ImageNations

NEW PUBLICATION: Birds of Our Land and Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

2012-01-28T08:00:00.000Z

This year Cassava Republic has two new titles:

The first is a children's guide to West African birds called Birds of Our Land, by Virginia Dike. The book aims to introduce Nigerian children to 25 birds representing the major species in the region. Through rich, poetic descriptions, it explains the basic features of these birds and includes key things to note in observing them. It is also richly illustrated with beautiful paintings by artist Robin Gowen. We believe this book is more than a great read, it is the perfect tool for parents and educators to encourage children to spend more time exploring nature.

Virginia Dike is a professor and head of the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and is also a founding member of The Children's Centre Library at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.

Our second book is the haunting novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, by Christie Watson. Winner of the 2011 Costa Award for First Novel, this beguiling novel tells the story of 13-year-old Blessing and her brother Ezikiel who must leave their comfortable life in Lagos to live with their grandparents in a poor village in the Niger Delta when their father leaves them for another woman. Just as Blessing begins to settle into this new life peopled by unforgettable characters, she finds out that all may not be as it seems. and forces beyond her control threaten to tear the family apart.

Christie Watson has worked for over ten years as a children’s nurse. She has a Masters in Creative Writing at University of East Anglia.

Quotes for Friday from William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000Z

Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts? [10]

Maybe you have to know anybody awful well to love them but when you have hated somebody for forty-three years you will know them awful well so maybe it's better then may be it's fine then because after forty-three years they can't any longer surprise you or make you either very contented or very mad. [12]

Ellen: blind romantic fool who had only youth and inexperience to excuse her even if that; blind romantic fool, then later blind woman mother fool when she no longer had either youth or inexperience to excuse her, when she lay dying in that house for which she had exchanged pride and peace both and nobody there but the daughter who was already the same as a widow without ever having been a bride ... [13]

In church, mind you, as though there were a fatality and curse on our family and God Himself were seeing to tit that it was performed and discharged to the last drop and dreg. [20]

Neither papa nor Ellen said Come back home. No: This occurred before it became fashionable to repair your mistakes by turning your backs on them and running. [28]

His guests would bring whiskey out with them but he drank of this with a sort of sparing calculation as though keeping mentally ... a sort of balance of spiritual solvency between the amount of whiskey he accepted and the amount of running meat which he supplied to the guns. [46]

Boys, this time he stole the whole durn steamboat! [51]

[Y]ou will notice that most divorces occur with women who were married by tobacco-chewing j.p.'s in country courthouses or by ministers waked after midnight, with their suspenders showing beneath their coattails and no collar on and a wife or spinster sister in curl papers for witness. [57]

Or maybe women are even less complex than that and to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint. [61]

[B]ut the fact that women never plead nor claim loneliness until impenetrable and insurmountable circumstances forces them to give up all hope of attaining the particular bauble which at the moment they happen to want. [63]

Love, with reference to them, was just a finished and perfectly dead subject like the matter of virginity would be after the birth of the first grandchild. [90]

But who knows why a man, though suffering, clings, above all the other well members, to the arm or leg which he knows must come off? [111]

So that he must have appeared, not only to Henry but to the entire undergraduate body of that small new provincial college, as a source not of envy because you only envy whom you believe to be, but for accident, in no way superior to yourself: and what you believe, granted a little better luck than you have had heretofore, you will someday possess; - not of envy but of despair. [117]

Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, ratiocination, who may have been conscious that his fierce provincial's pride in his sister's virginity was a false quantity which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in order to be precious, to exist, and so must depend upon its loss, absence, to have existed at all. [118/9]

In fact, perhaps this is pure and perfect incest: the brother realising that the sister's virginity must be destroyed in order to have existed at all, taking that virginity in the person of the brother-in-law, the man whom he would be if he could become, metamorphose into, the lover, the husband; by whom he would be despoiled, choose for despoiler, if he could become, metamorphose into the sister, the mistress, the bride. [119]

[A]nd Sutpen still waiting, certainly no one could say for what, incredible that he should wait for Christmas, for the crisis to come to him - this man of whom it is said that he not only went out to meet his troubles, he sometimes manufactured them. [130]

God may mark every sparrow, but we do not pretend to be God, you see. Perhaps we do not even want to be God, since no man would want but one of these sparrows. And perhaps when God looks into one of these establishments like you saw tonight, He would not choose one of us to be God either, now that He is old. [143]

[I]t would not be the first time that youth has taken catastrophe as a direct act of Providence for the sole purpose of solving a personal problem which youth itself could not solve. [148]

I really requires an empty stomach to laugh with, that only when you are hungry or frightened do you extract some ultimate essence out of laughing just as the empty stomach extracts the ultimate essence out of alcohol. [162]

There are somethings which the intelligence and the senses refuse just as the stomach sometimes refuses what the palate has accepted but which digestion cannot compass [188]

[T]he only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak ..[217]

[T]here was a limit even to irony beyond which it became either just vicious but not fatal horseplay or harmless coincidence. [333]

[T]here are situations where coincidence is no more than the little child that rushes out onto a football field to take part in the game and the players run over and around the unscathed head and go on and shock together and in the fury of the struggle for the facts called gain or loss nobody even remembers the child nor saw who came and snatched it back from dissolution... [333]

[A] man who could believe that a scorned and outraged and angry woman could be bought off with formal logic would believe that she could be placated with money too... [335]

[H]e had learned that there were three things and no more: breathing, pleasure, darkness; and without money there could be no pleasure, and without pleasure it would not even be breathing but mere protoplasmic inhale and collapse of blind unorganism in a darkness where light never began. [374]

[W]hen you are proud enough to be humble you don't have to cringe [410]

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Read the review here

4. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

2012-01-25T08:30:00.000Z

Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge

Absalom, Absalom!* (Vintage, 1936; 485) is a story of how a singular decision made by a poor boy, at a time when he was too young to understand anything, caused so much devastation to him and the people around him. The story follows the from when that decision, and others, was made later and their effects through the generations, beginning from 1820 when the first malevolent seed was sown to 1910 when the last bitter fruit was harvested, or crushed.

Thomas Sutpen appeared suddenly in Yoknapatawpha County. A strange man with strange looks, strange behaviour, strange language, and nigger followers. A man with an unknown past. A man who at fourteen made a decision, after he had been turned away from a big white house by a nigger who wears nice clothes, to create his own future wherein lies a big white house, niggers, and nobility.

Sutpen was to acquire a hundred-square miles land from an Indian community through a process no one knew or could conjecture. Then he set forth to build his house, having an architect amongst his travelling troupe. Again, through unknown and suspicious means, suspicious to the folks of Jefferson, he built the biggest house and named it Sutpen's Hundred. After which the need for a wife and Nobility arose. Sutpen then fished for a wife from an unlikely man, Goodhue Coldfield. For had Coldfield and Sutpen been twins they would definitely had been fraternal where one would be hedonistic and the other a monk. Goodhue was

a Methodist steward, a merchant who was not rich and who not only could have done nothing under the sun to advance his fortune or prospects but could by no stretch of imagination ven owned anything that he would have wanted, even picked up in the road - a man who owned neither land nor slaves except two house servants whom he had freed as soon as he got them, bought them, who neither drank nor hunted nor gambled; [20]

And from Goodhue Coldfield's home, Sutpen married Ellen Coldfield - a woman who was, initially and falsely, attracted by the house and the pride to live in it. The enigma surrounding Sutpen increased to such an extent that, even though the townfolks weren't certain of the source of his wealth, which seems to move with him into Jefferson anytime he takes a temporary leave, they had him arrested for theft and in his arrest Sutpen was still the unshaken stoic man and it was Goodhue Coldfield who bailed him out and having being bailed out looked no different from before his arrest. A man unmoved by the devices of man or of nature. A man whose sole purpose in life is to acquire certain items in life (including a wife and a name), pick them up like one picks items from a shopping mall, only his had an exceptional kind of determination and zealousness to it so that he would, if necessary, sacrifice his life towards its realisation just as he starved for several days during his journey into Jefferson and braced the cold weather conditions when Sutpen's Hundred was not fixed with its fixtures and fittings. And he was a man who could not accept help from anyone. And so Sutpen married Ellen Coldfield on one rainy day before a dozen witnesses cum audience and had two children Henry and Judith Sutpen, in that order.

What would undo Sutpen was not that Henry was almost effeminate, not as strong as he - Sutpen - was and unable to stand the bloody entertainment his father had with his niggers nor that Judith took his father's boldness. What would undo him is a choice Sutpen made when he run away from home and went to the West Indies in search of the riches that would make him achieve his dream. Not even this for merely fleeing home in search of wealth was innocuous. What would pulverise Sutpen's achievement began with deception. When he married, bore a son and left mother and son because the son was a negro. Sutpen had earlier been told that Charles Bon's - his son - mother was a Spaniard and not Haitian. When Sutpen - a man who had been turned away from a house by a negro and which had set him on this long journey - found that he had borne a negro, he saw his dream crushing down upon him before it began and so repudiated both mother and son.

Sutpen had achieved all: wealth - he was the largest grower of cotton; the house; the niggers; recognition - he was commended for his part in the war. Yet, he was a man who wanted sons. And it was this quest for sons that destroyed him. For Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen met at the university, became friends, later got to know they were brothers. And Judith fell in love with Bon and Bon wanted Sutpen to accept him as a son and Sutpen didn't want the marriage to materialise and Henry wanted Bon to divorce his octoroon wife in New Orleans, with whom he had a negro son, and Henry not assenting. And it was through this that Sutpen would urge Henry, psychologically, to kill Bon. And Henry would not have done it for he feared not the possible incest, in fact he argued for it. But it was the miscegenation that Henry feared and this was revealed to him by his father. And it was that the destroyed him and Bon. Having lost both sons - one physically the other emotionally, spiritually and all - Sutpen wanted sons who would succeed him. Ellen was dead; died through neglect and pain for all that Sutpen wanted was a woman with a respectable name in his household. In need of sons, Sutpen proposed to Rosa - Ellen's youngest sibling who, born seven years after Ellen's marriage: if she were to make him sons there would be marriage. As an affront on her being Rosa - whose father - Goodhue Coldfield - and all her relatives had died or eloped, moved to his lonely home. In need of sons, Sutpen slept with the granddaughter of a handyman on his property. She did get pregnant but it was a daughter. The interlocked gears which had been set into motion ground all - Sutpens and Coldfields. This destruction brought upon him by his quest for sons is reflected in the title Absalom an allusion to the biblical Absalom, the third son of David, who rebelled against his father and died in that rebellion.

The story had different narratives, including a universal narrator. It began as a narration from Rosa Coldfield to the grandson of Sutpen's only 'friend' in Jefferson, Quentin Compson. Quentin's father also filled him in. Then Quentin himself retold parts of the story to his roommate at Harvard University, Shreve who himself also narrated parts, or retold parts to Quentin to ensure that he had understood him. What was clear from all these narratives is each narrator's perception or influence on the story: they were more like explaining the actions of the individuals in the story rather than telling it as it is. Consequently, the veracity of what was being told became questionable. Another point about the narrative is the method chosen by Faulkner. The story was told in a repetitive mode, with each repetition adding another layer of information. As the telling spirals inward, the reader get to understand reasons and motives and it is not until the last end, when the story converges, that a concrete picture is obtained.

Aside being enigmatic, his singular purpose of mind in search of riches and, after he attained them, of sons made him a demon to many. He was described in many similar adjectives. Initially, one could not pinpoint what exactly Sutpen did wrong. Was it his goal in life? It could be said that the numerous narrators were all confused and couldn't explain the man's reasons. Even the few times a somewhat omniscient narrator took over the explanation of the man carried little of essence. So that Sutpen's evilness could lie not in him but within the skewness of the narrative. Irrespective of this, the reading evokes a comparison of Sutpen with Heathcliff (ref. Wuthering Heights). However, when the story developed and the narrators explained, adding and subtracting, they ended up with a Sutpen who, not having killed a person, nor fought anyone, nor stolen from anyone, was still as much evil as evil could possibly be.

A feminist reading of Absalom, Absalom! would be appropriate. For Sutpen was a patriarch who considered women as properties and even though Judith could have been what he wanted Henry to be, he saw through her. Again, to him marriage was for sons and acquiring a wife akin to acquiring a property. Though the period might have contributed to this, Sutpen's relationship with women quite stood out relative to other couples in the story.

Absalom, Absalom! could be a difficult read. With its long sentences the reader sometimes loses the message being conveyed for within each sentence lies several diversions, expatiation, and confirmations. Notwithstanding this, Faulkner's storytelling ability is capable of holding one's attention throughout and a dedicated, attentive reading is a necessity for understanding and enjoyment. William Faulkner has a way with words and this shone through too.

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* I read The Corrected Text

SHORT STORY MONDAY: Philipp Meyer and Rivka Galchen

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000Z

These two stories were taken from The New Yorker June 14 & 21, 2010.

What You Do Out Here, When You're Alone by Philipp Meyer

Max and Lilli had moved from their modest home in Huntsville to a plush neighbourhood in Oaksville. Unlike Huntsville, they were almost unknown in Oaksville, uninvited to parties and were living under the shadows of the teeming 'filthy' rich. Their new neighbourhood was the place where one could be 'sued for painting [his] mailbox the wrong color, for putting up the wrong fence, for installation of unapproved rooting materials...' But Max was not happy for several reasons. Not because his Porsche business was bad, for he was the 'best Porsche mechanic in Texas, the entire Southwest, if he was hones', in fact business was good and could even do favours for those who could not afford his services.

Max was not happy because of Lilli, through whose boss at Goliad Associates, they had heard about the Oaks building, which though had been obtained at half the market price was still expensive. Lilli, whose conviviality, happy-go-lucky behaviour in Huntsville had made her the object of attention at all the parties and gatherings they organised instantly metamorphosed into a calm, taciturn, and extremely cold figure. Perhaps because they were not recognised. But mostly because she wanted Max to live up to the 'standards' of the people of Oaksville to the extent that she bought him his t-shirts. Then there were the rumours. Rumours of Lilli sleeping with other couples in a sort of kinky kind of sex: threesome, foursome. The news was everywhere. Max had married young, had given up college and married Lilli and after over two decades and a son later, he wasn't sure if he was willing to go on with the marriage. If Lilli was still loved him. They had sex and had it even more, especially after what he referred to as Accident.

The Accident involved their son, Harley. Harley had a purpose, an aim to go to College. He was a top-of-class student, not exactly popular but had had enough friends. Even at thirteen, Harley had plans of going to Rice when he graduated. At least until the move that dislocated his plans and distorted his view of life. At Oaksville, Harley had become closer to his mother and Max had become a total stranger. So that when Harley involved himself with coke, it was Lilli who took him to see the shrink and Max had been kept totally in the dark. Currently, Max is in the hospital - having recently come out of coma - recovering from head injuries he had sustained in cells where he was held for drug possession. And it these that Max was thinking about. Struggling to comprehend how a simple move from Huntsville to Oaksville had destroyed his once peaceful, happy family. From a 'do-it-yourself' family, he had entertained the idea of walking off, with his son, leaving Lilli behind. Perhaps he could go with the single lady who seems to want him. He liked that lady but had restrained himself from having sex with her.

Philipp Meyer's story is not a happy one. He investigates, somewhat, what lies behind the facade of richness, of walled communities. And he does a good work with this one.

The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire by Rivka Galchen

This story is seemingly opposite to Meyer's. This time round it was the man who played the woman. Written in the first person, Trish came home one day to find his house less of some items. Initially, it seemed as if there had been a burglary until he found a note addressed to him. It was by her husband, the father of the baby she was carrying, Jonathan.

Trish had always thought that their relationship was without any problem. But Jonathan thought differently. So differently that he blogged about how his wife was getting on her nerves at 'I-Can't-Stand-My-Wife-Dot-Blogspot-Dot-Com'. Trish's brother, who had had suspicions about Jonathan had invaded the privacy of his laptop. Initially, he had had the idea that perhaps it was porn that was the problem. But what he found was weirder than porn, and the mere fact that there was no porn was also 'suspicious'. What Trish's brother then told his sister of Jonathan's blog. Later his friend - David, who had earlier shown some affection for her - also confirmed the existence of the blog and its content. Trish was determined not to read nor listened to the content from his blog. Though Jonathan had withdrawn money from Trish's account - she was a writer whose debut novel had shot her to fame so that she had a little bit of respect and a little bit of money - under the guise of paying his tuition through business school, he really wasn't a student. No one knew him at that said college. In effect Jonathan was a complete fraud. But Trish still had some love for him.

Thus, in The Entire Northern Side was Covered with Fire, we see Trish trying to accommodate to the sudden 'loss' of her husband and her daughter's father. Rivka Galchen also tries to say something, though not loudly, on the culture of 'keeping out of people's business'. Thus, though his friend and brother knew of he existence of the blog, none could tell her - afraid of hurting her feelings, perhaps. However, according to the brother, he thought it was a joke.

One common theme I found threading through both stories is an examination of our current chosen mode of living, the current living culture. Or could I have been influenced to see the link where there is none because I read one after the other? All the same, The New Yorker's 20 under 40 is a good read.

When the Vice President of Ghana Writes

2012-01-22T15:40:00.000Z

The only Ghanaian president I know of who wrote was Kwame Nkrumah. Much has been said, and on this blog too, about the importance of Nkrumah's writings. This is a man who shared his vision, his aspirations and more about our world through his writings. When leaders show interest in reading and writing it tends to have a trickle down effect. I read Obama's Dreams from my Father when he decided to come to Ghana. I have not as yet got a copy of Bush's Decision Point and I have Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values. In fact, I read how the Obamas went to a small bookshop on Small Business Saturday to buy books for his children. Whereas in the US and elsewhere past presidents spends quality time to write and share with the people their lives before, during, and after office and what made them take certain decisions, it is not so in Ghana. In Ghana, other people writes about them. A memoir that is not written by the person himself still lacks something even if it is an authorised version.

Dedicated book bloggers are few in Ghana and anytime we discover ourselves we talk of how reading is declining and the quality of writing too. Most of the young Ghanaian writers aren't living in the country, showing the difficulty of getting your work published.

Kinna of Kinna Reads, Celestine Nudanu of Reading Pleasure and I decided that we would have to SCREAM for the government to hear in order to arrest the rapid deceleration of our reading culture - Reading Maketh Man. If knowledge is power, then we are gradually losing ours. Extra effort needs to be taken. Publishers of fiction, memoirs, autobiographies by authors living in Ghana could be supported - tax cuts? tax holidays? or free (or reduced-cost) importation of printing materials. Something concrete has to be done. Writing programmes could be organised at the universities. Reading Clubs could be formed in schools and in this direction the Writers Project of Ghana is doing enough but it needs to be supported.

It is in this thinking mood that I was when I saw a picture of the Vice President of Ghana at a book reading in Ghana with such authors as Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Akpabli, Nana Awere Damoah. Last year I read that he was writing a book, which scheduled to be launched in July of this year. However, the book has been published and from his twitter conversation (yes he is on twitter) it would be available in Ghana in August. With a literary enthusiast as a Vice President, I think that if readers and writers scream we would have a listening ear.

My First Coup d'Etat by John Dramani Mahama

FROM BLOOMSBURY: An important literary debut from the Vice President of Ghana, a fable-like memoir that offers a shimmering microcosm of post-colonial Africa.

My First Coup D'Etat chronicles the coming-of-age of John Dramani Mahama in Ghana during the dismal post-independence "lost decades" of Africa. He was seven years old when rumors of a coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father, a minister of state, was suddenly missing, then imprisoned for more than a year.

My First Coup D'Etat offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story. This is a one-of-a-kind book: Mahama's is a rare literary voice from a political leader, and his stories work on many levels--as fables, as history, as cultural and political analysis, and, of course, as the memoir of a young man who, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, would grow up to be vice president of his nation. Though non-fiction, these are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader--much like the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Nadine Gordimer--into a world all their own, one which straddles a time lost and explores the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.

Two More Challenges Added: Africa Reading Challenge and The 2012 Chunkster Challenge

2012-01-21T08:30:00.000Z

I have already blogged on the challenges I would be participating in this year. Most of my challenges have been self developed and I hardly join in other challenges except the Ghanaian Literature Week and the Nigerian Independence Book Reading Challenge hosted by Kinna and Amy respectively. This year, I am taking a step away from my comfort zone and participating, formally, in external reading challenges whilst making sure that all books I read also meet other reading challenges such as the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge.

AFRICA LITERATURE READING CHALLENGE

When I blogged about my challenges for this year, I mentioned the Africa Reading Challenge to be hosted by Kinna. After days of deliberation, Kinna has finally put up the rules for this challenge. The rules are simple. The reader is supposed to have fun and get to explore Africa. He/She at the end would have actually visited several African countries through books. The rules are:

REGION: The entire African continent, including its island-states, which are often overlooked. (Visit Kinna's blog for more).

READING GOAL: 5 books. There are no levels and participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books. Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with the historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.

GENRE

Fiction - novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children's books. Note: You can choose to read a number of individual and uncollected short stories. In this case, 12 such stories would constitute 1 book. Individual poems do not count.
Non-Fiction - memoirs, autobiographies, history and current events.

READING SUGGESTIONS

Cover at least two regions, pick from North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa and Central Africa
Include translated fiction from Arabic, Francophone and Lusophone literature
You can mix classic and contemporary fiction
If you intend to read mostly non-fiction, then please include at least one book (out of the five) of fiction.

MY BOOKS: I have selected books that I think meet the above criteria. Though I do not as yet have a book from East Africa on my shelf, I would be visiting bookshops to meet this target. Though currently, I am only listing five books, ImageNations itself is an African Literature blog and therefore throughout the year I would be bringing you more African books.

As the Crow Flies by Veronique Tadjo (Translation (French); West Africa (Cote d'Ivoire))
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (Translation (Arabic); North Africa (Egypt))
Writing Free edited by Irene Staunton (Southern Africa (Zimbabwe); Anthology)
Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer (Southern Africa (South Africa))
Madmen and Specialists by Wole Soyinka (West Africa (Nigeria); Drama)

Read more about this reading challenge here. There is a link to sign up.

2012 CHUNKSTER READING CHALLENGE

This reading challenge has several levels. I am opting for the Chubby Chunkster which is for "readers who want to dabble in large tomes, but really doesn't want to commit to much more than that. Four Chunksters is all you need to finish this challenge."

Note that a chunkster is a book of 450 pages or more. Again, I'm using this challenge to reduce the large books on my Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, though I might deviate based on the mood. Selected books I would be choosing from include:

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (483 pages)
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (542 pages)
Famished Road by Ben Okri (500 pages)
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (498 pages)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (463 pages)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (523 pages)
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (581 pages)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (489 pages)
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (562 pages)

The first six books are on my Top 100 Reading Challenge. Read more about this reading challenge here.

Quotes for Friday from Steve Biko's I Write What I Like

2012-01-20T07:30:00.000Z

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. [21]

At the heart of true integration is the provision for each man, each group to rise and attain the envisioned self. Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another. Out of this mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination there will obviously arise a genuine fusion of the lifestyles of the various groups. This is true integration. [22]

As a testimony to their claim of complete identification with blacks, they call a few 'intelligent and articulate' blacks to 'come around for tea at home', where all present ask each other the same old hackneyed question 'how can we bring about change in South Africa?' The more such tea-parties one call the more of a liberal he is and the freer he shall feel from guilt that harness and binds his conscience. [23]

They have been made to feel inferior for so long that for them it is comforting to drink tea, wine or beer with whites who seem to treat them as equals. This serves to boost up their own ego to the extent of making them feel slightly superior to those blacks who do not get similar treatment from whites. These are the sort of blacks who are a danger to the community. [25]

These dull-witted, self-centred blacks are in the ultimate analysis as guilty of the arrest of progress as their white friends for it is from such groups that the theory of gradualism emanates and this is what keeps the blacks confused and always hoping that one day God will step down from heaven to solve their problems. [25]

Does this mean that I am against integration? If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and code of behaviour set up by and maintained by whites, the YES I am against it. I am against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that). I am against the intellectual arrogance of white people that makes them believe that white leadership is a sine qua non in this country and that whites are the divinely appointed pace-setters in progress. I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people. [26]

The liberal must understand that the days of the Noble Savage are gone; that the blacks do not need a go-between in this struggle for their own emancipation. [27]

Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority. [29]

At some stage one can foresee a situation where black people will feel they have nothing to live for and will shout to their God 'Thy will be done.' In deed His will shall be done but it shall not appeal equally to all mortals for indeed we have different versions of His will. If the white God has been doing the talking all along, at some stage the black God will have to raise His voice and make Himself heard over and above noises from His counterpart. What happens at that stage depends largely on what happens in the intervening period. [33]

The anachronism of a well-meaning God who allows people to suffer continually under an obviously immoral system is not lost to young blacks who continue to drop out of Church by the hundreds. [34]

The bible must not be seen to preach that all authority is divinely instituted. It must rather preach that it is sin to allow oneself to be oppressed. The bible must continually be shown to have something to say to the black man to keep him going in his journey towards realisation of the self. [34]

Black theology seeks to depict Jesus as a fighting God who saw the exchange of Roman money - the oppressor's coinage - in His father's temple as so sacrilegious that it merited a violent reaction from Him - the Son of Man. [34]

In order to achieve real action you must yourself be a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of that popular energy which is entirely called forth for the freeing, the progress and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself concerned with, and completely at one with the people in the great battle of Africa and of suffering humanity. [35]

Black people must recognise the various institutions of apartheid for what they are - gags intended to get black people fighting separately for certain 'freedoms' and 'gains' which were prescribed for them long ago. [42]

One of the most difficult things to do these days is to talk with authority on anything to do with African culture. Somehow Africans are not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even of themselves. [44]

The philosophy of Black Consciousness, therefore, expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self. At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realisation by blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. [74]

The absolutely infantile evidence upon which the State builds up its cases in some of the trials does suggest to me that they are quite capable of arresting a group of boys playing hide and seek and charging them with high treason. [81]

When I turn on my radio, when I hear that someone in the Pondoland forest was beaten and tortured, I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead, when I turn my radio, when I hear that someone in jail slipped off a piece of soap, fell and died I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead, he is likely to be found in Pretoria. [82]

White people, working through their vanguard - the South African Police - have come to realise the truth of that golden maxim - if you cannot make a man respect you, then make him fear you. [83]

On his own, therefore, the black man wishes to explore his surroundings and test his possibilities - in other words to make his freedom real by whatever means he deems fit. At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realisation by blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. If one is free at heart no man-made chains can bind one to servitude, but if one's mind is so manipulated and controlled by the oppressor as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters. [102]

In a true bid for change we have to take off our coats, be prepared to lose our comfort and security, our jobs and positions of prestige, and our families, for just as it is true that 'leadership and security are basically incompatible', a struggle without casualties is no struggle. We must realise that prophetic cry of black students: 'Black man, you are on your own!' [108]

Given the clear analysis of our problems, the choice is very simple for America in shaping her policy towards present day South Africa. The interests of black and white politically have been made diametrically opposed to each other. America's choice is narrowed down to either entrenching the existing minority white regime or alternatively assisting in a very definite way, the attainment of the aspirations of millions of the black population as well as those whites of goodwill. [158]

Besides the sin of omission, America has often been positively guilty of working in the interest of the minority regime to the detriment of the interests of black people. America's foreign policy seems to have been guided by a selfish desire to maintain an imperialistic stranglehold on this country irrespective of how the blacks were made to suffer. [159]

One does not think this way in political life of course. Casualties are expected and should be bargained for. An oppressive system is illogical in the application of suppression. [201]

The existence of a multiplicity of denominations convinces me of the uselessness of organised worship in investigating man's duty to God. Churches have tended to complicate religion and theology and to make it a matter to be understood only by specialists. Churches have tended to drive away the common man by immersing themselves in bureaucracy and institutionalisatioin. [238]

I can reject all Churches and still be Godly. I do not need to go to Church on Sunday in order to manifest my godliness. Yet I do appreciate that all too often people's moral convictions are reinforced by constant revival meetings. If then I go to Church it is more for this type of limited service than because I regard them as having monopoly on truth and moral judgement. If then my motives for going to Church are bound to be limited expectations I fee free to withdraw without any compunctions if and when my expectations are not met. [238]

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Read the review here.

3. I Write What I Like by Steve Biko

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000Z

Title: I Write What I Like

Author: Steve Biko

Genre: Non-Fiction/Essays/Letters

Publishers: Picador Africa

Pages: 244

Year of First Publication: 1978

Country: South Africa

On January 8, 2012, the African National Congress, the ruling party of South Africa marked its centenary and to celebrate that I decided to read this book. Though Steve Biko ran parallel organisations, The Black Conscious Movement, which was basically to empower blacks to stand for themselves and fight for what they believe in and its political wing the Black Peoples Convention, he has come to symbolise the South Africa's fight against the barbaric and inhuman attitudes meted by the white minority, Boers and even in his writings recognised the ANC has the main group for the old guards like Mandela, Sisulu and others. Thus, instead of talking about Mandela, who is already known, I chose to talk about Steve Biko.

I Write What I Like is a compendium of articles, essays, letters and memoranda by the freedom-fighter-turned-martyr, Bantu Steve Biko. In this collection, put together after his death in police detention in 1977, Steve Biko shares his views and aspirations for a country under apartheid. He visualises and cuts the path that would see blacks move from their lethargic acceptance and grumbling to an energy state where they would see themselves as the only saviours they have and need. As a do-it-yourself person, Steve Biko, early on, saw the struggle against apartheid not as a liberalist fight. For the liberals, mostly white, through no fault of theirs have been born into a system that gives them privileges and rights not earned by any other South African, black or coloured. It is this realisation and his philosophising of the black man's conditions that would become the core of his actions. He saw the liberals as not doing enough to change the status-quo they enjoy, as trying to tell the black man what is good for him.

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. [21]

As a testimony to their claim of complete identification with blacks, they call a few 'intelligent and articulate' blacks to 'come around for tea at home', where all present ask each other the same old hackneyed question 'how can we bring about change in South Africa?' The more such tea-parties one call the more of a liberal he is and the freer he shall feel from guilt that harness and binds his conscience. [23]

The liberal must understand that the days of the Noble Savage are gone; that the blacks do not need a go-between in this struggle for their own emancipation. [27]

Liberal organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) whose executives were mostly white and which push 'no harder' the problems blacks faced were seen as ineffective in the struggle against apartheid. It was only fitting that the first organisation Steve Biko would form would be a Students' organisation, for he saw the lacuna between the old and young black South Africans. Whereas some of the old were afraid to act, were torn between the Bantustan policies that was trying to divide and rule the country by diverting black South African's attention from the fight against apartheid to a struggle amongst themselves, and some were too slow for young, Biko saw an opportunity to bridge this gap. The South African Students' Organistion (SASO) was formed as a platform to address and push problems facing non-white students.

Biko's ideology was to awakened the catatonic soul of the black man that has made him unresponsive to the daily abuse he receives at the hands of the white man in South Africa. He challenged a system that deemed it best to preserve jobs for a certain category of people based on their skin colour. He criticised a system where blacks were deemed to be illiterate even though the system prevented them from receiving proper education. And his expansive knowledge of issues made him walk in and out of courtrooms and trials a happy man even though he received several detentions and bans. He saw the social vices of blacks, like stealing, murder, fighting, sexual promiscuity, not as an inherent or congenital trait - as preached about by the Nationalist party and some Priests - but as a consequence of the system; a system where the influx control or 72-hour clause restricts Africans to a given district and prohibits movement from one district to the other without government permit to last for more than 72 hours.

Again, Biko - though religious in a broader sense of the word - saw the harm that Christianity was causing. According to him, the black man does not find himself in the bible and the preaching does not reflect his situation. He made several statements that highlighted the incongruity between the Christianity the white missionaries brought and the practice of that Christianity. For instance, he bemoaned the daily atrocities meted out to blacks in South Africa and intimated

The anachronism of a well-meaning God who allows people to suffer continually under an obviously immoral system is not lost to young blacks who continue to drop out of Church by the hundreds. [34]

To him the bible must be seen to preach against white supremacy and allow blacks to see the evilness of that system rather than making them 'soul-dead' citizens who are seen to be eternally carrying the cross of Christ, waiting for their reward somewhere in heaven. He writes

The bible must not be seen to preach that all authority is divinely instituted. It must rather preach that it is sin to allow oneself to be oppressed. The bible must continually be shown to have something to say to the black man to keep him going in his journey towards realisation of the self. [34]

It is in view of this that Steve Biko advocated for Black Theology, which according to him

... seeks to depict Jesus as a fighting God who saw the exchange of Roman money - the oppressor's coinage - in His father's temple as so sacrilegious that it merited a violent reaction from Him - the Son of Man. [34]

Because a larger population of the South African society were Christians and because the individual priests - black or white - wield enough power in their communities, Steve Biko avoided antagonising them but rather prep them with what is wrong, to work to awaken the self of the African rather than continuously preaching the of Jesus walking water, among others.

Later, Biko formed the Black Conscious Movement, with its political wing the Black Peoples Convention, whilst still working for the Black Community Programme. With BCP Biko worked with the people to build clinics, to let them know that there is more they can do for themselves. All these were done under the watchful eyes of the security system. There several arrests, several deaths in detentions, several demonstrations and several shootings and deaths.

Steve Biko also fought the Bantustan policy where about 13 percent of the land were given to over 80 percent of South Africa population (the non whites) to form homelands. Though some of the leaders like Gatsha Buthelezi, Lucas Mangope, Kaizer Matanzima accepted and later ruled the Zulu, Tswana, and Transkei territories, Steve saw a divide and rule tactics inherent in the system. He saw how the National Party was fighting to divert the struggle to among the people so that instead a united Azania, Steve's name for South Africa, they would be approaching the struggle as different units of people making it ineffective.

After 101 days in detention under Section 6 of the Terrorism, Biko was again banned and restricted to his locality of King but not before he sent a memorandum to a visiting American diplomat, Senator Dick Clark, on American policy towards South Africa. In it he made some demands; but before those remarks, Steve wrote:

Besides, the sin of omission, America has often been positively guilty of working in the interests of the minority regime to the detriment of the interests of black people. America's foreign policy seems to be guided by a selfish desire to maintain an imperialistic stranglehold on this country irrespective of how the blacks were made to suffer. [159]

His restriction to King meant that he does not talk to not more than one person at a time, that two people in addition to him is a crowd, that his name is not mentioned anywhere that nothing he writes is ever to be read at any place. These were to wipe his name from the minds of the people. But Biko survived it all, including death. In August of 1977 he was arrested and through the usual police brutalities sustained brain injuries. Here the evil of apartheid was seen in all its 'glory'. For after the police had hit his head against the wall he was left, chained to the window grille, to recover so that the interrogation would proceed. On September 11, 1977 he, he was loaded in the back of a police Land Rover, naked and chained and was driven on a 1100-km journey to Pretoria to a prison with hospital facilities. He died on September 12, 1977 at the Pretoria prison.

This version by Picador Africa includes a memoir, Martyr of Hope: A Personal Memoir, by Aelred Stubbs an Anglican Priest Steve had close friendship with, sharing his fears and aspirations and considering him as his father.

Steve's death, at the age of 31, caused international protests leading to the UN arms embargo on South Africa. I Write What I Like was a column Steve Biko wrote in SASO newsletters under the pseudonym of Frank Talk. It is through these writings that he shared his visions. This book is recommended to all those who love international politics, who want to know more about a young man's quest for equality.

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Brief Bio: Bantu Stephen Biko was born in Tylden in the Eastern Cape on the 18 th December 1946, the third child of the late Mathew Mzingaye and Alice Nokuzola “Mamcethe” Biko. He attended primary school in King William's Town and secondary school at Marianhill, a missionary school situated in a town of the same name in KwaZulu-Natal. Steve Biko went on to register for a degree in medicine at the Black Section of the Medical School of the University of Natal in 1966.

Very early in his academic program Biko showed an expansive search for knowledge that far exceeded the realm of the medical profession, ending up as one of the most prominent student leaders. In 1968, Biko and his colleagues founded the South African Students' Organisation (SASO).

With the seeds of Black Consciousness having been sown outside of student campuses, Biko and his colleagues argued for a broader based black political organization in the country. Opinion was canvassed and finally, in July 1972, the Black People's Convention (BPC) was founded and inaugurated in December of the same year. Inspired by Biko's growing legacy the youth of the country at high school level mobilized themselves in a movement that became known as the South African Students Movement (SASM). This movement played a pivotal role in the 1976 Soweto Uprisings, which accelerated the course of the liberation struggle. The National Association of Youth Organizations was also formed in order to cater for the youth more generally. (Read more here)

Rating: 6.0/6.0

SHORT STORY MONDAY: The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000Z

David Medalie's story, The Mistress's Dog, should have been read last year as part of the Caine Prize Shortlist 2009 to 2011 Reading Challenge. I carried it with me but never came around to reading it, perhaps preferring to read the books rather than the single stories or perhaps discouraged by seeming bad taste that I found most of the Caine Prize Shortlist. If any of these was the reason why I failed to complete that challenge last year, then I should have persevered since this is a quite different and hilarious story.

The Mistress's Dog was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011 and was included in the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology To See the Mountain and other stories (2011). However, it was first published in The Mistress's Dog and other stories (1996 - 2010).

The dog had outlived its owner, The Mistress, and was now in the care of Nola. In fact, it had outlived the two individuals who made Nola's life silently difficult, Nola's husband included. And even though she preferred cats to dogs she had been left with this canine whose life and, with time, death she must look after. An animal that reminds her that there is really an end to life, that to every beginning there is an end, which makes her also think about her own end.

The Mistress came from a rural, religious, and poor background but had 'worked' hard to make a career for herself. She was single but not entirely, and her career consisted of working as a secretary to a powerful man and also as his mistress.

She remained single, devoted herself to what she called her 'career' (she was a powerful man's secretary), and had an affair that endured for over a decade with a married man (that same powerful man).

And this powerful man is Nola's husband. And Nola knew. She also knew that The Mistress was far from what she made people believe she was. So that even though people thought her to be beautiful, bold, daring, unconventional, libertarian, and happy - laughing excessively even when it was not warranted - Nola knew otherwise; she knew she was weak and fearful and frightened of being alone even though she flagrantly displayed her independence, which was limited to only marriage as the powerful man provided for all her needs even when they were not seeing each other again.

After thirty years of service with the powerful man, fifteen of which there was an intimate relationship, the man retired with Nola and so too was the single The Mistress, who thought it unwise to work for any other person. Unfortunately, the powerful man left with his wife to Cape Town leaving The Mistress in Johannesburg. Lonely she grew decrepit and moved into a home for the aged. It was during this time that the powerful man, now weak and suffering, begged her wife to take The Mistress's dog into her keep.

All through the novel, man's name is not mentioned and so too was the Mistress's name. The story provides a hilarious and at the same time scathing look at some of the choices and decisions that have become fashionable these days.

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Brief Bio: David Medalie is a South African writer and an academic. He is a professor in the Department of English. His first collection of short stories, The Shooting of Christmas Cows was published in 1990. Prior to its publication it won the Ernst van Heerden Award. His debut novel, The Shadow Follows, was published in 2006. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Award for Best First Book and the M-Net Literary Award. A new collection of short stories The Mistress's Dog was published in 2010. (Read more about him here)

Rating: 5.5/6.0

Quotes for Friday from Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000Z

The fact is that ll this softness is the result of smoke; particles of smoke that hang in the still winter air; smoke from that location that lies between the farm and city. It's a cataract over the fierce eye of the sun; it's even possible, some days, to look straight at the sun as if you are staring at the prism deep in the under-water radiance of a star sapphire. [78]

To keep anything the way you like it for yourself you have to have the stomach to ignore - dead and hidden - whatever intrudes. Those for whom life is cheapest recognise that. [79]

- Oh, compassion's like masturbation. Doesn't do anyone else any harm, and if it makes you feel better ... [98]

- I really don't know why I do. But don't you find the people it's most difficult to make confidences to are the ones who are closest to you? In fact confession is best made to complete strangers. Somebody who gets talking to you on a journey. It's easier with someone you don't know at all. - [106]

What begun as their own passion to be let out had long since become a fierce passion to keep out others. [114]

In the cosy dark of other presences, in the intimacy like the loneliness of the crowd, the feel of flesh is experienced anew, as the taste of water is recognised anew in the desert. [128]

Come to think of it all the earth is a graveyard, you never know when you're walking over heads - particularly this continent, cradle of man, prehistoric bones and the bits of shaped stone (sometimes a plough has actually turned one up) that were weapons and utensils. [148]

You can't get through. You are right, reading the cards on the table; charity's a waste of time, towards man or beast, it only patches up a little bit of pain here and there. [199]

There are kinds of companionship unsought. With nature. Nature accepts everything. Bones, hair, teeth, fingernails and beaks of birds - the ants carry away the last fragment of flesh, small as fibre of meat stuck in a back tooth, nothing is wasted. [200]
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Read a review of the book here.

2. The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer

2012-01-11T07:30:00.000Z

Title: The Conservationist

Author: Nadine Gordimer

Genre: Fiction/Race

Publishers: Penguin Books

Pages: 267

Year of First Publication: 1974

Country: South Africa

Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge

Mehring is rich, divorced and somewhat frustrated and, though he has a lot of highly-placed friends, he feels alienated. He also deals in pig-iron, so he doesn't classify himself as part of the oppressors regarding the use of cheap black labour in the mines. But Mehring has a farm as most rich South Africans do. In the context and setting of the story, rich is synonymous to white. Though Mehring has a farm, he does not run it for profit. He sees the farm as a place to escape to from the city and he knows nothing about farming so that blacks like Jacobus and Solomon and others are the ones who run the farm and these individuals were living on the land before it was purchased from the previous owner.

One day, the body of a black man was found on the farm. Mehring was called and he in turn called the police but because it was a black man, no investigations were conducted and the body was buried on location without any fuss. But when farm got flooded after a heavy downpour, the body was uncovered and the locals on Mehring's farm offered him a befitting burial using materials they could gather or borrow. It is the appearance of the dead black man on his farm that got Mehring thinking of his own death and succession.

Mehring was rich but never happy. His wife had divorced him and lived in the US, speaking to him only through her lawyer, and his son is estranged from him because he wouldn't serve in the military and had perspectives about life different from his father's. Thus, Mehring's riches had fewer spenders. But he also had a peculiar thinking, a kind that has ravaged modern thoughts, that he could obtain everything he wants with his money, including women, sex and love. However, seeing the way the poor black folks live on his farm - and he was considered a conservationist at least by the author because he would not allow anyone to take any wild animal from the farm including eggs laid by the guinea fowls - Mehring began thinking of whom the land he farms really belong to. He also felt lonely so that at one point he had to spend his New Year with the black workers on his farm. He knew that the locals were there before the first purchase, before his predecessor and will be there when he was gone. The land will not be truly his even though he had some papers showing that he had purchased and paid for it. The people's claim to it was ancestral and their attachment to it was not cultivated but connatural.

There'll be dissatisfaction because they were here when he came, they were squatting God knows how long before he bought the place and they'll expect to have their grandchildren squatting long after he's gone. [202]

These were the kinds of thoughts and ruminations, mixed with his own mortality and death, that plagued Mehring in his daily rounds even as he travelled from Japan to South America to Jamaica and back to South Africa and to his farm, making him look like one who was less satisfied with his life than the poor folks were with their poverty. What opened up these wounds was when his workers, especially Jacobus, talk of how his son - Terry - would take over from him after he had finished his school.

With the floods, storms and the destruction of Mehring's farm, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist could be considered a metaphor and interpreted as the conditions that blacks found themselves in. It could also be considered as a premonition of what was to come. For instance, when the storm came, a tiny ditch carrying trickles of water, in normal rainy weather, accumulated so much water as to carry away cars driven two white South Africans:

But who could ever have imagined that the trickle of water that sometimes dried up altogether for months on end so that that gully was nothing more than a culvert full of khaki-weed and beer cartons thrown in by the blacks, the trickle of water that in normally rainy weather was never more than a gout from the big round concrete pipe that contained it under the road, could become a force to carry away a car and its occupants. [235]

In some way, these gathering floods, which forced Mehring to finally abandon his farm and emigrate to 'one of those countries white people go to', could be taken to be the political force that was gathering in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. With this kind of interpretation one will summarise as: the police (white) bearing the authority of the government (white) only covered the dead stranger (black) on a land inhabited by blacks but paid for by whites; but after the floods (political upheavals) the body came up and Mehring (settlers) ran away to wherever he came from in the first place and the people buried their dead because he was one of them in colour and spirit and took over their land.

Using a mix of narrative formats and deliveries, Gordimer told the story from within the mind of Mehring so that we get to know his fears, even when he was only mentally projecting or playing around with it, and his person. In effect Mehring opened up his consciousness, or the author made him to, to the reader without restriction and this is what makes the book not only an interesting read but also a difficult and discomfiting to get around, at one point reading the 'I', at another 'You', at other places the omniscient takes over. The denser and seemingly impregnable nature makes the reader uncomfortable mentally and physically, as if one is crumpling under a burden and which he cannot also set aside.

The Conservationist was a joint winner of the 1974 Man-Booker Prize.

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Brief Bio: Nadine Gordimer (born 20, November 1923) is a South African writer and political activist. She is the daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer. She has lived all her life, and continues to live, in South Africa. Gordimer's writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organisation was banned. She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes.

As a writer she was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman 'who through her magnificent epic writing has - the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity'. Her principal works include A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter, July's People, A sport of Nature, My Son's Story, None to Accompany Me, Jump, Why Haven't you Written: Selected Stories 1950-1972, The Essential Gesture, On Mines and The Black Interpreters. (Sources: Wikipedia & Nobel Prize)

ImageNations: 5.0/6.0

SHORT STORY MONDAY: Joshua Ferris and Jonathan Safran Foer

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000Z

Officially, I am replacing Proverb Monday - after a year and 56 posts- with Short Story Monday hosted by The Book Mine Set. This is meant to monitor and motivate me to read the 100 short stories Kinna and I had set for ourselves.

Today's set of stories are from The New Yorker June 14 & 21 2010. This Literary edition of the magazine features eight short stories from eight of magazines 20 under 40 lists. The forty includes some authors as Chimamanda Adichie, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, Phillip Meyer, John Ferris, ZZ Packer, Tea Obreht, C.E. Morgan, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum among others. I will be reviewing two of the eight short stories today. I will use this feature as an introduction to several authors I have never read before.

The Pilot by Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris's The Pilot is a story about a screenwriter recovering from alcoholism. Lawrence Himshell has tasted success before however excessive alcohol intake has seen him fall from grace, losing some friends and now shares an apartment with a workaholic musician. Whilst working on a TV series The Pilot which will see him hit top form just as Kate Lotvelt has done with her Death in the Family series he is also shooting commercials in cheap (or tax-friendly) studios. His anxiety is heightened and he becomes jittery when he receives an email from Kate Lotvelt, addressed to her ex-husband and blind-copied, inviting him to a party. After having responded to the message and receiving no response to his response, he began to think that perhaps it was a mistake and that he was not invited; that Kate had had a contact mishap and was not actually inviting him. His anxiety grew, his desperation increased, he felt lonely, insecure and inferior. Should he go to the party? If yes, should he go alone or should he invite his roommate? Dithering on the choice - to go or not to go - he finally settled on going but not with his friend. Yet, he invited him and he turned him down. He thought everyone had forgotten about him, no one remembers him - even though her mother had been calling him everyday for almost two years as part of his therapy.

At the party, Lawrence was happy to find that he was really invited and that there are those who were interested in his project - The Pilot. Then there was a drink, then another, and another. Yet, it was here that Lawrence found providence, hope, and the confidence to begin all over again even after his manuscript got burnt.

Like most short stories, there is a lot going on here but the author condenses them for the reader to unravel because in this genre of fiction writing, every word is important, like poetry.

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Here we aren't, so Quickly by Jonathan Safran Foer

The narrative style used by Safran Foer in this story is unique. It reads almost like poetry. It has cadence and was almost written metrically though I thought that had the story being slightly longer than this - that is, a long short story - the reader will have become burdened with the read. As an example of what I mean, this is the first paragraph of the story:

I was not good at drawing faces. I was just joking most of the time. I was not decisive in changing rooms or anywhere. I was so late because I was looking for flowers. I was just going through a tunnel whenever my mother called. I was not able to tell if compliments were backhanded. I was not as tired as I said.

And in this similar pattern, using short, cryptic sentences mixing the first person singular with the second person and then the first person plural, Jonathan Safran Foer tells the story of man who reflecting upon his life with his wife after so many years of marriage. He tells of all the good, the bad, the ugly, the things he should have done but didn't, his fears, his shortcomings, his observations of her, the things they did together, the challenges they faced, how they met. And the geriatric related changes. The story moves gradually and progressively, from when they met till now, aged and weak with a child who had married and left home. It's like a reel of cinematic still-pictures rolling on a white calico.

Both stories were interesting and both authors are new to me. With these I hope to test their more larger works of fiction.

Remembering Steve Biko as ANC Celebrates its Centenary

2012-01-08T13:29:00.000Z

Steve Biko

As the African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its 100th anniversary, it is time for us to reflect on what they have achieved. However, I am less prepared to do a report today. I came across this article which might me of interest to those who want to know of the least-talked about student of South Africa's struggle against white supremacist rule (or apartheid) as the West looked on, supporting the government of the day in trade whilst murmuring their opposition against segregation and oppression. What history has thought us, and which most Africans still don't want to accept it, is that the West is never after true democracy. They are only after governments that will work in their interest. If such a government happens to be a dictator, like Saddam in the early 80s, good or like Mubarak, until his overthrow, better. They have words to describe every scenario. Yet, I won't talk much. Read this article about Steve Biko, the student leader who became a thorn in the flesh of the apartheid government until his capture, torture, and eventual death in captivity.

"The likes of Steve Biko were a bigger threat, as leaders like him denounced the regime for what it really was: a white supremacist dictatorship. It is thus that one should understand why they were so keen on silencing a local student leader with moderate demands for racial justice. Indeed, Steve Biko was “just” a student leader, cofounder of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO), later to become the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Barely 25 years old, he was “banned” for speaking out."

Read the full story here. I will celebrate ANC's 100th anniversary by reading Biko's book I write what I Like. This edition, published by Picador Africa, contains a memoir of the man, activist and hero, titled Martyr of Hope: A Personal Memoir by Aelred Stubbs.

The ANC itself became a terrorist organisation and was blacklisted by the United States of America. In fact, until 2008 Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa was on the list of American terrorists.

About Steve Biko: Steve Biko was born in Tylden, Eastern Cape, South Africa on December 18, 1946. As a medical student, he founded a black student organisation in 1969 and created a national 'black consciousness' movement. The movement's aim was to combat racism and the South African apartheid government. He was banned in 1973, which prohibited him from speaking in public, writing for publication and any travel.

Biko was arrested by police on August 18, 1977 and died on September 12, 1977 in police detention, naked and manacled from extensive brain damage. Read more about him here.

Quotes for Friday from Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter

2012-01-06T07:30:00.000Z

One does not fix appointments with fate. Fate grasps whom it wants, when it wants. [1]

Again, I think: heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, ridiculous weapons against the divine will. [2]

Standing upright, her eyes meeting my disapproving look, she mutters between teeth reddened by cola nuts: 'Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been' [8]

Each profession, intellectual or manual, deserves consideration, whether it requires painful physical or manual dexterity, wide knowledge or the patience of an ant. Ours, like that of the doctor, does not allow for any mistake. You don't joke with life, and life is both body and mind. To warp a soul is as much a sacrilege as murder. [23/24]

You don't burn the tree which bears the fruit. [32]

The play of destiny remains impenetrable. The cowries that a female neighbour throws on a fan in front of me do not fill me with optimism, neither when they remain face upwards, showing the black hollow that signifies laughter, nor when the grouping of their whites seem to say that 'the man in the double trousers' is coming towards me. [42]

A woman is like a ball; once a ball is thrown, no one can predict where it will bounce. You have no control over where it rolls, and even less over who gets it. Often it is grabbed by an unexpected hand ... [42]

Whereas a woman draws from the passing years the force of her devotion, despite the ageing of her companion, a man, on the other hand, restricts his field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his partner's shoulder. He compares what he had with what he no long has, what he has with what he could have. [42]

To overcome distress when it sits upon you demands strong will. When one thinks that with each passing second one's life is shortened, one must profit intensely from this second; it is the sum of all the lost or harvested seconds that makes for a wasted or a successful life. Brace oneself to check despair and get it into proportion! A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in distress. Little by little, it takes over your whole being. [43]

Friendship has splendours that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love. [56]

Aggression and condescension in a woman arouse contempt and hatred for her husband. If she is gracious, even without appealing to any ideology, she can summon support for any action. In a word, a man's success depends on feminine support. [59]

You don't fell the tree whose shade protects you. You water it. You watch over it. [69]

You can feed your stomach as well as you please; it will still provide for itself without your knowing. [81]

One is a mother to lighten the darkness. One is a mother to shield when lightning streaks the night, when thunder shakes the earth, when mud bogs one down. One is a mother in order to love without beginning or end. [87]

The success of the family is born of a couple's harmony, as the harmony of multiple instruments creates a pleasant symphony. [94]

The nation is made up of all the families, rich or poor, united or separated, aware unaware. The success of a nation therefore depends inevitably on the family. [94]

_______________

Read the review here

1. So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000Z

Title: So Long a Letter*

Author: Mariama Bâ
Translator: Madupe Bode-Thomas

Genre: Fiction

Publishers: African Writers Series Classics
Original Language: French

Pages: 97

Year of First Publication: 1979

Country: Senegal

Mariama Bâ's epistolary novella, So Long a Letter, voted as one of the best African books in the twentieth Century, is a commentary on Senegal's, and by extension Africa's, patriarchal society and the role of tradition and customs in maintaining and perpetuating the status quo. To some extent, the novella also portrays certain inherent weaknesses in some women when faced with the opportunity to finally take flight. It also opens up such feminist topics as polygamy, providing a different angle to the old story from a woman's perspective. Consequently, it has been described in some quarters as the first African feminist book and the author's overt use of 'New African Woman', 'Independence', 'Liberation' and similes and metaphors of similar meanings might have spurred this explicit description.

Ramatoulaye, the protagonist, is writing to inform her childhood friend, Aissatou, of the death of her husband, Modou. The writing of the letter itself - a cascade of past pleasures and present pain collected through a selective process to assuage her present predicament - and its sharing are part of Ramatoulaye's personal therapy, regarding Aissatou as someone with whom she shares similar fate after Aissatou had gone through and come out of the other end of the mills and ills of marriage - divorce - a better woman.

As the letter unfolds we get to know the exact causes of her pains, the extent of her suffering in the last five years of marriage until Modou's eventual death and the botheration she was going through even after his death from his family members stealing the family's properties to his brother proposing marriage at his brother's funeral. Ramatoulaye's husband of twenty years (at the time) had married their daughter's best friend, Binetou, leaving her to her fate and shirking all responsibilities as a husband and a father of a dozen children. But the major question or problem Mariama Bâ tends to answer with the Ramatoulaye character was her decision to remain married to a man who had, for all intents and purposes, 'divorced' her whilst at the same time describing herself as part of the new breed of African women. Was it because she was afraid of betraying the course after rejecting her mother's choice of a husband and going ahead with her marriage to Modou, because she was a 'New African Woman', or was because of those inherent fears she hinted upon in the text?

All through the narrative, explicit statements were made about the turning away from the old patriarchal society of the West African country (and West Africa in general) to one where everyone would have equal rights and access. And Ramatoulaye was one its proponents. She was politically-aware, a working mother, and a feminist revolution advocate, rejecting all suitors during and after he husband's funeral, including her Modou's elder brother. Yet, some of her decisions seemed to run counter to her preach. For instance, though she argued against the all-male National Assembly she would not enter politics. But most importantly, it was her stated reasons for not divorcing her husband which are difficult to accept:

Leave? Start again at zero, after living twenty-five years with one man, after having borne twelve children? Did I have enough energy to bar alone the weight of responsibility, which was both moral and material? [41]

And as a show of solidarity with Aissatou, she says:

Even though I understand your stand, even though I respect the choice of liberated women, I have never conceived happiness outside marriage. [58]

Yet, Ramatoulaye brought up her children liberally; making them choose their own husbands and throwing some part of her people's culture - both behavioural and institutional - away and setting her children up for the consequences of her decisions. Daba, the first child and former best friend of her father's new bride, was to build upon her mother's legacy. Her vision of marriage was totally different from that of her mother. She saw marriage as a

[M]utual agreement over a life's programme. So if one of the partners is no longer satisfied with the union, why should he remain? ... The wife can take the initiative to make the break. [77]

Whilst Daba was absorbing her mother's experiences and training and turning them into her own life philosophies, her other sisters were trailing other paths. Even then, Ramatoulaye would not resort to the 'normal' modes of correction. Especially when Aissatou (not the recipient of the letter) got pregnant she accepted the man responsible instead of reprimanding her, as suggested by her neighbour. Her focus to stay the course was once again threatened when she caught her twin daughters smoking in their room, after she had decided not to invade their privacy. And for those Western culture she did not agree with (such as the kind of fashion that was in vogue at the time), she was made to accept them, so that in someway her evolution was aided by her children:

I considered the wearing of trousers dreadful in view of our build, which is not that of slim Western women. Trousers accentuate the ample figure of the black woman and further emphasize the curve of the small of the back. But I gave in to the rush towards this fashion, which constricted and hampered instead of liberating. [80]

Was the use of 'constricted' four words away from 'liberating' - and in the same descriptive sentence - symbolical? Could this be interpreted as a warning against absolute cultural osmosis instead of selective cultural borrowing?

Another point of note is that even though the women in Mariama Bâ's story were Muslims they were all against polygamy. Regarding Ramatoulaye, one finds it difficult if it was the second marriage that made her bitter or her husband's treatment. In all three scenarios of polygamy (Ramatoulaye and Modou; Aissatou and Mawdo; and Jacqueline and Samba Diack) the husband's treatment of the first wives, after taking on another wife, was appalling resulting in emotional distress, divorce and nervous breakdown and subsequent death, respectively, for all the women involved.

Using climatic and geological metaphors that rings of 'tropical storms' and 'earthquake' respectively, Ramatoulaye provided a fitting end to her final transformation when she confirmed that she is not

[I]ndifferent to the irreversible currents of women's liberation that are lashing the world. This commotion that is shaking up every aspect of our lives reveals and illustrates our abilities. [93]

empahsising again the equality between the two genders. This statement defines or summarises all the major issues Ramatoulaye discussed in her letter.

Finally, like most stories written from the first person perspective, there were several events that she definitely couldn't have known had she not been told by another but no such claims were made. Again I find the description of another character's emotion by a protagonist in a 'first-person' narrative very difficult to believe, if not handled properly. However, all in all this was an interesting story and one I enjoyed reading.
___________________
Brief Bio: Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was born into a well-to-do family in Dakar, where she grew up. In the newly independent Senegal, Bâ's father became one of the first ministers of state. After Bâ's mother died, she was raised in the traditional manner by her maternal grandparents. Her early education she received in French, while at the same time attending Koranic school. At school Bâ was a prominent student. During the colonial period and later, girls faced a number of obstacles when they wanted to have a higher education. Bâ's grandparents did not plan to educate her beyond primary school, but her father's insistence on giving her an opportunity to continue her studies eventually prevailed. She won the first prize in the entrance examination and entered the Ecole Normale de Rufisque, a teacher training college near Dakar. During this period she published her first book. It was non-fiction and dealt with colonial education in Senegal. At school she also wrote an essay, which created a stir for its rejection of French policies in Africa. However, later in life Bâ recalled her experience with the French colonial educational system in a positive way. Bâ married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children. (Source)
____________________
*The last book read in 2011

100 Shots of Shorts

2012-01-04T08:15:00.000Z

This page collects all the short/single stories read in the year (January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012) for the 100 shots of Short challenge. The short stories have been grouped according to their source and would be updated as and when they are read.

The New Yorker (June 14 and 21, 2010): This literary magazine provides short stories from the New Yorker's 20 Under 40.

The Pilot by Joshua Ferris
Here We Aren't, So Quickly by Jonathan Safran Foer
What You Do Out Here, When You're Alone by Philipp Meyer
The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fired by Rivka Galchen

Cain Prize for African Writing Shortlist

The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie (2011 Shortlist)
Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo (2011 Shortlist)

Proverb Monday, #56 - A Year After

2012-01-02T07:30:00.000Z

It has been a year since I started this series. Over the years interests, in terms of comments and clicks, have decreased over time; however, I persisted. I decided some time ago to do away with it. I don't know exactly what I am going to replace it with but I do know that today's proverb, the fifty-sixth, could be the last on this blog. Thanks to all who visited, read, and/or commented. I appreciate your dedication. On a second thought, I think creating content for those who would be searching Ghanaian proverbs would not be a bad idea. So that even though traffic might be low today, it might be good for other researchers.

Proverb: Onipa bεyε bi, na w'amεyε ne nyinaa

Translation: A person came to do his part, but not to do all

Context: You can only do your part and that's what is most important.

Reading Projections for 2012

2012-01-01T01:00:00.000Z

Source

I have already reviewed my readings in 2011. This post deals with my reading projections for 2012. Broadly, I don't expect anything to change from last year regarding the types of books I read: the challenges began last year and years before will continue. However, to help expand my reading and push myself, I will join one or two other challenges; one or two because challenges could be disincentive to reading when they become too taxing.

Old Challenges

To begin with, my Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, which is in its fourth* third year this year and only about 30 percent complete, will continue. I will merge my Africa Reading Challenge with the new one Kinna will be organising so that the rules that I will apply will come from Kinna. Thus, officially my ARC challenge has ended. There are only about two or three stories left on the Caine Prize Shortlist reading challenge. These short stories together with the new shortlist that will be coming out this year will be part of the 100 Shots of Short Stories Kinna has been running for some time now. Finally, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa Region Winners Reading Project, a long term reading project, will also go on as usual.

New Challenges

70 Books Reading Challenge

The first challenge I signed onto this year was to read 70 books this year (excluding single stories but including anthologies). This challenge came about through a twitter conversation with Kinna, where I confessed that I wasn't able to meet my target of 60 this year. We've challenged each other to read approximately 6 books per month to meet this new target.

100 Shots of Short Stories

The next challenge is the 100 shots of short stories. Kinna has been running this challenge for sometime and I decided to join in this year. I've had a copy of The Best American Short Stories for 2004 for close to two years and this is how I want to deal with it. Again, the Caine Prize for African Writing shortlist will be read for this challenge also. Furthermore, I will use the internet a lot. This challenge will help me forage into authors whose works remain a virgin to me, most especially the Lusophone writers such as Macheda, recommended to me by Wuthering Expectations. If the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize release the shortlist, I would read them for this challenge.

Africa Reading Challenge

As already explained, Kinna will be hosting this challenge. She will speak more about it on her page. It's simply to help us read more writers on the continent.

Non-Reading Changes

Last year my writing suffered severely; I wrote little poetry including haiku, which means that my Haiku from Ghana blog suffered. This year I will work to develop a writing attitude - that early morning writing that writers are fond of using. I want to do more of short-story writing and this will require dedication. To ensure that my reading does not suffer, I'll be watching less and less TV to free up some time for reading and writing.

I thank all my readers and those who comment for making 2011 a happy year here at ImageNations. I hope 2012 will even be better. ImageNations will continue to read more of African-authored books, irrespective of the popularity of the author. If things work out properly and I am not disappointed as I was in 2011, I will bring you interviews with authors.

Welcome to 2012.
___________________
Upon further check I realised that the challenge officially began in October 27, 2009; hence it's in its third year

2011 in Review

2011-12-30T07:30:00.000Z

Source

Once again, the year has come to an end and bookish individuals will be taking stock of what transpired within the 365 days we had. But before we can conclude on whether this year has been successful, we must, as a matter of importance, relate our goals at the beginning of the year to what actually happened: Projections vs Actuals, as most Monitoring and Evaluation Officers do. However, I will first review my readings the month of December.

December in review
I read three books and suspended one in December. The objective for November was to play catch-up by reading enough books on my Top 100 Books Reading Challenge. It started well with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: a novel about race relations in America's south told from the point of view of the nine-year old Jean Louise Finch, daughter of a lawyer appointed to defend a black man - Tom Robinson - in an alleged rape case, which people know to be fault but are not prepared to pronounce one of their own guilty, which if done would be to put the slave above the master, no matter how weak the master's case is. The next book was DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little. This is a story about reality TV, teen murder, materialism, and our sense of justice. After this, I picked Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner and for more than two weeks I crawled slowly, trying to grasp Faulkner's delivery, attempting to crack it open. And still finding the doors tightly shut. At 150 pages I suspended the read and promised to pick it up in the new year. I don't easily give up on books and I have never abandoned a book so this will not be the first. The problem I had with the book is the preternaturally long sentences and the repetition of events. I picked the novella So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. This epistolary story tells the life of a recently widowed woman, Ramatoulaye, who was rejected by his husband after about twenty-five years of marriage. In this letter to her friend, she informs her of the various problems she has gone through, pitching custom against modernity.

Projections made for 2011

In my 2011 Welcome Note, I tagged this year The Year of Reading and entreated those who are not reading-friendly as some of us are to take three books they have heard of which tickles their interest and go through them slowly. If anyone took this unasked for advice, they would have read three books this year.

At ImageNations, though not stated, I decided to read five books per month - sixty by December 31. I also widened my reading coverage and promised to read more books from different countries in Africa through the Africa Reading Challenge. Catching up on the Top 100 Books was also mentioned.

What happened in 2011 regarding my goals

I was four short of the total number of books - I read 56 instead of 60, not counting single stories that are not part of an anthology such as the Caine Prize Shortlists. However, I am upping my determination again this year with Kinna of Kinna Reads (more of this in my 2012 Outlook). However, I read 12 single stories, making a total of 68.

The Africa Reading Challenge was very helpful. In fact I read a total of 20 books from 13 different countries including: Cote d'Ivoire (Veronique Tadjo), Kenya (Ngugi wa Thiong'o), Angola (Pepetela and Jose Eduardo Agualusa), Egypt (Alifa Rifaat), Malawi (Jack Mapanje) and Mozambique (Mia Couto and Lilia Momple). Other countries include Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Uganda, Cameroon, Namibia, Senegal and Gabon. According to geographic coordinates there were three from East Africa, one from North Africa, five from South Africa (not the country), two from Central Africa, one from South Eastern Africa and two from West Africa.

Regarding the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, prior to 2011 I had read a total of fourteen (14) books out of the projected 100. Though the remainder is still high and would require extraordinary effort to go through them, I read a total of 15 books this year. Another reason is that about 63 percent of the books on this challenge list are books authored by non-Africans.

Details of my readings

I am using the meme I used in 2010 to summarise my readings in 2011; changes will be made where necessary to fit the year under review.

How many books did you read in 2011?

I read a total of fifty-six (56) - twenty-six more than last year - and twelve (12) single stories. Including double counting (a non-fiction could be a work of translation) the following are the categories according to the genres (in addition to the single stories): Short Story Anthologies: 4; Non-Fiction: (10); Novels - pages greater than 150: 28; Novellas - 150 pages or less: 8; Translations: 10; Plays: 2; Children Stories: 1.

How many did you review?

I reviewed all the books I read in 2011 except Weep not Child, which I've reviewed one of its theme before I read it for the third time and So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba, which I'll be reviewing in the new year.

How many of the books read were on the Top 100?

I read a total of fifteen books on my Top 100 Books reading challenge. This is about two times the number read for the combined years of 2009 and 2010.

How many fiction and non-fiction?

As already stated, my non-fiction books (10) forms 15% of the total number of books read.

Male-Female Ratio

The year began very good on this. It was almost 50-50 at a point in time. However, it has skewed again, though better than last year. Thirty-five percent (or 24 books) of all my reads (including single stories) were authored by women and sixty-three percent (or 43 books) were authored by men. One percent (1) was mixed - an anthology of both sexes.

Favourite book of 2011

I have already discussed this here.

Least favourite

Not exactly a book but some of the Caine Prize shortlists, which were in the category of single stories, did not interest me. Their subject matter were predictable and the narrator is almost always a young individual as if the recipe for a good story has just been discovered in from an Einstein-like mathematical experiments.

Any that you simply couldn't finish and why?

Perhaps Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom will fit here, though I plan to pick it up in the new year, after all it is on my list of 100 books to be read and they must all be read. The reasons for its apparent abandonment has just been given.

Oldest Novel

The oldest (in terms of publication date) was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), this is followed by Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895).

Newest Novel

I read four books that were published in 2011: Accra! Accra! More Poems about Modern Africans by Papa Kobina Ulzen; A Sense of Savannah: Tales of a Friendly Walk through Northern Ghana by Kofi Akpabli; Look Where You Have Gone to Sit edited by Martin Egblewogbe and Laban Carrick Hill; and Tickling the Ghanaian: Encounters with Contemporary Ghanaian Culture by Kofi Akpabli. However, if the months are taken into account the latter will be the newest.

Longest and shortest title?

Longest: Tickling the Ghanaian: Encounters with Contemporary Ghanian Culture by Kofi Akpabli.
Shortest: 1984 by George Orwell and Mema by Daniel Mengara.

Longest and shortest books?

The biggest book in terms of pages was Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (639) and the least paged book is Accra! Accra! More Poems about Modern Africans by Papa Kobina Ulzen at only 28 pages.

Most read author of the year and how many books by the read was read?

The most read author was Ngugi wa Thiong'o. I read three of his books: The River Between; A Grain of Wheat; and Weep not Child.

Any re-reads?

Yes. I read Weep not Child for the third time.

Favourite character of the year?
Though I have favourite character in my spreadsheet for every story read comparing them is a problem. It means I have to be able to recollect why each character is loved and this means I have to recall all their characteristics and actions. A difficult job. However, I will randomly select Stephen Kumalo in Cry, the Beloved Country for African books and Sethe and Denver in Beloved for non-African authored books. The least favourite characters were all in one novel: Heathcliff, Mrs Catherine Earnshaw and Mrs Dean all in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Which countries did you go to through the pages in your reading?

I went to Kenya, Angola, Egypt, Malawi, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Uganda, Zululand, Cameroon, Namibia, Gabon, Nigeria, South Africa, Britain, America, Cuba, Gabon, Kangan (fictional), and Senegal.

Which book wouldn't you have read without someone's recommendation?
Geosi of Geosi reads encouraged me to take up Benjamin Kwakye's books of which I read two this year: The Clothes of Nakedness and The Other Crucifix.

Which author was new to you in 2011 that you now want to read the entire works of?

Lewis Nkosi. His Underground People jumped onto my all-time favourite list.

Which books are you annoyed you didn't read?

A lot of them but will shift them to 2012.

Did you read any book you have always been meaning to read?

Yes. To Kill a Mockingbird and Nervous Conditions.

Proverb Monday, #55

2011-12-26T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Yεnim sε nkyene yε dε; nanso yε kɔ dwa so a, yε tɔ mako

Meaning: We know that salt is sweet; yet if we go to the market we buy pepper.

Context: Functions are different and so are needs.

No. 4364 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

As Friends Share their Favourite Reads of 2011, #FavBook2011

2011-12-24T05:30:00.000Z

Source

After sharing my Favourite Reads of 2011 I turned to my friends to share theirs with ImageNations through the Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus platforms. The handler on Twitter was #FavBook2011. There were no rules except that the book(s) should have been read in 2011. The following were the books shared. The objective of this sharing exercise is to encourage others to read.

The first person to respond to this call was Novisi Dzitre who blogs at Novisi. He is a Blogger, Technology Geek (though he might not accept this), Writer, a Friend and a Great Controversialist. Novisi chose Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Weep not Child and A Grain of Wheat as his favourite books of 2011. It is not every time that an author gets to enjoy this position in a reader's life. If you haven't tried anything yet by Ngugi, you should start from the first of these books.

Obed Sarpong of Ready to Chew, a Radio Broadcast Journalist and Writer, selected the Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I have not yet foraged into the world of Russo-Lit yet. Perhaps, a properly structured challenge could help remedy this.

Courage Ahiati blogs at Courage's Melting Pot. He describes himself as a Political Scientist by profession and a Writer by birth. As a writer Courage loves to read and he selected Benito Mussolini's biography The Duce written by Richard Collier and James Michener's The Covenant as his favourite books of 2011.

Dedicated book bloggers are a few in Ghana and Kinna of Kinna Reads is one of them. She reads wide and could, if challenged, name at least a writer from every country. When asked for her favourite book(s) for 2011, the Reader, Reviewer, Feminist and Follower of African Politics, selected Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna and Fly away Peter by David Malouf.

Bembga Nyakuma of Renditions is one of my virtual friends, thanks to twitter just like many on this list. Bembga describes himself as an Outlier, Writer and a Gentleman, at least that is what is Twitter Page says. He chose Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.

I found Shannon of Reading has a Purpose's blog on my daily blog surfing through other people's reading list - this is how I follow blogs. She loves to read and her preferred genre is non-fiction because of what knowledge and facts it ends up giving to the reader. When Shannon selected George W. Bush's Decision Points as her favourite book for 2011 she added 'seriously' to the tweet.

Comrade Casca Amanquah Hackman shared his books on facebook. The first was Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love, the only book that was selected by two different individuals, no wonder it won the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Comrade's second book does not come from any Communist or Socialist country. It is Moo by Jane Smiley.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell was Tendai Huchu's selection. Tendai Huchu is the author of The Hairdresser of Harare. This is one of the benefits of book blogging - getting to interact with the writers themselves. Thanks TH for your contribution.

If there is any blogger who keeps me from falling, it is Amy McKie of Amy Reads. Amy is a voracious reader, blogger and a member of my virtual friends. She provided me with some of the books I needed to complete my Reading Challenge. Amy selected Sarah Ladipo Manyika's In-Dependence, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and African Love Stories edited by Ama Ata Aidoo.

These are the few individuals who shared their books with me. Thanks to you all for participating in this first ever 'friends share their favourite reads'. I have been reminded to read some books.
____________________

Note: some of these links lead to amazon.com.

ImageNations' Favourite Books of 2011

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000Z

Source: Penguin

The year 2011 saw me read more more than twice the total number of books and single stories I read in 2010 (the actual review of the year's activities will be published on this blog somewhere on 31st December or early January, 2012). This post presents some of my favourite books read in 2011 and not necessarily books published in 2011. I usually don't get that kind of luxury embedded in reading books just as they are published.

Reading a large number of books presents one major problem: choosing the favourite ones. To avoid this problem I decided to settle on six for each of the two categories: African-authored books and Non-African-authored books. No further classification such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry and others were considered as not enough books were read in some of these and would endanger this exercise.

African-authored Books: This blog is mostly about promoting African Literature. African Literature here is defined as any literary output written by an African and the African is somewhat loosely defined. I am yet to face some difficulty in its use. For instance, I consider all the works Coetzee produced pre-migration as African books. Perhaps, I might consider is post-migration books as Australian. Like I said, I'm yet to face such a difficulty.

A Question of Power by Bessie Head. This is a book that can confuse the reader. It reflects the author's state of mind at the time of her writing and all through her life. It's a difficult read and trying to figure out all that happened requires careful reading. The margin between reality and dream or visions or the surreal is very thin and Bessie did a good job confusing the reader. This book is almost autobiographical. No author I've read investigates the ticking of the mind as Bessie Head has done in this book. This will be a good introduction for those who haven't yet read her.

Underground People by Lewis Nkosi. Underground People satirises one-man's fight against Apartheid in South Africa. It does so by keeping the struggle serious but finding within it some elements that provide good laughter. This is what I said about the novel: "The uniqueness of Lewis Nkosi's Underground People lies in its beautiful, fast-reading, tension-building prose. And his ability to satirise South Africa's apartheid system whilst keeping its seriousness, its human suffering closer to the reader.

A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. A Grain of Wheat has been noted as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's best novel. It was voted as one of the Best 100 African Books in the Twentieth Century by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. As the third published novel, A Grain of Wheat embodies distillates from Ngũgĩ's two previous novels: Weep Not Child (1964) and The River Between (1965). In this story, the fight for independence, started in Weep not Child and The River Between converges and hints of elitism, greed, and discrimination against the independence fighters that blossomed into the novel Matigari had just begun.

The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye. Benjamin Kwakye's novel The Clothes of Nakedness is a compelling narrative directed at a Ghanaian audience, in particular. It reveals the economic hardships existing in our society; it also reveals the intricately woven relationships between the rich and the poor and how the 'seemingly' rich manipulate the poor to further that wealth-dom in this dual economic society where absolute riches exist side by side with abject poverty. The latter scenario is even more stark and pathetic if one knows that Nima and Kanda Estates, two neighbourhoods presented in the story, are real and not just fictional representation made concrete by Kwakye's brilliant mind.

Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe. In this very unique novel, Achebe treats the issue of despots, male chauvinism and power from a rather different and unexpected perspective. He opens up the struggles that goes on behind the power scenes and how easily an innocent, generally good individual could easily transmogrify into an absolutely demented despot.

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism is a step by step guide to unveiling, exposing, denuding, the factors, individuals, countries, and corporations working against Africa's development and unity. From chapters such as Africa's Resources, Obstacles to Economic Progress, Imperialist Finance, Monopoly Capitalism and the American Dollar, The Truth Behind the Headlines, The Oppenheimer Empire, The Diamond Groups, Mining Interests in Central Africa, Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, Economic Pressures in the Congo Republic, The Mechanisms of Neo-Colonialism, among others, Nkrumah sought to make the world know the kind of forces we are facing as Africans (and non-Africans) on the path towards development (and the people that rule our world).

Non-African Authored Book: Most of the non-African-authored books were mostly on my Top 100 Reading Challenge. Though this blog is mainly for the Promotion of African Literature I do read wider. This list is not in any particular order.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is a story set in the early nineteenth England in the town of Hertfordshire where five sisters lived, each with a different aspiration and disposition. Jane is servile, humble, quick to agree and forgive and almost never judges. Elizabeth, around whom the majority of the story is told is the thinking and cautious type. She does not easily submit to rules without questioning them. Mary is almost a recluse and played a minor role in the novel. Always learning, one can easily judge her to be suffering from an inferiority complex. The two others: Lydia and Catherine (or Kitty) are frivolous - acting without thinking of the effects of their actions.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. In Beloved Toni Morrison expanded the possibilities of the fiction genre from that which she created in Song of Solomon. She redefined the boundaries, broadening the horizon so as to write a story of stellar attribute with depth, passion, and a sensibility no other writer can express except Morrison. It is as if the words, scenes, sentences, speech and sense-making were being drawn from a well she only could see the bottom

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale is an imaginative dystopian about a fictional world; a place where all rhetorics about women's place in the world are realised. It is also a world that has been lived before. In this novel, Atwood relied on all that had been said and is being said about women and what they should and shouldn't do. In the fictional world of Gilead, the constitutional government of the United States had been overthrown; its place place taken by Gilead, a state based on the Christian teachings and its purpose for women.

1984 by George Orwell. 1984 is perhaps the greatest work of English Author, Essayist, Journalist and Political and Literary Critic, Eric Arthur Blair, writing under the pseudonym George Orwell. This 'futuristic' dystopian book is more of a prophecy than a novel. It is everything but fiction.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, The Kite Runner could easily pass as the best non-African authored book I've read this year, if not for 1984. The novel tracks the life and friendship of two individuals, Amir - the son of a Kabul merchant - and Hassan, the child of their servant, Ali as they grow in the affluent suburb of Wazir Akbar Khan District of Kabul. As their friendship unfolds, the history of a land that has been plagued by local and international wars unfolds. In fact, it is this very wars, leading to the overthrow of monarchs and governments, that dictated how the friendship between these two individuals went. Yet, the precursor of all the events is the age old tradition or practice of discrimination based on physical features.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a beautiful and innocent book that mirrors the conscience of a people. It belongs to the group of a few books, including Morrison's Beloved and Song of Solomon, that investigate our common mentality, query our attitudes and unapologetically point to our internal failings as humanity. Those books that slowly furl man's animalistic masque, a masque that creates a dissociation between thought and words so that we could think one thing and act entirely in the opposite direction or even a dichotomy of thoughts - one for the thinker and his or her coterie and the other for the Others, masques which further create a diametric self in an already dual personality. One might say a Jekyll and Hyde personality, had it not been described as a cliched phrase. However, what makes Harper Lee's book different from these few others in this sub-genre is the protagonist, nine-year old Jean Louise Finch or Scout. A young precocious girl who doesn't take everything as given but who asks questions, demands answers and ask further questions where issues are not clearer to her.

Introducing Fred McBagonluri's New Book, Harvest of Jenes

2011-12-21T10:23:00.001Z

Last year, I introduced to you Fred McBagonluri. In an interview he granted ImageNations he stated that his books - Harvest of Jenes and Flames of Will - were in advanced stages of completion. In fact, the former was schedule for release in December 2010; unfortunately, this was not to be. I am, however, happy to inform you that Harvest of Jenes has been published and available for purchase on amazon.

Dr. McBagonluri was a former employee of Siemens Hearing Solutions and headed the Research and Development department of the company. He was voted in 2008 as the Most Promising Black Engineer of the Year and in that same year won the New Jersey State Healthcare Business Innovator Hero Award. He is a co-inventor for three issued US patents. Currently, he is a Sloan Fellow at MIT. (Continue reading here)

About Harvest of Jenes (from Amazon): The encounter was brief and at first benign. It portended some sort of effortless bliss. The repercussions, however, lasted a lifetime. Indeed, when our principles encounter reality, the confluence of that encounter remains fuzzy. It was lust the first time, love the second time and lies forever. Her succulence found potential in the curls of his muscular arms. To encounter Haile is to embrace ill-will but to reject her is to leave behind wealth. Harvest of Jenes is whirlpool of intrigue, suspense, soul-numbing thrill.

___________________________

Note: Fred has given ImageNations a copy of this book and so better watch this space for a review next year.

Proverb Monday, #53

2011-12-19T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Animguase mfata ɔkanni ba.

Meaning: The Akan does not deserve shame.

Context: Shame is worth than death. The Akans say they fear being disgraced more than dying.

No. 4397 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Quotes for Friday from DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little

2011-12-16T07:30:00.000Z

Under my grief glows a serenity that comes from knowing the truth always wins in the end. Why do movies end happy? Because they imitate life. You know it, I know it. But my ole lady lacks that fucken knowledge, big time. [8]

You don't know how bad I want to be Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ram her fucken gun up her ass, and run away with a panty model. But just look at me: clump of lawless brown hair, the eyelashes of a camel. Big ole puppy-dog features like God made me through a fucken magnifying glass. You know right away my movie's the one where I puke on my legs, and they send a nurse to interview me instead. [8/9]

What I'm learning is the world laughs through its ass every day, then just lies double-time when shit goes down. [28]

The learning jumps to mind, that once you plan to do something, and figure how long it'll take, that's exactly how long Fate gives you before the next thing comes along to do. [28]

Silence fills the forty years Fate gives me to recognize the import of things. This would never happen to Van Damme. Heroes never shit. They only fuck and kill. [68]

I should jam a table-leg through his fucken eye, make him grunt like a tied hog. Jean-Claude would do it. James Bond would do it with a fucken cocktail in his hand. Me, I just squeak like a brownie. [70]

What I'm starting to think is maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing. [71]

There used to be a horse that could do math on stage. Everybody thought the horse was so fucken smart, he would tap the answer to math questions with his hoof, and always get it right. Turns out the horse couldn't do math at all, could he fuck. He just kept tapping until he felt the tension in the audience break. Everybody relaxed when he'd tapped the right number, and he felt it, and just stopped tapping. [79]

A TV scientist wouldn't give great odds of a college girl running away in the heat of the moment with a fifteen-year-old slimeball like me, not after a relationship spanning twenty-nine words. But that's fucken TV scientists for you. Next thing they'll be telling you not to eat meat. [83/4]

The day he got his first thousand dollars, the neighbors must've got ten. Aim for a million bucks, you suddenly need a billion. I upgraded my computer, but it wasn't enough. No matter what, it ain't fucken enough in life, that's what I learned. [87]

She leaves me with a kiss, then sashays east up the stalls, dragging my soul in the dust behind her. [91]

As we walk, I remember I have to keep enough trouble around me to not give a shit how I act with her. You can only really be yourself when you have nothing left to lose, see? That's a learning I made. Take note, you can feel jerksville lurking in back. And as we know, just by thinking it, you suffer it worse. The learning: potential assholeness when a dream comes true is relative to the amount of time you spent working up the dream. A = DT^2. It means I could even fucken puke. [192]

Mom once said Palmyra was into food because it was the only thing she could control in her life. It wouldn't run from the plate, or stand up to her. [264]

___________

Read the review here.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

2011-12-14T10:19:00.000Z

Anyone who read and loved The Catcher in the Rye will love DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little (Harcourt; 2003; 277), winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize. It contains the teenage hormonal angst, the classic misunderstanding, and a heavy dose of teen-lingo and more. The more in DBC Pierre's book - a pseudonym that is almost eponymous to the names of several of the entities in the industry he satirised - is the 'provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media' that were the major concern of the this book.

In the town of Martirio, sixteen students have been killed. And the town's police officers are working hard to get a culprit by all means necessary, even though the murderer - the Mexican Jesus Navarro - had committed suicide after his slaughter. Enter Vernon Gregory Little, a misunderstood boy of almost-sixteen from a single-parent family and the only friend of Jesus. Vernon's appearance (unshaved hair), Nike boots, dressing and lingo fit the crime and could be the accessory the police officer Vaine Gurie, charged to improve upon her appalling prosecution statistics or be demoted, is looking for. And this is where the drama begins.

Vernon narrates the story, telling it in a language that all teens are familiar with, filled with teen-inspired words similar to Caufield but more caustic, if one does the mathematics: fifty-eight years between the publication of both books, and none is futuristic in its settings. Vernon begins with his first 'hold-up' and interview by Vaine and his subsequent rescue by Palmyra, a woman fattened on Prittikin diet from Bar-B-Chew Barn and a friend of his mother, Doris. Yet, later the police and prosecutor would agree that he escaped detention. As the town mourns its losses, a mysterious man - Eulalio Ledesma, Lally for short, would appear. Lally would befriend Doris and and her coterie of friends, thinly 'fall' in love with Doris, a widow and an obese - surpassed only by her closest friend Pam. Through tricks and plain deceit, Lally would gain control of Doris's life and Vernon's case and Doris, having found 'love' would inadvertently 'sell' her son's problem to him. He would establish a TV Reality show out of it, which would broadcast live the lives of Vern and his family and would follow him wherever he went. Angered by Lally, Vernon would show several times that Lally was a liar and an impostor seeking to capitalise on her mother's ignorance for personal gain, but what are the words of an accused 'murderer' to that of a lover if not utter nonsense. Lally, with the corporations behind him, would sponsor the investigation that would lead to uncovering the truth, his truth - which means the arrest and sentence of Vernon. Vernon, a boy of little experience in life, with several incriminating evidences against him: fingerprints on a second gun the police and the SWAT team are looking for, faecal matter he wouldn't disclose, a stash of drugs (hemp and LSD), finally decided that he would crossover to Mexico. Again, his complete ignorance of his situation mixed with that adolescence illusion that bundle love, lust and sex into a veritable Elysium that must be sought- and here Holden Caufield's call to Sally Hayes when he decided to run away comes to mind - caused him to call Taylor Figueroa, a lady whose cousin is the new woman Lally is going out with in Doris's coterie, to run away with him. This adolescence illusion is reflected in Vernon's own statement:

A TV scientist wouldn't give great odds of a college girl running away in the heat of the moment with a fifteen-year-old slimeball like me, not after a relationship spanning twenty-nine words. But that's fucken TV scientists for you. Next thing they'll be telling you not to eat meat.

Taylor would entertain him, and corner him in Mexico to achieve her own dream of working in the media.

Whilst on the trip to Mexico, unbeknownst to him, several deaths would occur, some farther from his route, but all would be attributed to this fifteen-year old boy whose only weapon, a twenty dollar bill, was robbed off him by a security guard at the Mexican border post. Back home, in metal cage, his trial would begin and after several cross-examination and the prosecutor's inability to 'prove beyond all reasonable doubt' that Vernon committed the murders both at home and away from home, he was charged with murder for the sixteen school children and innocent for the eighteen others. And again, this mistrial filled with an objective of getting someone pay for a crime - regardless of his innocence - was similar to what faced Atticus Finch in his defense of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.

I get an enlightenment about the ten years it feels like I've been listening to this whole crowd of powerdime spinners, with their industry of carpet-fiber experts, and shrinks and all, who finish me off with their goddam blah, blah, blah. And you know the State ain't flying any experts down for me. What I learned is you need that industry, big time. Because, although you ain't allowed to say it, and I hope I ain't doing The Devil's Work by saying it myself - Reasonable Doubt just don't apply anymore. Not in practice, don't try and tell me it does. Maybe if your cat bit a neighbor's hamster, like with Judge Judy or something. But once they ship in extra patrol cars, and build a zoo cage in court, forget it. You have to come up with simple, honest-to-goodness proof of innocence, that anybody can tell just bey watching TV. Otherwise they hammer through nine centuries of technical evidence, like a millennium of back-to-back math classes, and it's up in there that they wipe out Reasonable Doubt.

All these were shown live on Ledesma (or Lally's) new TV reality show; Ledesma, a Service Technician working in his blind mother's room, had risen to riches and fame.

Sentence to death by lethal injection, Vernon would come to understand his position and all anger would fly away; his language would change from those teen-inspired jargons to those that reflected this understanding. Having matured overtime and having accepted his fate, Vernon was prepared to die but after meeting a strange black man in prison he knew he would not go down without a fight if only he would just stop been 'too darn embarrased to play God' and 'give the people what they want'.

In the end, a series of revelations would show how much there is to life in Martirio, how much everybody played a part in the massacre of the school children, including the school children themselves who ceaselessly taunted Jesus Navarro, Dr Goosens - a psychiatrist who did more than his profession dictates, Mr Nuckles the class teacher, Doris who put love of self above love of his son and many others.

From Vernon's narrative we see that though he was immature he was also perceptive of events around him. He knew that his friend Jesus Navarro needed a role model but not the kind that Mr Nuckles provided:

[He] needed a different role model, but nobody was there for him. Our teacher Mr. Nuckles spent all kinds of time with him after school, bu I ain't sure ole powder-puff Nuckles and his circus of fancy words really count.

In Vernon God Little, DBC had shown that teenage violence, like the Columbine Massacre, don't just spring up but has roots and is a consequence of several factors. But are we listening? so that we stopped being symptom managers to root-cause solvers. The humorous part of the story revolves around the media's role in the unfolding event when almost everybody was eager either to appear on TV - including Doris or to be part of the reporting crew and when the town's people and the law enforcers want to punish someone at all cost. In fact, Lally instituted a voting system in addition to his Reality TV where the public vote for the next inmate on Death Row to be executed. So much was the media's vulturing of news about the murders that the small town of Martirio, in the state of Texas, overnight became a commercial town booming with activities. Again, through this novel, DBC provided a commentary on the disintegration of (American) families, the quest for riches and fame and that consumerism that had swallowed this current generation. And later Vernon would himself enjoy from his troubles, courtesy a book deal.

This book reminded me of several books and movies that franchise American prisons; the likes of The Condemned (starring Stone Cold Steve Austin) and Death Race (Starring Jason Statham). This novel is necessary and has come at an appropriate time where findings of improper trials that wrongly landed several people in jail keep increasing.

Note: This book was read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2011-12-13T07:30:00.000Z

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960; 284) - read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge - is a beautiful and innocent book that mirrors the conscience of a people. It belongs to the group of a few books, including Morrison's Beloved and Song of Solomon, that investigate our common mentality, query our attitudes and unapologetically point to our internal failings as humanity. Those books that slowly furl man's animalistic masque, a masque that creates a dissociation between thought and words so that we could think one thing and act entirely in the opposite direction or even a dichotomy of thoughts - one for the thinker and his or her coterie and the other for the Others, masques which further create a diametric self in an already dual personality. One might say a Jekyll and Hyde personality, had it not been described as a cliched phrase. However, what makes Harper Lee's book different from these few others in this sub-genre is the protagonist, nine-year old Jean Louise Finch or Scout. A young precocious girl who doesn't take everything as given but who asks questions, demands answers and ask further questions where issues are not clearer to her. Her observations of the people around her, her teachers, her father, Maycomb's neighbours, bring out the beauty of Lee's work. In fact, the paragraph

Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was - she was going down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her - she was talking with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it's time somebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way above themselves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home -

by the main narrator Scout on her teacher's double-standards regarding her hatred towards Hitler's persecution of Jews and her support for Maycomb County's persecution of blacks summarises Harper Lee's love story which came an American Literary masterpiece. That statement becomes even more revealing and meaningful, if one realises that prior to this the teacher had used the word 'persecution' and 'democracy' to distinguish between America and Germany. She says

Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. ... There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn't think so is a mystery to me.

Set in the Southern town of Maycomb, To Kill a Mockingbird, described as both Southern Gothic and Bildungsroman, is about human relationships, humanity, race, morality, conscience, childhood and growing up. Scout and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a legislature for the Maycomb County - a man whose self-respect is synonymous with his respect towards the other; a man who would first want to be a living example of what his children should be. In the world that nine-year old Scout describes, Maycomb County is full of castes so that people are known for certain behaviours; for instance it is known and accepted that the Finches are Noble, the Ewells are thieves and blacks are servants. As the story unfolds Scout tells of life in Maycomb, its people and especially of her relationship with her brother Jem and the obscure and enigmatic Dill. Life for the trio was pleasant and more so under a liberal father whose preferred choice of correcting a child is the threat of punishment that never materialises and even though people, including Aunt Alexandra (Atticus's sister), complained of Scout's tomboyish behaviour, her wont to move with the boys and wear breeches instead of flowery dresses and necklaces, her nonconformity to the behavioural dictates established for girls, Atticus only glanced over it; seeing beyond the outward development into the development of their moral aptitude, courage and ability to stand for what is right, and respect everybody irrespective of their colour, religion and others.

Every summer when Dill came visiting, they would act from stories and Dill would tell them several stories. However, when Dill was introduced to the Radley Place, a house inhabited by a recluse and enigmatic Arthur Radley (or Boo Radley), Dill quickly made the wooing out of Boo from his seclusion as the trio's latest adventure. The children had heard and added onto the stories surrounding Boo so much so that it became scarier and Boo took on preternatural abilities, making him a fearful figure to the children. And though Boo surprised them with gifts of gum and watch they never saw him in person. But he would later save Jem and Scout from being killed.

Their life was mostly devoid of problems until Tom Robinson, a black man living in the quarters, was accused of raping Mayella Ewell by Mr. Ewell and Atticus was nominated to defend him. Though the people of Maycomb knew the Ewells to be liars and thieves, they still disapproved of Atticus who made it his personal duty to defend Tom Robinson. According to Atticus, this was a test of his moral aptitude and should he fail he

couldn't even tell [Scout] or Jem not to do something again.

This is the central plot of the story. And Harper expertly handled Jem and Scout as they went were taunted by Maycomb's children and adults alike and labelled 'nigger-lovers' even when Scout Finch did not understand what the term means and had to fight those who called Atticus by that name because she read the the derogatory import it carried. When she asked Atticus what it means, he said

'nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything - like snot-nose. It's hard to explain - ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, whey they want a common, ugly term to label somebody."

To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that shows how people would always want to be associated with the majority; how people are afraid of standing for what is right but would sacrifice what is right in order to gain acceptance, for what we saw in the end is that though many of Maycomb's inhabitants were against the treatment of Tom Robinson, knew that he was innocent, none was willing to stand up against the system. Each want to preserve the status quo, afraid of disturbing the hornets nest. It also shows that we need not the majority for major changes to be done and though Atticus might not have achieved what he intended to, in the end he was respected by all for the stance he took.

I conclude with this quote from which the title was taken:

I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. ... Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Proverb Monday, #52

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Nimyε di bi.

Meaning: He who knows how to do it is entitled to his share.

Context: The labourer is worthy of his hire.

No. 4404 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Quotes for Friday from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

2011-12-09T08:52:00.001Z

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. [34]

It's against the law, all right ... and it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. [35]

Finders were keepers unless title was proven. [39]

There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. [50]

Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. [94]

People in their right minds never take pride in their talents. [102]

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions ... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. [109]

I'm hard put, sometimes - baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. [113]

I wanted you to see something about her - I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. [116]

[H]ow can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home - [249/250]

Mr. Finch, there's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em. [272]

[Y]ou never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. [282]

[N]othin's real scary except in books. [283]
____________________
Read the review here.

The Granta Book of the African Short Story - Edited by Helon Habila

2011-12-07T09:33:00.001Z

The short story is now in vogue and as Africa goes through a Literary Renaissance, it is expected that the short story will play a major role. Consequently, many awards schemes have been put in place to encourage is genre form. There is the Caine Prize for African Writing and the reformed Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize. It is therefore unavoidable that there is going to be several anthologies of such stories.

The latest to hit the shelves is The Granta Book of African Short Story edited by Helon Habila, author of Oil on Water. Here is a brief review of the book at Africa Book Club. Follow to read the full review.

“But I grope after language to describe the feeling I experience on my evening walks, the light in the air and on the sea. This pleases me: that some things remain beyond my grasp…” thus muses the jogger in Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Promenade about a significant encounter between him, a middle-aged unassuming copy writer, and a young ambitious boxer. The sense of enjoying “things remaining beyond (our) grasp” could be a leitmotiv for many of the stories in the The Granta Book of the African Short Story, encouraging us to read with open eyes, mind and heart. Collected and introduced by award winning Nigerian author, Helon Habila, this new anthology is an outstanding and wide-ranging rich smorgasbord of stories by twenty six writers from nineteen countries all across Africa – stories written in English or translated from French, Portuguese or Arabic.

Click here to read the full review.

Proverb Monday, #51

2011-12-05T12:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Nimdeε firi obi ano.

Meaning: Knowledge (or understanding) are from someone's mouth.

Context: We learn from others

No. 4395 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Library Additions

2011-12-02T13:00:00.000Z

Quotes for Friday will be back next week; haven't marked enough lines for a serving this week. In its place, I would want to share my newly acquired books with you instead.

It has been a month since I shared my list of acquired books on this blog. The reason for the time lag being that I have acquired fewer books over this period. However, there is a person out there who has been sending me some of the books on my challenge list. And I have recently some books from her. Thanks very much for your kindness.

Mad Libs by Roger Price and Leonard Stern. This is a workbook of grammar. After having the fun, I'd work it out with my son. Don't you just love it when a child you don't know send you a book? This is why I am against any sort of book burning. I am beginning of forming an online movement (if one has not already been formed) about Bloggers Against Book Burning. Let me know what you think.
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer. This book is on the list of Top 100 Books Reading Challenge.
The Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer. This is also my my Top 100 Books Reading Challenge. Gordimer is one I have read only in short stories. I am therefore happy to have received two of her most sought after books. She will be the fourth Nobelist I would read after Soyinka, Morrison and Coetzee.
Sula by Toni Morrison. It looks like I am an aficionado of Morrison even if I am yet to read her entire Oeuvre. I started collecting her books after I read Beloved and Song of Solomon.

I also picked up a book and had it autographed at the Writers Project of Ghana's last book reading for the year:

Journey by G.A. Agambila. I don't know when I am going to read this book. The way I see it, it might take a while or perhaps Kinna would once again rescue me with her Ghanaian Literature Week.

My new job sometimes take me to other African countries. Late October I was in Zambia and I have decided to pick a book or two from every country I visit, if possible by authors in that country. However, the ones I picked in Zambia were not written by Zambians. I discovered that local or African-Books are expensive than foreign ones:

Speeches that Changed the World by Cathy Lowne (Compiler). This book contains speeches since the days of Julius Caesar that have shaped the world; or changed it.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This is not strictly on any challenge list; though the book is one I have been looking out for after reading Orwell's 1984 and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

In effect, these are all the books I have received or purchased since October 18, 2011. Have you read any? What is your opinion?

November in Review, Projections for December

2011-12-01T08:30:00.000Z

November could be termed Ghana Reading Month here on ImageNations. Most of the books I read went into the Ghanaian Literature Week organised by Kinna at Kinna Reads. Of the five books I planned reading, three were read, I am reading the fourth, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the fifth, A Place of Beautiful Nonsense, has been postponed. I also reviewed Tail of the Blue Bird as part of the GLW celebrations.

Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes. This a book about a young man Kayo trying to crack a case of seeming murder in a village of Sonokrom. The book highlights the science versus tradition (spirituality) tango. Depiction of Ghanaian living was palpable and true. This book was read in October but reviewed in November for reasons already stated.
The Other Crucifix by Benjamin Kwakye. This book is about identity, culture shock, home and more. It follows Jojo Badu as he finds his way into the US and the trappings of living in such society which makes one forgetful of home or makes one question what home is and where it could be found.
Tickling the Ghanaian by Kofi Akpabli. Kofi's works ask questions and explore topics in a way that people have never really done in a very long while. In fact his work is destined to be important for many years to come especially as we refuse to let our older generation teach us the importance of every traditional belief, traditional item and more. What is the importance of the cloth to the Ghanaian, or the Schnapps, or Akpeteshie (local gin)? Kofi's writing is funny and probing. In this book we encounter contemporary Ghanaian culture.
The Imported Ghanaian by Alba Kunadu Sumprim. Alba's work is a somewhat antithesis of Kofi's work. Whereas Alba's seemingly also want to ask questions, it was more judgmental than exploratory. Picking on certain experiences and observations, the author provided scathing discussions of these issues, providing what in her mind was to be done. The tone was acerbic and vituperative at several points. However, there were some funny moments in the book. To know that the author had just arrived from the UK, where she was born, is important in appreciating this work. I am eager to read what she has to say 10 years later.

I managed to read one Caine Prize 2011 Shortlist:

Butterfly Dreams by Beatrice Lamwaka. This is a story about child soldiers, rape, conflict, survival, trauma and more. And it is a short story.

In December, there are no specific titles but there is a specific objective: to read only books that are on my challenge list. My Top 100 Books Reading Challenge is only two years to the end and I am not even a quarter through the list. Fortunately, with the help of some friends, both home and abroad, known and unknown, I have managed to obtain some of the books on the list. Thus, I would be focusing mainly on these books. The implication is that few, if any, of African-authored books will be read this month, except if it is on the list and I have it. Also, if things go through well with my reading objective, I will be joining Iris on Books in her Advent with Austen which began on November 27, and ends on December 24.

My plans for next year will come out soon.

55. The Imported Ghanaian by Alba Kunadu Sumprim

2011-11-30T07:30:00.000Z

Title: The Imported Ghanaian

Author: Alba Kunadu Sumprim
Illustrator: Alba Kunadu Sumprim

Genre: Non-Fiction/Satire

Publishers: Marvik

Pages: 264

Year of First Publication: 2006

Country: Ghana

This book was supposed to be reviewed within the Ghana Literature Week hosted by Kinna. However, I had to defer it.

Alba Kunadu Sumprin's book is a difficult book that provides an unapologetic and scathing look at some supposed Ghanaian eccentricities and foibles. How much the issues discussed are a general Ghanaian problem and how prevalent they are to merit such generalisation is what need to be discussed not whether they occur or not. However, there are certain things that must be cleared before I discuss this book:

If you are a man be careful when reading this. According to the author, almost all the things she discussed are caused by men. Even when she was discussing the problems of women, she found ways of making their problems male.
The author placed herself on some high pedestal of morality, civility and knowledge and Ghanaians in a box of 'badly nurtured, ignorant, undisciplined zombies' who have not yet come out of the eolithic age.
The author makes everything she saw, read or was told look inferior to the mannerisms she has acquired in UK, where she was born and raised.

Thus, as a Ghanaian male forgive me if I tend to be defensive instead of discussing this book. This book is the antitheses of both of Kofi Akpabli's books.

To begin with, it would be deceitful to say that none of what has been discussed by the author is alien to Ghana. It is not. In fact they do occur and I have personally witnessed or being a victim of some of them. However, where I disagree with the author - the author herself states that she doesn't expect the reader to agree or believe everything she has written - is her penchant to generalise.

The book opens with a list of 20 Things You Need to Know and each begins with 'Ghanaians ...'. First on this list of was:

First and foremost, Ghanaians know everything and are always right. If you try to tell or show the Ghanaian something or a better way of doing things, then you are too known, and they are not going to listen to you.

I guess, the Ghanaian has never been to school or learnt a vocation. If the Ghanaian has then I wonder how they learnt from their teachers or masters. It is wonderful that by accusing Ghanaians of knowing everything and being always right, the author herself exhibited this trait by condemning everything - at least those in the book - she saw or experienced and prescribing what should be done instead. She knows the correct way Ghanaians should dress and the proper body-weight they should have. In the latter, I don't know if Ghana is an obese country compared to the UK or Europe, where governments spend more on obese-related health issues than any other.

The author does not understand why Ghanaians would ask you 'are you sure?' after you have provided them with an information (and note that this never occurs in a formal setting; it's always between friends). I have never travelled anywhere or as extensive as the author, but I guess each country has its own such 'unique' words or phrases they use, which to the uninitiated ears doesn't sound right. Having lived in Ghana all my life, I never take offense to this. The questioner is not doubting your integrity, he or she wants confirmation. And this is not a matter of semantics. Recently, a guy had to come to my office for something. He called to say he was there and I asked if he was sure he was there. Why? because I was in the office, had even come out of the building but he wasn't around.

Perhaps experiencing some form of culture shock, Alba decided to put down her experiences as a freshly arrived Ghanaian. She describes Ghanaians as individualistic but pretending to love the communalism. She says when the Ghanaian says you are invited (to his or her food), you're really not invited and she experimented this with a MAN who later looked shocked that his food was really going to be shared. I was also shock because unless the author is telepathic, something she accused Ghanaians of in one of the chapters, she could not have known why the man was shocked. I have friends who will not wait to be asked before they join in my food. And I do same to them. If one has worked in the rural areas one would know that the first code of ethics in working in such places is that 'do not refuse anything you are given' and these are the most poor people you will meet in Ghana. They can surprise you with the gift they will give you. In fact, some years back people prepared more food they can eat and keep some in expectation of a visitor: family or otherwise.

Then there is the issue of the εnyε hwee (literally, it is not anything, just stop) phrase which she used to explain most of the topics she discussed. This phrase or statement is used to calm down tempers and resolve problems. Here one of the parties, especially the aggrieved one is made to drop the issue at hand and forget about it. And this is what the author vehemently spoke against. She would want to educate the perpetrator of the effect of what he or she had done or nearly did to her. Why should people tell her to drop the issue? This also leads to why several street arguments do not degenerate into fist-fights; why someone will just pop up and utter the "εnyε hwee" phrase to whittle tempers, and she doesn't understand this. I was partly surprised by this notion; partly, because for one who is describing Ghanaians as having a Neanderthal behaviour to prescribe the reenactment of William Golding's Lord of the Flies as a way of resolving problems is shocking. Perhaps it is this attitude, despised by the author, that has kept the country together, have prevented all our elections from descending into civil conflicts, though we have been to the brink on many occasions. On the other hand, I think we, as Ghanaians, need to stop being bias towards these foreigners who parade our streets and should insist on the right thing as the author wants. But to fight to get there? No.

She describes how people spits about, urinate and ease themselves anywhere they get to, dig into their noses, and most of these are men's behaviour. However, had the author not been told that the buta (a kettle-like plastic container) that Muslim carry contains water, she thought it was a urine container they carry with them. Is this not a clear example of misconception and misconstruing of people's way of living?

Under Wires Crossed she discussed how Ghanaians respond to questions. In asking a driver's assistant (popularly referred to as Mate) whether the trotro (public bus transport) will pass through Achimota, the mate responded that he doesn't have coins. And here the author was worried. She needed a yes or no answer. But hasn't the mate responded and added a condition? I would have jumped onto it because subtly the mate had said yes, but she shouldn't get on board if all she has are bigger notes as he has no smaller notes to be used as change. And this is the reason I refer to some of her experiences as ordinary culture shock. Again, it is not good to pretend that everybody speaks or understands English especially the kind which comes with the American or British accent, no matter how the words are enunciated.

There is also the discussion of Ghanaians making other people's business their business. I laughed when I read this. This is what most Ghanaians who have lived abroad (abroad meaning North America and Europe) will tell you they miss the most about Ghana. According to them, the stress and lifestyle of living in such countries makes impossible to share their problems with others. Here in Ghana you can strike a conversation with an unknown stranger and before you are aware he or she has shared with you all her family problems. The Guardian reported of Joyce Carol Vincent, a socialite young woman who died (on her bed) and was undiscovered for three years. Soon after discovery, the British behaviour of keeping to themselves became the topic of discussion. Is this the route the author wants us to take? Well, what I know is that this will never happen in the place I live in Ghana, though it will happen in residential areas.

The author described a situation where people gawked at her because she was wearing an afro-wig and here I was shocked because wig-wearing is not new, afro-wig included. This chapter antagonised other chapters in the section; for whereas the author wanted people to accept the fact that wearing afro wig was alright, which I know most Ghanaians already know, she also went on to complain about how poor Ghanaian women dress in terms of their hair and nails.

Not even beauty contests escaped Alba's lens. And like most of the topics she managed to make it a male one:

Previously, I'd been against the idea of beauty pageants, considering them to be mere cattle markets for attractive skinny women to parade their skinny butts in front of salivating members of the male species.

Whether she is discussing the giving of chop money (upkeep money) or cat fight (where she discussed women fighting over a 'short' man - I don't know if the author is averse to short men) she made them male problems and accused them for being the cause.

If there is something that this book does, it is generalisations. It treats Ghanaians as a brainless, mannerless, amorphous group whose thinking and actions are backward; perhaps, the author's use of Neanderthals and Stone age show her perspectives and views. Consider this statement:

When it comes to customer services, Ghana is still somewhere in the Stone Age. Restaurants, chop bars, shops, renting property, utilities services, communications, you name it, the moment Ghanaians get thrown into the equation, expect the fun and games to being. [Part VII, Customer Services]

I will reiterate that the Ghanaian can be found in almost all of the topics mentioned: for instance who has not complained of the numerous feet-stomping, hands-clapping, microphone-bursting churches in their environs, or the speedily waltzing trotro and its ear-splitting fuzzy radios, or some of the poor music coming out these days. But do they merit the broad paintbrush treatment? The way it has been presented, it is akin to me saying that all Americans or Europeans are nudists when I see one nude walking the streets or that they are all serial killers when I read of one in the newspapers.

Perhaps, it is Alba's writing style in being judgmental whilst generalising that makes people take offense to these scathing issues. Who knows? she might be able to change one or two people with her straightforwardness. And there are those who minces no words in getting themselves heard. Or perhaps I am one of those Ghanaians afraid of taking responsibility, who always think they are right and who get angry when their country is being described as such. It should, however, be noted that there are several humorous descriptions in the book that one will enjoy. I couldn't help but laugh at some of Alba's descriptions of her experiences and observations. I will end with a list of some of her generalisations:

Ghanaians don't like taking responsibility for anything;
Ghanaians are always right
Ghanaians know everything
Ghanaian logic is very simple; whatever the Ghanaian does is logical because Ghanaians are doing it
The Ghanaian male was created solely for entertainment
Just like their men, Ghanaian women are also an interesting case study

___________

About Author: Alba Kunadu Sumprim was born in London. She has been writing for as long as she can remember and regularly flips through, with a wry smile, the stacks of notebooks that contain what can only be described as the melodrama of her teenage years. She graduated from the Cuban film school and earns her living writing radio dramas, screenplays and weekly social commentary column in The Daily Dispatch newspaper. She lives in Accra, where she is regularly accused of being Senegalese, Malian, Ivorian, Liberia or Zimbabwean, in fact, any other nationality but Ghanaian. She is adamant that she is just as Ghanaian as any other ... though imported. (Source: The Imported Ghanaian) Visit the author here.

54. Butterfly Dreams by Beatrice Lamwaka

2011-11-29T07:30:00.000Z

Butterfly Dreams was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Writing Prize in 2011. It was part of the crime anthology 'Bad Company' published by Pan Macmillan SA in 2008. It has also been included in the Caine Prize for African Writing 2011 anthology To See the Mountain and other stories.

Beatrice Lamwaka's story is a sad one. It is a story that represents the true story of many children caught in the unending conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Uganda government in northern Uganda. This conflict has left in its wake many rape victims and child soldiers. And those who escape from their abductors are left traumatised, needing rehabilitation.

It is within this setting that Lamwaka's story is set and told and eleven-year old Lamunu is one of such children. Like all children Lamunu also had a dream, a dream to become a medical doctor and take her mother's profession a step higher. Consequently, she loved to learn. She loved books and would brace everything to be there including news of abduction that would lead teachers and other pupils locked in their homes. Unfortunately, one evening the rebels invaded the village of Akololum and amongst those abducted was Lamunu.

From the story we see that though she had been able to escape from her abductors after four years in captivity, Lamunu suffers from post-abduction disorder. She refuses to talk to anyone and reacts badly to any booming sound of a passing plane and helicopter. However, the narrator drops pieces of information regarding what Lamunu have done and what have been done to her whilst in captivity. For instance, we get to know that she was forced, together with others, to beat a girl who tried to escape to death. Again, by mentioning the names of people who have gone through similar experiences we find that Lamunu's experience is not unique; it's almost become the norm.

Another angle to the story is the effect of the conflict on the life of the people: the once vibrant village of Akololum had been turned into a camp and the farmers, including Lamunu's father, who could in pre-war days feed their family to excess, now have to depend on donations and hand-outs from Non-Governmental Organisations and on food which they used to give to their dogs. In some way the story also shows resilience in the face of adversity; for Lamunu, after spending her youthful life in captivity, still kept her focus on her dream of becoming a medical doctor, enrolling in school again. Emotions have been bottled up, each person afraid of raising or asking a question that would open healing wounds. Yet, the urge to know more was high. The fear and anxiety could actually be felt off the pages.

Written in the second person addressing the protagonist, the story could have taken place entirely in the narrator's mind or it could have been epistolary, though the latter is not supported by the facts presented. And it is this writing style that brings to the story its weaknesses, in addition to it being part of the usual story of Africa. For instance, though it almost sounded as if the narrator did not know what the protagonist might have done or gone through, because she was non-communicative, there were places where she actually described some of these. Besides, there were shifts in focus from the suffering mother and coping family to Lamunu attempting to fit in. And again the second person did not seem to work at many places. The tense, past or present, was difficult to pin down. Then the story itself: it is not unique. It is about abductions, child soldiers, rebels, camps, NGOs and more and these are portrayed, more grisly, on our Televisions.

The story can be downloaded here.

____________________

About the Author: Beatrice Lamwaka is a teacher and writer. She graduated from Makerere University with BA (ED) Literature and English Language Studies. Her published works include "Vengeance of the Gods," a short story Published in ‘Words From A Granary’ An anthology by Ugandan Women Writers. ’Queen of tobacco’ Gowanus Books. Her poems have been published in various anthologies. She is one of the pioneers of a British Council writing scheme to link Ugandan writers with established writers in the UK. She is a member of Transcend Art And Peace (TAP) an organisation that supports creativity and art in working for peace. She is also a member Of Uganda Women Writers Association. Her Novella ‘Anena’s Victory’ is awaiting publication with Fountain Publishers. She is currently working on her first novel ‘Second Home’. She works with Uganda Bureau of statistics. (Source)

ImageNations Rating: 3.0/6.0

Proverb Monday, #50

2011-11-28T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: "Nim-nim" nnim.

Meaning: "Knows all", knows nothing.

Context: If you pride yourself on your wisdom, it is a sign of ignorance.

No. 4388 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Quotes for Friday from Benjamin Kwakye's The Other Crucifix

2011-11-25T07:30:00.000Z

The elders say that the foreigner never carries the head of the casket. [16]

[H]ome is where you go knowing that no matter what happens to you, no matter what others might think of you, you will be loved. Period. No ifs or buts. This is where he spirit feels most comfortable, most restful and most at ease. [17]

Culture shock? That was to be asked at the end of my stay, for the shock, if any, of being exposed to a new culture isn't to be measured in days or weeks or even months, but by the depth of many years accumulated, tasted, tested, weighted, felt, loved, rejected, hated, accepted. [26]

Here, there was a distance that I couldn't define, and perhaps it was, like air, not definable in its infinite qualities. [32]

My imagined seduction stayed imaginary - mind proposes, reality disposes. [43]

In our earlier days together, the passion was too hot to suffer these gestures, but in the ebbed heat, when lust plateaus, I became vulnerable. [92]

There could be no bridge between the unlinked unless someone built it. But who would lay the first brick of the foundation? Sometimes an extraordinarily farsighted person does. Sometimes, though, the river must overflow, boiling red, before the first brick is laid. [102]

I wanted to know her, make her familiar like the insides of my eyelids. [136]

When it exists, love between husband and wife is intense, but the love between parent and child is indescribable, transcending transcendence itself. [158]

I could reconcile myself to failure, but I couldn't reconcile myself to failing her. [159]

Book Reading with G.A. Agambila, Author of Journey, a Novel

2011-11-24T10:59:00.001Z

In our last reading for the year 2011, we will feature Dr Gheysika Adombire Agambila, author of the novel, “Journey”.

Gheysika Adombire Agambila was born in Bolgatanga, and was educated in Ghana and the USA, where he had his BA from Brandeis University, an MBA from the University of Rochester, and Ph.D from New York University. Dr Agambila has worked with Ernst and Young, taught at the University of Ghana Business School, and served as a Deputy Minister of State in the Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning, Harbours and Railways, and Environment and Science.

He also has to his credit a collection of short stories for children, “Solma: Tales from from Northern Ghana”.

Dr Agambila will read from the novel, “Journey”, described by reviewer Kari Dako as “…an absorbing exploration of reality in contemporary Ghana…” and by A Denkabe as “… a fine novel, written in a sober yet often moving style, and rich in the way it reflects the Ghanaian post-colony.”

“Journey” is published by Sub-Saharan Publishers and is available in bookshops across Ghana and also online at Amazon.com

This event offers the opportunity to meet and interact with G A Agmabila. There will be a short discussion session after the readings. Copies of the book will be on sale.

This monthly reading series is organised in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Accra.

Date: Wednesday, 30th November

Time 7:00pm – 8:00pm.

Location: Goethe-Institut Accra, 30 Kakramadu Road, (next to NAFTI ), Cantonments, Accra.

Admission is free.

Proverb Monday, #49

2011-11-21T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Wonnim asa a, na wose atwene nyε dε.

Meaning: If you don't know how to dance, you would say the drums (beats) aren't interesting.

Context: Sour grapes

No. 4383 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Quotes for Friday from Nii Ayikwei Parkes' Tail of the Blue Bird

2011-11-18T07:30:00.000Z

This is my contribution to Kinna's Ghana Literature Week, Nov. 14 - 20, 2011.

____________________________

If you look you will see that whatever happens the birds will sing their song. [1]

The ancestors say that the truth is short but, sεbi, when the tale is bad, then even the truth stretches like a toad run over by a car on those new roads they are are building. [2]

Ei, the elders say that news is as restless as a bird [5]

And when fear catches you, it returns you to screaming, your first language. [7]

I wanted to tell him that you do not light a fire under a fruit-bearing tree, but these young people think they invented knowledge so I ignored him. [9]

[R]emember that the monkey was eating long before the farmer was born . [9]

And I tell them that it is not just about beauty because beauty doesn't pay debts. But do they listen? [13]

He couldn't accept, as his grandfather's fellow had, that it was meant to be. His grandfather's life was not sunset, some light that went out whether you liked it or not. [32]

That is why they say that the way the crab lives by the stream makes it understand the ways of water. [66]

As the wise ones say it is not a name that changes the nature of an animal. [67]

The simple black and orange batik cloth she had wrapped over her breast was amplified halfway down her body by her hips, which swung with the casual ease of a hypnotist's pendant. [99]

It is no mystery that when something leaves your hand, grief can take its place; it is the same way that rain takes the place of clouds. What we cannot understand is how heavy the rain can be. [100]

The wise ones say that everything in this world is like sleep; it comes and goes. It is so with happiness and madness. [103]

[T]he brave man displays his courage and strength on the battlefield, not at home. [107]

[W]hen one starts on the path to evil good counsel sounds like a joke. [130]

They say nothing is other than what you see, but it is also true that nothing is other than what you don't see. [168]

53. Tickling the Ghanaian - Encounters with Contemporary Culture by Kofi Akpabli

2011-11-17T07:30:00.000Z

Title: Tickling the Ghanaian - Encounters with Contemporary Culture

Author: Kofi Akpabli

Genre: Non-Fiction/Contemporary Culture

Publishers: TREC

Pages: 142

Year of First Publication: 2011

Country: Ghana

For Kinna's Ghana Literature Week

Kofi Akpabli is a creative writer I have come to admire. His is a journalism completely circumscribed by the field of Creative Writing. His style, of combining keen observation, difficult questions and mirthful writing, makes him unique in this expansive field of words, sentences and descriptions; a field where most practitioners resort to sensationalism, outright lies, and trivialisation, stretching an already suspicious occupation to its negative extremum, to grab people's attention and glean some fame for themselves. Such is the shitload on discerning ears that some, having exceeded their elastic limit, have tuned out from radio, permanently. To such individuals, Akpabli's writing has come as a relief. For having gone through the proverbial mill, Kofi Akpabli's method is refined. His dedication to his craft has been appreciated by winning, on two consecutive occasions, the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist for Arts and Culture - the first person to do so.

Whereas Akpabli's first book A Sense of Savannah grew from his travels - mostly through northern Ghana - Tickling the Ghanaian is a compilation of thirteen published articles including The Serious Business of Soup in Ghana and What is Right with Akpeteshie, which won him the 2010 and 2011 awards respectively.

From How Cloths tickle the Ghanaian to This is the Way we say Goodbye, Kofi presents in this book articles which take an infinite look at the multi-dimensionalities of contemporary Ghanaian culture; contemporary, in that some of what is discussed are leftovers from colonisation - those that we imbibed, localised and refused to grant independence to or decolonise both at the peak of our furor and euphoria for independence. With themes on Christmas reminiscences, the vanishing taste of food, food shunned and loved, fashion, drinks, funerals and bargaining, Kofi takes us on a tour of Ghana's cultural idiosyncrasies. He looks at every topic exhaustively.

The book opens with How Cloths tickle the Ghanaian. Here the history, types, functions and sources of cloths and how certain kinds of cloths, especially those coming from Holland (like Vlisco/Dumas) have come to signify class and status in the society are detailedly discussed. Whether discussing the childhood uses of cloths, its social (among the citizenry) and traditional (between the citizenry and the chieftain) status, its use in traditional dances, like agbadza, or any of its numerous uses, Kofi weaves wit, knowledge, and love into each line providing the reader with a sense of satisfaction that only comes from reading a well-researched piece. In one of such various functions of the cloth among the Ewes (these are group of people to be found mainly in the Volta Region of Ghana and spreads through Togo and parts of Benin) Kofi writes

Among the Ewe people, the sleeping cloth is so important that it has a personality of its own. It even has a name, Zavor. Zavor simply means "night cloth" and it is the closest companion one could ever have in life.

Over time, Zavor adopts one's personality. Indeed, few items hoard specimen of an individual's DNA like the night cloth) come on, what with all those body fluids). Among the boarding school boys and bachelors, Zavor has a special reputation for smelling bad. [18]

In Ghanaman and the Rastaman the writer writes from experience when he had locks. He talks of how he was consistently thought to be a user of hemp and how people preferred to address him as belonging to the Rastafarian faith. The Serious Business of Soup in Ghana compares what Ghanaians refer to as soup and what is described as Soup in Europe and America. How soup could be drunk in a cup; how it could contain sugar and alcohol; how soup could be pepper-less, still bothers me. In this humorous description of Soup, Kofi writes

What is soup? Philosophically, soup is what makes the Ghanaian say "I haven't eaten all day" simply because all he or she has had did not contain a soup item. Soup is what makes people look forward to going home after a long day's work. Again, soup is what gingers up nostalgia for homely, far away places. Finally, soup (especially, when taken hot) is what helps critical minds to form opinion on serious issues. [32]

What more could one ask for? Yet, Kofi provided a detailed write-up on all the types and functions of soup interspersing it with titillating soup stories.

In The Rise of the Schnapps, Kofi investigates how this Dutch drink has risen to occupy a position that used to be the preserve of the local gin, akpeteshie; today at no traditional ceremony, be it naming ceremony, festivals, or engagement, can one not find Schnapps. Between Tinapa and Boflot - where did the old Taste go questions whether foods are losing their cherished tastes especially comparing old brands with the current bland brands.

Other issues investigated include the art of bargaining, which is a psychological warfare that could be studied under Game Theory. Here each player anticipates the other's move before he plays or makes his move. Nash equilibrium is reached when both parties are satisfied with the outcome of their final moves, else there is no trade: the buyer getting value for his money and the seller too. Unlike in shopping malls,boutiques and other places where prices are fixed, the majority of trade in Ghana is governed by this art. Those who are well versed in this art always come out satisfied. This is discussed under the chapter heading Dongomi and Albarika - The Ghanaian Art of Bargaining. Here it is only right that I quote from Kofi's repertoire of humorous, yet truthful lines:

The Ghanaian's bargaining habit is also expressed at fetish consultations. Usually when a priest mentions the items needed to perform a ritual it is considered spiritually critical. Therefore, folks do not subject it to common market-place negotiation.

However, there are times when the items demanded are simply impossible. For instance, a gourd, half-filled with the very first collection of late season rain, the egg shells of a maiden vulture and the midnight droppings of a pregnant elephant.

Because of the difficulty in obtaining these items, clients would manage a bargain of sort: "Errm, Mighty One, we have heard but; can you plead with your Honourable Deities to quantify everything in monetary terms?" [66]

The remaining topics include Things we do for Rings; The Truth about Fufu; Ghana vrs Naija - rubbing shoulders with a Giant; Batakari has spoken; Why Kokonte is facing the Wall; What is Right with Akpeteshie; and This is the way we say Goodbye.

In What is Right with Akpeteshie, Kofi discusses the functions and origins of this local gin that has devastated so many homes and yet is one of the hottest commodities on the market. Though its effects - when taken in excess - are known, demand is high even if it has fallen from grace. People would love to hide or pretend to be not taking it. But it is the drink that has the heaviest repertoire of aliases. Whenever you hear blue kiosk you know there is a reference to this drink. Our reaction to this drink is similar to that of a local food kokonte which the author also discussed. But in Why Kokonte is facing the Wall, the author pointed out our hypocrisy with this food; a food that virtually saved Ghanaians from the massive famine the raged the country in the early 1980s, a food one would eat and sweat in a corner of his home but would swear he has never seen it before.

In the last title the author discusses how Ghanaians cherish funerals and how people go to all lengths to give their departed ones (loved or not) a befitting burial. It has become an industry on its own with different shapes and styles of coffin.

Throughout the book, Kofi treats the reader to insightful information and even when he seems not to be saying that 'let's be careful' he says it in a subtle way without sounding preachy and presenting the facts from both sides does the trick for him. With this style and delivery Kofi is set to go farther with his works.

This book is highly recommended. The reader is bound to learn a lot about Ghanaians, an aspect which would not be found in any text book about Ghana nor taught in any place of learning: higher or lower. What is in this book are the things that make Ghana, Ghana; the things that people associate with. In brief, this provides a sort of informal history of events and things of Ghana.

ASIDE: This book is similar in some thin respect to the one I am currently reading - Imported Ghanaian. What differs most is the approach, so that whereas Kofi looks at the more positive side, bringing out the fun and showing us we aren't that bad, the author of the current book takes a vitriolic take on Ghanaians and their behaviours.

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About the author: Read about Kofi Akpabli here.

52. The Other Crucifix by Benjamin Kwakye

2011-11-16T07:30:00.000Z

Title: The Other Crucifix

Author: Benjamin Kwakye

Genre: Fiction/Identity/Immigration

Publishers: Ayebia-Clarke

Pages: 218

Year of First Publication: 2010

Country: Ghana

For Kinna's Ghana Literature Week

My first encounter with Benjamin Kwakye was through his first novel The Cloth of Nakedness. In that novel Kwakye used a proverb and a character to metaphorise the humorous nature and hierarchical structure of our existence or specifically of our way of living. Using tools within the society, he told of how manipulative the rich could be.

Kwakye's third novel - I am yet to see a copy of his second book, The Sun by Night, on book stands - The Other Crucifix is a different kind of literary delight. It deals with identity, home, and freedom in an immigrant's life. He explores and expands every minutiae of life in an alien country. In doing so things that had always been taken for granted are held onto by such immigrants that letting go is tantamount to betrayal of the motherland: memories are held onto, or they are lost, together with the inner self. The setting of this book also provides contrasting feelings of identity and the characters and their background employed by the author also brought the issues he was tackling to the fore: are you an African because you are black? Is home where you choose or where you can identify with? Or is home where people look at you and see themselves in you? But what if you cannot speak the way they do?

Set in the early part of the 60s - after Ghana gained its independence from the British and African-Americans are still segregated against and women still had no remarkable rights and when the Civil Right movements were at their all-time peak - and into the 70s, The Other Crucifix tells the story of Jojo Badu and the struggles he went through as he left the borders of his country, Ghana, to seek higher education in the US. The story tells of his struggles against the established culture of racism, of negro-chanting, of severe discrimination, of alienation, of not-belonging and the culture shock he went through. Here Kwakye, through his exquisite and mature use and handling of language coupled with the first-person narrative form he chose, projected to the reader the internal struggles, the mental debate, the emotional dipoles Jojo Badu went through. He was able to make those emotions flow off the page into the reader.

Forgive the cliche, but the reader would love and hate Jojo in equal measure. He is unaware of what he wants and for most of the time he was selfish in his quest or betrayed a common cause. Specifically, one would say that he wanted to be accepted in unacceptable situations. He could not stand against the current but would also was also not eager to go with it. And as the writer intimated, Jojo Badu died several deaths; except, that he was always born anew with a different soul.

His first death was when the International Student Association voted to change the name of its house from Brewer to Castro because the former had owned slave. This caused a problem whose proportions went beyond the borders of the university for Castro stood for everything anti-American. After such grand problem, including the burning of a cross, the President of the University tasked the International Students Adviser, William Redford, to cause the International Students Association to change the name and issue an apology. Redford, himself eyeing the Dean of Students position, had early on courted the friendship of Jojo Badu by inviting him to his house. Thus, Jojo Badu was to become the perfect pawn to be used to effect the necessary changes after he was reminded that he was in the school

... because The University has been generous with its financial aid. Can The University continue to maintain such aid if the screws begin to tighten from Washington? And believe me, it will if nothing happens and this thing stands'. [61]

Jojo's mind was made up after this. He would apply diplomacy to reverse this decision to continue to be a member of the university. He would later become the president of the said association after the voluntary resignation of its president, who afterwards lost all his initial verve to fight the cause of injustice. This kind of 'betrayal' was seen throughout Jojo's stay on campus and at several points he seemed ignorant or oblivious of the racial entanglement he was winding around himself. And this part of the story mirrors the several aids that developing countries receive with conditions attached to them be it social, cultural or political adjustment; the recent of such conditions being Cameron's threat to cut aid from African countries that do not accept homosexuality.

While Jojo responded to all these socio-political whirlwinds in his life, morphing gradually into an American, considering Marjorie - his girlfriend he left in Ghana - as a 'fat ass' something that is supposed to be disgusting, it was one major event, several thousands of miles away, that would define Jojo and make him seek refuge in an alien country where his skin colour makes him a second class citizen, deserving only the sloughs left behind by the first citizens of the land. Back in Ghana, his benefactor, whom he planned of working with should he come back to Ghana, had been killed. Uncle Kusi had been implicated for funding a group of individuals who had planned to overthrow Nkrumah's government. The coup failed and organisers were rounded up. He was said to have resisted arrest and was killed during the melee that ensued. This singular event completed the transformation process with Ghana sounding like the last echoes of a clanging metal.

Later, after school and without a diploma to show because he has financial obligations to settle with the university, he would go on to struggle for work but without the 'proper' colour a college degree amounts to nothing. Thus, Jojo Badu, irrespective of the fact that he completed among the top students in his class, settled for hay-stacking. He would marry to Fiona - a woman with as much history behind her as Jojo himself before proceeding to Law School with the intentions that Law School begets successful life. But the old demons would come revisiting: mounting debts from student loans plus student politics.

Perhaps to atone for his years of not standing up for anything at college, Jojo in Law School had spontaneously become emboldened after listening to: first, a lecture on racial discrimination in which the victim was described as a property and therefore having no right to sue his master and then, a first-hand account of the life of South African politician exiled in the US after the Sharpeville incident and of black South Africans in general. These two events turned Jojo into advocate of sorts and a tempestuous one at that. Here he was unfortunate to have assaulted the Dean of Students after he and three of his colleagues decided to submit a petition to the Law School to remove their investments from a government that did not uphold freedom and justice to all its citizens, after a hugely-attended demonstration. After the case was heard and his fear of expulsion did not materialise, Jojo and his friends were banned from any such activities on campus. And again, he was defeated.

This is a book of jaw-dropping analogies, of stupendous theories - Mechanic Instinct versus Earth Instinct - of inversions and parallelisms, and of humongous themes. Through his characters, Kwakye explored several levels on racialism apart from the usual black on white discrimination. He entered into the muddy waters of African-Americans and Africans and how an African whose speech leans away from his country of birth is considered a 'white man' and treated as such. He also treated the illusion of independence and how the verve suddenly died off. However, above all, Kwakye has written a book that seeps beautiful language. One cannot but appreciate his high acuity in the use of words. His tackling and description of human emotions, its evolution, eventual eruption, and devolution is superb. He takes the reader's heart through all the roller-coaster emotions the characters go through.

I purchased this book on November 25, 2010 and promised to read it for this year's Ghana Literature Week. I am happy to have gone by my word. Had I known what it entails, I might have read it earlier. It is worth it, especially if one has not read enough of an immigrant's story, as I have not. For those who have there is still much to be appreciated in Kwakye's delivery. His is a book of not just emotions but one that captures the politics of the world; of how at a time that Ghana had attained its independence, blacks in America, the land of liberty were still segregated and discriminated against at all levels, most especially in job search, of how women were still not part of the whole even though they were voting in Ghana. One thing I took from this book is that a deracialised American society is still in its infancy though greater achievements have been made.
_____________________
About the author: Click here to read about the author. Kwakye's forthcoming book is The Legacy of Phantoms (Africa World Press, 2011).

51. Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

2011-11-15T07:30:00.000Z

Title: Tail of the Blue Bird

Author: Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Genre: Fiction/Whodunit

Publishers: Jonathan Cape
Pages: 170

Year of First Publication: 2009

Country: Ghana

For Kinna's Ghana Literature Week

Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a whodunit of a unique kind. The story is about Kayo, a young forensic scientist who has arrived home after studies abroad to contribute to the development of his country. Having settled in, he realised that making it in this country is less a matter of what you have in your head than it is about knowing the right people and pressing the right buttons or greasing the right palms. Initially, with is profession as a forensic pathologist, he had applied to work for the police but was turned down. According to the police, a forensic pathologist is not their priority as current methods of 'interrogation' has worked and served them perfectly. Having resigned himself to working for the thrifty Mr Acquah, Kayo felt disappointed and underused. However, when a minister's girlfriend - visiting Sonokrom - came across an amorphous organic substance she suspected to be a leftover from a murder scene and after an initial attempt by nine police men and a pathologist to crack the case failed, a power-hungry police officer - whose eyes is on the position of the Inspector General of Police (the highest position attainable in the service, earned by political appointment only) began the search for Kayo. When the initial call to rope in Kayo to carry out his forensic investigation proved difficult because Mr Acquah wanted to charge of the said services even though it was not in his line of business, the police calmed him down with a secret of his. The way was then paved for Donkor, who sent his men to bring in Kayo. Blackmailed, coerced, threatened and tasked to bring in a CSI-style report on the case, Kayo set to work but the obstacles, the findings, the sheer weight of (mis)evidence and stories proved too much for science to unravel. Here is a science versus tradition case. Will Kayo's science save him or will tradition have its way? This is a multifaceted story with multiple dimensions and endings.

Unlike the many African books I have read where authors provide glossary of words at the end of the book or where definitions of vernacular words and jargon are provided just after their use, Nii refrained from explaining, defining, expatiating all the vernacular words or jargon he used, leaving it to the interpretation of the non-Twi speaker. This style of his gave the impression, right or otherwise, that the book was written for the Ghanaian and made accessible to the world. My admiration of this also stems from the fact that when Kafka writes he writes not for Africans though his works are accessible. And even non-understanding of these words will not take the meaning away from the reader.

The story begins with Yaw Poku telling the story of his life. The language here is different. The English feels like it has been directly transliterated from Twi, especially when one reads 'We were at our somewhere when she came ...' and it is interspersed with a lot of Twi words. Even the chapters are labelled after the days of the week in Twi. This part of the narrative also had a lot of proverbs and reflects the way language and words are used in everyday Ghanaian life. To the Ghanaian and perhaps African, proverbs and analogies play an important role in language and communication; so that, instead of answering a question, an adept communicator will tell a parallel story - as Yaw Poku did - and the listener was expected to understand and find his own answers.

The second narrative or writing style is a point-of-view. Here Nii wrote from Kayo's point of view, following him with his camera zooming in and out, presenting his fears, his aspirations, his seeming failure and more. The language here is very different, though it shares with the first person narrative (Poku's narrative) a kind of fluidity in its read. Being the main protagonist of the story, this writing style allowed us to explore the individual, Kayo, in a way that a first person narrative, which in itself could not be trusted, might not do. Here there is less use of Twi words too.

However, in tune with the happenings in the country, Nii Ayikwei Parkes was able to employ several of the major characteristics of contemporary culture such as songs in the realm of Hip Life - a new generation music genre that fuses West African Highlife beats with Hip Hop or Rap. Such traces of contemporary life brought the story alive making the Ghanaian reader identify with the unfolding events even if he has to suspend belief for awhile in order to swallow the final scenes of the story. More importantly, descriptions of landscapes, institutions, behaviours, and reactions were so exact and spot-on that at some point I thought I knew exactly where Sonokrom is, especially for those of us who have stayed at Tafo before. This feeling was enlivened when Sunrise FM, a Koforidua radio station, was mentioned.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes has written a book that, like Morrison's Beloved or the more conspicuously Song of Solomon, expands the borders of what is allowable, in African novels. He shows that even in a hut-and-thatch setting, which early in the story made me fear that this might be one of those calabash stories, there could be science and that the African character is not all poor and hungry but also has scientific tendencies, something a lot of contemporary writers are shying away from or are failing to point out. Yet like Ben Okri, though comparatively Nii's use of the surreal is mild, Nii has created a sub-genre that is solely his; for how many times will one encounter a forensic pathologist working in a village where traditions are upheld and having been rendered incapable acquiesce to it?

Again, both sides of the narrative bemoans loss and inefficiency. Whereas in Yaw Poku's world it is the the surge in rural-urban migrating depleting the village of its human resource such that its culture is dying off and traditional occupations like farming, herbal medicine and hunting are left without practitioners, in Kayo's world it is the corruption of the individual and institutions that is bemoaned. Yet there is a kind of symbiosis regarding the causes of the problem with the urban corruption and inefficiency drawing people from the rural areas.

One dimension of Nii's writing I loved most is his ability to involve the reader by not releasing all facts at a go. Sometimes sections begin as if the reader had been privy to some information required to understand what was currently being said. This implied or implicit sharing information makes the reader work his way into the heart of the story and becomes part of it and not necessarily a passive recipient of unfolding events.

I purchased this book exactly a year ago and kept it for this moment. I have enjoyed this book very much and I therefore recommend it unreservedly. It is that book that should be read. Nii Ayikwei Parkes gives me hope that there is hope in Ghana's next generation of writers.

__________________

About the author: Early this year, precisely on March 22, I interviewed Nii Ayiwkei Parkes on ImageNations. Kindly click here for the said interview.

Proverb Monday, #48

2011-11-14T07:30:00.000Z

This is my contribution to Kinna's Ghana Literature Week, Nov. 14 - 20, 2011.
__________________

Proverb: Wonnim nipa a, wo ne no nsi koso.

Meaning: If you don't know someone, you do not make a partnership with them.

No. 4381 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Quotes for Friday from Chinua Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria

2011-11-11T07:30:00.000Z

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example with are the hallmarks of true leadership. [1]

One of the commonest manifestations of under-development is a tendency among the ruling elite to live in a world of make-believe and unrealistic expectations. This is the cargo cult mentality that anthropologists sometimes speak about - a belief by backward people that someday, without any exertion whatsoever on their own part, a fairy ship will dock in their harbour laden with every goody they have always dreamed of possessing. [9]

In spite of conventional opinion Nigeria has been less than fortunate in its leadership. A basic element of this misfortune is the seminal absence of intellectual rigour in the political thought of our founding fathers - a tendency to pious materialistic woolliness and self-centred pedestrianism. [11]

Spurious patriotism is one of the hallmarks of Nigeria's privileged classes whose generally unearned positions of sudden power and wealth must seem unreal even to themselves. To lay the ghost of their insecurity they talk patriotically. [16]

But whereas tribalism might win enough votes to install a reactionary jingoist in a tribal ghetto, the cult of mediocrity will bring the wheels of modernization grinding to a halt throughout the land. [20]

Unlucky is the country where indiscipline is seen by ordinary people as the prerogative of the high and might. For, by the same token, discipline will be seen as a penalty which the rank and file must pay for their powerlessness. [33]

My frank and honest opinion is that anybody who can say that corruption in Nigeria has not yet become alarming is either a fool, a crook or else does not live in this country. [37]

__________________

Read the review here.

New Book: In The Midst Of Loafers by Omohan EBHODAGHE

2011-11-10T07:30:00.000Z

Let Omohan Ebhodaghe introduce you to his book...

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About the Author: Omohan Ebhodaghewas born in Lagos, Nigeria.He attended the universities of Beninand Lagos. Heco-edited an anthology of poems and stories entitled Twenty Nigerian Writers: Portraits; and the author of Hightower. A former teacher, he was the1993-4 publicity secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Lagos State Chapter. Helives and works in London, courtesy of a British Council, Lagos office assistance.

Focus: In terms of sheer size and quality, Spain has her own Don Quixote De La Mancha novel via Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra; Russia has her own War and Peace novel through Count Leo Tolstoy; India has her own A Suitable Boy novel as authored by Vikram Seth; and, now behold Nigeria with his own novel IN THE MIDST OF LOAFERS. And the upcoming PHOTOCOPIES & ORIGINAL.

SYNOPSIS: SUBJECT MATTERS

The 945 pageliterary novel IN THE MIDST OF LOAFERS (Published by Chipmunka Publishing, UK, 2011) is bifocal. With eight books of variedchapters in each, its first page opens In Medias Res “ Yet, you’re not one ofour showbusiness pastors of the expressway church fame as Esiri want us tobelieve but alas an American-styled adjutant professor in bloom if you don’tknow, “ page 30 UK edition, and thereafter the first four chapters centred attention,in flashbacks, on a group of religious and non-religious people who behave as eachdoes and within or outside of the academic life of some of them on an imaginaryuniversity campus or so-called the Metropolitan University of Benin withcampuses at Ekehuan and Ugbowo or the acronym MUB.

Written in acinematic epic format, it uses the holistic approach in presenting the variousissues raised in the novel and that included selfish human desires. Thus, itmixes dramatic actions with pragmatic realism with poetic wisdom as undertone.It also explores the historical development of a city, somewhere in West Africa from its early beginnings and speculatesabout the socio-political and aesthetic future of MUB and the state within thecomity of nations.

The main storylinetherefore runs through the main themes of madness and endurance and the maincharacter Okoekpen Okonofua Junior, and what other characters gained from himor that they each lost to him.

Okoekpen OkonofuaJunior, an undergraduate student at MUB is put against formidable obstacles inthe home, at school, at the religious premises and the ordinarily perceivedplaygrounds of old Bendel state of

Nigeria

. At home he must faceOmoakhuana. At school is Amadasun. Mo Debe Edegbe is for the church. And theplaygrounds have to do with Ojame as a friend’s older cousin with a woundedego. They claimed Okonofua was mad. Here also, we saw the exploration of hisriotous relationship with the extroverted Ekaette.

Hence, Okonofuahas to pass through these forces not only for his survival but also for hisgrowth towards adulthood. Each character therefore wants what he Okoekpenalready had initially as in Ekaette or would want to have as in formaleducation and or money. As a consequence, each became vicious, scheming andusing willing folks to achieve their stated aims as in the unwittingly use of MrOkonofua Senior by Omoakhuana at the home front and at the public arena Dr OkoroaforAgbamien by Amadasun among others.

The outcome insuch incendiary activities is the conflicts not only of willpower but also ofmorality. Whoever is socially successful still has to contend with the searedconscience. Therefore Amadasun acquired his degree and lectureship; Edegbe getsthe family properties and Ekaette as wife; Ojame gets the government parastataljob and social status; and, of course, his stepmother Omoakhuana secured herhusband’s favour and the family wealth in trust for herself and offspring. OkonofuaJunior, on the other hand, had the good life of a practical ethicist withpoetic wisdom in a contemporary Benin city of chaos and corruption, as it were.

In conclusion,Okoekpen got what others lost and lost what others got. He lost Ekaette toEdegbe, family wealth to his stepmother, university lectureship to Amadasun andsocial status to Ojame. The others lost peace of mind, that is, the poignancy andwisdom to live a better, healthier life as only the person enjoying it can feelwithin himself or herself behind closed doors and this with a name that bothpreceded him and lasted.

THEMES

The thematic thrust of the 945 page novel ismadness as in pages 658, 661, 691, 718 and 762 of the literary fiction. It isbifocal, as in being particular and general. The primary readers are taught andresearch Ph D students or postdoctoral fellows; then those with a BA or BSc andMA or MSc and are intelligent; and, then, those with vocational qualificationswho are naturally intellectuals as would other keen and discerning students atthe formal university level. As a short term usage, it is especially useful totourists, secondary school and college students as well as the general adultreaders as a literary enthusiast.

The particular aspect of the bifocaloverview of the literary novel is the quest of the lyrical personal or hero orprotagonist Okoekpen Okonofua Junior that used the In Medias Res format in itsfirst four chapters. Okoekpen in the Esan language of the people of Edo statein

Nigeria

means the child of peace. Okonofua is a white child, with connotative effectsvis-à-vis the cosmology, aestheticism, moral philosophies, academic prowess, theanthropological and touristic possibilities of the Idunwele villagers of Ewu inEdo state of the older Bendel state. Set in afictional university campus called the Metropolitan University of Benin or MUB,with names of other real universities placed side by side to create the effectof verisimilitude, other themes that engaged the author include literary,lesbianism, paedophilia, feminism, corruption, historical development ofEdoland, linguistics, love, revenge, domestic family squabbles, self-reliance,spirituality, entrepreneurial efforts, deficiency in public infrastructure orutilities like water supplies, good roads, lack of housing estates, electricitypower supply, serenity of Idunwele village life and social chaos.

If, when the novel IN THE MIDST OF LOAFERS isready or published eventually, and you climbed up the descriptive or ratheranalytical passages from page one to one hundred that are the mountain Everestof the work, then, when at the summit, so as to come face to face with theeagle on mountain Everest, as it were, then you could relax and savour thejuices that are the dialogues and characterization and this up to the end ofthe epic novel that is written in a cinematic form.

CHARACTERIZATION.

OKOEKPEN OKONOFUAJUNIOR, the lead character is a first son of OkonofuaSenior as recreated in flashbacks and In Medias Res in the first four chapterformat. 23 years old, he enters the Metropolitan university of Beninon his own effort. In a Beninsociety of a survivalist nature, rank and file individuals cheat in one form oranother and yet lay flip flop accusations on others and wait for personal materialprogress or publicly acknowledged happiness that never arises. The facts fromOmoakhuana or Ojame or Edegbe or Dr Agbamien he realised were utterly oppositeto the truth that their actual negative actions inflicted on him. At the end,he experiences a final escape from the broad road, streets, avenues orfootpaths of mankind with their confused layered claims to public goodness yet treadfor that narrow road of eternal bliss reserved for one or two folks from eachgeneration with a true sense of righteousness.
AMADASUNOGOMUDIA, 25 years, is the typical Edoopportunist who fought real and imaginary enemies in order to be featured inthe media, for first positions in class, playgrounds or workplace, to be theperson to secure the available plum jobs or monetary favours from foreigndonors. A spy for his lecturers, he used everybody to achieve his goals.
MO DEBE EDEGBE. Mo is Moses. A 36 years old junior civil servant of the old schoolof fawning and perpetual mental and social servitude to colonial ideals and whowas on a four years leave to acquire a qualification necessary for socialmobility in a corrupt Benin city civil service system, he is equally a churchelder of the sect of the local Jehovah’s Witnesses whose brutality if crossedknew no equal.
AGBOGIDI OJAMEEGUA, 32 years, is the inherently unqualified civil orpublic servant whose survival rested on using others qualifications, positionsor name to feather his own nest. Thus, he is easily able to ruin any person whothreatened his future.
OMOAKHUANAOKONOFUA SENIOR, nee AFEGBUA, is a 42 years old secondwife who at the office or marketplace came across more as a 28 years old waistlinerolling, rumbling, wobbling or undulating akpoleyeke or a psychedelic Binidamsel in outlook. Her raunchy talk of explicit sexual nature does not depriveher from killing if possible her stepson in order to get the family wealth
EKAETTE UDO. Also known as Akaette, the 24 years old. She is the face of theemerging Nigeria who aimedfor the politically democratised freedom of north Americawhile desperate to hold onto the traditional sense of respectability accordedwomen with formal academic qualifications, in top positions or wedded to publicfigures and elected figures. Yet, unlike in north America where a female has achoice to do good or refrain, in Benin city that human rights is unattainablewhen faced with satanic intents of men behind closed doors at homes, offices orhotels; a malignant social malaise amongst those with visible affluence andhigher education and in which some women are willing participants as Ekaettewedded Mo Debe Edegbe or play leading roles in. Hence Ekaette’s doublestandards in her adopted Bendel state even as a medical student.
DR FIDELIS OKOROAFOR AIGBAMIEN, 45 yearsold, is a metaphor of the morally subhuman African elite with a doctorate whothrives only where social infrastructure were put in place by bricklayers,plumbers, electricians, roadside mechanics, seamstress as better role models ofpractical values that he loathed. With a former classmate and friend like Osimehis return to the USAis a parasitic way of paradoxically reaping where he did not sow.
OMOGBAI AFUZE is that 28 years old personality with otherwise serious intents whilstin bed but who acted out as a joker who does the dirty biddings of other socially andeconomically better placed people in public without shame.

OTHERS:

UNCLEOKILO, 37, lean, stoic with a dopey-face kind of a booklover, he is that good-natured man like Jumobi or Adiza who is a churchgoer but with aprivate lifestyle that is of a better quality as an Ezon pragmatist, with asilent and reserved countenance to match. He entered MUB as an experiencedadult.

OBASOGIE ANSOWAN, a 41 years old male with a respectable traditional wife and three birthchildren back home, he is a bout of jokes with teenage undergraduates with foreignairs of make-belief sophistication yet he finds joy in rubbing minds with thesame teenagers or young adults as domestic life contrasted sharply with the universityair of freedom, liberty, material acquisition, cafes, staff clubs, glamour orstudent restaurants catering for wealthy and pretenders alike if the price is right.

OGHENETEGA OTERI,the plain-looking 26 years old pharmacy student, in order to get friends or asemblance of it, fights other people’s wars while her domestic problems remain.A member of a religious sect, she plays the holier than thou role of a typicalIsoko woman with a morally rotten past that she blames on parents and societysolely.

ONOLENLEN IKPOBA-HILLS, 38 years, is a senior staff nurse whose office boss is ten timestreated better than a legal husband of hers back home. With a desire to upholda lifestyle of drugs, parties or sexual escapades begun in junior secondaryschool, she finds a soul mate in Omoakhuana and other schoolteachers as crudefeminists.

OKPOME MALAIKA OHUAN-SHOKPEKA is a 19 and half years old who grew up in the wild wild west suburbof Idumota in Lagosand so hardened for life. Once a squatter with Ekaette, MoDebe Edegbe used her as an informant whose corrupting ways within theirPentecostal church would then be condone if she does the bidding of her maleelders as equally wicked bosses.

UDEME ANICHEBE, is the 17 years old otherwise clever lass whois overworked and underpaid housemaid, also called UD by mates or Ude by hermadam’s children. She was given out as a purchased property by Igbo parents whowere originally from Ngbidi in the old Anambra state and with already 14offspring the father cannot feed, house or clothe at his relative age of 39with primary school qualification, an office messenger job with petty farmingon government lands and an illiterate fulltime housewife of 36 years.

OKONOFUA SENIOR, 52years old, is wholly self-effacing, although easily used by his second wifeOmoakhuana to get at his first son Okonofua Junior. A man of remorse at theend, his wife still prevailed over his assisting his son.

OKUMAGBAWADO ODUMAGBA is the 25 years old primary school mate of Okoekpen whosehouse became his second home as his upper class taste did not find acorresponding ally at the GRA and more so when his spirit sought the lower andworking middle class folks as friends especially.

OKEKE UGBOKWE is the 34 years old shrewd Igbo manand a former trader who did a bachelor’s degree in health science at the university of Ifein the western region of

Nigeria

before relocating to MUB also as a local church elder for an MBBS degree in medicine. Classconscious he loathed Okonofua whom he rejected for Debe as a better choice forhis medical student counterpart Ekaette.

MODUPU OWOBU, a 42 years old, is the supple Benin woman of an unconditional and soa hundred percent surrender sort of mentality once in love and as she wasimbued in a vast knowledge of a conjugal nature of raw animals and a soul who hastravelled far and wide with scores of boyfriends, lovers and other male hangers-on,especially church elders who took advantage of her financially andsexually.

OROME AFE, a portable figure, trim, dark and posh, she is 19 and able to holdher own amongst males who could be thrice her age and this she did in mattersof coitus, social partying or academic matters as she has links with GreatBritain where her father schooled at.

JUMOBI EJIROGHENE, is the huge, lanky and super-shy 32 years old of lady with genuine self-respectwho preaches regularly. She is unlucky in love even with Okonofua but a gentlegiant in physique and this despite her good deeds that she easily offers peopleand as enshrined in her Pentecostal religious doctrines.

NWAKAEGO UGBO, is the 17 years old Imaguero collegejunior secondary school dropout as a result of diverse reasons and who ended upat a hotel to ply her trade as a commercial sex worker who laughed at theso-called good society of Benin cityand indeed the world to scorn. Her use of language she claims emanated fromseveral encounters with top flight businessmen in

Benin

society as her sexualcustomers.

UNIBEN and MUB lecturers also make up a large proportion of herclients. Besides, she is also self-educated via the media outlets of newspaperreadings, listening to radio stations especially the BBC World service, RadioFrance International and the VOA Africa programmes.

JAFARU IGEDU EMOATA, 24years old, is the Imobighe the silent one at the backside of the Oyiya churchplace of worship but who became agitated and tried to challenge his body ofelders at their regional headquarters at Igieduma where he died on his way viaa motor accident.

ELDER AMUTA AMIEGBE-AFIEGBE,49, is the worldly-wise insurance agent and banker whodoubled as the new presiding officer or overseer of Oyiya congregation thatOkonofua, Ekaette and Edegbe also attended.

ELDER OLIHA OGIDA, 68, isthe older and former presiding officer and the de facto pleaser. Also aweakling, with a wife and children to cater for, he used his position to getfinancial rewards from the socially privileged Ekaette and dealt injustice toOkonofua whom he took as poor and a church rat or floor member to be used and got rid of as practised widelyin Benin city.

COLONEL ETIM INYANG, 45, is asemi-illiterate man with brutal ways but courted royalty, class and wealth as alover of front seats at social functions could as well do.

GARY OSIME PHILLIPS, 42years old, a former course mate and friend of Dr Agbamien, is the symbolicunfriendly, unloving banker, corporate company executive, city trader or stockexchange broker who married wealth and so used mainly college and junior universitystudents as mere playthings who came to him for financial favours. His speechesare loaded with sexual innuendoes common with buddies in men’s gatherings or whollymen’s only clubs.

ADIZAOMOSENOBULA, 21 years old, she emerged the bestall-round student in her class, the department and challenges her lecturers whofound her as one of the fewer benefits of enduring as a teacher who gets his orher brain stimulated once in a while. Yet, she is that one whom her cruel societyrelegated to substandard jobs and lower pay while her former course mates asdullards become Nollywood A-list celebrities, executive state governors andhigh-flying military officers with billionaire, fleets of cars, palatialestates to show for it.

There are othercharacters well over 350 that represent in number only the tribes in

Nigeria

The Book is available at the Guardian and at Amazon

The Second African Roar Anthology

2011-11-09T07:30:00.000Z

African Roar has come to stay. In its second year, this annual anthology from the publishers of the StoryTime, a registered e-zine, is doing more to African Literature than what most prize-organisations dreams of doing with their prizes. Whereas the first edition featured eleven (11) authors, this one brings together fifteen (15) authors from across the continent. Mixing some old and award-winning names like the 2011 Caine Prize winning author NoViolet Bulawayo, Emmanuel Sigauke, Ivor Hartmann, Ayodele Morocco-Clarke, Zukiswa and previously unpublished authors like Isaac Neequaye, this eclectic collection, in theme, coverage and setting, from across the continent promises to be the must read anthology in a few years to come, if it hadn't taken that position already.

Edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor Hartmann, authors in the second edition include:

Memory Chirere: A Tribute to Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza
NoViolet Bulawayo: Main
Zukiswa Wanner: A Writer's Lot
Hajira Amla: Longing for Home
Uche Peter Umez: Lose Myself
Murenga Joseph Chikowero: Uncle Jeffrey
Danko Mkandawire: The Times
Emmanuel Sigauke: Snakes will Follow You
Emmanuel Iduma: Out of Memory
Ivor Hartmann: Dinner at Ten
Mbonisi P. Ncube: Chanting Shadows
Chimdindu Mazi-Njoku: Snake of the Niger Delta
Ayodele Morocco-Clarke: Silent Night Bloody Night
Isaac Neequaye: Water Wahala

Note that ImageNations will be bringing you a review of this anthology. I will also contact some of the authors for interviews, if they agree you will hear about them, their stories and what their stories mean for them. As I said earlier, African Roar, has created a platform for unpublished authors to get their stories published. If you are an African, have stayed on the continent for at least 10 years, have naturalised and would want to take advantage of this platform give it a try.

A kindle-edition of this book is available on amazon.

Excerpts from Nana Awere Damoah's Tales from Different Tails

2011-11-08T07:30:00.000Z

This is an excerpt from an upcoming anthology by Nana Awere Damoah. Until now, Nana Damoah's writing has revolved around creative non-fiction, pulling out his experiences and experiences of varied people to motivate others shape their life. Most often, people are more willing to leave others dabble in their mistakes and only tweet the #RIP for facebook some few words when their crooked ways lead them to their lives. We have come to a point in time when people pity you when you're dead, afraid of telling you in the face that your ways will lead you to disaster for fear of 'hurting their feelings'. However, when you're gone they can shower you with all the advice you don't need. That's why I love Nana's two previous books: Through the Gates of Thoughts and Excursions in my Mind. People have virtually become hypocrites, smiling and 'lol' even when they don't mean it, even when they say in their hearts 'WTF'. We are gradually becoming a people of sycophants, willing to live in our individualistic ways whilst thinking that others interconnectivity will solve the problem.

But I digress. Very big. What I bring you today is an excerpt from Nana's creative fiction side homonymously titled Tales from Different Tails. I will be bringing you a review of this soon, however until then enjoy these excerpts.

___________________________

Everyone has a priceand… their broom. You either name the price or find the broom that sweeps themoff their feet!

October Rush

The new academic yearhas started and school is under siege. Reason? ‘October Rush’. Heads keepturning as students struggle to juggle academic work with relationship wahala. The freshers are tagged New Stock, sophomores as Reduce to Clear while final years are Buy One Get On Free. Follow ‘October Rush’ as it tells theintricate story of University romance. For some, it is learning the ropes, forothers it is a do or die affair. Find your feet in this hot, intense, andpacey affair. The Rush is on!

Truth Floats

It is true that the onewho you save the bullet for might be the one pulling the trigger. So the storygoes that Kweku Ananse took the meat right out of his bosom friend, Akoto’s,mouth when he stole Ama Adoma from him. But it is also true that when they liethey will lie again because the deception never end. Amidst the lies anddisloyalty truth comes to light like a calabash that has been forced in water.All said and done, did Ama fall for Kweku? How did Akoto find out about hisfiancé, Ama’s, true love for him? This story teaches the values of patience,perseverance and love in the face of lies.

Dribble de Zagidibogidi

Vengeance is of God butcan the human mind truly forgive and forget? Zagidibogidi (Randy) is accused ofbrutally raping Rose, the only lady he would catch the moon for. As things turnout, Rose is the only one who could save him from going to jail. Wicked twist?Rose has fallen into coma. But help comes from strange places. Babyface,Randy’s lawyer, vowed to do his best to prove his client’s innocence. Willjustice be denied by it being delayed? Could there be some unfinished businesswith Babyface on Get Even Day? Revenge must be sweet when served cold andslowly…it is payback time! Yes, a broken mirror can be patched but the crackwill forever be there.

Hope Undeferred

The elders say women aresupposed to sell garden eggs not gun powder. But Araba’s heart aches for Kwesi.What risks can a young lady take in making her love known to the man she loves?Should she go ahead and propose love? For the most haunted spinster in AssinKabrofo, it is only a matter of time before she loses heartthrob Kwesi. Thisunwritten law in African setting is eating away this beautiful village queen.But do African gods condone breaking gender ranks? Hope can only be held ontowith hands and feet. And with prayer that it is not dashed to pieces as potteryon the rocks that line the banks of River Ankobra.

Kojo Nkrabeah

The only storiesvillagers hear of the city is that of glamour with streets paved with gold,money hanging on trees and the taps overflowing with milk and honey. This storyshatters the dream of city life for Kojo Nkrabeah and Akwasi Poku. Akilipee hascome to Moseaso from the city with well embellished stories. These storieslured the orphaned Kojo Nkrabeah and his friend, Akwasi Poku. In their haste toescape their mundane village lives, they learn the hard way where the grass is green. This is not your ordinary village-to-city story but onethat immerses the reader into the best of both worlds.

Guardian of the RentedWell

Akos is a married womanwho wants her book published. Benson wants everything in skirt. How does hedraw the line between pleasure with this taken lady and the business at hand?This story shows the resolve of married women and the extent to which they go toshow or betray love and trust.

Was it Akos who covetedBenson to get her way? Or it was Benson who risked his life guarding the rentedwell. What has all this got to do with Lieutenant Patrick Atiemo? Something hasto give, but what? Follow this maze of a crazy love affair gone terribly wrong…

Face to Face – TrotroPalaver

If you have not taken a trotro, aka troski in Ghana, then either you are not a Ghanaian or haven’t visited Ghana. Theordinary man’s means of transportation in Ghana comes with lots of hustle anddrama. The tight seating arrangements, the conversations, the potpourri ofsmells the laughter, gossips, the political debates as well as the twists,turns and trickery to outwit the police. This adventure brings you face to faceas we take a short winding yet hilarious ride in the old Morris troski, withregistration number ABC 4037. Join Akwasi the aplanke (drivers mate) who holds a PhD in cunning, slippery mathematicsand his master, Massa Kojo,the man who uses a toothpick in his mouth like a ceiling brush, as they driveus from Pig Farm to Circle.... vroooooommmmmm.......Away bus!

Project Akoma

When the heart decides,it is the mind that plans. A message sent to the mind simply reads: “I havefound my desire—my missing rib,” and sets the brain in motion. Stories of humanlove always go with sorrow, joy, deceit, unfailing dedication and jealousy. Towin the heart of this striking beauty of eve’s daughter, he must climb theseven skies and back, he must scale the China wall to profess love and win herheart. A moving rollercoaster of a love story which takes readers through thesteps to win Adjoa’s heart. This was so delicate and complicated it had to behandled like a final year project work on a University campus. Was this another happily ever after tale or a masterpiece of storytelling with stingat the very end?

Tales from DifferentTails will be launched on 1 December 2011 at the Teacher's Hall Complex near Workers' College and TigoHeadoffice, Adabraka, Accra,at 6pm.This is Nana Awere Damoah's third book, the first two being Excursions in MyMind (2008) and Through the Gates of Thought (2010).

Proverb Monday, #47

2011-11-07T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Wonnim kuro bi mu a, wonka mu asεm

Meaning: If you don't know a town, you don't talk about its affairs

Context: Don't talk about something about which you are ignorant

No. 4380 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Mai Nasara, Winner of the Prestigious NLNG Prize

2011-11-06T08:43:00.001Z

On October 10, 2011 at the Eko Hotels, an almost unknown writer, hiding under the pseudonym Mai Nasara, won the most prestigious award in Nigeria's literary calendar with his book The Missing Clock. In fact, the money attached to this award is better than most of the awards the literary world has to offer. At US$ 100,000 this prize is comparable to the Man Booker which offers the winner an astounding 50,000 Pounds; however, whereas the Booker is opened to all writers in the Commonwealth who have published a book in the awarding-year, the NLNG is awarded to a Nigerian author who has published a literary book that happen to fall within the category that the award will be going to for that year. Sounds complicated? I guess not. The award rotates amongst four literary groupings: Children Fiction (which was the awarding category in 2011), Poetry, Poetry and Drama.

From a list of 126 entries, a long shortlist comprising six authors were selected. This was further shortened to three consisting of Ayodele Olofintuade' Eno's Story, Chinyere Obi-Obasi's The Great Fall and Mai Nasara's The Missing Clock, the winning story. The expectation was high as it is with every money-laden award. And like most awards, the Booker being a recent example, the NLNG has its own controversies like there not being any winner in the previous year because the judges deemed the shortlisted books not good enough. That year the award was to go to poetry.

However, last year's episode was not repeated, at least not for literature (there was no Science winner this year). In fact, the quality this year was so high that had any of the other two shortlisted writers won, there would have been no grumblings or murmurings from the any side and no organisation would have jumped in to protest on 'dumbing down' the award or threatened to form another literature prize. Officials of the awards described The Missing Clock as

a genial heart-warming account of how a young boy's simple acts inspires his family to fortune.

The Chairman of the Panel of Judges, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, a professor of English at the University of Lagos and past co-winner of the prize said

The Missing Clock celebrates ingenuity, hard work and sparkles in its prose

describing the author as 'a gifted story teller'. According to a pleasantly surprised Adeleke Adeyemi, his real name, who had entered the competition with sheer hope and conviction that he finally had to turn something in for assessment:

My plan has always been to use this story, which is timely, to help children grow as human beings. This is why money is not my motivation. In fact, 10% of all proceeds from sales of the book will be used to fight malaria and promote girl-child education, especially in Northern Nigeria.

More information here.

October in Review, Projections for November

2011-11-04T07:55:00.001Z

This review has delayed. October was a good reading month though I couldn't settle on the books when I made my projections; however, I couldn't read one of the two books I decided to read, To Kill a Mockingbird. The following books were read:

The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga. I started this book in September but the chunk of it was read in October. It is a sequel to her earlier novel Nervous Conditions. In this book, we see how hopes were dashed and aspirations squashed. We see how a nation's struggle towards independence destroyed another.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. This book was read for my Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, a challenge which I'm far behind and which I'll be putting in much effort in the month of December all through to 2012. The story is about Holden Caufield and his teenage angst. Whether he is right to think so or he is suffering from teenage delusion, one thing is clear: he made statements that are true. The older we get the more sycophant we become with the fear of not interfering into people's affairs or leaving things up to them to solve themselves. Caufield hated people who aren't true to themselves and discovered that the world is full of them.
The Trouble with Nigeria by Chinua Achebe. I try to read at least one non-fiction book a day. This short book is a collection of articles/essays describing the root cause of the problem Nigerian is facing. According to the author poor leadership and misplaced/displaced values are the major causes of Nigeria's problem. This book was read for BAND.
Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes. This book was read for the Ghana Literature Week to be organised by Kinna from November 14 -20, 2011. I am therefore not going to say anything on this.

On the Caine Prize 2011 Shortlist, I read:

What Molly Knew by Tim Keegan
In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata by Laurie Kubuitsile

From November 14 - 20, 2011, Kinna is organising the 2nd Ghana Literature Week. Thus most of my reading in this month will centre on Ghanaian authors. Currently, I am reading The Other Crucifix by Benjamin Kwakye. I plan to read Kunadu Sumprim's The Imported Ghanaian and her second book A Place of Beautiful Nonsense. However, I will still be reading a non-African authored book and a non-fiction. For the non-African authored book, the plan is to read To Kill a Mockingbird and for the non-fiction, I plan reading Kofi Akpabli's Tickling the Ghanaian.

Follow me on twitter, facebook and on this blog for updates on my reading journeys. Comments are welcome and discussions too. My new job keeps me busy but I'll try as much as possible to respond to every comment and show appreciation to all those who do.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

2011-11-01T07:30:00.000Z

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (2007; 166) - read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge - seems to continue from where Thomas Hardy left off with the story of Jude and Sue in Jude the Obscure. In this story, McEwan investigates the changes that was taking place in early 1960s: social, political and economic changes.

Using the story of Florence and Edward, McEwan writes of how the early 1960s served as the turning point in the century. During this period, the British Empire has started shrinking, with several colonists becoming independent. There was also a change in the landscape with a somewhat rapid urbanisation of rural and peri-urban areas. However, the major change that McEwan concentrated upon is the change in relationships or the idea of what marriage is or should be, the major theme in Hardy's story. He toes Hardy's course, though Florence was much stronger than Sue and Edward more foolish than Jude, for Jude made compelling arguments similar, in content, to Florence's spontaneous speech on the beach. During this period, homosexuals have started living together, though they might not have started pressing home their rights. Perhaps.

The young man Edward had married Florence and at the night of their honeymoon, for that's the major setting of the story - that one night, they both discovered that they were novices, in the act of marital consummation - sex. Both were virgins. But Edward, in addition, had married Florence for the wrong reasons. All along, he had withheld or controlled his sexual urge for this one night. Florence on the other hand, loves Edward dearly; but not sexually. Yet, because of her love for him and his expectations of her, she had gone ahead to read books on sex, prior to this evening. Yet, on the very night, she found herself to be more clumsy, incapable, and unprepared than she thought she would be. And when she decided to be bold and lead Edward to her sex, all that they had built or overcome - the years of waiting, the hours of apprehension, the fear of failure - crashed upon them. Edward, unable to control himself, had let out his seed on her. And Florence, disgusted, shamed, and absolutely unprepared by this, instantly realised that this is not the love she was looking for. This is not what she called love.

Running from the room and onto the beach, Florence felt in between thoughts: she wanted to leave; but she loved Edward. However, she found that her solace was in her career, in her musical quartet, the 'Ennismore Quartet', when her fingers are moving, when she's recreating or replaying Beethoven, Mozart or Schubert. She wanted to do more with her life. Something wonderful. But Edward followed her onto the beach. He felt cheated, he felt humiliated and words were exchanged. After the cry of a blackbird, which Florence thought was a nightingale and Edward - a historian with a special skill of knowing the names of several birds, plants and flowers - corrected her, they parted. The significance of the blackbird's cry is prominent: why wasn't it a Nightingale singing a song of cares and love (Florence Nightingale?) but a blackbird (doom?). Yet, at its cry, Florence broke out of the societal cocoon with which she was entwining herself. She broke out toward independence, toward freedom, toward her career. And Edward, to whom sex was everything, descended into decadence. The history books he dreamt of writing, remained unwritten. In fact, on Chesil Beach, Florence had come up with an idea that would have benefitted both had Edward not been too infantile in his actions, too silent in his arrogance and too quick with his speech. She says

We love each other - that's given. Neither of us doubts it. We're free now to make our own choices, our own lives. Really, no one can tell us how to live. Free agents! And people live in all kinds of ways now, they can live by their own rules and standards without having to ask anyone else for permission. ... We could be together, live together, and if you wanted, really wanted, that's to say, whenever it happened, and of course it would happen, I would understand, more than that, I'd want it, I would because I want you to be happy and free. I'd never be jealous, as long as I knew that you loved me. [155]

But would or could Edward venture into the unknown? Could he break societal standards and norm? Could he follow his own path? The marriage was dissolved on the ground of non-consummation. And whereas Florence went on to achieve success with her musical career, producing album after album and playing at all the big places, receiving all the great reviews there were, failure beheld Edward, who at age sixty had fathered several children, lived with several women, and had another unsuccessful marriage behind him. With the exception of his balding head, there was nothing worthy, tangible or otherwise that he could show. Ending up living as a tenant in his father's house, Edward became a representation of failure and regret. In his regret, he made it a point to stay away from classical music; though he could not deny his love for Florence and her Classical Music. On the other hand, one could also observe that Edward's failure might not have stemmed from the fact that he divorced Florence, for that cannot stand to any objective and intellectual investigation. What might have caused his descent and failure is a mentality of subtle revenge; of trying to do or get whatever was withhold from him. Thus wanton search for sex took his mind away from the very things he set out to do. Again, he tried to go counter to everything Florence stood for, thus dabbling in the rock music industry, and achieving no measurable success.

McEwan by this very book, shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, provided the nascent stages of the many mini-revolutions that have changed our world in the past half century and which we have now been taken for granted. Another issue that was hinted at, only, was the breakdown of religious fanaticism and the ontogeny of atheism or a thread back to the Age of Reason; however, this was not fully fleshed out.

This is my first reading of McEwan's body of work and I enjoyed it very much. Consequently, I will go ahead to read the other four on my reading challenge.

Proverb Monday, #46

2011-10-31T07:30:00.000Z

Proverb: Akokɔhwede da Firaw ho nso ɔdware mfuturo
Meaning: The francolin lives near the Volta River, yet it bathes in the sand.
Context: You may have plenty of something and yet not choose to use.

No. 3324 in Bu me Bε by Peggy Appiah et al.

Call for entries: Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize

2011-10-29T07:30:00.000Z

The Commonwealth Foundation has made the call for entries for the new Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The prizes are part of a new initiative, Commonwealth Writers, an online hub to inspire, inform and create a community of writers from all over the world. Together with the prizes, Commonwealth Writers unearths, develops and promotes the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. Awarded for best first book, the Commonwealth Book Prize is open to writers who have had their first novel (full length work of fiction) published between 1 January and 31 December 2011. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £10,000. The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000-5000 words). Regional winners receive £1,000 and the overall winner receives £5,000. The winners will be announced in June 2012.

Chair of the Commonwealth Book Prize, Margaret Busby said “The significance of a prize such as this becomes greater with each year. It is vital to encourage and celebrate the talent of newly emerging novelists whose words have the potential to inspire and enrich the entire literary world. Searching out and promoting the best first books of fiction internationally is a serious task, a great honour and a wonderful challenge.”

Chair of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Bernardine Evaristo said “This wonderful prize will turn the spotlight on the increasingly popular short story form and aims to support and encourage short story writers worldwide.”

As one of the Commonwealth Foundation’s culture programmes, Commonwealth Writers works in partnership with international literary organisations, the wider cultural industries and civil society to help writers develop their craft. Commonwealth Writers is a forum where members can debate the future of publishing, get advice from established authors and ask questions of our writer in residence.

Commonwealth Foundation Director, Danny Sriskandarajah said “As one of the Commonwealth Foundation’s flagship projects, I’m delighted that we’re putting the prizes firmly on the contemporary map of new writing and launching a dedicated Commonwealth Writers website to extend our global reach.”

More information here.

Quotes for Friday from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Weep Not, Child

2011-10-28T07:30:00.000Z

My third reading of this book was for a Book Club discussion. The review here was written thirteen years after my last reading in 1998. Thus, I don't know whether I should review it again, now that the story is fresh in my mind or I should leave it just as it is. However, enjoy the quotes that came to me:

...[T]ime and bad conditions do not favour beauty. [3]

'Don't worry about me. Everything will be all right. Get education, I'll get carpentry. Then we shall, in the future, be able to have a new and better home for the whole family.' [4]

A fool, in the town's vocabulary, meant a man who had a wife who would not let him leave her lap even for a second. [9]

'Blackness is not all that makes a man,' Kamau said bitterly. 'There are some people, be they black or white, who don't want others to rise above them. They want to be the source of all knowledge and share it piecemeal to others less endowed. ... A rich man does not want others to get rich because he wants to be the only man with wealth.' [21]

'... A white man is a white man. But a black man trying to be white man is bad and rash.' [21]

[A] mother's silence is the worst form of punishment for it is left to one's imagination to conjure up what is in her mind. [35]

Education was good only because it would lead to the recovery of the lost lands. [39]

'... All white people stick together. But we black people are very divided. ...' [75]

'... Besides do you really think you'll be safer at home? I tell you there's no safety anywhere. There's no hiding in this naked land.' [83]

Yes. Sunshine always follows a dark night. We sleep knowing and trusting that the sun will rise tomorrow. [95]

'... Unless you kill, you'll be killed. So you go on killing and destroying. It's a law of nature. ...' [102]

______________

Read my review here

50. In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata by Lauri Kubuitsile

2011-10-26T07:30:00.000Z

In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata first published as part of the The Bed Book of Short Stories by Modjaji Books SA in 2010 was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Short Stories in 2011. It is also part of the Caine Prize anthology for 2011, To See the Mountain and other stories.

When alive McPhineas Lata was a lover of married women. He was an expert in making women happy, sexually. In fact, he died having sex with another woman. This makes the husbands in the village of Nokanyana an angry and bitter lot. They were therefore glad that he was dead. Consequently, whereas the women were

full of dramatic fainting and howls of grief echoing as far as the Ditlhako Hills

the men were so much so happy that some carried their own shovels to the cemetery and when the time came to cover up the body, it was carried out in record time. But another problem remained

a dead and buried McPhineas Lata didn't mean dead and buried McPhineas Lata memories. [emphasis not mine]

Every morning, the men see their women running to and humping the grave of McPhineas. Worried by this sight, they set out to investigate what made this dead man famous with their wives. They grilled Lata's friend: Bongo and Cliff but found nothing worthy of experimentation and subsequent use. The men of the village therefore set out to find it out for themselves. Each one was given a task to experiment on his wife and come out with the results for discussion during their meeting.

In the course of these investigations we found that the men had lost all that they used to do. Others were also clumsy and know of nothing, infuriating the women even more. But RraTebogo found something. He discovered that rubbing his wife's shoulder for three minutes followed by four strokes on the right worked on her. This he shared with his fellow men who also practised it on their wives.

With time and more learning and experimenting, visible changes were seen amongst the women. Less and less of them were trooping to McPhineas' grave. The women began speculating of McPhineas' ghosts inhibiting the bodies of their husbands. For there was no other means of explaining why all their husbands should change overnight; and all loving them in similar ways.

'He's here ... with us. I knew he couldn't just leave like that. McPhineas Lata has taken up the bodies of our husbands. He has taken spiritual possession of the husbands of Nokanyana.

Henceforth, both men and women live in anticipation of night to explore their new discoveries in between the sheets.

Written in a folktale-like narrative, In the Spirit of McPhineas tells the gradual decline in sexual life that beset marriages. In a convoluted way, Lauri advises men to be sexual explorers, to not relent on that which they used to do when they were young men. Reading this story after McEwan's On Chesil Beach (to be reviewed soon), I was surprised of the stark similarities and differences. The differences lie in the place of sex in marriage and the similarities, in the vindication of women and the freedom to pursue whatever they want. For this novel, written in a tone similar in refinedness as any of Mia Couto's short stories, requires the suspension of belief to appreciate. On the other hand, Lauri might also be testing the pulse of feminine adultery, though this direction of exploration did not go farther enough for any reaction or conclusion to be made.

In the Spirit of McPhineas, like Soulmates by Alex Smith is a different kind of short story. But having not read all the short stories in this shortlist I am not sure if this would be my favourite, though I must say I appreciated this very much. The story could be downloaded here.
_______________________

Brief Bio: Lauri Kubuitsile is a full time writer from Botswana. She has thirteen published works of fiction. She has also written two television series for Botswana Television and her short stories have been published in anthologies and literary magazines around the world. She has won numerous writing prizes including the Golden Baobab Prize junior category (2008/2009) and senior category in 2010, the BTA/AngloPlatinum Short Story Contest (South Africa- 2007) and the Botswana Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture’s Orange Botswerere Prize for Creative Writing (2007). She was recently chosen to be a writer in residence in El Gouna Egypt for the month of May 2010. She blogs at ‘Thoughts from Botswana’. (Source)

ImageNations Rating: 4.0/6.0