Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera (review)

formations – post-colonial studies, cultural studies, Third World studies, African and Africana studies, comparative anthropological and sociological studies of modernity – that are restructuring, problematizing, and enriching our understandings of cultural (self)-conceptions and categories’ (pp. 6–7). I suspect that some readers will have already decided from this taster whether they want to read the book or not. The topic is vast, important and contentious; the prose dense. To suggest the broad range of reference, it is enough to remark that E. W. Blyden’s name is joined in the book by those of writers and thinkers from across the world and across disciplines. Other names in the index include Chinua Achebe, Kwegyir Aggrey, Benedict Anderson, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwame Arhin, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ahuma Attoh and Nnamdi Azikiwe – to stray no further than surnames beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. Korang is at ease with many of those he draws into his argument. In view of the broad sweep of the discussion, it is not surprising to find in the Acknowledgements references to fellow intellectuals from various disciplines whose support was important in seeing through this hugely ambitious project. The list includes Stephen Slemon, Biodun Jeyifo, Zohreh Sullivan, Toyin Falola and Paul Zeleza. The last two were particularly involved, it seems, in getting a ‘sizeable manuscript approved for publication’ and out in the distinguished series of which Falola is the Senior Editor. There are indications in the text, including the reference to 1997 as ‘recently’ (p. 305), that this process took some time. The research on which the book is based is very impressive, but sometimes ‘improvised’ and incomplete. I particularly appreciate the indication that relatives had helped by visiting archives in London (‘Colingdale’, sic) and West Africa on Korang’s behalf. In the real world this is what happens and projects of this magnitude involve many. It may be that the items recovered in Cape Coast Archive included articles by Kobina Sekyi. I was happy to see Kofi Baku’s annotated bibliography of Sekyi’s work listed among the works consulted, sorry not to see use had been made of the same historian’s thesis, ‘An Intellectual in Nationalist Politics’. That important study examines some of the myths about Sekyi’s life that Korang repeats uncritically. With such a vast topic, so many ‘stories’ to tell and such an interdisciplinary approach, it was, perhaps, inevitable that there would be areas around the edge of Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa that would be inadequately investigated, swept up into the thesis. This said, it should be recognized that the central interests of the volume, those described in the quotation with which I began, have been vigorously pursued. Readers prepared to grapple with the laborious prose in which Korang has expressed his ideas will be exhausted, irritated and rewarded by his book.