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The Afro-Brazilian Mind: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Criticism ED. NIYI AFOLABI , MÁRCIO BARBOSA , AND ESMERALDA RIBEIRO Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2007. 272 pp. English / 306 pp. Portuguese. ISBN 1-59221-386-3 paper
Ossobó: Essays on the Literature of São Tomé and Príncipe BY DONALD BURGES Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2005. xvi + 160 pp. ISBN 1-59221-372-3 paper
Donald Burness's Ossobó: Essays on the Literature of São Tomé and Príncipe is an invaluable addition in English to the literary studies of an academically neglected region of Lusophone Africa. As well as three essays that deal with Fernando de Macedo's literature of the Angolares, literary reactions to the infamous 1953 Massacre of Batepá, and literary responses to the Ossobó (the emerald cuckoo of the collection's title), an extremely useful appendix includes a short anthology of poems and their translations into English by famous and less well-known writers from the islands: Alda Espírito Santo; Caetano da Costa Alegre; Carlos Espírito Santo; Fernando de Macedo; Francisco Stockler; Francisco Tenreiro; Frederico Gustavo dos Anjos; Herculano Levy; Marcelo de Veiga; and Maria Manuela Margarido.
Burness repeatedly situates his literary commentaries in the historical context of São Tomé e Príncipe, giving a solid account of the political and social background that lead the authors and poets he considers to write the...