ImageNations

The rapid mushrooming of fiery faith-based organisations with  promises of heaven and paradise (and their continuous banishment of Satan) who see into the preternatural and are able to spiritually diagnose every problem, from Malaria to Cardiovascular diseases, have ensured that in today's Africa, no occurrence is happenstance. This mentality takes on a new importance if the problem being tackled defies comprehension and the only thing that science can do is to name it.  In this all-knowing world where nothing occurs by chance and everything has a spiritual root, a child suffering from cerebral palsy is likely to be moved from one prayer-camp to the other. Even when the cause of the problem is known, even when the parents are educated, this itinerant search for a miraculous cure will still be embarked upon and taken seriously. It is within this setting that Farida N. Bedwei's Definition of a Miracle  (iUniverse, 2010; 389) is placed. Zaara suffers from cerebral...

Few authors are able to keep their theme running for such a long time as Ngugi has done. As a critic of the post-independence politics of the new wave of African leaders, Ngugi wa Thiong'o knows more about the tricks, chicanery, and shenanigans of these people than most people. He has observed and written about it both in fiction and in essays. His keen interest has always been the lack of socialisation of government efforts and the endemic corruption that has strangulated several African countries, including his home country of Kenya - which had to go through a series of Constitutional reforms after the 2008 electoral crisis - from developing. Ngugi's observations, from the the dawn of independence when the capsule of euphoria burst and evaporated all at once leaving behind a blanket of realities, are encapsulated in his works. From his first novel Weep Not Child  (1964), which studied the hostile relationship between the colonialists and the colonised to Wizard of the Cro...

The last time I shared books I've acquired was in September, though I've acquired a few and have read some already: October, 2012 Women Leading Africa - Conversations with Inspirational African Women by Nana Darkoa Sakyiamah (Editor).  November, 2012 Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing . I've read this book already. However, I bought it because the author is unique in his approach to the novel and was challenged by Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters . Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf . I once heard that no one can say she/he has sat in a Literature class without reading Woolf. I'm not a student of Literature but I love literature (the small 'l') so I decided to just try it and I didn't regret it. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather . I chose this book because I've seen the author's name on some list before. I really don't know where but I chose it and read it and was, again, not disappointed. It's simple an...

Sometimes we look so long at a thing that we lose focus of the other beautiful things that surround us. Those unable to bear our absolute and inimical neglect drop out and disappear from the stage, their works waiting to be exhumed by a careful reader. They assume posthumous importance and their works suddenly appear on several reading lists - personal or academic. The fate of many a writer has so been determined. Fortunately, Chuma Nwokolo's fate will not follow this posthumous line. His is a fresh voice painting the same abstract pictures, but from a unique perspective. He is a worthy name of his generation and we might lose the likes of him if we keep focusing too much on the generations above them. In Chuma we have a writer who is in love with language and the relationships between words and their meanings. Reading him is an enjoyment and the reader will not forget. He gives taste and colour to words; he brings language alive and his descriptions are superior. The au...

Sophocles'  Oedipus Rex  - written around 430 BC - is a classic tale of fate (destiny) versus choice. It addresses the dilemma that has afflicted man since the beginning of time. For instance, in most cultures people attribute every occurrence - good or bad - to an omnipotent, omniscient being. Yet the fate-choice inclination has consequences on responsibility; if we live by fate must we not blame fate for what we do? If so then crime becomes an item of fate. The fate-choice continuum then becomes difficult to extricate, swinging from end to end depending on the fallout. In this story, though the philosophical conundrum was somehow not resolved, it was clear that Oedipus' behaviour contributed to the fulfilment of the prophecy surrounding his birth. Thus, if fate takes into considerations one's character and character feeds into choices then fate is difficult to change by actions; that is, assuming that ones character is not dynamic or is robust to exogenous variable...

Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing  (Heinemann, 2002; 328) edited by Jack Mapanje is an anthology of essays, poems, articles, songs and speeches by Africans who have at one point in time been political prisoners or have had political infractions with the law and have been jailed for it. The collection is broken into Origins; Arrest, Detention and Prison; Torture; Survival; and The Release. In this anthology one will meet the pioneers of independence fighters in Africa like Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana,  Agostinho Neto of Angola and others; also present are the fighters against apartheid in South Africa: Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Breyten Breytenbach; equally important are the post-independent right fighters such as Jack Mapanje, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and others. Contributors come from all the various regions of Africa: north, east, west, central and south. However, wh...

Speeches that Changed the World (Bounty Books, 2006; 192) edited by Emma Beare is a collection of speeches, interviews, dialogue and one-liners that are supposed to have marked an epoch in time. Sometimes these epochs are not long-lasting and the speeches not-world changing; sometimes the reverberations of the outcomes of the speeches can still be felt today, like John F. Kennedy's speech that empowered NASA and sparked the space race, which promised that America will put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s and did. Today, Curiosity is on an exploratory tour on Mars. However, some of these speeches are there only for their beauty; this is the case in most of the one-liners - like the ones by Princess Diana - whose significant impact on world cannot be determined. Same can be said of Mark Anthony's speech delivered at the death of Caesar. The collection is mostly West-centric and not comprehensive enough. The only Africans in there are Nelson Mandela and F. W. d...

Some white church convention - I read in the papers where they have resolved all that over and the Golden Rule, too, also that Negroes should be treated right. It looks to me white folks better stop resolving and get to  doing . They have resolved enough.  Resolving ain't solving.  [80] They are always worrying about dusting something, cleaning up something, or washing something, especially in the spring. Now, you take Joyce, every time I go by her place, either she, or her landlady one, is bulldozing the house - sweeping or mopping or dusting or washing out curtains, or ironing slip-covers. I swear there is many a thing to keep clean in a house. But a man do not worry about it as much as a woman. [114] That man you was talking about were white. He could afford to throw out things. White folks have got plenty of things. Almost all we got is problems, especially the race problem. Everybody's talking about it. The white folks down where I work is always discussin...

The Best of Simple  (Noonday Press, 1961*; 245) by Langston Hughes is a collection of seventy very short stories serialised chronologically to tell the story of Jesse B. Semple (usually spelt Simple) - an average black Joe whose experiences and actions during the epoch of segregation could be described as representative of the larger black community, especially Harlem. From unstable jobs to living from day to day; from saving to marry to caring for a other family members; from the torments of segregation to becoming the head of a family, Simple's dialogue provides an insight to life and especially of dashed aspirations and frustrations of black Americans who had become slaves in the South and had to escape to the North to have some semblance of opportunities in terms of jobs as factory hands or maids, where the rights of black workers are not guaranteed. As expected, Simple talked about racial discrimination and how foreigners - as long as they are white - have more liberty ...

The reading target for 2013 is not different from that of 2012: I intend to read 70 books this year. Consequently, I have set a target of at least 50 pages a day and 6 books a month. These strategies helped me achieve the 2012 targets and I hope it will help this time around. A total of 7 books were read in January. These gave a total of 1642 pages or 53 pages per day. The following: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel . This was the first book I read this year, obviously. It is about the life of a young boy who survives a shipwreck, alone, and what he went through. However, the book is much more than just the story of a castaway. It gives hope and faith; it shows how much we can achieve if we put our minds to it and believe in it. Piscine Molitor Patel's story is one worth the read and if you're not the reading type, just read it. Or watch the movie adaptation which I cannot confirm if it stuck to the story. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi . This is a non-fiction, larg...