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...
 

In the Collective We Trust

In the past few weeks, I finished a new piece for Wild River Review on an Umberto Eco lecture I attended in New York City (to be published in their June 4th issue); I wrapped up the Haiti gig; I also took some time to look for a novel by a contemporary African writer that I could possibly review for a prestigious literary journal. The search for the novel proved tedious, especially since requirements were quite stringent -- not by a mainstream publisher, not overly reviewed in the American press, and also published within the past year or forthcoming in 2009. There were times I felt hopeless, in a sense, and angry because I am fully aware of the literary talent coming out of Africa. I concluded that you have to be an insider to know where to go. Otherwise, you may very well find yourself unable to locate RECENT fiction by important African novelists.  But fret not. African Books Collective (www.africanbookscollective.com) is a resourceful conduit --  it showcases worthy titles that are being published by a handful of publishers in Africa and markets them to a much wider readership. You can, as it turns out, get most of these titles on Amazon or through a national distributor.

Brava to collective action.

Keeping the Embers Alive

About a month ago, Africa World Press published a book on musicians from Zimbabwe -- a collection of raw interviews with some of the best of the best from Zimbabwe.   

In addition, the black and white photos by Kristin Capp not only capture the musicians in true physical form, but they are also quite beautiful.

In a time when almost all incoming news on Zimbabwe tries one's human capacity for hope, Keeping the Embers Alive sheds some much-needed light on what some of us can still absolutely love about the country--and Africa--itself.

See www.africaworldpressbooks.com for more details on the book.

[Cover by Sam Saverance; photos on cover by Kristin Capp]

Heidi Holland's Dinner with Mugabe

Increasingly, I enjoy the critical and timely reviews of Percy Zvomuya in South Africa's Mail & Guardian. Thus, for this May 1 post, I select a few choice paragraphs from his March 2008 article on Holland's latest book:

Dinner with Mugabe (Penguin South Africa) is in equal measures touching and enthralling, damning and well-researched, reflective and pacily written. It's a psychological biography of the hero of the 1970s independence war against Ian Smith's government.

And then this, with revealing observation:

The difficulty with this kind of book is obvious: how do you get people to talk about the subject as honestly and truthfully as possibly -- and to a white woman? For, after all, even Mugabe's grip on power grows more tenuous while he still retains that power. I found, for instance, the account by Patricia Bekele, Sally Mugabe's niece, to be fluffy and idealistic. She obviously can't say anything really damning, even though Sally's last days were not particularly rosy especially when Grace Mugabe, then part of Mugabe's secretarial pool, became his mistress. The same criticism could be valid in the parts Holland interviews Donato.

The picture of the early Mugabe is that of a loner, an unambitious person, who is thrust into the leadership of a violent organisation, very much against his will. Tekere says he found Mugabe exasperating, indeed, infuriating whenever Mugabe blocked moves to purge leadership -- even in cases in which Mugabe stood to benefit. "At no stage do you find him doing anything to promote himself to a position of leadership. It's very strange. Even in Mozambique and at Lancaster House he seemed to be almost unambitious."

How little one knows or assumes...sometimes.

Read more at: www.mg.co.za