New Read/s

Lots of essays, interviews, reviews - in the new, 4th edition of African Writing - and plenty of short stories. Among the contributors is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond whose attitude laden story, Bush Girl, follows a young Ghanaian woman bent on making it as a model in New York.

Excerpt

When I had overstayed my visa seven summers ago, my plan was to cash in on all the “You are so striking!”s I had heard on my many long vacs to London and New York. The Plan was to be discovered. The bit of fashion that had trickled down to me in Ghana through magazines and MNET (when cable had finally hit Ghana), had convinced me through Iman and Roshumba and Naomi that the world was ready to celebrate my kind of beauty.

The summer I had come to visit Auntie Freda, the summer before I was to start my first year at the University of Legon, I knew I wasn’t going back to Ghana until I was international. I didn’t know what I would tell Daddy or how I would get around the strictures of my three-month student visa, but that was before 9/11 and back then I knew God, so I prayed.

I couldn’t go back to Ghana. Sure, Daddy had a lucrative business. A big house. A driver. A Land Rover for the unfinished roads. A Benz for evening outings and afternoon luncheons. But I wasn’t a business or science student. I wouldn’t be snapped up by Mobil or Shell or some other multinational, be paid in dollars, meet and marry a boy whose father owned a home on Switchback Road. Besides I didn’t want any of that. I wanted the big house, the luxury cars, the dollars and sterling on my own terms. And I had a plan to get them. I was going to be a supermodel.

When Daddy called to tell me the recurring teachers’ strike had resumed, I felt convinced of God’s endorsement. That very night I prayed a promise to God that I would serve him forever if he made me the international supermodel I knew I was born to be. I practically fell to my knees with thanksgiving right in the middle of the shop when Selima, then the manager at Alain et Riette, asked me in her raspy Moroccan accent if I’d be willing to work off the books. Thank you, Jesus! Thank you Lord, for loving me!

Back then I got it, but I didn’t get it. I had read in Allure Magazine that Paulina Models, then newly-opened in SoHo, was looking for girls with a “different look”. In my 19 year old mind I didn’t realize that just meant they were looking for the latest industry obsession, girls from behind the Iron Curtain.

On my first day on the job I went to four agencies on my lunch break. They all turned me down. At one agency a woman emerged from a glass office and asked me, “How tall are you?”
I answered with the truth, “Five-seven.” After all, what? Carolyn Murphy was 5’7” in flats. Kate Moss was shorter. They had both come into Alain et Riette to try on shoes. Another divine endorsement, I thought back then.

.

This reminds me of a story of mine in which a Nigerian girl dreams of becoming a model in London, complete with a similar line noting Kate Moss' non-model-standard height. And Ms Brew-Hammond's story has given me a new catchphrase, "After all, what?"

• Read Bush Girl
  
• African Writing issue 4

Holiday Reading

[O]n January 5, 2008 – Ngugi turns 70. The lived years, in this case, do not signify the mere passage of time, but mark the process of the making of a colossus. Such an anniversary does not simply have to be observed; it ought to be celebrated. It is only appropriate then to take brief stock of what it is in particular we are celebrating.

- So begins a tribute to Ngugi wa Thiong'o at 70 (by Emilia Ilieva) in the new, 'Holiday' issue of African Writing, now online. There's acres and acres of content, and I am beginning to pick my way through. Poetry, Tributes, Profiles, Fiction (lots of fiction), Photo Galleries, Reviews... The theme is Southern Africa.

~

Might as well introduce a 'New Read' here... and here's the intro to a lovely short story in the issue, Eddie Fisher Won't Be Comin' In Today...

Viva McVee arrived that day at the tail end of a dust storm, and as the empty Simba chip packets settled back in the branches of the leafless hedge at the school gate, out of the grey dust appeared a woman. I sat on the lid of the dustbin outside of the airless staff room smoking a cigarette and as she emerged I felt my heart jump and knew, from the look of her, that we were in for something.

• Read the story, by Botswanan Lauri Kubuitsile here

~

There is a gallery of Bibi Bakare-Yusuf (publisher at Cassava Republic) looking fierce at a talk she gave in South Africa last month. Contributed by Ntone Edjabe, editor of Chimurenga.

Books of 2007

My compilation of Writers' Books of 2007 has been published in the new 'Holiday' issue of African Writing. Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy and Helon Habila's Measuring Time - are 2 of the hot picks this year.

Here's how E.C. Osondu introduces his chosen books:
"It was a cruel, gray, typical upstate New York winter. I was teaching in a small college in the outskirts of the city. It was a long forty-five minutes’ commute and the only thing of interest en route was the burial place of a female missionary Laura Maria Sheldon who had tried to convert the Seneca Indians. And of course there was the sprawling Onondaga cemetery where I once counted ten tombstones with the name Muldoon as the bus crawled past."

Already a story there, no? Other contributors include: Brian Chikwava, Blessing Musariri, Wadzanai Mhute, Aminatta Forna, and Akin Adesokan.

• See the Books of 2007

~ ~ ~

I have also contributed images from the PEN Women's Conference in Dakar to the new issue of Ponal.

• PONAL Homepage
  

Strutting her stuff

Here's writer Nana-Essi Casely-Hayford leading a storytelling session with schoolchilren during the 2nd Sable Litfest held in the Gambia - photographed by MW on 15 July. More images from the Litfest online in the 2nd issue of African Writing.

• Nana-Essi Casely-Hayford has an essay in the same issue - read it here.

African-Writing

In anticipation of the eagerly awaited second issue of African Writing, here's a little retropective of its debut - the publication's report of Monica Arac de Nyeko's Caine Prize win back in July.

Enter the Titans

You've never had it so good, all you lovers of African writing. What were the chances of 2 heavyweight websites serving up addictive doses of African literature being launched round about the same time? Well, it's happened. Wide-ranging, seriously ambitious and already amazingly vibrant. Welcome 'African Writing' & PONAL....

African Writing - incorporating a website as well as a print edition (going monthly in print from September). There is already so much to read on this website - new short ficiton from Helon Habila, lots of poets, cartoons, literary news and more.

Behind 'African Writing' is the publisher/editor team of Chuma Nwokolo Jr & Afam Akeh.

~

Here's what Nwokolo Jr had to say about the publication: "African Writing is a literary paper, which also has an online presence. It is the first open sales publication of its kind with an All-African perspective, offering new writing from, and information on, the literatures of the continent. African Writing is interested in the literary lives, literary work and thoughts of those who make writing happen in the African world... We will reflect the faces, controversies and peculiar flavour of the African writing world, a world increasingly inclusive in the processing of its familiarisation with other world writings and writers.

• Check out African Writing's list of 50 African writers.

PONAL - The brainchild of Pius Adesanmi and Amatoritsero Ede, PONAL (Project On New African Literatures), this features photo galleries of literary events, writing news, resources and information on conferences, audio of authors reading their works; while also highlighting the more 'obscure' gems by under-appreciated African writers. And that's not all. There's a Gboungboun ('Loudspeaker' in English) Magazine, edited by Ede.

~

Here's a bit about what PONAL has in store: "We present exciting new and emergent African literatures, especially those trapped within the ideological, political, economic, and institutional contexts of the Postcolony, and excluded by the canonising mechanisms of the metropolitan academy... we will disseminate, archive, and comment on the works of well-known, emergent and relatively unknown but equally engaging writers of the third generation from the entire continent."