Indigokafe:Portal for African Literatures, Writers and Films
Helen Oyeyemi
Mr. Fox: By Helen Oyeyemi
Review
"A sly, tender, and elegant novel, graced with a magical charm that makes its wisdom about love and loss all the more captivating to read. Mr. Fox is a novel for those who love stories and who believe in their singular power to alter and heal our fragile souls."
-Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air
"A wonderfully original novel, full of images and turns of phrase so arresting, so vivid and inventive, its pages almost glow with them. Helen Oyeyemi has given us a work of playful charm and serious narrative pleasure."
-Sarah Waters
Synopsis:
From a prizewinning young writer, a brilliant and inventive story of love, lies, and inspiration.
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, the celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently.
Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising; and in different times and places, the two of them seek each other, find each other, thwart each other, and try to stay together, even when the roles they inhabit seem to forbid it. Their adventures twist the fairy tale into nine variations, exploding and teasing conventions of genre and romance, and each iteration explores the fears that come with accepting a lifelong bond. Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair, and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox's game. And so Mr. Fox is offered a choice: Will it be a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit?
The extraordinarily gifted Helen Oyeyemi has written a love story like no other. Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.
About the Author
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl ; The Opposite House, which was a nominee for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and White Is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.
Esi Edugyan
Half Blood Blues: By Esi Edugyan
Review
"Packs a powerful emotional punch... Fine writing, subtle characterisation and a convincing portrayal of place and period mark out this engaging first work, reminiscent of early VS Naipaul' - Guardian 'Edugyan's language is supple, wry and at turns sensuous. This intricately worked narrative heralds an excellent new voice' - Chris Abani, author of GraceLand"
Synopsis
Chip told them not to go out. Said don't you boys tempt the devil, but the cheap beer in his gut made Hieronymus think a glass of milk would be worth the risk. Of course Chip was right, and the star musician on the European scene was taken away that night by the Boots. An easy target, being a mixed-race German. Fifty years later, Sidney, the only witness that day, is going back. He swore he wouldn't, but Chip always was persuasive. Full of surprises too, like the mysterious letter he kept a secret that begins Sid's slow journey towards redemption. Esi Edugyan's novel weaves the horror of betrayal, the burden of loyalty and the possibility that, if you don't tell your story, someone else might tell it for you. And they just might tell it wrong...
About the Author
Esi Edugyan has degrees from the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003. Her debut novel, written when she was 25, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was published internationally. She currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
Binyavanga Wainaina
One Day I Will Write About This Place: By Binyavanga Wainaina
Synopsis:
A groundbreaking and wide-angled memoir by the acclaimed Kenyan Caine Prize winner Binyavanga Wainaina
Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colorful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother's beauty parlor, black mamba bicycle bells, mechanics in Nairobi, the music of Michael Jackson—all punctuated by the infectious laughter of his brother and sister, Jimmy and Ciru. He could fall in with their patterns, but it would take him a while to carve out his own.
In this vivid and compelling debut memoir, Wainaina takes us through his school days, his mother's religious period, his failed attempt to study in South Africa as a computer programmer, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels around Kenya. The landscape in front of him always claims his main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood.
Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when, in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along. A series of fascinating international reporting assignments follow. Finally he circles back to a Kenya in the throes of postelection violence and finds he is not the only one questioning the old certainties.
Resolutely avoiding stereotype and cliché, Wainaina paints every scene in One Day I Will Write About This Place with a highly distinctive and hugely memorable brush.
About the Author
Binyavanga Wainaina is the founding editor of Kwani? , a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and has written for Vanity Fair , Virginia Quarterly , Granta , and The New York Times . Wainaina directs the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
Chika Unigwe
On Black Sisters Street: By Chika Unigwe
Synopsis:
On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.
Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp's red-light district, promising to make men's desires come true—if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else—they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week's wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future.
Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe's hidden photograph, Ama's lifelong search for a father, Joyce's true name, and Sisi's deepest secrets??and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a handsome, sinister stranger.
On Black Sisters Street marks the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors. Raw, vivid, unforgettable, and inspired by a powerful oral storytelling tradition, this novel illuminates the dream of the West—and that dream's illusion and annihilation—as seen through African eyes. It is a story of courage, unity, and hope, of women's friendships and of bonds that, once forged, cannot be broken.
Review
Praise for On Black Sisters Street
??[‘On Black Sisters Street' is] boiling with a sly, generous humor . Unigwe is as adept at conveying the cacophony of a Nigerian bus as she is at suggesting the larger historical events that propel her characters. ??/strong>On Black Sisters Street' marks the arrival of a latter-day Thackeray, an Afro-Belgian writer who probes with passion, grace and comic verve the underbelly of our globalized new world economy.??
-- The New York Times Book Review (*an Editors Choice selection in the 5/10 NYTBR) “Powerful....The author's raw voice, unflinching eye for detail, facility for creating a complex narrative, and affection for her characters make this a must read.??
??Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Gripping....As Unigwe tells her characters' stories in interweaving narratives and time lines, the women embody depths of fear and displacement, as well as the will to survive and prosper."
-- Booklist
“A novel of desperation, sexual exploitation, and, ultimately, sisterhood. ??Unigwe has a talent for capturing the dashed dreams of young women who are stronger than they imagine. ??The women's personal stories are wrenchingly memorable.??
??Library Journal
“In her English-language debut, the Nigerian-born Unigwe convincingly exposes an unfamiliar world without sentimentality. Capable drama that puts a human face on the scourge of human trafficking.??
??Kirkus Reviews
“Spellbinding…combines a storyteller's narrative flair with a reporter's eye for grim, gritty details about the sex industry. ??Nigerian-born Unigwe crafts her characters' voices with crystalline prose and compassion, in a revelatory work as tough, humane and unsentimental as its heroines.??
??MORE Magazine
“Chika Unigwe's ON BLACK SISTERS STREET is a grand and compassionate and moving work of art . The best fiction succeeds when it allows a reader to open a door, step into a different world, look about and say, finally, I feel and know this place and these people as if I have visited many times before. Ms. Unigwe has done that for us with all the men and women of her new novel. We owe her much praise and much gratitude.??
??Edward P. Jones, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Powerfully and gently, Unigwe gives voice to African women who walk the streets of their nightmares and dreams."
--Sefi Atta, author of Everything Good Will Come
“Chika Unigwe brings an ethnographic eye and masterful storytelling to bear on this complex portrait of African sex workers in Antwerp. Her startlingly physical prose offers a fresh look at lives made and unmade between Europe and Africa.??
--Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, University of Buffalo
“Chika Unigwe has evoked a chilling, brutal, and terrifying world with warmth, compassion, and courage. The voices of degraded African women are clearly heard, their bodies vividly rendered, their sorrows deeply understood, and their humanity ultimately realized. On Black Sisters Street is a dark tale luminously told, a stunningly moving book.”—Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language
“Chika Unigwe writes with moral urgency nourished by a nuanced understanding of the human condition and prose that is elegantly calibrated. And for all the dark turns her work takes, On Black Sisters Street is suffused with warmth, hard-won wisdom, and a deep compassion.”—Chris Abani, author of Becoming Abigail and Song for Night
“A probing and unsettling exploration of the many factors that lead African women into prostitution in Europe . . . an important and accomplished novel that leaves a strong aftertaste. Unigwe gives voice to those who are voiceless . . . and bestows dignity on those who are stripped of it.”??The Independent
About the Author
Chika Unigwe was born in Nigeria and now lives in Belgium with her husband and four children. She was a 2008 UNESCO-Aschberg fellow and a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation fellow (at the Bellagio Center), and she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden. She is the recipient of several awards for her writing, including first prize in the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. In 2004 she was shortlisted for the Caine prize for African Writing. Her stories have been on BBC World Service and Radio Nigeria. Her first novel, De Feniks , was published in Dutch in 2005.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention : By Manning Marable
Synopsis:
Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
About the Author
Manning Marable was M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African American Studies and professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. He was founding director of African American Studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003. Since 2002, he directed Columbia's Center for Contemporary Black History. The author of fifteen books, Marable was also the editor of the quarterly journal Souls .
Hubert Ogunde
Oloye Hubert Adedeji Ogunde (b. May 31, 1916 in Ososa , near Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria ¨C d. April 4, 1990 in London, England ) was a Nigerian actor, playwright , theatre manager, and musician who founded the Ogunde Concert Party in (1945), the first professional theatrical company in Nigeria--Wikipedia.
Leila Aboulela
Lyrics Alley: By Leila Aboulela
Synopsis:
Lyrics Alley is the evocative story of an affluent Sudanese family shaken by the shifting powers in their country and the near-tragedy that threatens the legacy they've built for decades.
In 1950's Sudan, the powerful Abuzeid dynasty has amassed a fortune through their trading firm. With Mahmoud Bey at its helm, they can do no wrong. But when Mahmoud's son, Nur, the brilliant, handsome heir to the business empire, suffers a debilitating accident, the family stands divided in the face of an uncertain future. As British rule nears its end, the country is torn between modernizing influences and the call of traditions past—a conflict reflected in the growing tensions between Mahmoud's two wives: the younger, Nabilah, longs to return to Egypt and escape "backward-looking" Sudan; while Waheeba lives traditionally behind veils and closed doors. It's not until Nur asserts himself outside the cultural limits of his parents that his own spirit and the frayed bonds of his family begin to mend.
Moving from Sudanese alleys to cosmopolitan Cairo and a decimated postcolonial Britain, this sweeping tale of desire, loss, despair, and reconciliation is one of the most accomplished portraits ever written about Sudanese society at the time of independence.
Review
-Short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South Asia and Europe)
-Long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction
“Aboulela's vivid . . . fleet and engrossing narrative . . . [is full of] a generosity of spirit that extends to all her characters.”??The New York Times Book Review
“Leila Aboulela's Lyrics Alley gives us the rich and complex world of a Sudanese patriarch in the 1950s who presides over a household containing two wives, various nieces, two sons—a new world full of modern ambitions and ancient problems. I read it with the delight one has suddenly stumbling on lush and abundant hidden gardens behind foreign city walls, various with its own life and laws, and infinitely satisfying.”—Sarah Blake, author of The Postmistress
“[Aboulela's] breakthrough novel . . . Real, compelling, and ultimately moving . . . Highly recommended for readers who enjoy family sagas set against a political backdrop, such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half a Yellow Sun .”??Library Journal (starred review)
“Rich in detail and generous in spirit toward its complex characters, [ Lyrics Alley ] showcases Aboulela's talent for connecting political and personal upheaval. [An] elegantly written family epic that brings to mind Naguib Mahfouz's The Cairo Trilogy. ”??Kirkus Reviews
“Haunting . . . Keeps the reader gripped . . . A tale of powerful feelings and potent words . . . this visceral, epic novel . . . gives fascinating insights into Sudanese society, with different characters embodying the dramatic clash between tradition and modernity. . . . Vividly evoking the alleyways of Sudan, Egypt, and Britain, [ Lyrics Alley ] also movingly and meticulously traces the hidden pathways of the mind and heart with all its anger, shame, hate and love.”??The Telegraph (UK)
“Each scene is rich with period detail . . . Aboulela has the gift of making her readers care about her characters. This she achieves partly by making us privy to their thoughts, and revealing to us all their conflicts, contradictions, petty vanities, hopes, and amnitions. . . . [She] has created a story for all the senses, one to be savored at leisure.”??Financial Times
“In beautiful, subtle prose . . . Aboulela explores themes of love, faith, and divided families with a tender restraint.”??Marie Claire (UK)
"An assured and highly readable portrait of a family in flux and two societies--Sudan and Egypt--on the cusp on momentous changes. . . . Lyrics Alley is an evocative description of the struggle between tradition and modernization, a conflict that is still being fought in present-day Islamic culture."-- New Internationalist (3 stars)
“A tender love story; a family saga, and a portrait of 1950s Sudan teetering on the brink of modernity.”??The Scotsman
"Leila Aboulela writes with tenderness and sensitivity about the hopes of a country on the verge of independence. Through the eyes of the Abuzeid family, we witness the competing claims of the political and the intimate, of modernity and tradition, of duty and individual freedom. The resulting narrative is at once compelling and illuminating, full of the color and cadence of Aboulela's homeland."—Tahmima Anam, author of A Golden Age
“A superb family epic . . . Vivid, beautifully original.”—Lesley McDowell, The Herald (Glasgow)
“[A] graceful and elegantly told saga . . . Aboulela writes with a light touch. . . . She uses words to powerful and sometimes surprising effect, language that seems to spring naturally from the very environment she's describing. . . . This beautiful book is a testament to what might have been as well as what might be.”—Jane Charteris, Literary Review
About the author:
Leila Aboulela won the first Caine Prize for African Writing. Her new novel Lyrics Alley is set in 1950s Sudan and is inspired by the life of her uncle the poet Hassan Awad Aboulela who wrote the lyrics for many popular Sudanese songs. Leila is the author of two other novels: The Translator , one of The New York Tim es 100 Notable Books of the Year, and Minaret - both long-listed for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Her collection of short stories Coloured Lights was short-listed for the Macmillan Silver PEN Award.
Teju Cole
Open City: By Teju Cole
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review.
Possibly the only negative thing to say about Cole's intelligent and panoramic first novel is that it is a more generous account of the recent past than the era deserves. America's standing in the world is never far from the restless thoughts of psychiatry resident Julius, a Nigerian immigrant who wanders Manhattan, pondering everything from Goya and the novels of J.M. Coetzee to the bankruptcy of Tower Records and the rise of the bedbug epidemic. In other words, it is an ongoing reverie in the tradition of W.G. Sebald or Nicholson Baker, but with the welcome interruptions of the friends and strangers Julius meets as he wanders Penn Station, the Upper West Side, and Brussels during a short holiday, and amid discussions of Alexander Hamilton, black identity, and the far left--a truly American novel emerges. Julius pines over a recent ex, mourns the death of a friend, goes to movies, concerts, and museums, but above all he ruminates, and the picture of a mind that emerges in lieu of a plot is fascinating, as it is engaged with the world in a rare and refreshing way. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
¡° Open City is a meditation on history and culture, identity and solitude. The soft, exquisite rhythms of its prose, the display of sensibility, the lucid intelligence, make it a novel to savour and treasure.¡±¡ªColm Toibin, author of The Master and Brooklyn
¡°The pages of Open City unfold with the tempo of a profound, contemplative walk through layers of histories and their posthumous excavations. The juxtaposition of encounters, seen through the eyes of a knowing flâneur, surface and then dissolve like a palimpsest composed, outside of time, by a brilliant master.¡±¡ªRawi Hage, author of Cockroach and De Niro's Game , winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
¡° Open City is not a loud novel, nor a thriller, nor a nail-biter. What it is is a gorgeous, crystalline, and cumulative investigation of memory, identity, and erasure. It gathers its power inexorably, page by page, and ultimately reveals itself as nothing less than a searing tour de force. Teju Cole might just be a W. G. Sebald for the twenty-first century.¡±¡ªAnthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector
"Fascinating . . . [an] intelligent and panoramic first novel . . . engaged with the world in a rare and refreshing way."
¡ªPublishers Weekly (starred review)
"One of the most intriguing novels you'll likely read. . . [it] reads like Camus's The Stranger ." -- Library Journal
"Masterful." ¨C Kirkus , starred review
Synopsis:
¡°The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with outsize intensity.¡±
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius: they are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation.
But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey¡ªwhich takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole's Open City seethes with intelligence. Written in a clear, rhythmic voice that lingers, this book is a mature, profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.
About the Author:
Teju Cole was raised in Nigeria and came to the United States in 1992. He is a writer, photographer, and professional historian of early Netherlandish art. Open City is his first novel. He lives in New York City.
Aminatta Forna
The Memory of Love: By Aminatta Forna
Synopsis:
From the award-winning author of The Devil That Danced on the Water and Ancestor Stones comes The Memory of Love, a beautiful and masterfully accomplished novel about the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of love.
Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of the most breathtaking writers out of Africa today, winning readers' hearts and critical acclaim. Now, in her newest novel, The Memory of Love , she evokes the haunting atmosphere of a country at war, and the powerful stories of two generations of African life. In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a man who was young during the country's turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer by Adrian, a British psychiatrist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.
A work of extraordinary writing and rare wisdom, The Memory of Love seamlessly weaves together the lives of these three men to create a powerful story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past¡ªand, at the end of it all, the very nature of love.
The New York Times - Maaza Mengiste
¡a luminous tale of passion and betrayal¡[Forna] forces us to see past bland categorizations like "postcolonial African literature," showing that the world we inhabit reaches beyond borders and ripples out through generations. She reminds us that what matters most is that which keeps us grounded in the place of our choosing. And she writes to expose what remains after all the noise has faded: at the core of this novel is the brave and beating heart, at once vulnerable and determined, unwilling to let go of all it has ever loved.
Biography
Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland and raised in West Africa. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on the Water, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003. Her novel Ancestor Stones was winner of the 2008 Hurston Wright Legacy Award, the Literaturpreis in Germany, was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and selected by the Washington Post as one of the most important books of 2006. In 2007 Vanity Fair named Aminatta as one of Africa's most promising new writers. Aminatta has also written for magazines and newspapers, radio and television, and presented television documentaries on Africa's history and art. Aminatta Forna lives in London with her husband.
Abiola Irele
The Negritude Moment: Explorations in Francophone African and Caribbean Literature and Thought: By Abiola Irele
Synopsis:
In this collection of essays, which span more than forty years of sustained scholarship, Irele explores the varied aspects of Negritude as a movement and as concept. He provides an account of its historical origins and examines the sociological and ideological background of the themes that have preoccupied French-speaking black writers and intellectuals in their confrontation with the pressures of a difficult collective experience, in both its objective manifestations and its inward implications.
About the Author:
F. Abiola Irele is currently Provost of the College of Humanities, Kwara State University, Malete, Nigeria. He was formerly Professor of French and Head, Department of Modern Languages, University of Ibadan. He has taught at various universities in Africa and the USA, including the University of Ghana, the Ohio State University, Tulane University and Harvard. He has also held a visiting fellowship at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. His publications include The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature (edited with Simon Gikandi) published in 2004, and three collections of essays: The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (1981, rpt 1990) The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora (2001) and Negritude et Condition Africaine (2008).
Cannes : Les stars africaines font leur cinéma(2000-2008)
What is the state of African cinema in recent years? What are its challenges and how to fix it?
Ibadan
Ibadan,
running splash of rust
and gold-flung and scattered
among seven hills like broken
china in the sun.
J.P. Clark
Christopher Okigbo
Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight
Review
Puts Okigbo in the context of African writing and politics, giving detailed descriptions of his personal and public life. DAILY NATION (Nairobi) A powerful narrative of a brilliant, mischievous, wandering soul trying to find himself, and eventually doing so through the creative act of writing poetry. (...) But this book, for all, or maybe because of his craziness, shows why he is placed securely among the greats. BUSINESS DAY LAGOS
Synopsis:
Christopher Okigbo, once described as 'Africa's most lyrical poet of the twentieth century' was killed in September 1967, fighting for the independence of Biafra. The Sunday Times described his death as 'the single most important tragedy of the Nigerian civil war'. The manner in which Okigbo died typified the passionate, tortured and dramatic quality of his life. Widely considered along with Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe as part of modern Nigeria's greatest literary triumvirate, Okigbo's death promoted him to cult status among subsequent generations of African writers. This is the first full biography of the Nigerian poet. It places Okigbo within the turmoil of his generation and illustrates the aspects of his life that gave rise to such an intense poetry. How did his experience in the prestigious, English-type boarding school, Umuahia, where he was known more as a sportsman than a scholar, influence his life and later choices? Why was he sacked from the colonial service, and how did that lead him towards a search for private recovery, and ultimately towards poetry? What led him to take up arms? In other words, how did his eclectic pursuits as high school teacher, university librarian, publisher, gun-runner and guerrilla fuel his poetic drive?
About the Author:
OBI NWAKANMA, journalist and poet, is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri.
Excerpt of speech from my film James Baldwin Anthology
By: Claire Burch
Love Apart
The moon has ascended between us,
Between two pines
That bow to each other;
Love with the moon has ascended,
Has fed on our solitary stems;
And we are now shadows
That cling to each other,
But kiss the air only.
Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. He is the recipient of a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Lannan Literary Award, and received a "5 under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears , was named a New York Times Notable Book and awarded the Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among numerous other honors. He lives with his wife and son in Paris.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Fela: This Bitch of A Life: The Authorized Biography of Africa's Musical Genius:
By Carlos Moore
Synopsis:
African superstar, composer, singer, and musician, as well as mystic and political activist, Nigerian Fela Kuti, born in 1938, was controversy personified. He was swept to international celebrity on a wave of scandal and flamboyance, and when he died of AIDS in 1997, more than a million people attended his funeral. But what was he really like, this man who could as easily arouse violent hostility as he could unswerving loyalty?
Carlos Moore's unique biography, based on hours of conversation and told in Fela's first-person vernacular, reveals the icon's complex personality and tumultuous existence. Moore includes interviews with fifteen of his queens (wives); photos; and an updated discography.
About the Author:
Carlos Moore is a political scientist and an ethnologist. He is an honorary research fellow at the School for Graduate Studies and Research of the University of the West Indies–Kingston and the author of Pichón: Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba. Gilberto Gil is a composer, a bandleader, a singer, and a guitarist and has served as the Brazilian minister of culture since 2003. Margaret Busby is a writer, a critic, a broadcaster, and the editor of Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writing by Women of African Descent.
Reviews:
¡°Fela was an incredible pioneer. His rhythms and influence have been absorbed into so much of the music around today, and the musical world owes him a debt of gratitude.¡± ¡ªStevie Wonder
¡°His music was exotic, royal, powerful, and captured the spirit of Mother Africa. He was respected and loved not only for his music but for his intellect and his dedication to African traditions. Fela was one of the most courageous individuals I have ever met." ¡ªRandy Weston
¡°An amazing musical genius with a boisterous sense of humor, Fela was an immovable rock in his fight against corruption. Surviving several immoral military regimes, it is a miracle that he died from natural causes rather than their torture.¡± ¡ªHugh Masekela
¡°The most charismatic musician to have emerged from Africa in the past 40 years.¡± ¡ª Telegraph
¡°Africa's most important musical export.¡± ¡ª Africa Music
¡°[H]e has influenced music in Africa more than anyone else." ¡ª Guardian
¡°[T]he most influential and significant musician ever to emerge from Africa." ¡ª Time Out
"Highly Recommended."---Cafeafricana
Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Rare early footage (shot by Ginger Baker) featuring Fela & Afrika 70 performing in the rainy southeastern town of Calabar, shortly after the the Nigerian civil war
The Mesh
We have come to the cross-roads
And I must either leave or come with you.
I lingered over the choice
But in the darkness of my doubts
You lifted the lamp of love
And I saw in your face
The road that I should take.
By: Kwesi Brew
Margaret Ekpo
Margaret Ekpo
Margaret Ekpo (1914-2006) was a Nigerian women's rights activist and social mobilizer who was a pioneering female politician in the country's First Republic and was a leading member of a class of traditional Nigerian women activists, many of whom rallied women beyond notions of ethnic solidarity. She played major roles as a grassroot and nationalist politician in the Eastern Nigerian city of Aba , in the era of an hierarchical and male dominated movement towards independence , with her rise not the least helped by the socialization of women's role into that of helpmates or appendages to the careers of males--Wikipedia
Achebe Foundation
September 21, 2006
Originally published in July 2005
Now being republished on the occassion of her passing
One on One-Wole Soyinka
Nnedi Okorafor
Who Fears Death: By Nnedi Okorafor
Winner: 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa
Synopsis:
An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post-apocalyptic Africa.
In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.
Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny-to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself.
About the Author:
Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents. She holds a Ph.D. in English and is a professor at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of and finalist for many awards.
Review:
"Highly Recommended....Nnedi Okorafor is a superlative science fiction writer with an impeccable imagination."--Cafeafricana
Nnedi Okorafor
Palaver
Palaver: Interviews with Five African Writers in Texas: By Bernth Lindfors
Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark, Dennis Brutus, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and Kofi Awoonor
Publisher: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, the University of Texas a (1972)
Interviewer: Bernth Lindfors (1972)
Excerpts:
You said you wanted your poetry to be easily understood by bus driver, the man on the street, and so on. Wouldn't protest poetry permit you to communicate directly with such people:
Dennis Brutus: Well, I suppose one answer to that is you can't write poetry about anything you don't feel poetic about. If it doesn't take flight, if it doesn't get off the ground, if you don't feel that you've got a certain tension, a certain singing quality-well, you might even want to do it, but it won't come off. Infact, I think I've written some like that and thrown them away because I felt they hadn't come off.
Sefi Atta
News from Home: By Sefi Atta
Synopsis:
From Zamfara up north to the Niger delta down south, with a finale in Lagos, this collection of stories and a novella respond to and amplify the newspaper headlines in a range of Nigerian voices. Men, women, and children speak out to us from these stories, from immigration centers and police barracks, from street corners and maternity wards. Ghanaian writer Mohammed Naseehu Ali says, Sefi Atta "writes like one who has lived the life of each single character in her dazzling collection of short stories."
Review
"With this collection of stories, Soyinka Prize-winning author Sefi Atta consolidates her position as one of the leading writers of her generation. The stories... are written with quiet virtuosity... What we get from Atta are compulsively readable tales, leavened with a sly wit and a generous vision."--Teju Cole, author of Every Day is for the Thief --Teju Cole
"Sefi Atta is a brilliant artist, who writes as if she knows her characters personally...great stories. I have been very touched by the beauty and diversity and depth of these stories"--Uwem Akpan, author of Say You're One of Them --Uwem Akpan
About the Author
Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
Review:
"Highly Recommended....Sefi Atta propelled the readers to absorb, and sympathize with the characters in her novellas. I love reading her novels."--Cafeafricana
Sefi Atta
Dem Say
Dem-Say: Interviews with Eight Nigerian Writers: By Bernth Lindfors
Michael J.C. Echeruo, Obi Egbuna, Cyprian Ekwensi, John Munonye, Gabriel Okara, Kole Omotoso, Ola Rotimi and Kalu Uka
Publisher: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, the University of Texas a (1974)
Interviewer: Bernth Lindfors (1974)
Excerpts:
Do you see any new trends developing in Nigerian Drama?
Ola Rotimi: I don't know. Perhaps it is premature to make any prognosis on the future of Nigerian drama. But, I believe drama, like any artistic venture, is alive, and being alive presupposes a process of mutation and growth. I think drama in Nigerian won't be static.
Bright
with armpit-dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,
wearing white light about her;
and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moolight.
So brief her presence-,
match-flare in wind's breath-
so brief with mirrors around me.
Downward...
the waves distil her:
gold crop
sinking ungathered.
Watermaid of the salt emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.
By Christopher Okigbo.
Ousmane Sembene
Toyin Falola: This website is about the universe of Africa and Toyin Falola's place in it: the projection of a continent; the celebration of a community of ideas; service to people; and the various definitions of our shared future.
Susanne Wenger: Artista E Sacerdotessa: By
Paola Caboara Luzzatto
"To build a shrine is like performing a religious ritual. The aim is the same: Bringing to awareness what was in the dark, rediscovering the mythical event in the present, taking the divinity down to the world, finding the divine inside ourselves." Amazon.com
Synopsis:
Paola Caboara Luzzatto's Susanne Wenger: Artist and Priestess is bilingual, written in Italian and English. Though a small book, it is structured into five parts. Evidently, Luzzatto takes her time to do this neat structuring in order to better present the dramatic, though systematic, self-immersion of Susanne Wenger, the subject of the book, in Yoruba traditional religion. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this bilingual book of biography is that it records rather than tell. It records the words of the artist and priestess Susanne Wenger. In this style it reads as concise and direct. It also offers us the untainted wisdom, the mystical lore, of a rare woman turned half-human-half-god. The author very methodically conditions herself as a medium through which Susanne Wenger's enchanting words reaches the reader with an aura of mysticism.
It is thus through her own words that the reader delves into the life and practice of Susanne Wenger alias Adunni Olorisa, the iconoclastic, legendary priestess of Obatala (the divinity of creation, of the Sky) and Sonponna (the divinity of suffering, of the earth) in Yoruba traditional religion. She was indeed a strange phenomenon in Oshogbo, Nigeria. Though an Austrian, she lived in Yorubaland for over sixty years, not as an expatriate (as she ought to have been, having arrived Ibadan as an expatriate scholar's wife), not as a researcher, not as one of those Europeans who came to Africa in the 1950s to amuse themselves with primitive, paganistic folkways of the Africans, but as a naturalized (she disliked the word ¡°converted¡±) native, fully involved in the native religion now declared heathen by even some of the natives who had converted to Christianity and Islam.
Susanne Wenger herself knew of the strangeness of her immersion in the Yoruba traditional religion. She was also worried that people, especially her fellow Europeans, interpreted her involvement in negative, derogatory ways, and were inclined to, in her own word, ¡°psychoanalyse¡± her. But one very frank thing that keeps recurring in the narrative is the strangeness of her entire being, which only became meaningful even to herself when she embraced the Yoruba religion. Raised by parents who ¡°were both gifted and frustrated¡± (122), often spending her childhood nights crying (¡°I would allow myself to cry, and nobody ever knew¡± (121)), Susanne Wenger did not only get into the depth of loneliness and meditation, she also began to plumb the spiritual dimension of objects, such as the trees and the rivers around her. She naturally grew up a deviant, a communist.
"Highly Recommended."--Cafeafricana
Sade: Soldier of Love
Sade (pronounced shar-day) was born on January 16, 1959 as Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria where her Nigerian father (Adebisi) was an economics professor and her English mother (Anne Hayes) a nurse. After her parents separated, Sade moved to London with her mother, where she was educated, and as a young woman worked as a fashion designer and (briefly) a model. Although Sade originally began studying fashion design, her desire for music led her to become a backup singer with the British Jazz-Funk/R&B band; Pride. She formed a writing partnership with Pride's guitarist/saxophonist Stewart Matthewman . Together, backed by Pride's rhythm section, they began doing their own sets at Pride gigs. Sade's elegant, exotic look and the cool, jazz-inflected approach of her low-keyed singing immediately garnered her considerable attention. In 1983 Sade and Matthewman split from Pride along with keyboardist Andrew Hale and bassist Paul Denman and formed Sade; they got a record deal late that year. Sade, the woman, and Sade, the band, became staples on the pop and R&B charts from the mid-80's and into the 90s. By selling millions of LPs around the world, Sade brought a level of class and a smooth jazz sound the ears of pop radio, always maintaining a high level of quality. The longevity of Sade's music best represents the uniqueness of its sound.--Net Biography
Bookshelf Porn: A collection of all the best bookshelf photos for people who *heart* bookshelves.
Letter Home
Letter Home
in the fourteenth year
Where the largeness of the dream
is touched by the smallness of one's England
there are travel guilts a wayfarer sheds
like loose feathers or discarded skin.
The flight so far is full of fret.
This island is a perch to many birds,
home of sorts to the travel worn,
lost in transit, storied swallows
and things out of touch with their beginnings,
harried between exclusions and inclusions,
tortured by absence,
as spoiled for options but without choice.....Poetry
By Afam Akeh
Denyce Graves sings the Habanera from Carmen
Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism (Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature: By Biodun Jeyifo
Review
'... there are very few critics writing in the field who can carry out this kind of examination so well.' African Affairs
'... fascinating ...' Wasafiri
Synopsis:
Jeyifo examines the connections between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo carries out detailed analyses of Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by Soyinka's use of literature and theatre for radical political purposes. The evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the violence of collective experience in post-independence, postcolonial Africa. No existing study of Soyinka's works and career has attempted such a systematic investigation of their complex relationship to politics.
About the Author:
Biodun Jeyifo is Professor of English at Cornell University. He is the author of The Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria (1984) and The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Radical Sociology of African Drama (1985). He has written essays and monographs on Anglophone African and Caribbean literatures, Marxist cultural theory and colonial and postcolonial studies and has also edited several volumes on African drama and critical discourse.
Love Apart
Love Apart
The moon has ascended between us,
Between two pines
That bow to each other;
Love with the moon has ascended,
Has fed on our solitary stems;
And we are now shadows
That cling to each other,
But kiss the air only.
By Christopher Okigbo
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Dreams in a Time of War: By Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Synopsis
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author of Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a father whose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The man who would become one of Africa's leading writers was the fifth child of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of his mother's eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning.
In Dreams in a Time of War , Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; and the troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middle class and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armed struggle for Kenya's independence against the British informed not only his own life but also the lives of those closest to him.
Dreams in a Time of War speaks to the human right to dream even in the worst of times. It abounds in delicate and powerful subtleties and complexities that are movingly told.
About the Author
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University
Highly Recommended."--Cafeafricanaa
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
The Danger of a Single Story
Maaza Mengiste
Beneath the Lion's Gaze: by Maaza Mengiste
Synopsis
An epic tale of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia's revolution. This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement¡ªa choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and indelibly tragic, Beneath The Lion's Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut. From the Back Cover Advance praise for Beneath the Lion's Gaze:
¡°With words that make ¡®a faint, tender bruise' on the page, and a compassionate imagination that transforms everything it touches on, Maaza Mengiste delivers an important story from a part of Africa too long silent in the World Republic of Letters.¡±¡ªChris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
"What a beautiful book! After a few chapters I felt I was a member of this family, a citizen of Ethiopia. Maaza Mengiste is talented and bold and fresh. Already, I'm looking forward to her next book."¡ªUwe Akpan, author of Say You're One of Them
"Literature from the margins is often too poorly lit for us to see, but Mengiste takes us through this dark political hunt with the night vision of a lion. A novel both tender and brutal, fearless, it is accomplished beyond a first book.¡±¡ªDagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and The Flowers About the Author Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was named ¡°New Literary Idol¡± by New York magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Chinua Achebe
The Education of a British-Protected Child (Essays): By Chinua Achebe
Synopsis
From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical essays¡ªhis first new book in more than twenty years.
Chinua Achebe's characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart , the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama's election. In ¡°The Education of a British-Protected Child,¡± Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its ¡°middle ground,¡± recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In ¡°Spelling Our Proper Name,¡± Achebe considers the African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know ¡°from whence he came.¡± The complex politics and history of Africa figure in ¡°What Is Nigeria to Me?,¡± ¡°Africa's Tarnished Name,¡± and ¡°Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature.¡± And Achebe's extraordinary family life comes into view in ¡°My Dad and Me¡± and ¡°My Daughters,¡± where we observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of raising ¡°brown¡± children in America.
Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.
Biography
Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, Nigeria, the son of a teacher in a missionary school. His parents, though they installed in him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture, were devout evangelical Protestants and christened him Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. In 1944 Achebe attended Government College in Umuahia. Like other major Nigerian writers including Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi, John Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, and Cole Omotso, he was also educated at the University College of Ibadan, where he studied English, history and theology. At the university Achebe rejected his British name and took his indigenous name Chinua. In 1953 he graduated with a BA. Before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos in 1954 he travelled in Africa and America, and worked for a short time as a teacher. In the 1960s he was the director of External Services in charge of the Voice of Nigeria.
Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over 15 years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short-story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.
Assia Djebar
A Sister to Scheherazade: By Assia Djebar
Synopsis
The story of how Isma and Hajila, wives of the same man, escape from the traditional restraints imposed upon the women of their country.
Isma and Hajila are both wives of the same man, but they are not rivals. Isma - older, vibrant, passionate, emancipated - is in stark contrast to the passive, cloistered Hajila. In alternating chapters, Isma tells her own story in the first person, and then Hajila's in the second person. She details how she escaped from the traditional restraints imposed upon the women of her country - and how, in making her escape, she condemns Hajila to those very restraints. When Hajila catches a glimpse of an unveiled woman, she realized that she, too, wants a life beyond the veil, and it is Isma who offers her the key to her own freedom.
About the Author:
Algerian novelist, translator, and filmmaker, one of North-Africa's best-known and most widely acclaimed writers. Assia Djebar has also published poetry, plays, and short stories, and has produced two films. Djebar has explored the struggle for social emancipation and the Muslim woman's world in its complexities. Several of her works deal with the impact of the war on women's mind. Her strong feminist stance has earned her much praise but also considerable hostility from nationalist critics in Algeria.
"Assia Djebar is a genius....Her prose flows like a quiet river within a garden."--Cafeafricana
Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 2
News
Wole Soyinka
LAGOS (AFP) ¨C Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka launched a new political party Saturday in Nigeria ahead of upcoming presidential elections , saying he wanted to take aim at corruption and give hope to young voters.
The Democratic Front for a People's Federation would be not only a political party, but also at the "forefront of the watchdogs of democracy," Soyinka told a party convention .
"I wish to emphasise that function, and it is clearly meant both as a warning and exhortation," the Nobel laureate in literature said. "Above all, the DFPF is a party for frustrated youth and uncomfortable ideas."
Join us and be part of our journey. Maybe you have thought about joining but not actually done it? Maybe you think you are too young, too old or too busy? Maybe it's because nobody has asked you. We're asking you now.
Photo by Isabelle Levy
Books
A History of the Yrouba People: By Anthony Akintoye
Synopsis
“Professor S. A. Akintoye links the Yoruba past with the present, broadening and transcending Samuel Johnson in scope and time, and reviving both the passion and agenda that are over a century old, to reveal the long history and definable identity of a people and an ethnicity, one of the most important in Africa and the African Diaspora. Here is an accessible book, with the promise of being ageless, written by the only person who has sustained an academic interest in this subject for nearly half a century, providing the treasures of accumulated knowledge, robust encounters with received wisdom, and mature judgement about the future.??Toyin Falola, The Frances Higginbotham Nalle Professor in History, University of Texas at Austin.
Helen Oyeyemi reading an extract from White is for Witching
"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." ¡ª Franz Kafka.
Links
Wangari Maathai (b: 1940 - d.2012 )
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted 40 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003, she was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, a post she held until 2007, when she left the government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, Matthai has been honored around the world for her work, including a recent appointment to the Legion d'Honneur by France and the Order of the Rising Sun by Japan. She is the author of two previous books: The Green Belt Movement and Unbowed , a memoir, and she regularly speaks to organizations around the world. Maathai has three grown children and lives and works in Nairobi.
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai argues that well-intentioned aid to Africa may have unexpected negative consequences. She draws from Sharon Stone's pledge to buy anti-malaria bed nets in Tanzania to explain why money alone will not solve Africa's problems.
Poetry
Christopher Okigbo
Also: Olayimika by Toyin Adewale, Ode to James Baldwin: By Andrene Bonner, Black Woman: By Leopold Sedar Senghor, Requiem: 5: By Wole Soyinka, Love Apart: By Christopher Okigbo, Art Santuary: By Nikki Giovanni, Olokun: By J.P. Clark.
THE PORTAL FOR AFRICAN LITERATURES, WRITERS, AND FILMS
African continent is replete with brilliant writers, and filmmakers that are world-renowned. The main objective of indigokafe is to showcase and present African literatures, writers and filmmakers worldwide.
Exclusive Interview
M.K. ASANTE, JR.
Exclusive Interview with Poet, M.K. Asante, Jr.
Q: What is central to your poetry?
A: Struggle is central. I struggle to write, grapple with ideas, and fight with the pen. For me this is the only way. The poet Lamont Steptoe once told me that if I¡¯m not struggling with my work, then I¡¯m wasting everyone¡¯s time ¨C mine own included. So there is a genuine sense of struggle there. Another thing which I hold central is the duality of being alive. The title speaks to this to some extent; the dual nature of existence. It can even be related to Duboisian idea of Double Consciousness.
Image: Courtesy of M.K. Asante, Jr.
For more information on M.K. Asante, Jr., visit www.asante.info.
Vladimir Horowitz
Mozart Sonata in C Major K; Ist Movement
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.
'Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a Nigerian feminist who fought for suffrage and equal rights for her countrywomen long before the second wave of the women's movement in the United States. She also joined the struggle for Nigerian independence as an activist in the anticolonial movement'--Odim and Mba.
Events Calendar
African Art at LACMA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90036
tel 323 857-6000
tel 323-857-0098 (TDD) publicinfo@lacma.org
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, filmed in 1986
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ken Saro-Wiwa: 1941-1995.
'Nigerian television producer, writer of satirical novels, children's tales, and plays. In 1994 Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned by order of the dictator Sani Abacha. He had strongly defended the rights of the Ogoni people and criticized the government's oil policy with Royal Dutch/Shell. Despite wide international protests, Saro-Wiwa was hanged after a show trial with other eight Ogoni rights activists in Port Harcourt, on November 10, 1995'--www.kirjasto.com
'My lord, we all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginilization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.'--KEN SARO-WIWA'S CLOSING STATEMENT TO THE NIGERIAN MILITARY APPOINTED TRIBUNAL. Photo: unknown artist.
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Films
Wanjiru Kinyanjui
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Wanjiru Kinyanjui was born in Kenya in 1958. She was a writer, poet, and radio journalist before becoming a filmmaker. After receiving a Masters in English and German Literature, she enrolled in the Ferman Film & Television School in Berlin. Since then, she has directed numerous fiction and documentary films for European and Kenyan television.
"These men are not merely evil, I thought. They are the mindlessness of evil made flesh. One should not ever stumble into their hands but seek the power to destroy them. They are pus, bile, original putrescence of Death in living shapes. They surely infect all with whom they come in touch and even from this insulation here I smell a foulness of the mind in the mere tone of their words. They breed themselves, their types, their mutations. To seek the power to destroy them is to fulfil a moral task."--Wole Soyinka. Excerpt from The Man Died (1972), Pg. 225: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka.
"It was a bit of a lie that universities were self-governing institutions. Nevertheless, what universities, suffered during the 1980s and 1990s was pretty shameful, as under threat of having their funding cut they allowed themselves to be turned into business enterprises, in which professors who had previously carried on their enquiries in sovereign freedom were transformed into harried employers required to fulfil quotas under the scrutiny of professional managers. Whether the old powers of the professoriat will ever be restored is much to be doubted."--J. M. Coetzee. Excerpt from Diary of a Bad Year (2007), Pg. 38.
Yo-Yo Ma plays the prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1
Kwame Nkrumah
The Late Kwame Nkrumah
OSAGYEFO DR. KWAME NKRUMAH (1909-72) Founder and Father of the Nation Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, stands out not only among the Big Six but also among the greatest statesmen of history. It was he who canalized the discontent of the people of the Gold Coast Colony into the highly organized movement of protest against British rule, and within a relatively short period won political independence for Ghana on March 6, 1957. With Ghana independent, Nkrumah worked to liberate the whole of the African Continent. He supported and financed liberation struggles and nationalist movements throughout the continent. His efforts soon yielded dividends as the majority of countries on the continent gained independence. Then he turned his efforts to forging a common union of African states--NiicaAfrica.
Bamako 2006
A film by Abderrahmane Sissako
Plot: An historic trial is taking place in a residential courtyard in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. African citizens have taken proceedings against such financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whom they blame for perpetuating Africa's debt crisis.--Amazon.
Capt. Mbaye Diagne
Capt. Mbaye Diagne
He was a hero.
'From literally the first hours of the genocide, Capt. Mbaye simply ignored the U.N.'s standing orders not to intervene, and single-handedly began saving lives.' PBS "Ghosts of Rwanda'. Photo: Unknown artist: Courtesy of PBS.
African Music
African Music Around the World...Research, Library, Archives....
John Coltrane was, after Charlie Parker the most revolutionary and widely imitated saxophonist in jazz. Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina, where he learned to play E-flat alto horn, clarinet, and (at about the age of 15) alto saxophone. After moving to Philadelphia he enrolled at the Ornstein School of Music and the Granoff Studios; service in a navy band in Hawaii (1945-46) interrupted these studies. He played alto saxophone in the bands led by Joe Webb and King Kolax, then changed to the tenor to work with Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (1947-48). He performed on either instrument as circumstances demanded while in groups led by Jimmy Heath, Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie (with whom he made his first recording in 1949), Earl Bostic, and lesser-known rhythm-and-blues musicians, but by the time of his membership in Johnny Hodges's septet (1953-54) he was firmly committed to the tenor instrument. He performed infrequently for about a year, then leaped to fame in Miles Davis ' quintet with Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones (1955-57)--PBS.
Photo: Unknown Artist.
"Superb."--Editor, Cafeafricana
John Coltrane :: Alabama :: Jazz Casual
Classical Music
Akin Euba
"Akin Euba was born in Lagos, Nigeria on April 28, 1935 and spent his early years there. He is a member of the Yoruba ethnic group. His biography is Akin Euba: An Introduction to the Life and Music of a Nigerian Composer by Joshua Uzoigwe. It is a 1992 publication of the Bayreuth African Studies Series, edited by Prof. Eckhard Breitinger. It explains that his father was an amateur musician:
Akin Euba's father, Alphaeus Sobiyi Euba, was in his youth an active musician (although music was not his profession). He was a chorister at the Olowogbowo Methodist Church (now Wesley Cathedral) Lagos and also played the clarinet in the Triumph Orchestra, a Lagos dance band in which Fela Sowande (who later became internationally famous as a composer)was the pianist. Akin Euba's mother, Winifred Remilekun Euba, née Dawodu, was a teacher by profession."-AfriClassical.com
KATHLEEN BATTLE - KARAJAN (Frühlingsstimmen - J. Strauss II)
African Cooking and Recipes
"The African kitchen is traditionally outside or in a separate building apart from the sleeping and living quarters. By far the most traditional and to this day the most common sight in an African kitchen is a large swing blackpots filled with meat, vegetables, and spices simmering over a fire. The pot usually sits on three stones arranged in a triangle, and the fire slowly consumes three pieces of wood that meet at a point under the pot"--Africaguide.com. Photo: Unknown Artist
'Good wine is a necessity of life for me.'--Thomas Jefferson.
Robert Hughes
¡°By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.¡± ¨C Eknath Easwaran
Robert Hughes
in action
Museums
Painting: My Genesis: By Hannah Uzor
'African art embodies one of humanity's greatest achievements--fusing visual imagery with spiritual beliefs and social purpose. Its technical achievements and artistic perfection bear witness to the creative ingenuity of its makers'.--NMAFA.COM.Painting: Lonely Boy by an African artist:
"Zambian artist Hannah Uzor's works have exciting and unique themes that depict her view of life, social interactions and spirituality. Her African heritage is evident in her works from her use of vibrant earthy colours.'-Africancolors.com
The Keys to Great Wine Service-Wine Spectator
Country Profiles
From Algeria to Zimbabwe:
Botswana, one of Africa's most stable countries, is the continent's longest continuous multi-party democracy. It is relatively free of corruption and has a good human rights record-BBC
Image:Unknown artist.
Grants
Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie Corporation of New York is a general-purpose, grantmaking foundation established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie "for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States." Subsequent charter amendments have allowed the Corporation to use 7.4 percent of its income for the same purposes in countries that are or have been members of the British Commonwealth. Overseas grants are currently concentrated in Commonwealth Africa. Grants in "noncharter" countries are occasionally made when their substantial purpose is the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States.--Carnegie Photograph/Logo: Property and Courtesy of Carnegie Foundation of New York.
About Us
The main objective of CafeAfricana is to showcase the best of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. CafeAfricana is about culture, arts, politics, news, community and lifestyle.
Member: Los Angeles Press Club
On DVD: City of God, Artemisia, Goya, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Belle Du Jour, 8 Women, Shall We Dance...
Wole Soyinka blesses a newly crowned beauty queen with a tale of faded glory.
"The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city. The adventurer Leo Frobenius fantasized the lost city of Atlantis sunken in its bay. Washed by the Atlantic, pocked by lagoons, and veined by canals through which canoes plied a steady commerce with inland riverine settlements, memories of that past provided the setting for my radio play, A Scourge of Hyacinths." --Wole Soyinka
Obafemi Awolowo
Obafemi Awolowo
( March 6, 1909 ¡ª May 9, 1987 )
Chief Awolowo, a lawyer, publisher and politician, served as Premier of the self-governing Western region from 1954 until Nigeria achieved full independence from Britain in 1960. He played a major role in the constitutional conferences in London and Lagos that paved the way for independence.
Chief Awolowo was opposition leader in the first post-independence Parliament and came to be regarded as leader of the Yoruba tribe. The Yorubas are one of the West African nation's three major ethnic groups and live mainly in the south and west.
In 1979 and 1983, Chief Awolowo was the Unity Party's presidential candidate, losing to the northern-based National Party of Shehu Shagari. When the Shagari Government was overthrown by a military coup Dec. 31, 1983, Chief Awolowo returned to private life.---The New York Times.
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The Art of Living: Watching art-house films from The Auteurs and Criterion Collection
Image: I Am Love (2009) Directed by
Luca Guadagnino
