Werewere Liking

Werewere Liking (b.1950, Cameroon) is a writer, playwright and performer based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. She established the Ki-Yi Mbock theatre troupe in 1980 and founded the Ki-Yi village in 1985 for the artistic education of young people.

Performances by Ki-Yi Mbock include music and ritual, often using marionettes. This is consistent with Werewere Liking's pan-African aesthetic, lyrical language and reinvention of ritual, and her use of avant-garde techniques. Her novel "Elle sera de jaspe et de corail" is a song-novel recounted by a "misovire" (a post-gender being) in writing a journal on nine themes.

She received a Prince Claus Award in 2000 for her outstanding and successful contributions to culture and society, and the Noma Award in 2005 for her book "La mémoire amputée". [ [http://www.nomaaward.org/press2005.shtml Noma Award 2005] ]

Writing

Her many books and plays include:
* "La mémoire amputée", Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes (2004), ISBN 2844872360
* "Elle sera de jaspe et de corail", Editions L'Harmattan (1983), ISBN 2858023298 - trans. Marjolijn De Jager, "It shall be of jasper and coral; and, Love-across-a-hundred-lives" (two novels), University Press of Virginia (2000), ISBN 0813919428
* "La puissance de Um" (1979) and "Une nouvelle terre" (1980) - trans. Jeanne Dingome, "African Ritual Theatre: The Power of Um and a New Earth", International Scholars Pubs. (1997), ISBN 1573090662

Further reading

* Simon Gikandi, "Encyclopedia of African Literature", Routledge (2002), ISBN 0415230195 - pp.288-9
* Katheryn Wright, "Extending generic boundaries: Werewere Liking's L'amour-cent-vies", in Research in African Literatures, June 2002 accessed at [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb265/is_200206/ai_n5663530] March 5, 2007
* Don Rubin, "World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre: Africa", Routledge (2000), ISBN 0415227461
* Nicki Hitchcott, "Women Writers in Francophone Africa", Berg Publishers (2000), ISBN 1859733468 - focuses on Mariama Bâ, Aminata Sow Fall, Werewere Liking and Calixthe Beyala: see publisher's details [http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/book_page.asp?BKTitle=Women%20Writers%20in%20Francophone%20Africa]
* Peter Hawkins, "Werewere Liking at the Villa Ki-Yi", in African Affairs, Vol.90, No.359 (Apr. 1991), pp. 207-222 - accessed at [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-9909(199104)90%3A359%3C207%3AWLATVK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R] March 1, 2007

Notes

External links

* [http://aflit.arts.uwa.edu.au/WerewereLikingEng.html Werewere Liking Gnepo, University of Western Australia]
* [http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/africa/cameroon/liking/1.html "Werewere Liking and Aesthetics of Necessity", Postcolonial Web]
* [http://people.africadatabase.org/en/person/6348.html Contemporary African Database]
* [http://www.kiyi-village.org/ Ki-Yi Mbock website]