Indigokafe: Portal for African Literatures, Writers and Films
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. ‘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
Advance praise for Open City:
¡° 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).
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
Lola Soneyin
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives: A Novel: By Lola Soneyin
Synopsis:
Blind acceptance splinters a polygamous marriage in Shoneyin's gripping debut set in modern-day Nigeria. Bolanle Alao, the newest and youngest of Baba Segi's wives, threatens to upset the balance of power--she is educated and beautiful, though naïve about the relationship dynamics among the other three wives in the house. Raped at 15, Bolanle considers herself disgraced and unwanted until Baba Segi, an overweight, malodorous businessman welcomes her into his family, no questions asked, until it seems she cannot conceive. Like the other wives, she feels she has been saved by Baba Segi, who accepts all of them politely, but beyond brief mentions of his sexual encounters and visits to the toilet, Baba Segi is a peripheral character. When greedy Iya Segi and Iya Femi plot to run young, sweet Bolanle out of the family, the result is disaster. It is Bolanle's unexpected submissiveness that leads her and her husband to uncover a secret that forces him to assert his control over the family. Shoneyin masterfully disentangles four distinct stories, only to subtly expose what is common among them.
About the Author
Lola Shoneyin was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, but spent most of her childhood at boarding school in Edinburgh, Scotland. She studied English at Ogun State University and lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where she teaches English and drama at an international school. She is married to Olaokun Soyinka, the son of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. They have four children and four dogs. Shoneyin reckons she could survive an entire year eating nothing but pineapples.
"Lola Shoneyin is a lyrical writer....The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is funny, poignant, and a microcosm of polygamous lifestyle in Nigeria."--Cafeafricana
Lola Shoneyin
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
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
My Gear: Leica M Series, Hasselblad 500 Series, Mamiya RZ 67 Pro II, Canon, and Rolleiflex.
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
Winner of the 2009 NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa
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.
Sefi Atta
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.
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.
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
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
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
Summertime: J.M. Coetzee
Synopsis
Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize
A brilliant new work of fiction from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year
A young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father-a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. Never having met the man himself, the biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee well, including a married woman with whom he had an affair, his cousin Margot, and a Brazilian dancer whose daughter took English lessons with him. These accounts add up to an image of an awkward, reserved, and bookish young man who finds it hard to make meaningful connections with the people around him.
Summertime is an inventive and inspired work of fiction that allows J.M. Coetzee to imagine his own life with a critical and unsparing eye, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being. Incisive, elegant, and often surprisingly funny, Summertime is a compelling work by one of today's most esteemed writers.
About the Author
J.M. Coetzee 's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Foe, and Slow Man , among others. He has been awarded many prizes, including the Booker Prize (twice). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
The Danger of a Single Story
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—a 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.”—Chris 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."—Uwe 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.”—Dagoberto 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.
Graphics
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—his 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.
Welcome
In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Synopsis In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother—and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth-Amazon
Reviews
"Surreal and Provocative....Highly Recommended."-Editor, Cafeafricana
"Along with the impertinent funny stuff that peppers the text, this book is above all a philosophical tale that gives a caustic critique of contemporary civilization through a distorting mirror."-Le Devoir
"Exhilarating and instructive. . . . This is a powerful, courageous, inventive novel."-Le Matricule des Anges
About the Author:
Abdourahman A. Waberi was born in Djibouti in 1965 and has lived in France since 1985. He has published numerous books, articles, and stories. His first collection of short stories, Le Pays Sans Ombre (published in English as The Land without Shadows ) won Belgium's Royal Academy of French Language and Literature Grand Prix.
David and Nicole Ball, both independent translators in Northampton, Massachusetts, have published several translations separately, as well as together, including Lascaux: A Work of Memory . David Ball won the Modern Language Association's prize for literary translation in 1996. Percival Everett, professor of creative writing at the University of California–Riverside, is the author of many novels, including, most recently, The Water Cure .
Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 2
News
Dambisa Moyo
Questions for Dambisa Moyo: The Anti-Bono
Interview by Deborah Solomon
Q: You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
A: Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.
Photo: Unknown artist
Books
White is for Witching: By Helen Oyeyemi
Synopsis
As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there's the family house in Dover, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda's father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But The Silver House manifests a more conscious malice toward strangers, dispatching those visitors it despises. Enraged by the constant stream of foreign staff and guests, the house finally unleashes its most destructive power.-Amazon
With distinct originality and grace, and an extraordinary gift for making the fantastic believable, Helen Oyeyemi spins the politics of family and nation into a riveting and unforgettable mystery.
About the Author
Helen OyeyemiI is the author of The Icarus Girl and The Opposite House , which The Times (London) named as one of “best novels of the year” and was recently shortlisted for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction. She is currently at work on her fourth novel.
Helen Oyeyemi reading an extract from White is for Witching
"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." — Franz Kafka.
Links
Wangari Maathai
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
Wole Soyinka: Abiku.
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.
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 – 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
LACMA
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
Abderrahmane Sissako
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Abderrahmane Sissako was born in Kiffa, Mauritania, in 1961 and raised in Mali, his father¹s homeland. When he returned to Mauritania in 1980, the emotional and financial difficulties of adjustment made him turn to literature and film. A study grant allowed him to attend the Institute of the University of Moscow. Le Jeu (1990), first presented as a graduation assignment, won the prize for best short at the Giornate del Cinema Africano of Perugia in 1991. In 1993, Octobre was shown at Locarno and won prizes the world over. His latest film, Waiting for Happiness , was screened at Cannes 2002 and was winner of the FIPRESCI award for best film in the Un Certain Regard section. It was also shown at the New York Film Festival in 2002 and won the Grand Prize at FESPACO in 2003.--Through African Eyes.
Films: Waiting for Happiness, Bamako, Life on Earth, Le Jeu, Octobre
MoMA focuses on Award-winning African Director Abderrahmane Sissako for its Anuual Flaherty Series June 20 through 26, 2009, at Colgate Universtiy, Hamilton, New York
"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....
Haruna Ishola, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Yusuf Olatunji, Miriam Makeba, Agidigbo, Apala, Madam Comfort Omoge, Madam Mujidat Ogunfalu, King Sunny Ade, Angelique Kidjo.... Photo: Unknown artist
Drummers: Lagos, Nigeria
Jazz Legends
Joshua Redman
Joshua Redman was born February 1, 1969, in Berkeley, California. By the time of Joshua's birth, his father, noted saxophonist Dewey Redman, had moved to New York and was playing with Ornette Coleman. Young Joshua's only contact with his father was hearing his records around the house, and during his infrequent visits to town with Ornette, Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams and others. His mother Renee Shedroff, a dancer and librarian, was the driving force that nurtured his creativity. Redman's formal music training began at age five, when his mother enrolled him in Indonesian and Indian music classes at the Center For World Music. These unique art forms, along with the recordings of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Dewey Redman were his early influences. Joshua soon learned to play the recorder, guitar and piano. He listened to popular music, with James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, the Commodores, Parliament-Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles topping the Shedroff household playlist---afgen.com
Photo: Unknown Artist.
"Superb."--Editor, Cafeafricana
Joshua Redman Quartet - Headin' Home (Live)
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
Wine of the Month:
1999 Lamarque: Product of France.
Wine List: CafeAfricana.
1989 Domaine du Pesqier Grande Reserve. Product of France.
1998 Cabernet Sauvigno-Malbec Maule: Product of Chile.
1996 Lacryma Christi Del Vesuvio, Mastroberardion: Product of Italy.
The Keys to Great Wine Service-Wine Spectator
Don't drink and Drive.
'Good wine is a necessity of life for me.'--Thomas Jefferson.
“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.” – Eknath Easwaran
Robert Hughes
in action
Museums
Painting: Facing Streets Ahead by David Chinyama
'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:
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
Country Profiles
From Algeria to Zimbabwe:
Libya: Murzuq castle, from which sultans of Fezzan once ruled, southern Libya
'Libya has it all: ancient cities of rare and exquisite splendour, the Sahara that you thought existed only in your imagination and the unmistakeable cachet of being ruled by one of modern history's most iconic figures, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.'--www.lonelyplanet.com.
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.
On DVD: City of God, Artemisia, Goya, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Belle Du Jour, 8 Women, Shall We Dance...
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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Image: Wild Strawberries-Directed by Ingmar Bergman (1957)
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