At the moment...

Where do I start?

It seems like I have been away for quite a while! Truth is that I've been very much around, but very, very busy. I will just capture a few of what I have been doing in the last couple of weeks.

Any one living in Lagos at the moment would know the horror it is to simply get up and go anywhere. I live in Lekki extension and work a 9-5 job on the mainland, Ikeja. Lagos as we know it, is under some major construction in many parts, but most especially Lekki area with the building of the Free Trade Zone. So, I am up at 4:30am, out of the house by 5:30am to avoid traffic and in the office by 6:30am. After work in the evening, I spend no less than two and a half hours to make it back home (and that's on a good day).

I have been working on some business projects that have taken me to Accra twice in the last one month, and to Abuja and Port Harcourt as well.

The power situation has been appalling! It has been generator almost everyday, until midnight when the generator in my apartment is turned off regardless of electricity or not!

Trying to go out on Saturdays has become almost an exercise in insanity. The traffic is beyond believable, and staying home means coping with the heat, generator noise and fumes and boredom!

Apart from work and the colourful mayhem that is Lagos, I have been busy. Yes I am working on my third novel and making very good progress. In fact, I believe I have a production schedule for next year, which is exciting.

But also I have been reading. Not books, but manuscripts from some rather exciting writers in a collective that I am part of. I can't say much at this stage, other than there will be some really good books coming out next year from a new force in Nigeria publishing and literary arena. It's like 'Finally, somebody got it right!'.

I wish I could blog more often, but there isn't enough time for me at the moment. I do promise to update with book reviews, reflections and other interesting things soon. So, I plead, do not desert this blog. Do not feel neglected. I am thinking of all you all the time.

Best,
JD

Sarah Ladipo Manyika reads in Lagos and Abuja

Cassava Republic Press is pleased to announce a new voice in Nigerian literature: Sarah Ladipo Manyika and her debut novel In Dependence. Sarah, a resident of California, is visiting Nigeria this November to promote her book, which will be available nationwide from December. Sarah spent much of her childhood in Jos, Plateau State, but has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She currently teaches literature at San Francisco State University.
Readings:
Lagos
Venue: Quintessence, Falomo Shopping Centre, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi
Time: 4.00pm
Date: Sat 7th November 2009

AbujaVenue: Pen & Pages
Time: 5.30pm
Date: Tues 10th November 2009
Address:
Plot 79, Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, White House, Wuse 11

You can read my review here: In Dependence

The Antinovel

I will start with the elementary introduction and understanding of the novel as it is taught in creative writing workshops.

The word ‘Novel’ first came into use during the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). The writer Giovanni Boccaccio applied the term novella to the short prose narratives in his Il decamerone (1353; Ten Day’s Work). Later when his tales were translated, the term novel passed into the English language. Today, the word novella is used in English to refer to short novels.

The basic definition of novel is a long work of written fiction. Fiction we know is literary works of imagination (imaginary people and events).

However, for a written work to be considered a novel, it must embody certain elements; plot, characters, conflict, setting and theme.

So what does ‘Antinovel’ mean? And is it possible that many works of fiction celebrated as novels are actually antinovels?

It is understandable that the first impulse one gets when the prefix ‘anti-‘ is added to a word (especially a neutral or positive word), is something bad or derogatory e.g. anti-Christ, anti-Establishment, anti-Progress etc. So, you are a young novelist and have managed to sign up with a publishing house, your first ‘novel’ is published and you suddenly read somewhere that your novel has been termed ‘antinovel’. Does this mean that it is bad, that you are a bad writer and that you should hide yourself in shame? Most certainly NOT!

The antinovel is also known as the nouveau roman—new novel. French novelist, essayist, and screenplay writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) is regarded as the father of the 1950s antinovel, a genre in which time, place, and point of view are generally disregarded in an attempt to capture a more basic reality than that expressed through conventional fictional techniques. For Robbe-Grillet the essential fact of experience was the way the mind fastens onto particular scenes and objects, an obsessiveness that he conveys through minute attention to visual details. In his novels he presents a view of the world as if the narrator were a filmmaker simply capturing images.


A lot of novels written today adapt this approach. The quality of the narrative is very filmic, so much so that you don’t feel like you are reading a book, but watching events unfold.

Have you come across any antinovel among the books you have read lately? Share with us the title(s) and tell us why you think the book in question qualifies to be an antinovel.

The Balance of Our Stories - Ikhide R. Ikheloa

The following essay is re-produced here with permission from the author.

The Balance of Our Stories
Copyright © 2007 Ikhide R. Ikheloa

I wake up to dawn in America and our preteen daughter Ominira is peering at me, needing my attention, hankering after my wallet. I need money for my cafeteria account daddy! I get up praying that I can find a check book in this house and that said check will find money in our bank account. I wander around the house looking for the brief bag that houses my cluttered existence – there must be a check book in there somewhere. Writing checks! That is so analog. I hardly ever write checks preferring a digital fiscal existence through my trusty laptop Cecelia. I wander around this house of rooms each with its own name. It is not a big house, but America allows the living poor to dream about things that others really have, like rooms with their own names. Why do we have a sun room? I don’t know. What happens when the sun goes down, do we flee the sun room for the breakfast nook? And what if it is lunch time? Ah, there is the family room! But I am not feeling like family right now. My family is fleecing me penniless, they want checks! We are at the breakfast nook; Ominira grabs the check from me, and she points to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book Purple Hibiscus leaning on Cecelia at the breakfast table. “I am reading that,” she says matter-of-factly. She is ready for school draped in my favorite wind jacket (note to myself, buy a really ugly jacket next time!). I walk her to the door – she is weighed down with my jacket, too many clothes, a monstrous book bag, her iPod, and her cell phone and she is miraculously clutching Purple Hibiscus. Bye daddy! I open the door to America and Ominira clatters out all the way to the school bus like an American soldier with too many weapons.

It is good that Ominira is reading Purple Hibiscus. It is a good book. It is not as sure-footed as Adichie’s second book, the epic Half of a Yellow Sun but it is a good first effort and I heartily recommend it to anyone. My children love to read books. Just like their father. I pray that they don’t grow up enjoying cognac. Just like their father. Some pleasures turn to burdens soon enough. It is a great time to be a connoisseur of Nigerian literature. There are all these Nigerian writers doing some really exciting work and there are not enough hours in the day to consume all their wares. While I can practically count the Nigerian writers of my childhood on my ten fingers, I am afraid to list all of Nigeria’s contemporary writers whose works I have come across in books and on the Internet because I just know that I will leave someone out. And quite a number of these writers are doing us proud judging by the international awards they are garnering for their works. More importantly, these writers are extremely influential because their stories are fast becoming the literary prism by which Nigeria, certainly Africa is judged by the Western world. It is therefore critically important to examine their works to ensure that there is indeed a balance to their stories. I have had occasion in the past to express vigorous objections to the prejudiced slant of the stories being told about Africa in books written by Westerners like Tony D’Souza (Whiteman).[1] I am afraid however, that reading Nigerian writers, especially those writing from places far away from Nigeria, one also observes the same worrisome trend – of disrespect for Nigeria and a tendency to project Nigeria using dated and tired images. Interestingly, most of these writers have been away from Nigeria for a very long time but their themes return again and again to the Nigeria of their fading memories. In that respect, I just finished reading Chris Abani’s Graceland a story set in the Nigeria of the seventies and the eighties and this is one book I pray my children never read. From the perspective of this Nigerian, it is a dreadful book and when I am done with it I shall return it to the good friend that loaned it to me. This is one book that will never grace my book shelf. Some books are better off not read.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that by all literary standards it is a well written book and in certain parts of the book, Abani’s muscular talents are on display. In fact, I became a fan of Abani’s after reading his book, The Virgin of Flames, a book similar in theme to Graceland, but this time based in Los Angeles, America. Thanks to a delightful experience with that book, I jumped at the opportunity to load up on more of Abani’s crisp prose. Unfortunately, reading Graceland was a traumatic experience for me; the book made me very sad. Abani, that son of Africa with a brain on steroids takes his immense literary gifts and markets a nightmarish Nigeria to an adoring West. Reading the book one imagines Nigeria as one huge filthy latrine. We are not talking about mere squalor here; we are talking about an irredeemable Nigeria, of inchoate characters babbling even more inchoate sentences.

And the Western world loves this book. The first thing that the reader notices is that Graceland is garlanded with fawning blurbs from Western literary heavyweights; there is absolutely no comment from any African literary practitioner. It is perhaps a smart marketing move by Abani, albeit at Nigeria’s expense. And Abani hits pay dirt. The blurbs drip with saccharine praise for a body of work that confirms the West’s prejudice of Africa – one huge disease ridden latrine that houses people who somehow survive the filth and the degradation by moping around their nuclear zone and muttering half-sentences. Hear the legendary Harold Pinter struggling to outdo the other blurb writers with his praise-song:

Abani’s poems are the most naked, harrowing expressions of prison life and political torture imaginable. Reading them is like being singed by a red-hot iron.

The stench of rotting flesh assaulting your nostrils is Abani’s Nigeria. Nigeria has done nothing to deserve the ire of Abani’s boundless imagination. Ah, yes, his imagination is boundless.

As an aside, in terms of structure, and content, Graceland is a puzzling book; it seesaws between the seventies and the early eighties, telling a story, or several stories, that go nowhere, perhaps a deliberate metaphor for Nigeria’s fortunes. We follow this strange “Nigerian” boy Elvis, who when he is not dreaming of making it big in America like his namesake Elvis Presley, surrounds himself with a sad, sad cast of subhuman caricatures posing as Nigerians. Throw in filth and squalor, rape, incest, reams of death and destruction, awful, inchoate, contrived dialogue and the recipe is complete for the making of the African writer to be adored by a fawning West. And the contrived language – an infuriating mix of American slang and half sentences gets in the way of making sense of the book. For heaven’s sake, who in Nigeria speaks like this?

But as soon as he go, my hand was on de cage and suddenly de weaver was in de air. It beat its wings against my face and was gone. I was surprise to hear myself laughing. I was free and I stood in de small rain dat began to fall again. I was powerful, aagh.[2]

The dialogue – and the imagery are contrived. From my perspective, this is unnecessary and unfortunate. As another aside, in the book Abani obsesses nonstop about hidden meanings trapped inside the lobes of the mystical kolanut and several chapters start with some esoteric psychobabble about the revered kola nut as in: “We do not define kola or life. It defines us.” The book’s one redeeming feature is its inventory of Nigerian recipes. Buy this book if you need a good cookbook of Nigerian dishes. I have no need for the recipes though; I have a copy of Nigerian Cookbook (Riverside Publications) by Miriam Isoun and H.O. Antonio. Find a copy and buy that instead of Graceland, it is a better cookbook.

My point is that it is hard to imagine Abani’s Nigeria of the 70’s and the 80’s. I would know; I lived through those years in Nigeria and while Abani’s perspective may be true of the slums of Maroko, it overwhelms the totality of what Nigeria was like in those days. There is absolutely no balance to his stories of the Nigeria of that era. Instead, there is a near-obsession with tragedy and irredeemable despair, sexual abuse and associated depravities, child abuse, sexuality issues, rapes filth and death in its most ghoulish and ghastly form. What is it with Abani and hooks, sexual depravity, handcuffs and bodily secretions? Abani’s fantasy world is populated by mumbling individuals with scant control over their surroundings, their bodily functions, and their sexual urges. Graceland is a pit bull of a book tearing at Nigeria with steely teeth housed in muscular literary jaws. It is a deliberate production, one that was carefully marketed to a gullible West by a brilliant but narcissistic son of Africa. If this book was written by a white man, we would all be asking for a pound of flesh.

I propose however that we all turn our rage inwards and acknowledge our contribution to the frustrating disrespect that Africa endures in the world today. Some of our writers may not know it but they are unwittingly helping to reduce Africa to ridicule and irrelevance in the global community. Abani is not the only culprit in this new rush to pawn off Africa’s dignity in the capitalist markets of the West. I think that many of us living abroad (and I include myself in this criticism) who claim to be writing about Africa’s issues are culpable to varying degrees. There is enough blame to go around. The world has finally calmed down from its righteous indignation and apoplexy induced by Professor James Watson’s quiet ruminations about the intelligence quotient (or lack thereof) of black folks. As far as I am concerned, the resulting dust storm has been insincere; it is hard to see what the fuss is all about regarding Professor Watson’s commentary. He has only said what many of our own thinkers say out loud and for great profit. Different strokes for different folks. Consider this: For Watson’s utterances, he has been stripped of several perks including his livelihood (don’t worry, he won’t die of hunger). But for saying worse things albeit in muscular prose, V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidadian who fancies himself a Briton, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Go read Chinua Achebe’s methodical deconstruction of the troubled mind that is V.S. Naipaul in the book Home and Exile, specifically the essay, Today, the Balance of Stories. In that essay, Achebe takes Naipaul to task over his African novel A Bend in the River and he quotes this particularly obnoxious passage from the book:

I asked for a cup of coffee…. It was a tiny old man who served me. And I thought, not for the first time, that in colonial days the hotel boys had been chosen for their small size, and the ease with which they could be manhandled. That was no doubt why the region had provided so many slaves in the old days: slave peoples are physically wretched, half-men in everything except in their capacity to breed the next generation.[3]

Achebe’s response to Naipaul’s unnecessary roughness is a thunder clap of unalloyed fury and he roars: “That is no longer merely troubling. I think it is downright outrageous. And it is also pompous rubbish.”[4] Now comes another Nobel Prize Winner of African descent, Nigeria’s very own Wole Soyinka in his book You Must Set Forth at Dawn. In the following passage eerily similar to the above by Naipaul, Soyinka describes a whimpering obsequious old man struggling to serve him in a rest house somewhere in Nigeria:

I … sometimes gratefully enjoyed the courtesy of rest houses built for the colonial district officers, where the uniformed waiter, immaculate in standard attire, service-conditioned from colonial days would pad in gently in the morning with a tea tray….


But I did not ask for tea! Yes, master, he (old enough to be my father or even grandfather) replies, setting down the tray and pulling back he curtains…. No! Leave that alone, I’m not awake…. Yes, master, he replies, pulling the curtain open all the way…. Will master like me to make fried or scrambled eggs with the toast? Oh, you house-trained antiquated robot, master would like to scramble Papa’s head for breakfast![5]

One can almost hear Achebe cursing the darkness and saying of Soyinka’s prose: “That is no longer merely troubling. I think it is downright outrageous. And it is also pompous rubbish.” Now, if these hurtful words had been written by Watson, we would be asking for his head. My point is that if the world took us seriously, they would be insisting on the same standards for our very best. Perhaps, the Western world truly believes that Africans are children of a lesser god. And our very best thinkers seem to agree with them. For our words, our writers’ stories, drip with the self-loathing that confirms the worst hiding in other people’s dark hearts.

There is some hope that the Western world is getting fed up with our tales of woe. Some of our writers protest too much and even for a gullible readership there is such a thing as too much misery. In April 2006, Nathan Ihara reviewed Abani’s book Becoming Abigail in the LA Weekly and he pronounced himself fed up with Abani’s fare. He courageously protested the all-you-can-eat buffet of unnecessary suffering and deprivation served up by Abani thus:

[s]tarvation, torture, AIDS and murder have become the background noise of our entertainments, the wallpaper pattern of our newspapers. We are so inured to tales/images/instances of pain that a direct assault on our cauterized nerve endings no longer works. Literature must come upon us athwart, enter the heart by sneak attack. Peter's debasement of Abigail -- "Filth. Hunger. And drinking from the plate of rancid water. Bent forward like a dog" -- is disturbing yet remote. The staccato rhythm and the graphic language are so direct, so lurid, that they fail to pierce the skin. The scene is grimly fascinating, but lacks emotional resonance. Suffering in literature must be more oblique, more sideways; it must be a void into which the reader falls. [6]

A recent copy of the literary magazine Granta features short stories from Adichie and Helon Habila, two of Nigeria’s star writers.[7] In the midst of several robust offerings by other writers, we read the same tired overcooked gruel from two of our very best – of victims being thrown out of storey buildings by over-sexed generals, etc, etc. Why are we so depressed? Is there no joy in our existence? Why do our writers peddle the same tired stories, all the while ignoring fresh palm wine frothing in the sunlight? How is it that our best and brightest are not mindful of the end of the machete that hurts our motherland?

There may be hope but from strange quarters. The July 2007 edition of Vanity Fair, guest edited by the musician Bono, was a bumper issue devoted solely to Africa. It was a beautiful edition and all those who truly love Africa, should find a copy and keep it for posterity. For once Africa was in the limelight and it was not all about disease, war, famine, corruption and associated clichés. Bono’s Vanity Fair made the point that generations of award-winning African writers have failed to make – that Africa is not a lost cause, lost to disease, war, famine, ceaseless despair and hopelessness. Rather, just like Africa, the magazine was a comforting collage of some of Africa’s success stories, some of whom had been carefully rescued from Africa, by the West. We saw literary jewels from the very young and talented Nigerian writers Uzodinma Iweala and Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie to aging lions like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. One gets goose bumps from seeing in living color all these beautiful people, irreplaceable offspring of Africa’s loins luxuriating in the adulation that has eluded them in their own Africa.

No doubt war has been hard on African writers. It would appear, for instance, that in terms of abuse and suffering, Abani has paid his dues. Ihara points out that Abani was imprisoned several times in Nigeria for his literary works, and tortured as a political prisoner: he apparently endured beatings, electrical shocks and solitary confinement. There needs to be closure – a Truth Commission that invites people with claims of horrid abuse to come testify – and for the perpetrators to publicly apologize once and for all. Regardless, our writers have every reason to be worried about the situation in Africa. The question becomes: What are they doing about it? Many of our writers spend a lot of time painting gory pictures of Africa’s sorry state and selling the result to Westerners. When Westerners gasp from shock, they complain that Westerners are being patronizing and racist. Right after posing for Bono’s Vanity Fair, Iweala penned an indignant editorial in the Washington Post decrying the tendency of Westerners to “promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death.” He was unhappy that “news reports focus on the continent’s corrupt leaders, warlords, “tribal” conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation.[8] Is this the same author that posed for Vanity Fair’s bumper Edition on Africa, the same African who wrote the best-selling book Beast of No Nations a novel about child soldiers?

Iweala’s editorial comes across as the protests of one who wishes to eat his cake and have it. At the very least, he is guilty of being overly sensitive. Fresh from posing prominently in the Africa issue of Vanity Fair, he rushes to the Washington Post to chide Western superstars like Bono and Bob Geldof and presumably the entire West for a patronizing attitude towards Africa’s challenges. He makes the profound point that a lot of humanitarian efforts from the West directed at Africa are driven by less than altruistic motives. But those who read Bono’s Vanity Fair will be forever haunted by the before-and- after images of African AIDS patients who have been miraculously rescued by the anti-retroviral drug that is now available in African countries thanks to the Lazarus Project and the efforts of Westerners like Bono. Those pictures in Vanity Fair are the most graphic reminders of what can happen to Africa if the world stopped for a second and paid her much needed attention. Iweala’s rage is sadly misplaced. Instead, Iweala and the rest of us should erupt in lusty songs of protest against African leaders who continue to loot Africa’s treasures and deposit them in the West even as they loudly berate the white man for all of Africa’s problems. According to Vanity Fair, the United States has quadrupled aid to Africa over the last six years under President George W. Bush. Once you get over that shock, a rising rage wells up in you because you have your suspicions as to what happened to all that money. Nigeria is a wealthy county. She should not be receiving aid and sympathy from any country.

One can only hope that the horrible images of Africa as one giant beggar-continent will someday be erased when Africa’s intellectuals and writers like Iweala direct their rage inwards. The first step is for African writers and intellectuals to stop feeding the West stories of irredeemable despair that turn Africa into a caricature continent. Ironically, Iweala has risen to international prominence by penning a best-selling fiction of a drug-crazed child-soldier who runs around a barely fictitious African country killing people and babbling in an inchoate form of English that is at best contrived. If a Western writer had written such a story, Iweala would be up in arms decrying the racism inherent in such a caricature of Africa. There is another young writer from Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah who is making a killing selling his story, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, a chronicle of his life as a child soldier.[9] A good deal of this may be reality; however it gets a lot of play in the West because it sells. And African writers have been only too willing to play along for riches and fame.

Where are our writers’ loyalties to be found? It is an important question. Compare Abani’s Graceland to The Virgin of Flames and one wonders where the author's interests lie. For one thing, where Graceland is stale in its message, The Virgin of Flames is current and reflects an immediacy depicted by someone who truly knows Los Angeles as it is today. Should our writers, especially those abroad be oblivious to their current dispensation because it is easier to mine the stories of the past? It is an important question. Westerners fawn with delight over Iweala's book, Beasts of No Nation and they should; it was written exclusively for them by an expatriate offspring of Africa. But the book does Africa no good. I have to take the reader back to Achebe's essay in his book Home and Exile - The Balance of the Stories. Where the main character in Joyce Cary’s Mr. Johnson was a bumbling buffoon dreamt up by a racist author, the African characters in books by our Iwealas and Abanis are bumbling buffoons incapable of putting together complete sentences. And we are in the 21st century.

I ask the gentle reader: Where is the outrage? Never mind that these are talented writers in their natural elements. In a recent edition of the magazine Granta, Iweala shines as an American author.[10] This edition of Granta features works by, as the magazine bills them, the “best of young American novelists. From America’s perspective, Iweala is an American writer. In his short story Dance Cadaverous, Iweala shines as an American telling a wholesome all-American story of two boys, lips locked in love and in lust and Iweala takes us through scenery that only an American would portray – with love and caring. It is not great literature; chased perhaps by the demons of an editor’s deadline, the story gallops to an undignified end and claims its rightful place in the pantheon of enjoyable but forgettable stories. But it is told nonetheless by an American. Iweala is a Nigerian. Iweala is an American. Iweala is the sum of his experiences. And this illuminates issues in a debate raging rather savagely in my head. Who are we? And, who are we writing for?

What to do? It is a good question. We have been talking about books written mostly by Nigerians abroad and I still say the book is dying. We must look also for fresh thinking in the new e-books thrilling us on that wondrous playground called the Internet. The written essay of our childhood is now roaming free and happy out there, crackling free and fresh on the Internet - in blogs, websites and on YouTube. Our new thinkers are talking up a storm about the new Africa. No one is listening for now because we are still attached to the book. I propose that the astute reader should look to the new medium of ideas called the Internet. The dreams of Africa lurk quietly in e-places where there is a total surrender to a return of the oral tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. Take YouTube for instance. The Western world calls that technological innovation. Our people say YouTube was Africa’s theater from the beginning of time. The more things change the more things stay the same. Every day history is made. But if the West insists on making up history to suit its own agenda, it must not be with the willing cooperation of our thinkers. It is time to correct course.

We must return to Achebe who again reminds us of the East African proverb: Until the lion tells the story of the hunt, the hunt will always be glorified by the hunter. We must tell the truth, nothing but the absolute truth in our own stories. It is a great time for the lion to tell his story because the essay is born again, live, as dying alphabets, former myrmidons of the Empire, flee, shoved out of YouTube by the agents of change. There is hope, because there is a return to the oral tradition of storytelling by our ancestors and they call this change. Long live Africa. Let us continue to remind our writers of this: Cannon-balls of joy and hope are booming clear across the valleys and our thinkers must listen past the smell of dollars and euros for the triumph of song over grief. For now, our thinkers are, backs turned, fawning over alien booms. And there is no balance to our stories. Our stories are unrelentingly Naipaulitan, to coin a perversion from the name of V.S. Naipaul. In our stories, Naipaulitan verse after Naipaulitan verse is hurled, like mean bricks, through Africa’s dainty windows. And strangers peek in to the devastation and spit on what is left and we are outraged.

Finally, I write this in memory of one of Nigeria’s great story tellers, Cyprian Ekwensi, anyi, loyal teacher, who just moved on to the pantheon of our ancestors. I celebrate the life of a great soul, Cyprian Ekwensi, rising one last time in joyful defiance of the call of the sokugo. I also salute Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Odia Ofeimun, Gabriel Okara, Zulu Sofola, Elechi Amadi, Ola Rotimi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Kenule Saro-Wiwa, James Ene Henshaw, T.M. Aluko, Okogbule Wonodi, Ogali A. Ogali, Wole Soyinka and J. P. Clark-Bekederemo, seer-poets with a deep abiding love for and pride in our people. It was probably a function of their time – you just knew you were not going to be rich from writing books but in the name of our ancestors you were going to enjoy doing it. These visionaries wrote for a precocious generation that went through books with the same intensity with which today’s children surf the pages of the Internet. The pressures on these writers were enormous; readers were impatient for entertainment and education and they just could not get enough of their stories. And their voices never stopped singing, they delivered story after story, as they painstakingly but lovingly transferred their stories long-hand from foolscap papers onto the typewriter. And this was all before the gods cooked up the wonder that we now call the Internet. And as children, we sat at the foot of these teachers and listened with rapt attention, in awe, to the stories of these gentle warriors.

As a devotee of this generation of writers, I learnt that there is a clear distinction between the products of words merely put together even if effectively, and a labor of love by the genuinely gifted and committed. As you read their works, you feel the passion and the love for the word, pulsating through every word; there is a near obsession for perfection that borders on a disability. If you think of the writer as a wordsmith, you can visualize her seated before a canvas, surrounded by all these words buzzing around the workshop. The wordsmith picks one word up, examines it closely, like a practiced shopper would a mango, looks at her canvas for just the right placement, finding none, shakes her head, flings the blighted word over her shoulder and resumes the search for the perfect word, the perfect phrase and the perfect placement. Part of the joy of reading the resulting product is feeling the spirit of the artist wandering around the words like a proud farmer tending her crops, watering a plant here, trimming a tendril to health over there. The presence of the writer’s spirit among the words fills the reader with something and the reader holds the words with respect, and depending on the gifts of the writer, gently leads the reader to approach the written word with reverence. Now, that, my people, is a gift. I propose that there has to be a higher purpose to writing, one that is definitely not self-serving. The Nigerian writer must return to focusing on the true condition of the land without reducing the land and her people to ridicule.

Stories of the past remind us that, like the sokugo, even today is all about change. The sokugo? Ah, if you have never read Ekwensi’s Burning Grass, find a copy and read of Mai Sunsaye’s restless journey under the arresting spell of that mesmerizing wandering disease, the sokugo. There is a message in Burning Grass. The sokugo is a metaphor for the constancy of change even as we endure the daily rituals of living, teaching, learning and loving. The world we live in is a different world from that inhabited by the youths of Achebe, Ekwensi and Soyinka. It is a world at once large and small - there is an impish deity up there re-arranging our world and relationships. In the beginning the gods created walls, clans and villages. There was too much order and then they created sea-faring vessels and air-faring vessels. And there was still too much order. And then they created the radio, television, telephone and faxes. And there was still too much order. And then they created the Internet and all hell broke loose. What will the gods think of next? I don’t know. They are too busy rolling on the floor laughing their impish heads off. How do we manage change today, as the thinkers before us did? I believe that the first step is for the writer to accept some ownership for the circumstances Africa finds itself. We need to begin to show some respect for Africa, actually model respect for Africa and everything African. Immersing ourselves in a contrived culture of despair may earn us fame and fortune but the damage to Africa is permanent and incalculable. We must not be like the Stepin Fetchit character that occupies a prominent place in contemporary African American folklore. It is all about investing in self respect and dignity. It will pay off in the long run; it certainly won’t hurt Africa. John Whitehead says children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. Our stories like Things Fall Apart and Burning Grass are like our children. What messages are we sending off to the future? Long live Africa.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Tony D’Souza, Whiteman (Harcourt)


[2] Chris Abani, Graceland (Picador), p. 49


[3] V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 3


[4] Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile ( Oxford University Press), p. 87


[5] Wole Soyinka, You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Random House), p 47


[6] http://www.powells.com/review/2006_04_30.html


[7] Granta 99, Fall 2007, pp 31-37, pp 225-238


[8] The Washington Post (Uzodinma Iweala, Stop Trying to “Save” Africa, July 15, 2007)


[9] Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Sarah Crichton Books)


[10] Granta 97 Spring 2007, pp 195-211

Does African writing take itself way too seriously all the time?

What do you think? Is this the case with literature from Africa? Leave a comment and lets know what you really think.

Harare North - by Brian Chikwava

Literature has always been one of my best teachers. I have never been patient with technical stuff, perhaps the reason I hated subjects like biology, introductory technology and other sciences. However, with literature I found I was able to learn things about the world and life that I may have found tasking had I had to sit through boring classes.

Harare North by Brian Chikwava is one of those literatures that introduced me to Zimbabwe, her people and aspects of her history. It’s a rather one sided story about an ex-Green Bomber (Robert Mugabe supporters) on the run from the authorities—and apparently from himself—who makes his way to the UK (Harare North to Zimbabweans the way the UK and London is referred to as Jand by Nigerians). The unnamed protagonist embodies the worst traits of the Zimbabweans—exploitative, arrogant, proud, illiterate and criminal minded yet, he considers himself principled. The other Zimbabwean characters that he encounters aren’t much better and at the end of this book one may come away thinking that a majority of Zimbabweans are desperate, lazy and selfish beings.

Chikwava’s language, though creative, was rather tedious after a couple of pages. The narrator’s vernacular babble is at once humorous and painfully hard to follow sometimes.

However, Chikwava must be applauded for shedding some light on how gullible people can easily be brainwashed by political propaganda so much so that they become blind to the atrocities their leaders are committing right before their eyes.

Harare North also looks at migration, diaspora and asylum (how intriguing that asylum has a double meaning here—on one hand it’s an institution for people with psychiatric disorder and on the other hand a place of sanctuary). Africa may be a tough continent to live in, especially if the leaders of some African countries care nothing for the citizens and run the country’s economy to the ground. However, Africans should also be aware that the West is not so welcoming and that life on the other side may be a different sort of hell. This seems to be one of the stronger themes of Harare North. Chikwava examines mental health as well using the unnamed narrator, and we see how he slowly descends into paranoia.

Chikwava has cooked up a dark comedy indeed in Harare North, one that leaves a disturbing after taste.

On Black Sister Street - by Chika Unigwe

His penis searched for a gap between her legs. Finding warmth, he sighed, spluttered sperm that trickled down her legs like mucus, inaugurating Sisi into her new profession. And she baptised herself into it with tears, hot and livid, down her cheeks, salty in her mouth, feeling intense pain wherever he touched, like he was searing her with a razor blade that had just come off a fire - pg 213.

I completed On Black Sister Street by Chika Unigwe on Saturday morning. I cannot begin to cite all the things I found wonderful about this book. The writing was taut, the storytelling technique was absorbing and the characters, all of them, were well drawn.

I certainly agree with Ali Smith when she says: This powerful book will leave you haunted. Each woman's devastating journey from Nigeria to Belgium to work as sex workers is told through the eyes of each of them. The story begins when Sisi, one of the women, is found murdered. As her remaining co-workers and house mates, Ama, Efe and Joyce come to terms with her death, each relives their painful journey from Africa to the house on Zwartezusterstraat and how a man called Dele was instrumental to their being there.

I loved Unigwe's style, the layering of events in a non-sequential format, moving back and forth with time with each different story. And then the end with the ghost of Sisi whispering her curse into the ears of Dele's offsprings made the final lines all the more powerful.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book!

Read Bernadine Evaristo's review here.

Saraba e-zine

Dear all,
Do enjoy the free issue of Saraba by simply clicking/flipping the pages, as if browsing a physical magazine.

Well done to the brains behind Saraba a fast growing literary e-zine.

Open publication - Free publishing - More saraba

I kissed a man and I liked it...

I just thought I would start with a catchy title. It's almost appropriate for the film review of 'Rag Tag', which I had promised.

Rag Tag is a movie by Adaora Nwandu and the movie first came to my attention in 2006 (I believe). There was a private screening of the movie in Lagos I was invited to, but unfortunately I was not able to make it. I was really keen on watching this movie as I was told its theme was very similar to my debut novel 'Walking with Shadows'. After three years, I finally got an opportunity to see this movie.

It's a story about two boys growing up in London, both of them close friends. Tagbo's (Tag) parents are what many will call middle-class Nigerians, working and living comfortably in London, whereas, Raymond (Rag) who is of West Indian heritage is raised by a single mother. From the onset of the movie it is quickly established that Tag's father disapproves of the friendship between his son and Rag. It is also quickly established that not all is OK at home for Rag - his mother's constant absence drives him to sneak into Tag's room most nights to sleep till the next morning. Could this be the reason for Tag's father disapproval of this friendship? Rag's background was less than sterling and there is that stereotype about British-West Indians, you know, drugs and the ragamuffin lifestyle!

The story drags on for quite a while, as the director takes her time to lay the foundation of this unusual love story. There are no clear indications that Rag and Tag are anything more than just close friends in the beginning. The boys are separated for about a decade when social services takes Rag away to protect him from his mother. Fast-forward ten years later and Tag graduates from the university with a law degree and has a white girlfriend who, not surprisingly, his father also disapproves of. And Rag resurfaces with a daugther of his own and a baby-mama. The two reunite and as adults, their feelings for each other intensifies.

On a trip to Nigeria to celebrate with a friend of Tag's who was being conferred with a chieftaincy title, Rag overhears a conversation that makes him believe that Tag could be in danger if he continued to associate with his friend Olisa (who also comes across as a 419 kingpin). Also, Rag gets challenged in a whipping contest and when it gets really heated, Tag comes to his rescue... not long after that scene was the much awaited 'kissing scene'.

A few lessons were learnt in the Nigeria sequence: the most notable was when Tag discovers that his uncle stayed behind in Nigeria all those years to remain close to his male lover, a sacrifice he had no regret about. And Rag learnt that in Nigeria, friends are very open about their affection for each other - male friends hold hands and drape their hands over each other's shoulders without thinking anything about it; it is not a gay gesture.

Back in England after a fall-out, Rag and Tag reconcile with their feelings for each other and in a moving moment in the movie, Tag recites almost the entire taboos or Holy-Do-Nots of Leviticus (the infamous book in the Bible that preaches against man sleeping with man in the same manner as he would a woman). I had no idea there were so many Holy-Do-Nots...

The movie was bold in its message, however, I was a little disappointed that it was not shot on film. It was more like a slightly better nollywood creation. But, a plus, though - the two lead actors were pretty good.

I was glad to see this movie, glad that Africa/black gay men are being potrayed in a positive light and not the usual stereotypes that abound about black gay men.

I Do Not Come To You By Chance - Review

Dearest, One

Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I contacted you after going through your profile, I prayed over it and selected your name among other names due to its esteeming nature and the recommendations given to me as a reputable and trust worthy person that I can do business with and by the recommendation , I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business .

I am Marian Kunter the only child of late Mr. and Mrs.Mathias Kunter. My father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Abidjan , the economic capital of Ivory coast, my father was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outings on a business trip.

My mother died when I was a baby and since then my father took me so special.
Before the death of my father on october 2008 in a private hospital here in Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has the sum of Ten million, five hundred thousand United State Dollars. USD ($10,500,000.00) left in a security company here in Abidjan, that he used my name as the only daughter for his next of kin in depositing the funds. He also explained to me that it was because of this wealth that he was poisoned by his business associates but I suspect his brothers, That I should seek for a foreign partner in a country of my choice where i will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose such as real estate management or hotel management .

Dear, I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways: (1) To stand as a guardian of this fund since I am only 22years. (2) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and to secure a resident permit in your country.Moreover, Dear, i am willing to offer you 15% of the total sum as compensation for your effort/ input after the successful transfer of this fund into your nominated account overseas.

Furthermore, you indicate your options towards assisting me as I believe that this transaction would be concluded within four (4) days you signify interest to assist me. Anticipating to hear from you soon.


Best regards,

Marian Kunter


The letter above crept into my spam box of one of my email accounts. It arrived on the 25th of August and it is a classic example of one of the email scam letters exposed in Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's timely debut novel 'I Do Not Come To You By Chance' - Weidenfeld & Nicolson; (14 May 2009) ISBN-13: 978-0297858713; 352 pages.

We are told or are meant to believe that nothing in literature (no book, story, plot or theme) is new. Everything conceivable to man has been documented in prose, we are wont to say. I used to believe this myself as my consumption of world literature grew and continues to grow. I have found similarities in themes, emotions and plots in books by authors from different backgrounds and continents that make this world we live in seem so small. These writings from different authors who hail from different countries reaffirms that our lives are very similar whether we come from Kenya or Nigeria or India or Russia or the United Kingdom, or even Iran. Our humanity with all its flaws and challenges unites us.

I know I have not read as many books as say some experts in book reviews, critics and scholars, however, for once I can safely say that of all the books I have read, written by fellow Nigerians, I have not read anything similar to Nwaubani's debut effort 'I Do Not Come To You By Chance'. So, it's quite safe to say that not everything has been captured and documented in prose form.

Not that the premise of the novel, 419, is new to me and millions of others in Nigeria and around the world, far from it! The stigma of 419 (the criminal code for Advance Fee Fraud) is like the intrusive badge that has been pinned to Nigeria and almost every Nigerian whether they be doctor, engineer, teacher, student, pepper seller or child has had to endure the brunt of this stigma. This is one heavy cross innocent Nigerians have had to carry.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani scores high points for tackling this bothersome theme in her debut novel and she scores more points for introducing fresh insights into the world of the 419ers, almost lending a humane and sympathetic ear to their plight, without completely shunning the moral issues the fallout of their schemes provokes.

So, why is this book so timely? It is a morality tale with a wicked, wicked twist. The story begins with the refreshing lines: People in the villages seemed to know everything. They knew whose great-grandmother had been a prostitute... Immediately, the reader is sucked in, aware that the author wants you to be entertained. And entertained you will be. The humour and wit, infused from the beginning of the story till the end, never runs dry.

The story starts by introducing us to how Augustina, a village girl with a passion and zeal for knowledge and education, meets Paulinus, the UK educated engineer, falls in love, pursues her education at the university of Nsukka, marries and starts an idealistic family. Their hope is that all their children would be educated, get good civil jobs and live respectable lives. A lot of hope is put on their first son, Kingsley, the opara. However, life does not always work out as planned; the country undergoes series of crisis both political and economical that even first class graduates cannot get a job - unless you have long legs, of course! Things turn particularly bad for Kingsley after his father suffers a stroke and his sweetheart shuts the door to their relationship because she sees no future in it. Kingsley or Kings as he is referred to, is forced to turn to his uncle Boniface aka Cash Daddy (a 419 kingpin) for help. And thus begins the major conflict of this story. Kingsley's idealistic upbringing is put to the test and we see how he slowly yields to the lure of a better life... or is it?

Nwaubani's insights into the pressures of parents, family and society was quite on point. A lot of her characters were people I recognised albeit that many of these characters were over-drawn caricatures, however, in the spirit of satire she pulled this off very well. Cash Daddy is one of the most memorable characters I've ever read. He is a character that everyone loves to hate, but love him we do, with all his warts and all!

I Do Not Come To You By Chance was like opium. The language was easy to follow and very addictive. I kept wanting to know what eventually would happen to the characters; Kings, Cash Daddy, hoping for a reunion between Kings and Ola as well as the fate of the many mugus (whites) in the story.

Now that I've finished reading it, another book comes to mind - White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. I guess the reason for this is because of the guilty pleasure I experienced while reading both books. Both books focused on less than admirable characters and protagonists but that did not stop me from empathizing with them or even liking them... somewhat!

The icing on the cake was the final denouement of this book. I was completely surprised.

This is a very good book with very few flaws. A brilliant debut novel that I would recommend to anyone.

I Do Not Come To You By Chance will be published and released in Nigeria by Cassava Republic in November 2009.