ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Literature category.

Of Tabs and Texts

I realized since a few months ago that I have a habit of opening too many tabs on my Google Chrome internet explorer. Everyone who peeped onto my computer screen while I work always wondered how I managed to concentrate on current tasks. My fiancée suggested that I most likely have attention deficit. In return, I argue that I have read enough reports that suggest that distracting oneself with stuff online actually led to efficiency. She has now asked that I limit my open tabs to ten. I have tried, and failed. Now I use Evernote to mark down some of the links I intend to read much later.

Today however, I recalled something that may be responsible for my interest in many things at once (much of them about politics, education, humour, literature, and news). Two words: my father. Thinking back now, I remember how there was always a room in every house we’ve lived in that has stacks of every current publication in Nigeria at the moment. Today, I remembered Prime People, Vintage People, Fun Times, Ikebe Super, Super Story, Vanguard, The Sketch, Newswatch, Daily Times, among very many others. Name it, we had every issue published, and they were always delivered by father’s vendor early in the day. Soon enough, the stack filled up a whole room. Literally.

It was impossible to be bored in an environment like that, and cartoon strips in the newspapers and magazines, and the continuing stories in legitimately fun publications like Ikebe Super, Fun Times, and Super Story sustained a literary interest for a very long time, long before it was eventually replaced with real literature, also from his bookshelves. So now, whenever I’m chided for opening too many webpages at once, I point back to the memory of a time when pleasure and work walked hand-in-hand while sitting on the floor of a living room with dozens of news and feature publications spread all around.

Sometime last year when an academic mentor in Ibadan asked if I had access to past issues of any Nigerian publications which used pidgin as the main language of communication, I immediately thought of Fun Times, Dauda the Sexy Guy, and Ikebe Super. He was working on a compilation of a comprehensive Nigerian Pidgin English dictionary. I have not asked father what he did with all his stack of past issues, but I assume that it will be a trip to return into the margins of those oldies at some point in the future, if they still exist. For now, new tabs and texts.

On Ibadan’s Literary Personality

Ibadan has a special quality which makes it conducive to intellectual and artistic production. It is a big city like Lagos but, unlike Lagos which is chaos running on crack, it is sufficiently laid-back. Consequently, the city’s rhythm is amenable to reflective activity. And don’t forget that the city began as a war camp so Ibadan has always been a city of immigrants, a legacy which makes it welcoming to newcomers till date. It also has a vibrant, affordable and unpretentious social life; the history of highlife, fuji, juju, gospel and many other genres of music in Nigeria cannot be written without highlighting the importance of Ibadan’s bars, clubs and open-air joints to the artistic development of their major acts. And the city has long hosted the headquarters of most of Nigeria’s major publishing houses.

Add to this mix the city’s juxtaposition of age-long cultural traditions and contemporary urban culture, its easy accommodation of the significant percentage of Nigeria’s academic elite based in the University of Ibadan, University College Hospital (UCH) and the Bodija area alongside the artisans and petty traders living in the city’s interior quarters, not to talk of the colourful and controversial characters who have illuminated the city’s fascinating and occasional combustible political history, and one begins to understand why the city has been so prominent in Nigeria’s literary history. The prestigious line of writers with significant connections to Ibadan stretches from illustrious names like Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark Bekederomo in the 1950s and 60s to vibrant voices of the present like Kunle Okesipe, Niran Okewole, Benson Eluma, Ayo Olofintuade, Tade Ipadeola and Ify Omalicha of blessed memory.

From my recent interview with Rotimi Babatunde, winner of the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing. Full interview here.

Caine Comes Home

On Monday July 2, my friend and writer, Rotimi Babatunde, was declared the winner of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing – the highest prize for short fiction from Africa. The prize comes with 10,000 British Pounds, and the bragging rights that come with being singularly crowned out of a list of diverse nominees.

“The shortlist with Baroness Nicholson in Oxford yesterday: Stanley, Melissa, Jenna, Emma, Billy and Rotimi.”

His short story titled “Bombay’s Republic” (downloadable here) explores the almost forgotten story of Nigerian soldiers in Burma during the Second World War. In the citation, Babatunde’s work was described as “ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and the psychology of Independence.”

Rotimi Babatunde’s fiction and poems have been published in Africa, Europe and America in journals which include Die Aussenseite des Elementes and Fiction on the Web and in anthologies including Little Drops and A Volcano of Voices. He is a winner of the Meridian Tragic Love Story Competition organised by the BBC World Service and his plays have been staged and presented by institutions which include the Halcyon Theatre, Chicago and the Institute for Contemporary Arts. He is currently taking part in a collaboratively produced piece at the Royal Court and the Young Vic as part of World Stages for a World City. Rotimi lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.

3bute.com & Caine Prize: Press Release

The 2012 winner of the of the £10,000 Caine Prize, Africa’s leading literary prize, will be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 2 July. To promote the new crop of young writers, 3bute.com in collaboration with the Caine Prize will be adapting (so readers can mashup) all the stories shortlisted for this year’s prize before the winner is announced.

Drop dates for the Caine Prize 2012 ‘3butes’:

– Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’ – May 27

– Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) – June 3

– Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’ – June 11

– Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’ – June 20

– Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’ – June 30

3bute [pronounced: tribute] is an online anthology devoted to the contexts often missing when African stories are reported. Our mash-up platform lets artists collaborate with writers on 3-page visualizations of their stories and journalism. By being able to add context to these narrative and “mashable” surfaces, our goal is to render, with your help, the developing world in a more engaging and immersive way.

3bute’s mashable surface lets everyone add their voice to the story by submitting relevant links to any context/ media content they can find on the web. 3bute pages can also be embedded all over the web, and the context everyone has added to the page goes along with it. In other words, 3bute is a social, accessible and sustainable way of distributing African stories, along with much needed context, around the web.

This year, like never before, overwhelming attention is being drawn to the shortlisted stories, thanks to the efforts of portals like ZunguZungu. 3bute hopes to offer a hotspot for the discussions around the stories.

For more information visit www.3bute.com or email us at mail@3bute.com.

For Maurice Sendak

My editorial commentary in the current issue of Nigerianstalk Litmag briefly touched on the passing of children’s writer Maurice Sendak. Like Dr. Seus, I didn’t know much about Mr. Sendak until I came to the United States, and one of my most remarkable contact with him was through Stephen Colbert in a very recent, every affecting interview (as if either of them knew how short a time the writer had left. He died at 83 on Tuesday). Maurice is the author of the popular children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. He admitted to Colbert that he didn’t see himself much as a “children’s” writer but as someone whose work has been accepted as appealing to children. The second part of that interview is here.

Listening to his other very remarkable, emotional interview with Terry Gross of NPR, it is hard to see him as anything but remarkable a human being – much more than the brilliant writer and illustrator that he was. Ending the interview with an advice to “live your life, live your life,” it appears that one of his most enduring legacy will be his ability to defy all odds of negativity and skepticism in order to achieve immortality. As Colbert himself will now acknowledge after receiving the boost of approval from Mr. Sendak for his own new book for children I’m a Pole (and So Can You), genius loves company.

These are some of the last words on that NPR interview, a commentary on his life: “I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

RIP Maurice (Obituary in the NY Times).

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