{"product_id":"when-africa-speaks-an-archive-against-erasure-9798994418918","title":"When Africa Speaks: An Archive Against Erasure","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhen Africa Speaks: An Archive Against Erasure\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e is a bold, lyrical reckoning with history, memory, and voice. Historian and poet Dr. Bright Alozie transforms African archival materials-oral histories, petitions, letters, inscriptions, and overlooked texts-into poetry that bears witness, challenges erasure, and reclaims silenced stories. This collection confronts slavery, colonialism, partition, extraction, and neocolonialism, while celebrating Africa's intellectual, cultural, and political agency across centuries. Organized in five powerful sections, the book moves from rupture to resilience. \"Rupturing the Rupture\" unsettles assumptions in poems like \u003ci\u003eThe Danger Was a Single Story\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eUnlearn to Relearn\u003c\/i\u003e. \"Before the Rupture\" restores Africa's precolonial depth through \u003ci\u003eDrumbeat before Iron\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eShe Built the First University\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAfrica at the Gates of Europe\u003c\/i\u003e, and other poems. \"The Rupture\" names violence and its normalization with poems such as \u003ci\u003eAfrica Under Siege\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAtlantic Memory\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLeopold's Rubber Quotas, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Museum of Borrowed Gods\u003c\/i\u003e. \"After the Rupture\" traces neocolonial power in \u003ci\u003eCobalt Selfie\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLithium Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePostcolonial Apron Strings\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eA Menu of Death\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eLekki Tollgate Remembers\u003c\/i\u003e. \"Beyond the Rupture\" imagines futures rooted in survival and memory in \u003ci\u003eIron Outlasted\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWriting Ourselves Alive\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAfrica Rises\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlending historical rigor with poetic imagination, \u003ci\u003eWhen Africa Speaks\u003c\/i\u003e teaches readers to see Africa as an active, thinking, and remembering force, not a metaphor. It invites reflection on memory, witness, and responsibility, challenging us to confront erased histories while imagining futures rooted in survival, resistance, and agency. This is a collection for students, historians, poets, and all readers ready to hear Africa speaking on its own terms-across time, rupture, and resilience.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Bright Lights Archive Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52039796392210,"sku":"9798994418918","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f717c6e3-21e0-4b67-ad9e-38f104513cf6.jpg?v=1771414424","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/when-africa-speaks-an-archive-against-erasure-9798994418918","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}