“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
The Text: Osiris Rising, Armah's sixth novel, is structured after Africa's oldest narrative, the Isis-Osiris myth cycle. Traveling to Africa on a search for life work and love, Ast, an African American scholar, gets immersed in history as living continuity. In a pillaged society where slaveraiders' heirs masquerade as aid donors, and colonies are disguised as nations, Ast still finds her home in a quiet community working to bring the continent's people together. The love of friends focused on the making of an African future absorbs her pained consciousness of a world destroyed.