ktravula – a travelogue!

My Books of 2017

It’s becoming cliché to say that the year flew by pretty fast, but that happened this year again, and I have a number of books to thank for providing a hiding place from the overwhelming nature of reality. Now, the time has come to take stock of progress and setbacks, and to reminisce about the delight that words in print provided to carry one through a tumultuous year.

(You can find my Books of 2016 here)

Here are books I read, wrote, or contributed to this year, in no particular order. Where a link is provided, it’s usually to a review of the work that I wrote.

Books I Completed

  1. Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
  2. The Yearning by Mohale Mashigo
  3. When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola
  4. Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atógun
  5. A Good Mourning by Ogaga Ifowodo
  6. The Heresiad by Ikeogu Oke
  7. Songs of Myself by Tanure Ojaide
  8. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika
  9. I Wrote This For You by Samira Sanusi
  10. The Kindness of Enemies by Laila Aboulela
  11. Slipping by Lauren Beukes
  12. The Birth of a Dreamweaver by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
  13. Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzor
  14. Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre: A Literary Biography by Sule E. Egya
  15. Grass to Grace by Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé
  16. America their America by JP Clark

I enjoyed all the books I completed this year, especially in the prose department. Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s anticipated debut blew me away in a number of ways, and perplexed me in others. I also enjoyed Mohale Mashigo’s debut which explores trauma and mental illness, Olúmìdé Pópóọlá’s delightful prose and a story of friendship, Lauren Beukes’s collection of dystopian stories, and Sarah Manyika’s beautiful and unconventional book about love in old age. I think I should read more non-conventional prose like these in the next year. Normal is boring.

I was honoured to be able to speak with Laila Aboulela in Kaduna in July, discussing her historical novel The Kindness of Enemies. I’ve always found work that incorporate elements of fact into fiction to be very engaging. That way I can pretend that it’s nonfiction when it is really not. I loved Taduno’s Song for the same reason. I look forward to reading more of such work.

Started But Not Finished

  1. A Woman’s Body is a Country by Dami Àjàyí
  2. Masks of Light by Robert Eliot Fox
  3. What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
  4. Are You Not a Nigerian? by Báyọ̀ Olúpohùndà
  5. The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes
  6. The Book of Memory by Pettina Gappah
  7. The Sellout by Paul Beaty
  8. Facade by Emem Uko
  9. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
  10. Beyond Linguistics and Multilingualism in Nigeria: Essay on linguistics and multilingualism, language in education, English language, Yoruba language & Literature by Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé.
  11. Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer
  12. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré

Speaking of delightful prose, one book I can’t wait to finish is Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky. It is my first time reading anything she’s written and I’m blown away. Thanks to the folks at Farafina for sending me a complimentary copy. The book is a collection of short stories each carrying a heavy punch. Her words are sweet and svelte, capable of telling a story, no matter how difficult, with care and beauty. Two of my friends, Báyọ̀ Olúpohùndà and Dami Àjàyí also published a book each this year, and I look forward to spending quality time with them. I’ve read Àjàyí’s book as a manuscript, and many of the articles in Olúpohùndà’s when they were newspaper columns. But I look forward to reading them again. I also highly recommend Robert Eliot Fox’s collection of poetry, published by a publishing outfit by Frank Chipasula whom I met for the first time in Abu Dhabi in April.

Bought But Not started.

  1. Nollywood by Jonathan Haynes
  2. Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe
  3. White Lagos by Pẹ̀lú Awófẹ̀sọ̀
  4. Al Franken: Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
  5. King Baabu by Wọlé Ṣóyínká
  6. The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma
  7. Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman
  8. Dialogue With My Country by Niyi Ọ̀súndáre
  9. The Translator by Laila Aboulela
  10. A Black Man in the White House by Cornell Belcher
  11. Kintu by Jeniffer Nansubuga Makumbi
  12. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Walk in the White House by Alyssa Mastromon

Of these twelve, the one less likely to be read in a hurry now is Al Franken’s autobiography which I was actually looking forward to. His resignation from the Senate amidst allegations, by about eight women, of sexual impropriety will certainly cast a shadow on any of the jokes he makes in the work about working with women. Not like the Letterman story will be any less cringe-inducing, but one of them managed to escape unscathed from public life. Some irony in that. Both of them, however, still occupy a very important place in American public life, as well as in comedy. I bought the Nollywood book at the Lagos Conference this summer, on impulse purchase, and because the author was there. But don’t know when I’ll ever get to it now. It does look like a good reference material on the story of Nigeria’s thriving movie industry though. I also look forward to reading Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain which actually preceded his memoir published last year. Will be interesting to trace his creative development and style.

Publications my works appeared in.

  1. GENERAL NONFICTION. Saraba Magazine’s published its first print issue this year, titled Transitions. In it, I have a nonfiction piece, co-written with Tèmítáyọ̀ Ọlọ́finlúà titled “House 57”, about a house in Ìbàdàn that means a lot to me, but also carries an important story that touches more than just its immediate characters.
  2. REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS. I published a number of reviews and interviews on Brittle Paper this year, of works of writers like Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre, Chibundu Onuzor, Odafe Atógun, Lauren Beukes, Tádé Ìpàdéọlá, and Wana Udobang. I also published a couple of works on AfricanWriter.com, most notably my interview with Yẹ́misí Aríbisála (February 2017) and Titilope Sonuga (July 2017). I also joined This is Africa later in the year as a resident interviewer, publishing interviews with Dami Àjàyí (October 2017), Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (November 2017), and Igoni Barrett (December 2017). In Ake Review 2017, I have an interview with debut author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ on her work, her process, and on the presentation of women in fiction. It’s aptly titled “There’s Not One Way to Write a Feminist Character” — a quote taken directly from the author’s response to a question I had posed.
  3. ESSAYS. Earlier in March, my literary essay In the Shadow of Context was published in Enkare Review. It was later nominated for the Brittle Paper Award for Think Pieces. In June, I contributed an essay titled Wetin Dey? Nigerian Pidgin and its Many Pikin as a preface to Inua Ellams’s Barbershop Chronicles staged and published by the UK National Theatre. In November 2017, my essay appeared in Il Suono di Pan an anthology edited by Prof. MM Tosolini and launched at Cividale del Friuli, near Udine in November 2017. The essay was titled The Suspended Leg in the Tripod of Identity: Yorùbá Around the World Today. it was also translated to Italian.
  4. FEATURES. In January this year, Latterly Magazine’s Ashley Okwuosa shadowed me around places in Ìbàdàn where I grew up, asking relevant questions about my work as a writer and linguist. We visited Àkóbọ̀, the University of Ìbàdàn, and she met a couple of my professors. The result was a long profile titled “The Yorùbá Guardian” in the Spring Issue of the magazine. So, while this is technically not my work, it’s one I’m glad to have participated in.

Books Lost

This one is a tragedy A book I’ve had with me since 2002 was “borrowed” from me without my permission while I was attending the Kaduna Book and Art Festival (KABAFEST). Still waiting for whoever has it to send it back, graciously.

Hello 2018!

Thinking back, it’s hard to believe I read (or wrote) this much this year. My pocket certainly doesn’t believe it. There are so many more books I have bought and I’m looking forward to reading. The complete works of Nnedi Okorafor, for instance. Something tells me that the time for sci-fi and fantasy fiction is upon us. Every year I promise myself not to buy more books than I can read. I’ve failed this year, but 2018 is another year.

So, what books did you read and enjoy this year? And will you lend me to read?

My Books of 2017 was published on December 9th, 2017, with the tags , , , , , under the Literature category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Farafina Releases Three New Books

Press Release

 

Kachifo Ltd is pleased to announce the release of three new books – What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky (Nigerian edition), How to Win Elections in Africa and Àníkẹ́ Ẹlẹ́kọ under its Farafina, Kamsi and Tuuti imprints.

The three titles were released on 13th November 2017 and are available on online platforms and in selected bookstores nationwide.

The Books

WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY by Lesley Nneka Arimah

The collection of short stories, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for writing, boasts of powerful storytelling, unique female protagonists, and a world where women are depicted as the center of the society.

Reviews:

From Tendai Huchu, author of The Hairdresser of Harare, and The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician:

“Arimah has a gift of crafting intimate familial relationships . . . and the pressures and strains of those relationships form the most intricate and astonishing narratives. The powerful stories in this dark and affecting collection will show you that magic still exists in our world.”

From Chinelo Onwualu, editor of Omenana Magazine: “Masterfully moving between the speculative to the mundane, this is a riveting read that will stay with you long after you’ve put it down.”

From Igoni A. Barrett, author of Blackass and Love Is Power, or Something Like That:

“From the very first story in What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky this thunderstruck reader began to glean the answer to the question embedded in the book’s title. . . Lesley Nneka Arimah has landed in my rereading list like a blast of fresh air.”

About the Author

Lesley Nneka Arimah’s work has received grants and awards from Commonwealth Writers, AWP, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and others. Her short story, What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky was shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. She currently lives in Minneapolis.

 

ÀNÍKẸ́ ẸLẸ́KỌ

Àníké has to hawk ẹ̀kọ every morning but that does not stop her from going to school. She loves school and wants to be a doctor. However, her mother has decided her fate: once she finishes primary school, she will join her Aunt Rẹ̀mí in the city as a tailor.

When a mystery guest visits Àníké’s school, she has the chance to win a scholarship that will change her fate. Will the help of her friends Oge, Ìlérí and Àríyọ̀ the cobbler be enough?

Written by Sandra Joubeaud and illustrated by Àlàbá Ònájìn, ÀNÍKÉ ELÉKO tells a colourful story of one girl’s courage in the face of opposition to her dreams.

 

About the Authors

Sandra Joubeaud is a French screenwriter and script doctor based in Paris, France. She has also worked on Choice of Ndeye, a comic book commissioned by UNESCO and inspired by the novel, So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba).

Àlàbá Ọ̀nájìn is a graphic novelist with a diploma of Cartooning and Illustration from Morris College of Journalism, Surrey Kent. His work includes The Adventures of Atioro, and other collaboration projects with UNESCO and Goethe Institut. He lives in Ondo State, Nigeria.

 

HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS IN AFRICA

Democracy involves the process of changing custodians of power from time to time in order to maintain a useful equilibrium of performance and accountability. But the post-colonial narrative in most African countries has been one of the strongmen and power brokers entrenching themselves deeply across the crucial levels of society. The past few years have however seen citizens become more aware, and some revolt against these systems.

How To Win Elections in Africa explores how citizens, through elections can uproot the power structures. Using examples from within and outside Africa, this book examines the past and present to map a future where the political playing field is level and citizens can rewrite existing narratives.

Politicians have been handed their notice: It is no longer business as usual.

 

About the Authors

Chude Jideonwo is the managing partner of RED, which brands include StateCraft Inc, Red Media Africa, Y!/YNaija.com and Church Culture. His work focuses on social movements shaking up and transforming nations through governance and faith, with the media as a tool. He teaches media and communication at the Pan-Atlantic University. In 2017, he was selected as a World Fellow at Yale University.

Adébọ́lá Williams is the co-founder of RED and chief executive officer of its communication companies – Red Media Africa and StateCraft Inc. A Mandela Washington Fellow under President Barack Obama, he has been a keynote and panel speaker at conferences across the world including at the London Business School, Wharton, Stern, Yale, Columbia, Oxford and Harvard.

Farafina Releases Three New Books was published on November 20th, 2017, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Literature, News category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

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Buchi Emecheta Foundation and Omenela Press created to Preserve a Legacy was published on November 20th, 2017, with the tags , , , , under the Guest Post, Literature, Prose category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

The Suspended Leg of the Tripod of Identity: Yorùbá Around the World Today

By Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

.

“Il suono di pan” (2017)

.

I am Yorùbá by birth and by blood, a privilege that has sat me in good stead, professionally and personally, through a wide network of associations, resources, legacies and traditions. From great award-winning novels (many in translation) to great art works curated in museums all over the world, there are many valuable responses that attend my questing glances around the world for validation and direction. In today’s world, to be Yorùbá is to embody all that is complex and dynamic in a culture and civilization that predates even the birth of Christ.

But due to centuries of colonial contact, my identity today is a complex one. I say complex, because saying “incomplete” would carry too much of a burden of judgment. My identity is complex because were we to return to early Yorùbá societies of 4th Century BC in Ifẹ̀, what I am would embody not just the language I speak, my racial composition, the clothes I wear, the scarifications on my face and my role in society, but also my religion, yet untouched by the crusading powers of Christianity that would come centuries later. 

In that 4th Century BC in Ifẹ̀, I would either be a citizen, with roles and responsibilities, or a member of the priesthood – which isn’t the same as the Christian one, but which carries similar significance to the proper ordering of society, or a royal. An important group of citizens, a hybrid between genuine plebeians and important religious personas, are the sculptors. The working class men — it was a more gendered time — whose role was to continue the tradition of preserving and interpreting the culture through the moulding of bronze heads. (A similar tradition would take root decades later in Benin — 270km SE of Ifẹ̀ — with more bronze heads of different shapes and styles moulded in the same lost-wax tradition not before conceived in the capitals of Europe). 

Because of the hard work of thorough artistry sustained through both civic and religious significance by the practitioners of those times, a record of who the Yorùbá were, what they did, and how long they have been around, was set. This would be helpful in 1938 when Leo Frobenius and his crew came across them at the Wunmonije Compound in Ifẹ̀, buried deep into the soil. So stunned were the European archeologists at the sophistication of the art works (they “compared them to the highest achievements of ancient Roman or Greek art” – source: Wikipedia) that they began to doubt that they could have been created by Africans. They must have been imported from Greece or Rome, they suggested, full of hubris.

In today’s Yorùbáland, I am still a citizen with roles and responsibilities. But I have embodied a new role, that of a citizen of a larger entity called Nigeria, brought into being in 1914 through colonial force, and before that by other forces of globalization, including the transatlantic slave trade and Christianity. (I’ll speak more on that in a second). The internet is a latter-day version of that movement, arriving in time to complete the cycle of connecting what is an individual culture and worldview to a supposedly larger one. In submitting myself to the forces of this expansion of our social and religious space, I also surrender to a new way of thinking. Christianity, in the intervening period, has taken over the world, through the invading forces of colonialism and slave trade. Our religious and cultural autonomy was destroyed and replaced with what is said to be superior and benign.

A friend of mine once visited Brazil and met with a number of caucasian residents of Bahia. In approaching him, because of his mode of dressing, they were curious about his origin. When he told them that he was Yorùbá, they were very excited, and they told him that they, too, were Yorùbá. Never before been exposed to this kind of unfamiliar acculturation, he became disoriented. How, his face wondered, could people of this skin tone and racial make-up be Yorùbá? Then, after recovering himself in a few seconds, he began to speak to them in the language. And to his consternation, they could neither speak nor respond. “But you said you were Yorùbá” he wondered. “Yes,” they responded. “We belong to the Yorùbá religion. We do not speak the language!” That cleared it up, and he learnt something new. Belonging to a religion is not always the same as belonging to the culture.

The Yorùbá religion, consisting of hundreds of Òrìṣà in a dynamic network, centers around Olódùmarè as the supreme being. And through Ifá divination, and its founding father of wisdom—Ọ̀rúnmìlà—the will of the divine one is made known to the people. Ifá as a symbol of divination has been the bedrock of Yorùbá belief system since its recorded history. Along with a corpus of stories, admonitions, aphorisms, songs and chants, that body of knowledge is one through which Ifá priests and priestesses predict the future and understand the past, and one with which the inidividual Yorùbá citizen understands his/her place in the cosmos. So when, in the 16th century, the transatlantic slave trade began, and citizens from inside Yorùbá country were stolen and sold off into the new world, the only valuable resource not capable of being destroyed by the invading slavers and their accomplices across the ocean was the knowledge of these old systems of religious knowledge. Though their bodies were broken down by hard labour, dehumanization, mutilation, separation and other forms of indignity, they held onto these songs and religious rituals and passed them to their children, sometimes in secret.

It is unclear why the religion did not survive in a stronger form in the United States as it did south of the Rio Grande. But we know that in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and Jamaica, variations of the indigenous African religious practices, particularly from the Yorùbá country survived, sometimes in isolation but mostly in syncretism and other forms of mutation, so that today, there are racially and culturally different people who are nevertheless religiously Yorùbá. Their worldview may be Western, as is their racial composition and language, but their soul and heart are Yorùbá, or aspires to be. This is in a sharp contrast with the homeland where many Yorùbá citizens today are Christian or Moslem (converted through a later trans-Saharan slave trade that came through the north), but Yorùbá only in cultural and linguistic heritage, that is, possessing everything but the third leg of the tripod of identity.

It is tempting, then, to assume that the spiritual identity of the Yorùbá has undergone a weakening since the dawn of European civilization. This would have been true only without the knowledge of the depth of hold that the religion has had around the new world, and among those at home who have retained the independent cultural, spiritual, and mental identity away from what the imported religions recommended. In any case, the “suspension” of this leg in Nigeria and much of Africa, deplorable as it is, has only deepened the support for the religion among those to whom that is all that is left after centuries of plundering. And so there is the silver lining. Over the last couple of decades, practitioners of Lukumi (a religious variation of the Yorùbá Òrìṣà religion, which uses Ifá as its divinatory centre, and modified Yorùbá incantations and songs for liturgy) have made pilgrimages to Nigeria and connected the relevant dots of their religious ancestry. And through a fertile continuation of that relationship, the practice of Ifá and Òrìṣà worship has resumed around the country. A number have also started taking to learning the Yorùbá language as well, as something to add to what they already have in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. And while the Yorùbá in the home country have also shown a lukewarm attitude to the language, the diaspora comes in to save it through a warm embrace.

In 2008, Ifá became classified as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage” by UNESCO. There is a sort of delightful ending in the fact that Ifá had to travel all the way across the world in a slave ship before returning home to rescue its people at home. But maybe that was necessary, especially in its now inevitable expansion across all hitherto forbidden spaces. 

_________

(first published, in a slightly different version, in English and Italian; in Il Suono di Pan, an anthology edited by Prof. MM Tosolini and launched at Cividale del Friuli, near Udine in Italy. November 2017)

_________

For Further reading

The Suspended Leg of the Tripod of Identity: Yorùbá Around the World Today was published on November 20th, 2017, with the tags , , under the History, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Finding Chris Abani

To know Chris Abani is to love him. I spent about an hour today at the Lagos International Poetry Festival interrogating the affable Nigerian/British writer about his life, his work, his vocations, and a few other matters. It was our first ever sit-down conversation about anything, although I had known and admired him for a while, read his work, and exchanged pleasantries when we’ve met at other literary events (last year at the Aké Arts and Book Festival, for instance).

But this time, at a formal setting, I had looked forward to being able to learn a bit more about what motivates him as an artist, and to do it within the stipulated hour. It turned out to be a conversation that was as enjoyable as it was challenging. His reputation, drive, and breath of literary production span an impressive and sometimes intimidating stretch. He is a full-time writer in California, but also an apprentice babaláwo, publisher (and curator of a number of poetry competitions and chapbooks with Professor Kwame Dawes), and author of many award-winning books including Graceland (2004).

There were a number of questions, but one of the most enjoyable parts of the conversation for me was a detour on the true definition of literacy in an African environment. Too often, we have defined literary competence, and even a state of being culturally literate, as merely being able to understand the translation of terms from one language or culture to the other. Whereas, what is true literacy is being able to successfully occupy the full extent of being in that culture and maybe another as well. He mentioned an example of listening to a performance either of the chanting of the Odù Ifá or a poetry performance in Afikpo, where he was born and raised, and being able not just to understand what is being said, but successfully occupying the spiritual and mental state in which the work was conceived and performed. The nearest familiar example from my end would be a literate Yorùbá citizen, listening to a cultural performance with a dozen other not-as-literate people, and having a better, more enhanced experience of the same work of art just because of a capacity to understand the meaning of each talking drum pattern played under each public chant. In Yorùbá traditional art, there are sufficient depictions, as a satire on the importance of this skill, of novice or despised chiefs or kings dancing glibly to a drummer’s feverish patterns without knowing that the drummer was actually insulting them through the delightful ambiguity that the tonal patterns of the Yorùbá talking drums provide.

Chris Abani is a truly literate and competent artist in this way, which greatly helped the conversation along. One hour suddenly felt like a few good minutes. But the writer, in spite of his many achievements, also carries himself in a way that is relatable – which is what you’ll expect of someone still intent on learning the very many ways of being, and of existing as a true and competent artist.

I may have ruffled him a bit with an elephant-in-the-room question about a once controversial portion of his biography relating to his imprisonment in Nigeria in the eighties which, a few years ago, put him in the crosshairs of some Nigerian writers who accused him of not just fraud but sabotage: he was portraying Africa in a horrible light for foreigners for his own artistic advancement, and deserved censure. It was an argument that played into the big contemporary hoopla about poverty porn and the perception of Africa in world literature as a nest of ills. In Abani’s response, he gave as strong a defense as one can find for the freedom to be private about elements of one’s life story especially in the face of what he thought was an unfair and relentless attack, and anger at those who he said had tried, though unsuccessfully, to damage his name and livelihood in their blood lust for his scalp through a witch-hunt disguised as a defence of autobiographical fidelity, or the country’s honour. It made sense to me, and I was glad to have given him a chance to defend himself on the topic in a public forum.

What he is known for today, along with his impressive literary output, is his work with the African Poetry Book Fund with Professor Kwame Dawes where dozens of new African writers are discovered every year and published in chapbook and box sets which are sold all over the United States and around the world. His explanation on the breadth of work that the Fund does was thorough and detailed. How he is able to cope with that work along with every other thing he does is one of the wonders of his impressive career.

In the end, I was greatly impressed by the writer as an artist, an important and talented voice in the African writing space, as well as a bearer of important stories.

Finding Chris Abani was published on November 4th, 2017, under the Interview, Literature, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.