My friend Diana and fellow FLTA speaks to the Voice Of America, here.
Browsing the archives for the Academic category.
It began with a suggestion by a German friend to get an old book that offers perspective on feminism and new ways to look at the world of women. Against my better judgement, I was not skeptical about it this time because she had recommended two similar books before that turned out great. The first was Roald Dahl’s My Uncle Oswald which is actually not anything about feminism at all as it is a fictitious look at the life of a philanderer, beautifully written with one of the best humour styles I’ve ever encountered in writing. The author is one of Britain’s best known children novelists. The other book was Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues that went on to become a global sensation and a staple for feminist agitators in many parts of the world.
So when she mentioned Nancy Friday‘s Women on Top, I ordered it without thinking. Unfortunately, since I got it, I had not been able to get beyond a the few random lines that I encountered in my first random opening of the pages. First impression: boring prose. I just never developed sufficient curiosity to go beyond the unimpressive first impression that stared me in the face and pore through the novel’s thick pages. Yet whenever we conversed, she asked me how I was doing on the book and I told her, she told me that I was missing out on interesting ideas that I could benefit from either as a writer or as a curious reader. I believed.
In any case, I still haven’t read it till today, and I may not any time soon. But when my friend Chris stayed over at my apartment this weekend, he stumbled on it and read it almost all night, and he has now been bombarding me with questions about why any woman would write such “depraved” or “perverted” book disguised as experiences and fantasies of real-life women. In his words, some of the details were not only sometimes too disgusting for words (bestiality etc), but they were too far-fetched to have been dreamed up by real-life human beings. Nevertheless, he seemed attached enough to give the book more than one more reading before he left. According to what I’ve now read on Wikipedia, and the review in Time Magazine, I believe that the author has tried to use the book to show that men do not have the monopoly of perverted thoughts or sexual experimentation. If this is a victory for feminism or not – like The Vagina Monologues perhaps, or plain pornographic literature – I have no idea, and I doubt it, but I’m not going to find out soon. However it looks like a very bold statement of new directions. Not new actually, it was published in 1991.
Was not so boring, because I presented a talk to a group of senior citizens (read grown folks over sixty) along with Reham in an event called Dialogue With Seniors. It was titled “Life in two of Africa’s biggest cities: Ibadan and Cairo.”
I enjoyed it because, contrary to my early apprehensions, they were quite amiable and relaxed. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience of speaking about everything from food to dressing to greeting to customs to religion and to malaria and HIV/AIDS. I showed them a picture of real Nigerian yams, as well as cocoa, both of which they were seeing for the very first time. They had seen Hershey’s, M&Ms and Snickers before, but this was the first time of seeing what cocoa really looked like. They asked questions and I responded. When Reham spoke, I learnt a few new things about Egypt and Arabic as well. It’s funny how much of what we had to say bounced off each other, as well as off the Americans. Cairo is Africa’s largest city while Ibadan is the second largest – by geography. The Nile in Egypt is the longest river in Africa while the Mississippi just close by is the second longest river in the world. (This fact about the Nile has amazed me since I grew up to realize that – contrary to the song we were taught in primary school – the Mississippi was NOT the longest river in the world. I wonder who came up with the song then.)
Yesterday, I participated in a similar seminar, this time for a class of students of English language teaching. Along with visiting scholars from Iran and Azerbaijan, we sat and answered questions about the difference in the University and learning environments in our countries and the United States, where they diverged, and where they were similar, and what we thought each could learn from each other. That was fun too. There were no “high tables”, just chairs. One thing I learnt from that event was that in Iran, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, boys and girls were separated into same-sex high schools and don’t have any form of social interactions until they gain admissions into the University. According to the Iranian speakers, this causes a lot of frustrations when they eventually get into the University and have to engage in social interactions, it becomes awkward. I could almost say the same for Nigeria of a few generations back as well, but not as a result of a government decision or anything. Most parental restrictions on their children (derived from a claimed divine injunction to “train the child in the way he should go”) often result in poorly sociable human beings unleashed on the society.
In all, it has been a wonderful week so far, except for the ugly news of the loss of my files and all my student’s data and academic scores in my now unrecoverable hard drive. Well, the week is just half gone. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
And so today March 17 marks the anual St. Patrick’s Holiday in the United States. St. Patrick (AD 387–461) was the missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland and converted them from their “pagan” ways. The holiday which began as a catholic holiday is now very secular and, like the Mardi Gras, has become a day of revelry and celebration of Irish culture. In Ireland, it is a public holiday. In the United States, it is just a day where people wear green, where the fountain in front of the White House and the Chicago River among many waters in the country are dyed green.
It doesn’t however mean that everyone who wears green or gets drunk on Guinness on this day in the US is of Irish descent or knows anything about Ireland. More often than not, it is just the chance to belong. There was a St. Patrick’s day parade last weekend in Chicago, and I’m sure in many other American cities but I couldn’t attend. I asked one of my students to name five famous Irish citizens. He didn’t know. The ones I can remember are John F. Kennedy, George Carlin, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, Conan O’ Brien, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift, among others.
And he was impressed with my ability to come up with those names spontaneously, much to my surprise.
In bed, reading Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street. First impression: A brilliant story. Great writing.
It started this way:
“The world was exactly as it should be. No more and, definitely, no less. She had the love of a good man. A house. And her own money – still new and fresh and the healthiest shade of green – the thought of it buoyed her and gave her a rush that made her hum.”
In Yoruba, that should be:
“Ilé ayé rí gẹgẹ bó se ye kó rí. Kò sí àseju bẹẹni kò sí àìtó. Ifẹ rẹ n jẹun lokan ọdọmọkùnrin ọmọlúàbí kan. Ilé kan. Àti owó tirẹ – tó tuntun yanranyanran pẹlú àwò ewé té rẹwa tó sì jọlọ – rírònú nípa rẹ lásán mú inú re dùn dé ibi wípé ó bẹrẹ sí n kọrin laìlanu.”