ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

For Coloured Girls

The adaptation of a stage play to film is tricky, and one should credit Tyler Perry for attempting that uphill task with his adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s play into film. Full disclosure: I am a fan of plays. I am a bigger fan of adaptations, especially if I have read the play first. In this case, I hadn’t. All I had going for me was a perception of the director as one very much in tune with his female base, willing to approach them from the most emotional point of their interest.

I had seen The Diary of a Mad Black Woman – his first film I saw. Then I saw the Madea Family Reunion which featured some of my favourite actresses. Maya Angelou was there. Then there was Why Did I Get Married and its sequel which I grossly disliked (and blogged about) for its over-sensationalist approach to family dysfunctions in the black community. In all his films I have seen, what I always took away is his ability to portray things as they exist in the reality of many. In doing so, he contributes to the (some have said “stereotypical”) portrayal of black life.

Initial thoughts on For Coloured Girls is that it does like all his work – with the brilliant performances of Kimberly Elise, Anika Rose, Phylicia Rashad, and Thandie Newton – once again takes an unflinching look at the painful lives of black women, their pains and victories. The positives are a star-studded cast, a language that sticks as much as possible to the lines of the play, and a story that is as complex as it is haunting. The negatives include the failure of the story to offer more than the pain of loss and the beauty of community. The promise of the first half of the story fails to move anymore after an hour, and at times seems like an earnest fight against an inevitable failing. Maybe it’s in my expectation of too much from it all, or my sociocultural distance from the emotional experience being so beautifully portrayed.

The summation of course is not that we need less of these kinds of works. It is that we need more, and better. And this is where Tyler Perry gets a thumb up.

Poems of my Present

I want to write about what I read when – in rare times like this when I have all the time in the world to myself – I get the luxury of contemplating sweet, literary stuff rather than bury my head in the tedium of long linguistic theories. If I were to compile a list of recommendations of things to read to a friend – Nigerian or not, this would be a tentative list. There are very many more.

Poems

Suicide Notes. Poems by Dami Ajayi in Maple Tree Literary Supplement Issue 8.

Letter Home by Afam Akeh in MTLS Issue 2 is a long poem that haunts, and soothes.

Mayakovsky by Peter Akinlabi.

Three Poems by Obemata in Sentinel Nigeria Issue #5

What have YOU read that has moved you lately?

Meeting Eshu

Today a well-dressed man with a Sean Connery/Salman Rushdie look, beard, and an eerily similar Wole Soyinka/VS Naipaul voice walked into the language lab. He was accompanied by a colleague in the department who had brought him there to use the computer. I’d heard a little about him from the departmental emails. He is one of the prospective employees brought to take a tour of the department and meet members of staff. He had come earlier before I arrived at work. He stands a chance of being a new addition to our staff so I went to speak with him.

“Where are you from?” He asked after I’d introduced myself.

“Nigeria.”

“Bawo nee.” He said, and I was suprised.

“A dupe. How did you know this. Have you ever lived in Nigeria?”

“No. I’m from Brazil.”

“Wao. I didn’t know that you speak the language there.”

“Yes we do. The Yoruba religion is very big in Brazil. It’s a huge huge thing.”

I knew this, but was still very impressed. Then he went on.

“Do you know Shango?”

“Waoh.”

“And Orisha.”

“I’m impressed.”

“And Oshun.”

“Interesting.”

“And my personal favourite – Eshu*!”

“Hahahahaha.”

“I tell everybody about Eshu, especially the Christians I meet, and they look at me like an evil voodoo priest.”

We went on to talk for a few more minutes, and he then showed me a youtube video of a performance of the Yoruba religious worship in Brazil. The songs are a mixture of Portugese and Yoruba. One could pick out many Yoruba words, phrases and expressions in the song. The costumes however are a mixture of European and African. The drums were distinctly African.

The short conversation has given me a new appreciation of religion being the most enduring bearer of language. We’ve seen it with Latin and Catholicism, Arabic and Islam. Now we’re seeing it with Yoruba and Candomble.

It is was all just very interesting to me.

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* Eshu is the Yoruba god of mischief, lost in the translation of the English bible into Yoruba as the devil himself.

Walking the City

It is ancient, it is new. It’s cold, it’s warm. It is windy. It is dry, it is bubbly. It surprises like a carnival. It soothes like a feather. It delights. It surprises. It bores. It hugs. It repels: a beautiful half desert land of strange plants and creatures. Ruins. Concrete. Rust. Trees. Tar. Tall remnants of a history that comes back many times to relive itself. City. Town. Relic. St. Louis.