Talk:A Son of the Soil

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2021 and 5 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Stacy.johnson515.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Some notes

User:Stacy.johnson515, a few things. You have a good start here. I looked at the review by Sharma (holy moly, a single-paragraph one-page plot summary...) and there is a lot of material there. To the plot, I think you need to add the main character's background, since it points to a background that will make him "African" more than a collaborator with the white Rhodesian government. In other words, I sense that he is being true, in the difficult choices he makes and the threats he faces, to his grandfather's tradition. Also in that review is a note on the main character's relationship to the whites in his world, which is multifaceted. Same with Christianity, which is usually an integral part of education.

What this needs right now is a bit of background; you might could do this as a separate (short) background section--because that he grows up when "Rhodesia" is ruled by a brutal white-minority government means everything. Without that background, his life doesn't make much sense. The review can also help with a "Criticism" section; the reviewer has plenty of praise and some criticism.

A few more things:

• cite this book to establish it's autobiographical, and use it to write a link to his next book. It also has some criticism that you can cite
• cite this (get the book through ILL) to be able to add that it is "foundational" to Zimbabwean literature, and to figure out the publication--it says Longman, not Rex Collings (this is important)
• This you can use to add a French translation; that's important too. You can make a section called "Editions and translations", for instance.
• This essay (careful: it's an essay in an edited collection, so figure out how to cite it properly--get the book through ILL) also adds to criticism and to any general characterization of the novel; clearly the author isn't very impressed with Katiyo's writing
• You should also get this book because it has important notes on what Katiyo's novel (and he himself) say about the relationship between Christianity and the oppressed people it supposedly ministers to

  In all, there is plenty of material, and that's before I got to JSTOR. Dr Aaij (talk) 22:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)