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CONTENTS
Editor-in-Chief's Message
Memorable Lines: This Mournable Body
Bookshelf: A Reading List
Common Ground
The African Novel Podcast: Poet Vanessa Onwuemezi
Book Review: By The Sea
Author Readings: Kabuika Kamunga
Book Events & More
Our Radio Archives
Off the WRITE Path
African Proverb: Guinean
Editor-in-Chief’s Message
Last month, we debuted The African Novel electronic newsletter in this format to a heartwarming reception by readers like you.
No sooner had we rolled out this medium than the feedback started pouring in, following readers’ clicks to open it around the world.
“Congrats on the venture….Good start,” read the very first reader reaction, from a professor of African history at a New England university. She answered our call to action to readers to sign up for a free subscription. The notification chimed. What a delight! Click by click, voluntary subscriptions have been registering on the newsletter dashboard. From a radio broadcaster in Lagos, Nigeria…and so on.
A few days later, upon receiving a link to the premier issue of the newsletter, another professor in the U.S. who specializes in contemporary fiction and short stories, reacted: “Your newsletter looks great. Thanks for sharing it with me.”
We always welcome your feedback — with suggestions and recommendations.
Buoyed by all we have heard and read since last month, we proudly present a new issue of The African Novel digital medium. This issue launches what we promise will remain a staple: The African Novel Podcast. Expect engaging one-on-one conversations with novelists, poets, literary movers and shakers that we meet in the ever-expanding universe of people celebrating African letters and storytelling — like us — in unprecedented ways in a global community.
Don’t make us “a best kept secret”! Introduce The African Novel medium to your family members and friends, students, teachers, and others. Share us on your social media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Remember our own Twitter handle: @theafricannovel.
Enjoy!
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D
P.S. Perhaps a friend forwarded this email to you. Sign up now to receive The African Novel directly in your inbox.
Memorable Lines
"Your cousin looks as though she is about to sob, once again situating herself beyond your understanding. Weeping alongside a first grader—even nearly doing so—is a nauseating act of ghastly femininity. You have no desire to expend energy on sympathy for a minor matter of corporal punishment. Women in Zimbabwe are undaunted by such things. Your cousin, on the other hand, has been enfeebled by her sojourns first in England then in Europe. Acquiring a degree in political science at London School of Economics, another in filmmaking in Hamburg, and coming back to Zimbabwe where no one wants her to have either has caused her disposition to grow yet more fanciful. Zimbabwean women, you remind yourself, know how to order things to go away. They shriek with grief and throw themselves around. They go to war. They drug patients in order to get ahead. They get on with it. If one thing doesn’t turn out, a Zimbabwean woman simply turns to another."
— from This Mournable Body (Faber & Faber, 2018 ) by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Bookshelf
What writers and readers of African titles are reading:
Poet Bayadir Mohamed-Osman (Maryland): Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and The New War on the Poor by Dr. Paul Farmer; Secrets of Div. ine Love by A. Helwa.
Writer/Poet Vanessa Onwuemezi (London):The Palmwine Drinkard by Amos Tutola; Lote by Shola Von Reinhold.
Novelist Cyprian Josson (Chartres, France):Ladies Trip by Fanny Enoh; Burning Grass by Cyprian Ekwensi.
Novelist Benjamin Kwakye (Michigan, USA):Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka; The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.
Cyril Ibe (Ohio, USA):Things Fall Apart (in French)/Le Monde s’effondre by Chinua Achebe; Songs of Benjamin by Benjamin Kwakye.
(As a reader or subscriber of this newsletter, you can submit titles of African fiction and other books on your reading list. Tell us in what part of the world you reside).
Common Ground
It’s one for the books. A Memphis bookstore is determined to boost child literacy one title at a time.
The African Novel Podcast #1
UK-based author Vanessa Onwuemezi talks with Editor-in-Chief Cyril Ibe about her new collection of short stories, Dark Neighbourhood.
Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel, By the Sea, invokes two voices in an intense debate over their past that nevertheless never degenerates into acrimony.
Raja Shaaban, an elderly man, arrives at London’s Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar pretending not to speak any English. The only words he utters to immigration officials are “political asylum.” And from these simple but heavily loaded words begin the retelling of a story of human endurance and heartbreak.
Shaaban, we learn, is not the real name of this immigrant. Like his claim that he doesn’t speak English, that name too is false. Despicable, one might think. But not so fast. Gurnah quickly reminds us of the tough decisions confronting displaced people – displaced whether by circumstance or choice, or both.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea then becomes a story that sets out through a series of flashbacks to blend present and past. It presents a well-crafted overview of an African nation in disarray and the resulting effects on its citizens who find themselves in a day-to-day struggle to survive. Beyond that, Gurnah shows that there is no escaping history.
Whether in Zanzibar or England, Shaaban must deal with a history that seems to lay siege to his very existence. In effect, By the Sea brings its chief narrator to English shores where he is forced to confront his past. It is a past of love and betrayal, greed and generosity. By confronting it with him, we come to see and share in the possibility and power of forgiveness and redemption.
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar. He was the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
Gurnah is an alumnus and emeritus professor of English and post-colonial literatures at the University of Kent in England. In addition to By the Sea, he is the author of several highly acclaimed novels, including Paradise and Admiring Silence.
Editor’s Note: Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye is The African Novel’s “Resident Novelist.”
Author Readings
Hear authors themselves reading from their works.
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Congolese children’s book author Kabuika Kamunga reads from Kabuika Wants to Make New Friends. (She will be featured in The African Novel Podcast #2 in the June issue of The African Novel electronic newsletter. Stay tuned!)
The Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL) has launched the Black Lit Book Club in celebration of African American authors. The book club will meet monthly to discuss one book written by an African American author. GRPL’s librarians will lead the book discussions.
Book club enthusiasts will gather outside at the Seymour library branch, 2350 Eastern Ave SE, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49507.
The book club’s schedule through August, 2022 is as follows:
May 24:The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray.
June 28:The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley.
July 26:The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.
Aug. 23:Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
All book club meetings are scheduled from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. For more information: (616-988-5413), or visit Grand Rapids Public Library.
In Person
Somaliland Hosts Hargeysa International Book Fair 2022
The Hargeysa International Book Fair 2022, marking its 15th year, will be held in Somaliland from July 23-28 under the theme “Solidarity.” Senegal is the festival country partner.
Launched in 2008, the Hargeysa International Book Fair has been held since at the Redsea Cultural Foundation in Somaliland. The festival is considered “the biggest literary extravaganza in the Horn of Africa” and “one of the biggest on the African continent.” It has hosted leading writers, journalists, academics, publishers, artists, journalists, and other professionals visiting from dozens of countries around the world.
The Hargeysa International Book Fair will feature panels, readings, book launches, performances of theatre and poetry over the five days. For 2022, the “country focus” will be on the West African nation of Senegal, considered one of the “leading literary powerhouses” in that region of the continent.
Library of Congress Celebrates May for Africa Month By Sharing Interviews With African Writers
The Library of Congress is celebrating Africa Month by hosting a three-part series of conversations with award-winning African writers throughout May. The writers include Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut, and Tanzanian-born novelist and Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah.
The LC has noted: “The interviews are part of the `Conversations with African Poets and Writers Series’ produced by the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division since 2008 to promote a greater cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. The series offers a window onto African writers, from the continent and the diaspora, and features their works in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and literary criticism.”
This archive is made possible through a multi-partner literary program series involving the Library of Congress' African and Middle Eastern Division, the Poetry and Literature Center, the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, and the Center for African Studies at Howard University.
For more information about “Conversations with African Poets and Writers,” visit here.
Help for Writers
A Boost for Emerging African Authors
Suyi Davies Okungbowa, a Nigerian author and creative writing professor at the University of Ottawa, has announced creation of “The Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors” program. The program’s aim is “to support, elevate and connect emerging fiction authors of Black and/or African descent, based primarily on the African continent and writing in English.”
Fellows selected for the program will each receive $500 for a three-month digital residency and support for their publishing efforts. Submissions are now open through May 31, 2022. Winners will be announced sometime in June. For information on eligibility and the application process, visit here.
Our Radio Archives
Coming soon: Offerings of rare, exclusive interviews and audio documentaries for our paid subscribers.
A partial list of archived Premium offerings:
Interview: Chinua Achebe biographer Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Interview: Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka on his legendary cousin, Fela
Interview: The Black press in America
Interview: South African novelist Mark Mathabani
Audio Documentary: Eighty Gifts for Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks
An audio tour of the Mandela House Museum in Soweto, South Africa
Interview: U.S. filmmaker Ileen LeBlanc on Take Us Home, a documentary pic on the exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
Interview: American historian Edward Haas on slavery, the civil war, and the uncelebrated role of Blacks in the union army.
Interview: Herbert Martin, professor emeritus of English literature and African-American studies at the University of Dayton and co-editor of The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Ohio University Press).
Cyprian (Njoku) Josson directs a gospel group in Chartres, France, and organizes “Festival International de Gospel et Negro Spiritual de Chartres” in the historic French city.
African Proverb
"Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand.” -- Guinean proverb.
Our Team
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D., Editor (Ohio)
Resident Novelist/Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye (Michigan)
