Concert of Voices - Second Edition: An Anthology of World Writing in English

by Victor J. Ramraj (Editor)

Overview

Concert of Voices combines poetry, fiction, drama, and essays in an anthology of world literature in English. This second edition preserves the first edition’s breadth and its balance of established and less widely known authors, while including a large selection of exciting new material. Biographical information and explanatory notes have been updated and expanded, and new pieces by Cyril Dabydeen, Vikram Seth, Wole Soyinka, Pauline Johnson, Rudy Wiebe, and many other authors have been added.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551119779
Publisher:	Broadview Press
Publication date:	08/17/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Victor J. Ramraj is Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

Table of Contents

Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)

Girls at War (story)

Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana)

No Sweetness Here (story)

Meena Alexander (India-USA)

Port Sudan (poem)

Agha Shahid Ali (India-USA)

Snowmen (poem)

Lillian Allen (Jamaica-Canada)

Rub A Dub Style Inna Regent Park (poem)

Mulk Raj Anand (India)

Duty (story)

Jean Arasanayagam (Sri Lanka)

I Have No Country (poem)

Louise Bennett (Jamaica)

Anancy an Ticks (folk tale)

Neil Bissoondath (Trinidad-Canada)

Man as Plaything, Life as Mockery (story)

Dionne Brand (Trinidad-Canada)

Return (poem)

Amelia (poem)

Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)

Red Rising (poem)

Dennis Brutus (South Africa)

By the Waters of Babylon (poem)

Buhkwujjenene (Canada)

Nanaboozhoo Creates the World (folk tale)

Willi Chen (Trinidad)

Assam's Iron Chest (story)

Marlyn Chin (Hong Kong-USA)

Elegy for Chloe Nguyen (1955-1988) (poem)

Austin Clarke (Barbados-Canada)

The Man (story)

Wilkie Collins (UK)

A Sermon for Sepoys (essay)

Saros Cowasjee (India-Canada)

His Father's Medals (story)

Rienzi Crusz (Sri Lanka-Canada)

Roots (poem)

In the Idiom of the Sun (poem)

Fred D'Aguiar (Guyana-UK)

Home (poem)

A Son in Shadow (Memoir/Essay)

Cyril Dabydeen (Guyana-Canada)

Mother (poem)

David Dabydeen (Guyana-UK)

Catching Crabs (poem)

The New Poetry (poem)

Kamala Das (India)

An Introduction (poem)

The Looking Glass (poem)

Jack Davis (Australia)

White Fantasy—Black Fact (story)

Pay Back (story)

Anita Desai (India)

Surface Textures (story)

Eunice de Souza (India)

Catholic Mother (poem)

Return (poem)

Nissim Ezekiel (India)

In India (poem)

Lorna Goodison (Jamaica)

Survivor (poem)

Lesson Learned from the Royal Primer (poem)

Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet? (story)

Jessica Hagedorn (Philippines-USA)

The Song of Bullets (poem)

Kaiser Haq (Bangladesh)

Strange Pleasures (poem)

Claire Harris (Trinidad-Canada)

Backstage at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary (poem)

Death in Summer (poem)

Wilson Harris (Guyana-UK)

Kanaima (story)

Bessie Head (South Africa)

The Collector of Treasures (story)

A. D. Hope (Australia)

Man Friday (poem)

Nalo Hopkinson (Caribbean-Canada)

A Habit of Waste (story)

Keri Hulme (New Zealand)

Hooks and Feelers' (story)

Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand)

This Life Is Weary (story)

Sally Ito (Canada)

Sisters of the Modern Mind (poem)

Arnold Itwaru (Guyana-Canada)

arrival (poem)

roomer (poem)

separate ways (poem)

Eva Johnson (Australia)

Murras (Hands) (play)

Pauline Johnson (Canada)

The Cattle Thief (poem)

Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua-USA)

On Seeing England for the First Time (essay)

Thomas King (Canada)

A Coyote Columbus Story (story)

Rudyard Kipling (UK)

The White Man's Burden (poem)

Ernest Crosby (USA): The Real "White Man’s Burden" (poem)

Joy Kogawa (Canada)

What Do I Remember of the Evacuation (poem)

When I Was a Little Girl (poem)

Alex La Guma (South Africa)

A Matter of Taste (story)

Fiona Tinwei Lam (Canada)

The Hyphenated (poem)

Shirley Geok-lin Lim (Malaysia-USA)

Ah Mah (poem)

Passports (poem)

Jayanta Mahapatra (India)

The Abandoned British Cemetery at Balasore (poem)

Freedom (poem)

The Portrait (poem)

Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-UK)

The Garden Party (story)

Lee Maracle (Canada)

Charlie (story)

Dambudzo Marechera (Zimbabwe)

Black Skin What Mask (story)

Sharon May (Iran-USA)

The Wizard of Khao-I-Dang (story)

Pauline Melville (Guyana-UK)

McGregor's Journey (story)

Sudesh Mishra (Fiji)

Mt. Abu: St. Xavier's Church (poem)

The Grand Imperial Hotel (poem)

Rohinton Mistry (India-Canada)

Swimming Lessons (story)

Timothy Mo (Hong Kong-UK)

One of Billy's Boys: A Memoir (essay)

Toshio Mori (USA)

Slant-Eyed Americans (story)

Mervyn Morris (Jamaica)

To an Expatriate Friend (poem)

Little Boy Crying (poem)

Es'kia Mphahlele (South Africa)

The Coffee-Cart Girl (story)

Bharati Mukherjee (India-USA)

Hindus (story)

Gerald Murnane (Australia)

Land Deal (story)

V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad-UK)

B. Wordsworth (story)

Jasmine (essay)

R. K. Narayan (India)

Mother and Son (story)

Mudrooroo Narogin (Australia)

They Give Jacky Rights (poem)

Njabulo S. Ndebele (South Africa)

Guilt and Atonement: Unmasking History for the Future (essay)

Ngitji Ngitji (Mona Tur; Australia)

The Possum Woman (story)

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (Kenya)

Goodbye Africa (story)

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Australia)

Gooboora, the Silent Pool (poem)

The Past (poem)

Gabriel Okara (Nigeria)

The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down (poem)

Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka-Canada)

Light (poem)

Sasenarine Persaud (Guyana-Canada)

Gifting the Light of the Soul (poem)

M. Nourbese Philip (Trinidad-Canada)

Sprung Rhythm (poem)

Caryl Phillips (Caribbean-UK)

Out of Africa: The Case Against Conrad (essay)

Sharon Pollock (Canada)

The Komogata Maru Incident (play)

Jean Rhys (Dominica-UK)

I Used to Live Here Once (story)

Kevin Roberts (Australia-Canada)

Mah Fung (poem)

Salman Rushdie (India-UK)

"Commonwealth Literature" Does Not Exist (essay)

Outside the Whale (essay)

F. R. Scott (Canada)

To the Poets of India (poem)

All the Spikes but the Last (poem)

Samuel Selvon (Trinidad-UK-Canada)

Turning Christian (story)

Olive Senior (Jamaica)

The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream (story)

Vikram Seth (India)

Research in Jiangsu Province (poem)

Philip Sherlock (Jamaica)

The Warau People Discover the Earth (folk tale)

Janice Shinebourne (Guyana-UK)

Red Bean Cakes: New York and London (memoir)

Leslie Marmon Silko (USA)

Yellow Woman (story)

Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)

Chimes of Silence (poem)

Subramani (Fiji)

Sautu (story)

Mary TallMountain (USA)

There is No Word for Goodbye (poem)

Edwin Thumboo (Singapore)

Ulysses by the Merlion (poem)

Alatina Vuki (Fiji)

Four-Year Wisdom (poem)

Fred Wah (Canada)

from Breathin' My Name with a Sigh (poem)

Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)

Ruins of a Great House (poem)

A Letter from Brooklyn (poem)

Midsummer LII (poem)

Archie Weller (Australia)

Pension Day (story)

Albert Wendt (Western Samoa-New Zealand)

Crocodile (story)

Rudy Wiebe (Canada)

Where is the Voice Coming From (story)

May Wong (Singapore)

The Shroud (poem)

Arthur Yap (Singapore)

2 Mothers in a HDB Playground (poem)

Editorial Reviews

A significant improvement to the original 1995 edition, the updated and expanded version of Victor J. Ramraj’s Concert of Voices remains my favorite collection of this kind. Few critics have a better grasp of the vast and quickly evolving field for whose mapping—Ramraj was so right in the introduction to the first edition and is even more right today—‘postcolonial’ and the concepts and paradigms usually swirling around it have become largely insufficient. Concert of Voices is no longer an ‘alternative’ to other volumes of this sort but the anthology of world writing in English for the global-age, transnational, twenty-first century. Comprehensive, eminently teachable, and a great pedagogical resource overall, the volume really lives up to its title.” — Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

“This second edition takes the most classroom-friendly anthology of world writing in English and makes it even more so by adding more essays and memoirs, extending biographical notes and explanatory footnotes, and underscoring familiar postcolonial themes such as in-betweenness, writing back, and mimicry. A good blend of human commonalities and, in Northrop Frye’s words, ‘loyalty to one’s place in the class structure,’ this book is vital for contemporary literature studies.” — John C. Hawley, Santa Clara University; editor of Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections (SUNY Press)

“Concert of Voices is an impressively varied selection of first-rate writing from around the colonized and postcolonial world. Encouraging readers to see the shared commonalities of human experience across diverse literary and cultural traditions—from Maori to Guyanese, Nigerian to Sri Lankan—Victor J. Ramraj deftly juxtaposes works on similar themes and suggests rewarding comparative analyses. This concert features the frisson of dissonance as well as the pleasures of harmony; it will get students tuning in to the voices of the world and wanting to hear more.” — John Clement Ball, University of New Brunswick

From the Publisher

"Concert of Voices is an impressively varied selection of first-rate writing from around the colonized and postcolonial world. Encouraging readers to see the shared commonalities of human experience across diverse literary and cultural traditions – from Maori to Guyanese, Nigerian to Sri Lankan – Victor J. Ramraj deftly juxtaposes works on similar themes and suggests rewarding comparative analyses. This concert features the frisson of dissonance as well as the pleasures of harmony; it will get students tuning in to the voices of the world and wanting to hear more."

John Clement Ball University of New Brunswick

"This second edition takes the most classroom-friendly anthology of world writing in English and makes it even more so by adding more essays and memoirs, extending biographical notes and explanatory footnotes, and underscoring familiar postcolonial themes such as in-betweenness, writing back, and mimicry. A good blend of human commonalities and, in Northrop Frye's words, 'loyalty to one's place in the class structure,' this book is vital for contemporary literature studies."

John C. Hawley Santa Clara University

"A significant improvement to the original 1995 edition, the updated and expanded version of Victor J. Ramraj's Concert of Voices remains my favorite collection of this kind. Few critics have a better grasp of the vast and quickly evolving field for whose mapping—Ramraj was so right in the introduction to the first edition and is even more right today—'postcolonial' and the concepts and paradigms usually swirling around it have become largely insufficient. Concert of Voices is no longer an 'alternative' to other volumes of this sort but the anthology of world writing in English for the global-age, transnational, twenty-first century. Comprehensive, eminently teachable, and a great pedagogical resource overall, the volume really lives up to its title."

Christian Moraru University of North Carolina