, the problems of
marriage and the American family, and the relationship
between the Blues and the single-parent home in the works of
William Faulkner, August Wilson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Blossom N. Fondo holds a PhD in English specialized in
Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures. Her current areas
of interest are Anglophone African and Caribbean Literatures,
postcolonial theory, Ecocriticism and feminism. She teaches
literature and critical theory at the Higher Teacher Training
College of the University of Maroua. She has been a visiting
scholar to New York University in the USA and Karl Frazens
University of Graz in Austria. Her publications have appeared
in national and international journals.

Worth Kamili Hayes is an Assistant Professor of History at
Tuskegee University. Prior to joining Tuskegee he served as an
Assistant Professor of History and Chair of the Department of
Social Sciences and Criminal Justice at Benedict College. His
research centers on the histories of Black education, the
African diaspora, 20th century U.S. urbanization, and post-
world War II Black activism. His current project illuminates
“the golden age of black private education” in Chicago from
1940-1990 and reveals the critical role alternative institutions
played in African Americans’ pursuit of quality education.

Stephen Magu is an Assistant Professor of Politics and
International Relations at Hampton University in Hampton,
Virginia, and occasionally teaches for the Junior Statesmen. His
publications have appeared in journals such as Cultural
Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions: A Journal of Border Studies, the
Journal of African Studies, The African Journal of International
Affairs and Development, in the edited volume Africa Yesterday,
Today & Tomorrow: Exploring the Multi-dimensional Discourses on
‘Development’, the International Journal of Political Science and
Development and in the forthcoming book, Soft Power Strategies in
US Foreign Policy: Citizen Diplomacy of the Peace Corps by Praeger
Publishers. His main research interests span US and Africa’s
foreign policy, democratization in post-colonial Global South,
social and economic development in a globalizing world, global
political economy, regionalism and cultural norms in
modernity. Stephen is currently working on a second book, The
Black Man's Burdens.
Bill F. Ndi, poet, playwright, storyteller, critic, translator,
historian of ideas and mentalities as well as an academic has
held several university teaching positions. He teaches at
Tuskegee University. He has numerous scholarly publications
on Early Quakerism and translation of Early Quaker writings.
He has also published extensively in both the French and the
English languages. These publications include scholarly articles
and book chapters, poetry, and plays. Professor Bill F. Ndi has
16 volumes of poetry of which 4 are in French, a play and 4
works in translation.
Jennifer Ross is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Psychology and Sociology at Tuskegee University. Her research
interests include attachment and caregiving behavioral systems,
parenting and coparenting, and the intergenerational
transmission of attachment. Her current research focuses on
conflict resolution among Mexican-American coparents, the
influence of coparenting and culture on maternal sensitivity
and insensitive caregiving in Mexican-American mothers with a
toddler, and also explores whether mother-infant attachment
relationships are universal or culture-specific. Jen’s work has
appeared in Research in Human Development.

Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………... 1
Bill F. Ndi

Chapter 1: “Until lions write their own history”:
Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals of the African
and his history…………………………………………… 21
Stephen M. Magu

Chapter 2: Behind the Scenes of Parent-Child
Attachment Relationships………………………………. 53
Jennifer J. Ross.

Chapter 3: Refuge or Fortress: Howalton Day
School, the African-American Middle Class,
and the Golden Era of Black Private Education………. 67
Worth Kamili Hayes

Chapter 4: MMustard Grows Followed by
“Pokey and Me,” interview with and by
Eleanor Blount………………………………………….. 85
Eleanor Blount

Chapter 5: Olaudah Equiano,
Gustavus Vassa, Negotiating Identity in a
Trans-Atlantic World……………………………………. 113
Rebecca Carte.

Chapter 6: Traduttore, Traditore:
Word-for-Word Translation as an Ideology
Secretly Silencing Original Meanings………………….. 129
Richard Evans

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