Reality, Altered Negatively

Of Hoffman, Othello, and Obama

"To my mind, Iago actually loves Othello. And it's hard not to think of Obama when you read 'Othello' now." -- Philip Seymour Hoffman in Hirschberg's New York Times Magazine article.

MOOLAADE

About a year and a half ago, while living in sleepy Hightstown, NJ, I was writing film reviews for a soon-to-be-launched website on new African media. The website never materialized, but I received four films in total, each of which I watched and then wrote about in 500-word reviews. Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade was by far the most memorable one for me, especially because the great filmmaker had died early that year in 2007. Here is the long-languishing review:

Powerful and vibrant, Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaadé brings unwavering focus to female circumcision, one of the many plights of women in Africa. Filmed in Senegal, Moolaadé reveals the harsh realties of familial conflict, as village elders are challenged repeatedly, a young man refuses to wed the eleven-year-old bride picked for him, girls drown themselves in protest, and the defiant Collé (Fatoumata Coulibaly) takes a public flogging for her stand against female circumcision. In his final, beautifully filmed masterpiece, Sembene does not fail us as usual, offering steady but moving images of daily life and ritual in a Senegalese village, and wide-ranging emotions portrayed by an impressive cast of African actors; and finally, a sobering but hopeful glimpse at the challenges ahead for African women everywhere. Moolaadé is not for the faint of heart, yet it unfolds brilliantly, responding with a clear, defiant answer to those who continue to insist on female circumcision in Africa.

Graphically Speaking

There are probably just a few times in one's life when blatant self-promotion is actually excusable -- and this tool we call the internet comes in very handy at those exhilirating moments. I'm posting the introductory part of my interview with Ivorian writer Marguerite Abouet which has recently been published in the beautifully illustrated graphic novel,Aya of Yop City. The interview itself first appeared on Wild River Review and was subsequently picked up by Canadian publisher Drawn + Quarterly for reprint in the second edition of Abouet's first work, Aya. I've already linked to it under "Some Writings" on this blog. For more, cast your eyes toward the top right corner of this virtual page.And herewith the intro to the interview:Too often, it is easier than we realize to forget the intimate details of a childhood, especially one lived thousands of miles away in a different country. As the years pass by, distance and time make fading memories more difficult to recall. Slowly, a new — and hopefully better — life takes over our days, making it even harder to remember little details. 
 
Like Marguerite Abouet, I left West Africa at an early age. And like her, I too, long to remember and write about what it was like then, for in the back of my mind West Africa is always present. It comes as no surprise to me that Abouet’s only comic book in English, Aya, is her very powerful visual and literary expression of this longing, this deep need to hold onto childhood memories filled with “unbelievable” stories about neighbors, families, friends — all in an Ivory Coast that had recently gained independence from France and was enjoying a new middle class society. 

Set in a bustling city in Ivory Coast, Aya is a witty, urban story. One, Abouet says, could have taken place anywhere in the world. She is right, in theory, for there is a universalizing force that seems to drive Marguerite Abouet, the writer. 

So come along and let her show you why, and literally through pictures, how, just as they might do in Europe or America, young girls sneak out to meet guys at night — or go to a party and flirt with the most attractive guy there. This is no different worldwide, really. 

And yet,Aya is also an urban story that takes place, specifically, in Ivory Coast — a country which now experiences what many other African countries have faced after decades of colonial rule: political corruption, disease, civil strife, and staggering poverty. 

Days after I finished this interview with Abouet, I realized that in it I had brought attention to the current harsh realities for Africans in Ivory Coast, and for those who migrated to Europe. Perhaps, as someone who was raised in Africa, I felt I had to... and it was the responsible thing to do. Perhaps it may always remain so; I don’t know. Thankfully, Abouet was generous and warm in her response to my questions, always unapologetically reaching for honesty in her own reflections. 

At a panel discussion at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York City, Abouet spoke of how she often feels a certain responsibility as an African writer because she wrote the book Aya. It was unclear to me whether this feeling of responsibility, like mine, had everything to do with addressing the current crisis in many parts of Africa. But I secretly wished it didn’t, and that part of it also meant continuously drawing attention to the universal and relatable aspects of Africa, which Abouet has indeed successfully done in her engaging work, Aya — and in her interview with me.

Worl' Do For Fraid

Over the past few months, I have had the fortune of working closely with the brilliant Sierra Leonean playwright, Nabie Yayah Swaray, on his play, The Rape of Fatimah, which was published in the 80s as Worl' Do For Fraid. It isn't often that the press publishes plays because they are rather hard to market unless performance is somewhat guaranteed. The last play I worked on, as editor, was by Rashidah Ismail back in 2004, I believe, and it was called The Ricekeepers.  As I contemplate both plays, I must say that they are different in several ways. Yet they both deftly explore aspects of the sad demise of Africa's societal cohesion with some powerful and accessible metaphors. If you are inclined, do pick up a copy of one of the plays, if only to engage, via a different literary form, the minutia of the "African condition" as we know it even today--and as it is legitimately explored through the past in these two plays.

*Of course, all books that I have worked on can be purchased through Africa World Press at www.africaworldpressbooks.com. 

Floral Consumption

If I just wrote or read more, I'd post frequently. I was away again and in northern California for six days. With my new LG shine, I took photographs (this is one of them) which may reveal an untapped and consumptive disposition toward the Visual.

Of Black, White, and Red

Over time, this blog has become more of a personal project, and this is mainly because I have had little time to read books or on books lately.  Last weekend, however, en route to New York City, I began reading Lauretta Ngcobo's and they didn't die, which I will review briefly for the blog. So far, it intrigues with its authorial directness (occasionally much harsher than I am used to in prose) and its rather powerful storyline which is set in the barren Sabelweni valley in South Africa.

Meanwhile, as the summer days in Princeton come and go with surefire rapidity, I have taken to writing again, and below is an excerpt from a lengthy piece I am working on called "Half-Caste." It is my hope that it will become a mighty book project one day. And I must say this: It cometh to fruition quite slowly, as have many of my curiosities and more realistic dreams.

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At about the age of nineteen, a year after I arrived for college in the United States, I stopped thinking of myself as “half-caste.” The word, so loaded in its literal meaning and with its colonial roots, was used with frequency and ease to refer to those of us who had European mothers and African fathers in Nigeria.

For a long time—from early childhood to late teens—I accepted the word, not giving it much thought since it wasn’t necessarily used in a negative way. In fact, if you were “half-caste,” you were different in a way that was usually considered interesting and more attractive. The “half-caste” women, for instance, were often sought after and desired by Nigerians for love affairs; the men deemed good-looking. Or so I observed, growing up in Plateau State, Nigeria, where more than a handful of mixed-race families lived.

In the first decades following Nigeria’s independence from the British in 1960, many Nigerian men received scholarships to study in Europe and the former Soviet Union. They left for their studies—and some of them returned, after many years, with foreign wives. My father was one of these men who came home with a European wife. While studying veterinary medicine in Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, he met my mother and married her in a heady time of some discrimination and racial prejudice against black students in the Soviet Union.

At that time, the generalized reactions to the African male in the Soviet union involved a few strongly-held beliefs, most of them informed, arguably, by circulating racist imagery not only in the visual form (picture books) but also in the literary one as well (poetry, nursery rhymes, etc). And there was also the ideologically-driven desire to communize the African, which in and of itself masked an impulse that was not only patronizing but perhaps in some ways very misplaced given that little was known about Africa in the Soviet Union. In fact, at that time, most Russians had been cocooned in their comradeship; very few had traveled to Africa and had gleaned most of their knowledge from biased televised programs, books, stories, and songs. It was said that my grandmother had never laid eyes on a black person before she met my father—and she was not amused by my mother’s decision to marry my father. She is noticeably absent in all photos taken at the wedding ceremony in Kiev.

Yet deeply in love, my parents embraced their stark differences—and their unborn child, my sister, and in the precise moment that my mother fell in love with my father, I believe, her fate was sealed. In 1972, my sister was born into the convoluted world of angst and tears over my mother’s decision to leave Ukraine, indefinitely, for Africa. And so it was that my mother, father, and sister came to live in Vom, once an idyllic colonial enclave, in the northern region of Nigeria. And so it was too that, after I was born in the nearby city of Jos and then raised in Vom, I would come to question the divisive roots of the word, “half-caste.”

More to come...