The following has been taken from an article posted in The Economist: “IN RURAL China, the afterlife is a serious matter. After more than 60 years of Communist Party rule, the festival of Qingming or “tomb-sweeping day”, celebrated on the fifteenth day after spring equinox (April 4th this year), is enjoying a revival. Though suppressed […]
Read More →Author: christy
You, Familiar with the Streets of Hillbrow
A consequence of Mpe’s use of the second point of view to address Refentse is the reader’s involvement with the text. As one reads, Mpe’s use of the pronoun “you” makes one feel like one is Refentse, and all the events seem authentic, as if one had seen them with one’s own eyes. Moreover, Mpe […]
Read More →Persistence of Yersinia Pestis
According to this semi-scientific article, Yersinia Pestis, the agent of the plague in the 1940s in Oran, still existed in the same place in Algeria when the article was written in 2006: “Rieux, the hero of Albert Camus in “La Peste,” aimed to relate the events of the plague outbreak in Oran in the 1940s […]
Read More →Haunted: Syphilis and Corruption
The corruption from Oedipus Rex and Arthur Mervyn follows us to Ibsen’s Ghosts… The Alving household is built on corruption and lies. These constituents do not simply subside and die with Captain Alving. Instead, they lead to the appearance of ghosts who inhabit the house and prevent the past from being forgotten. Therefore the ghosts are […]
Read More →1790s Philadelphia
Here are four pictures that portray several aspects of the city during the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia. Statistics from the photo on the left shows the abundance of women in the city as “Wives were deserted by husbands” and “Men were seized by the disease in the streets” (pp.99). […]
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