The African Novel, Issue #5

Celebrating African Literature & Performance

Aug 09, 2022

Welcome to the latest issue of The African Novel digital newsletter. You have joined an exciting global community of publishers, authors, readers, writers, poets, performers, as well as academics, missionaries, and even current and former Peace Corps volunteers. We are all connected in our passion for appreciating, celebrating, and sharing African literature and performance in their many forms.

To savor this e-newsletter, we’d highly recommend you patiently read from top to bottom!

IN THIS ISSUE

Editor-in-Chief's Message
Book Review: One is Enough
The African Novel Podcast: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Author Readings: Chinelo Okparanta
State of African Literature
Bookshelf
Book Events & More
Our Radio Archives
African Proverb: Cameroonian

Editor-in-Chief’s Message

In the July issue of The African Novel newsletter, I posed three questions that come up frequently these days: Are writers of African fiction taking the literary world by storm? Is the tide turning for African literature in America and the rest of the West? Are we witnessing a renaissance of African literature in our social-media-connected global village today?

I must state categorically here that these questions are not popping out of thin air. Rather, they represent interrogations that appear to be taking up a significant amount of time, space, and ink in some circles — literary, media, and others. Consider a Jan. 2, 2022 guest essay by Jeanne-Marie Jackson in the New York Times, declaring, like others of her ilk, that “2021 was the year for African literature.” Jackson, of course, is the author of “The African Novel of Ideas” and associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. (Professor Jackson, if you are reading this, keep in mind that we’d like to meet you asap).

Consider also Al Jazeera’s Dec. 23, 2021 headline: “African authors took the literary world by storm in 2021.”

Against this backdrop, we are introducing a new feature in this issue of The African Novel newsletter titled: “3 Questions on the State of African Literature.” Our effort is simply to pose the questions to writers, authors, poets, and others and bring you their unfiltered answers in their own voices here. We would appreciate readers’ comments and feedback, and we reserve the right to publish them in the newsletter.

Finally, I would note that we have dropped some other features we ran in past newsletter issues like “Memorable Lines,” “Off the WRITE Path,” and “Common Ground.” As a reader of this newsletter, always let us know what you enjoy the most or the least about its contents.

Enjoy!

Cyril Ibe, Ph.D

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Book Review

Title: One is Enough

Author: Flora Nwapa

Publisher: Africa World Press

Reviewer: Benjamin Kwakye

In Flora Nwapa’s One is Enough, Amaka has just received notice from her mother-in-law that she is persona non grata in her husband’s household. Why? Amaka, it appears, is incapable of having a child.

She, therefore, has two choices. Either she allows her husband to bring into the household a younger wife who, unknown to Amaka until then, has already had two children with her husband. Naturally, Amaka is surprised and dispirited by this news. Her second option is to leave her husband and forge a new life as an independent woman. Leaving her husband is not an easy choice in a society that places a great premium on marriage. But it is the one that Amaka chooses.

Much as Flora Nwapa refuses to judge a woman’s worth by her marital status, she does not offer a blissful alternative either. Nwapa seems to suggest that whatever the choice, there are challenges to be confronted. More forcefully, however, Nwapa demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of the influence of the extended family – ever present, ever powerful, yielding little, demanding a great deal. If Amaka is really to establish her independence, she must extricate herself from all such trappings. But in an African society where family is so important, is such independence possible? Is tactful compromise not a better alternative?

Flora Nwapa raises these questions, which linger even after we’ve finished reading One is Enough. Through Amaka, Nwapa suggests choices without imposing any, making her novel a refreshing diagnosis, not a prescription.

Flora Nwapa, who died in 1993 at the age of 62, was Nigeria’s first female novelist. She was the author of other novels such as Efuru, This is Lagos: And Other Stories, Never Again, Wives at War and Other Stories, and Women are Different.

Editor’s Note: Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye is The African Novel’s “Resident Novelist.”

Episode #4

Liberian-born poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley talks with Editor-in-Chief Cyril Ibe about her life journey as a poet who witnessed the brutal, 14-year civil war in Liberia and considers her writing of “witness” poems a “patriotic” duty.

“I never get weary of writing about the war….These are patriotic poems, if you ask me,” Jabbeh Wesley says.

Past Podcast Episodes:

Bayadir Mohamed-Osman, author of Second Hand Smoke

Vanessa Onwuemezi, author of Dark Neighbourhood

Cyprian Njoku Josson, author of The Immigrant Ladder

Kabuika Kamunga, author of Kabuika Wants to Make New Friends

Author Readings

Hear authors themselves reading from their works.

Chinelo Okparanta, Pennsylvania, US-based, Nigerian-born novelist, reads from Harry Sylvester Bird.

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