Werewere Liking
Encyclopedia
Werewere Liking 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 marionette
s. 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.
Abidjan
Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire, while the current capital is Yamoussoukro. it was the largest city in the nation and the third-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, and Kinshasa but before Montreal...
, 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 marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
s. 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
Prince Claus Awards
The Prince Claus Fund was inaugurated in 1996, named in honor of Prince Claus of The Netherlands. It receives an annual subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs....
in 2000 for her outstanding and successful contributions to culture and society, and the Noma Award
Noma Award
The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa is a $10,000 prize for outstanding African writers and scholars who publish in Africa. Established in 1979, the award is annual and given to any new book published in three categories: literature, juvenile and scholarly...
in 2005 for her book La mémoire amputée.
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 BâMariama BaMariama Bâ was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes resulting from [African] traditions...
, Aminata Sow FallAminata Sow FallAminata Sow Fall is a Senegalese-born author. While her native language is Wolof, her books are written in French.-Life:She was born 1941 in Saint-Louis, Senegal where she grew up before moving to Dakar to finish her secondary schooling...
, Werewere Liking and Calixthe BeyalaCalixthe BeyalaCalixthe Beyala is a Cameroonian writer who writes in French.She grew up in Douala with her sister. In 1978, She left Cameroon for France...
: 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