Binyavanga Wainaina in Granta

It's been argued in some quarters that Binyavanga Wainaina is the best thing that ever happened to the Caine Prize. It would seem Granta's views aren't that far off, as the journal now tells everyone who cares to listen that the Kenyan writer's essay, 'How to Write About Africa' is the most popular ever on its website. It will be recalled that the essay went viral after it was published years back, for its lampooning of European Africanists. Is there anyone left that hasn't read it?

Originally print-only, Wainaina's latest essay for Granta has now been made available on the magazine's website, so many more than freely enjoy it. Low viral potential, but a wonderfully observed piece all the same. ''One Day I Will Write About This Place' is from the writer's forthcoming memoirs of the same title.


An excerpt

A well-known dombolo song starts, and a ripple of excitement overtakes the crowd. This communal goosebump wakes a rhythm in us, and we all get up to dance. A guy with a cast on one leg is using his crutch as a dancing aid, bouncing around like a string puppet. The cars all have their interior lights on; inside, couples do what they do. The windows seem like eyes, glowing with excitement as they watch us onstage.

Everybody is doing the dombolo, a Congolese dance where your hips (and only your hips) are supposed to move like a ball bearing made of mercury. To do it right, you wiggle your pelvis from side to side while your upper body remains as casual as if you were lunching with Nelson Mandela.

I have struggled to get this dance right for years. I just can’t get my hips to roll in circles like they should. Until tonight. The booze is helping, I think. I have decided to imagine that I have an itch deep in my bum, and I have to scratch it without using my hands, or rubbing against anything.

My body finds a rhythmic map quickly and I build my movements to fluency, before letting my limbs improvise. Everybody is doing this, a solo thing – yet we are bound, like one creature, in one rhythm.

Any dombolo song has this section where, having reached a small peak of hip-wiggling frenzy, the music stops and one is supposed to pull one’s hips to the side and pause, in anticipation of an explosion of music faster and more frenzied than before. When this happens, you are supposed to stretch out your arms and do some complicated kung-fu manoeuvres. Or keep the hips rolling, and slowly make your way down to your haunches, then work yourself back up. If you watch a well-endowed woman doing this, you will understand why skinny women are not popular among many in East Africa.

• Read the whole essay.

Related: How to Write About Africa

The Maple Tree Literary Supplement

A new Literary journal to watch. The Maple Tree Literary Supplement is primarily concerned with Canadian writing but promises to "hold a conversation with the world by featuring some writing from around the globe." Fair enough. View their submission guidelines and browse the site.

Farafina on America

View the YouTube webvert for Farafina Volume 13, guest-edited by Adichie. I'm still reading through the edition, comprised mainly of essays by over 30 contributors on theme of [Africans looking at] America. My own thoughts may come later...

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from Sunday May 11th edition of Toyin Akinosho's Artsville column (in The Guardian, Lagos)...
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Farafina Hits The Mother Lode
The current issue of Farafina, the literary magazine,is enjoying a round of earnest conversation among the Lagos arthouse crowd. Everybody, it seems, has something to say about the edition, which is guest-edited by the novelist Chimamanda Adichie. Still, one of the more interesting takes on the publication comes from a cyberspace input by the architect Ayo Arigbabu, who contributes a “design sleuth” column in Guardian Life, the pull out in this newspaper. Arigbabu starts by recalling Adichie’s main motive for choosing America as theme for the edition.“She insists she wanted 'to create a messy montage ofsorts, inspired by those Nigerian Sunday Newspapers in which the answers of ordinary people to a question, often a ridiculous question are printed on a two page spread". But then, according to him “there were just too many essays, which got repetitive (and thus tiresome considering the theme: 'America' - of course everybody would write about the land of plenty that still manages to dash the tallest dreams) after a while”. In spite of that, Arigbabu says that the magazine “does come together though”. He then does some sort of review:, “Teju Cole's reparte with a cab driver in New York is my favourite. Karen King's piece falls flat but there are enough other interesting bits and pieces to make up for it...Like Ogaga Ifowodo's Shock Jock country. Biodun Jeyifo goes on and on...a whole essay to say America is the best place for African academics? I would have been more interested to read little anecdotes about him toasting some hispanic chic in between lectures... I mean, do you really go to America and spend all your time blowing grammar? The design is simplistic, (though I'm still attracted to the title design for Ndidi Nwuneli's 'A Common burden'...cool!) but works for readers who just want to get on with it and can't handle complex visual gymnastics, the content is robust with 29 contributors, Gado's cartoons were witty and mature and the magazine seems like it could have done with a few more interludes like his to break the monotony of all those 'centre spread essays'. Perhaps Miss Adichie should have asked the contributors to tell unusual stories about their experiences in / about America, if she had, instead of asking for 'essays', it might have turned out more of a lurid expose and less of a predictable scrap book...but then, that's exactly what she wanted...a'int it?” The magazine is on sale at Nu Metro Stores in Lagos.

• Farafina 13's cover is actually blue, but by some magic it came out orange on this blog. Go figure!

New Read 2

Here's another new/ish read. Newly published in Farafina volume 13 guest-edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A version of Victor Ehikhamenor's story, 'Passport to Heaven' is available online as earlier published by Eclectica.

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Excerpt

"You greet everyone with a toothy, cauliflower smile. Even your shylock landlord gets a good greeting from you. Your co-tenants in the Face-Me-I-Face-You house know your expression has lightened. They are suspicious. Something is fishy. Christopher is a tight-ass-son-of-a-bitch who does not laugh. Christopher is a yam head who wears the Nigeria misery look of no-petrol or food on his face. Christopher is spokesperson of the downtrodden masses of the earth who curses the Obasanjo administration at any given time. "Maybe he has a new girlfriend," they whisper to each other. You keep smiling. You cannot risk telling them the source of your joy. Someone might come calling in the night with a machine gun, demanding your passport to heaven. You have to keep your secret like an un-hatched egg. Even Fatima, your off-today and on-tomorrow girlfriend, cannot hear this. You will tell her a day before your departure, or maybe not at all. Femi has sworn an oath of silence, and except for the mechanic and panel beater who will contribute to the ticket fund, no one else will know.
The days go by slowly. You call Pius, your friend in Washington, D.C., to tell him the good news. He will be your host till you find your feet in an unknown land. He is happy for you and at the same time cursing the consular officer in Kaduna for the extra burden added to his already debilitating American load. But he will not tell you that. You will see for yourself.

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Read Passport to Heaven. And subscribe to Farafina.

• Farafina magazine is available by subscription for direct delivery all over the world for $79.99 for 6 issues a year. Email Farafina (subscriptions@farafinamagazine.com) for more information.

Chimurenga 12/13: Dr. Satan's Echo Chamber

Chimu People on the 164-page double edition, out now

The latest issue of the Cape Town based cultural and literary journal, Chimurenga, is a double-take on sci-fi and speculative writing from the African world, collectively titled “Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber”. The title of the double-issue is drawn from a dub mix by the late Jamaican producer King Tubby.

Chimurenga 12 is a collection of dystopian faction, which challenges, relentlessly, and throws rocks at the windows of the world. The issue features writing and art by: Allan “Botsotso” Kolsky, Koffi Kwahule, Joao Barreiros, Olufemi Terry, Doreen Baigaina, Stacy Hardy, Akin Adesokan, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, JG Ballard, Emmanuel Dongala, Blank du Blanc, Jean Malaquais, Liesl Jobson, Peter Kalu, Dominique Malaquais, Basim Magdy, Jean Lamore, Femi Rage Dawkins, James Sey, Minnette Vari, Teju Cole and Rana Dasgupta.

Chimurenga 13 documents the making of several Afrofuturist projects, from the speculative engineering of Abu Bakaar Mansaray to the film-work of the Black Audio Film Collective and Jean-Pierre Bekolo, and dub/death-work of King Tubby. The issue also features: Angolan composer and theorist Victor Gama’s object-oriented music writing; John Edwin Mason on the making of Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Mannenberg”; Lionel Manga on future-present Douala; Baudouin Mouanda on SAPE; Pume Bylex on his paintings; Eyal Weizman on walking through Palestinian walls; Luca Frei on the Beaubourg underneath Paris and a discussion between Sartre and Nkrumah staged by the Sharzhad Collective.

Since its very first issue in 2002, Chimurenga has received excellent reviews; writers, poets, scholars and journalists, among numerous others, have lauded its originality, the quality of its content and its willingness to tackle subjects other publications might consider too difficult or controversial to address. It is widely viewed as one of the most interesting and important publications available in post-apartheid South Africa and is fast gaining supporters abroad. Award-wining Kenyan writer and founder of Kwani, Binyavanga Wainaina, says “Chimurenga is the finest literary magazine in Africa”. Vanity Fair calls it “an uber-cool, multilingual journal spinning a funky mix of art, culture and political writing from and about Africa”. Chimurenga is available at bookstores across South Africa.

ISSN 1683-6162

To order or subscribe to Chimurenga, please contact:

email: chimurenga@panafrican.co.za; phone: +27(21)4224168; fax: +27(21)4241673

Or visit our website

Farafina Now

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Farafina Vol. 12, guest edited by Akin Adesokan, carries on its Letters page a note from the hilariously named Dingwo Normality. You read it and think: someone's having a laugh. Jim McConkey (who writes about Ayi Kwei Armah), Afam Akeh, and Omowunmi Segun (read her story, Homecoming) - are among the contributors. I am also in there, with my review of the film Bamako. As is Tade Ipadeola, who in the essay, Adedibully, casts a critical eye on Lamidi Adedibu, a man who gives a bad name to the term political godfather.
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In the previous edition, guest edited by Petina Gappah (and with contributions from the likes of Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Chris Abani, Kuzhali Manickavel and Tinashe Mushakavanhu) and published before the ethnic violence unleashed after contested elections in Kenya - I spotted this quote, illustrated by a misbehaving monkey. A certain Mrs Njeri expresses concern about rampaging monkeys destroying crops and killing livestock. It wouldn't have seemed possible, but soon, human beings would behave worse than the monkeys...

Granta 100

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Wordsbody, why not talk about some of the contents of the William Boyd guest edited 100th issue of Granta?

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Well, because there are so many pieces by so many stellar writers in the issue, one doesn't know where to begin. The reader will just have to dip in to find them out, including this rather interesting thing called "My Question for Myself", wherein a writer asks a question he/she wishes a journalist had asked, then provides the answer. Richard Ford's is one of the more interestingly succinct ones. 'Richard Ford, do you know what's important to you?' / 'No, but I can make it up'. Which of course is what writers do.

New Reads

You can't get away from Barack Obama in this American election season. Asked for her favourite writers, Tsitsi Dangarembga (author of 'Nervous Conditions' & 'The Book of Not) lists Obama among. Read her interview in the new issue of Per Contra. Among the fiction fare in the edition is 'Through the Looking Glass', taken from Dangarembga's forthcoming novel, Bira. High jinks on the bus queue...

Excerpt
"But women!" Now it was a young man chuckling. “What is it with these women! Some of them just walk just like that! With everything in the open!" Some age mates of his standing nearby grinned. They slitted their eyes in speculation and let their observation, like a single gaze, meander over the young women. "Ah, they want to inflame us!" The speaker sighed, and continued with amused indignation. "Now, isn’t it known that when it’s like that it can’t be stopped! So what if we don't want to begin and be inflamed! And get a gaol sentence? We don't want! Now these hussies want to put us in gaol! People, isn’t that why! Isn't that what makes people stone them!

• Read Through the Looking Glass
  

Also in the fiction is something from a forthcoming novel by another favourite writer of Dangarembga's, Sefi Atta. In Grief Mongers (from the novel 'Swallow', soon to be published by Farafina), a young woman comes to her overcrowded building and finds a drama of grieving unfolding. A young boy may have drowned in the septic tank...

Excerpt

The day my father’s body was found, I came home from school. A group of women were holding my mother down in her room. They were the women of her former esusu group. They saved money together and my mother had for a while been in charge of taking and keeping their contributions. "Your father is gone," one of them said, before I had a chance to walk into my mother’s room. She was my uncle’s wife called Sister Kunbi. I could tell she expected me to be sad and instead she made me furious. "I know," I said to her. "He has gone to Lagos." She seemed offended that I wasn’t crying. She reached for my shoulder. "This world is a marketplace," she said. "The other is home. Your father has gone home." "This is my father’s home," I said.

• Read Grief Mongers

And don't miss Silver Leaves for Judah Jones by Vanessa Gebbie - newly unveiled winner of the Per Contra Annual Fiction Prize. Her collection of short stories, Words from a Glass Bubble, has just been published.

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Per Contra's non fiction this time round focuses on the theme of 'Chaos, Terror and the Rise of the Police State' - and there are two pieces on the recent turmoil in Kenya.

• What is his name, the child whose death you spoke about, Kiraithe? by Ayo Bole; and
• Rigging is Just Rigging (Or, A Nation Held Hostage) by Muthoni Garland.

Per Contra Prize

From Per Contra

Per Contra has featured winners of The MacArthur Award, the Caine Prize, the Orange Prize, the Walt Whitman Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award, the Pushcart Prize and more. Per Contra has published authors from the United States and North America, South America, Europe, Africa and South Asia .

Our March 2008 issue features former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the position now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate) Daniel Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize Winning former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the position now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate) Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer Prize winning author and poet John Updike, poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the position now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate) William Jay Smith and O. Henry Prize winner Stephen Dixon, as well as great emerging writers from around the world.

You may have seen our ad in the Fall 2007 Edition of Poets and Writers.

We are now accepting submissions for the 2008 Per Contra Prize. Because of the public interest generated by our lineup for the Spring, we are working hard to find talented emerging writers to submit manuscripts for the Prize. The grand prize winner will be published in our Spring 2008 issue.

Grand Prize is $1,000 and publication at our regular professional rates. The top ten stories submitted will be published at our regular professional rates during the 2008 editorial calendar.

Deadline for Entry is January 31, 2008. This is an excellent opportunity for an emerging writer to be published with several elite writers and poets.

• How to enter.

New Year Read

Let us begin the new year's new reads with a lie...

Uncle Vernon's Lie (by Patrick Samphire) is published in Serendipity, a new online journal of magical realist fiction. If you love magical realism then you'll love this story, in which a young boy is sent to holiday with his uncle, who will only ever tell him one lie. Uncle has no TV or computer but lives in an enchanted house and there's a girl in the garden who may not be real. Uncle Vernon is full of fantastical ideas, all of which sound like lies. Separating the one lie, may not be easy...

Extract...
"What did that man want?" Benji asked.

Uncle Vernon grimaced. "He's a doctor."

"Then why didn't you let him in?"

"In?" Uncle Vernon's face whitened. "No, my boy. That would never do. Doctors make people ill."

"What do you mean?" Benji said. "They make people better."

"They don't, whatever they might tell you," Uncle Vernon said. "They make diseases. They make cancer and bad backs and in-grown toenails and colds and the Black Death and the dreaded lurgy. Doctors go poking around looking for new illnesses. They find someone who's a little under-the-weather and say, 'Ah-ha, you've got lung cancer'. Then, ever-after, people have to suffer from lung cancer, and the doctor gets a medal or certificate." He shook his head. "I let a doctor into my house once, and he made me a new disease. That's why I never let doctors in anymore." He glanced out the window. "Doesn't stop them trying. Meddlers."

Benji considered that. "The dreaded lurgy isn't a real disease," he said.

"Ah!" Uncle Vernon leaned down. "Not yet, it isn't. Stay away from doctors, and it might never be. See?"

Read Uncle Vernon's Lie.
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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

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

• PONAL Homepage
  

What the- Kwani?

Excerpt from a review of Kwani? 4 - in Artmatters

For its liberal use of not-so-polite four-letter words, the first editorial by Billy Kahora—why was it necessary to have two editorials, anyway?—is one of the Achilles’ heels in Kwani?4. And now that we have mentioned obscenity, what is a naked man doing running across the pages of Kwani? 4 with his accentuated private parts leading the way in Running by Jackie Lebo?

Why does Kwani? relish the use of four-letter words in its articles, editor Binyavanga Wainaina and your assistant Billy Kahora? To paraphrase Shailja Patel’s poem, An Open Letter to Certain Male Performance Poets, we may pose: “…Show me how: aesthetically, stylistically, morally, metrically, rhythmically” four letter words are crucial to your writing.

- Read full review here.

Wasafiri 52

The new edition of Wasafiri dropped in the post a couple of days ago and, though I am yet to read much of it, I can already tell this is going to be my best issue for a long time. The theme is 'The Book in the World' and features readers, writers and publishers.

15 writers talk about the books that changed them. Hence Biyi Bandele and his editor, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey share the same page as they discuss the books that changed things for them. I reasoned very much with Bandele's choice of early 80's Nigeria reading of numerous titles by James Hadley Chase - "an English writer now completely unknown in England (in nearly twenty years of living in London, I'm yet to meet a single British person who admits to having heard of him)." Tell me about it, Mr Burma Boy! Coulda said the same meself! Who'd have thought it, all those years we were chomping down James Hadley Chase? Still we were hooked on the stuff (my own early teenage reading went in stages: some 400 Mills & Boon titles from which I graduated to James Hadley Chase from which I graduated to Harold Robbins - with Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer stuck in-between; and when I left each stage, I could never bear the novel that marked that stage again. It's a good thing I read my fill of populism before the age of 16, because I couldn't abide populist novels from then on). I digressed. We were talking of Bandele's impression of James Hadley Chase novels, some of which he names: Like a Hole in the Head, You're Lonely When You're Dead, This Way for a Shroud, The Doll's Bad News, The Way the Cookie Crumbles, Well Now My Pretty, An Ear to the Ground, & The Vulture is a Patient Bird. Funny, I read them all too, though I don't recall the 'Vulture' one at all. I was somewhat disappointed Bandele didn't mention, Tell it to the Birds, Miss Shumway Waves a Wand and the one that had me completely gobsmacked all those years ago, 'Believe This and You'll Believe Anything'. Ah, bless!

Blake Morrison's choice would probably be mine, if asked - Midnight's Children. And here's how I discovered Salman Rushdie's 'Booker of Bookers'. The writer was just someone I knew from TV bulletins including words like 'blasphemy' and 'fatwa'; none of which particularly made me want to rush out to buy his books. And so I was on a Bakerloo Line tube train in January 1992 and there on the seat beside me in an empty carriage, was a brand new copy of Midnight's Children. Finders Keepers, ehn? Dear blog reader, I alighted the train with the book, and it's as if I've seen the world through perforated sheets from then on. I still have the copy.

Anyway, back to Wasafiri, which embraces all of those Journals any reader worth his or her salt in Africa ought to read these days: Kwani?, Farafina... there's even an interview with Chimurenga 's editor, Ntone Edjabe.

And there's a short story by Nigerian Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, 'Cemetery of Life'. I've read the story and I'm intrigued by it, seeing as I love all that magical-mystery stuff. I remember E.C Osondu telling me in an interview, that 'Jimmy Carter's Eyes' was his own "attempt at allegory". Perhaps 'allegory' would describe Uzor Maxim Uzoatu's offering in Wasafiri. Loved it, but still scratching my head as to what it really means...

Meanwhile, I'm off to read more of the magazine.

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.

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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.

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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."

Farafina's Woman Issue

The current edition of Farafina Magazine (vol. 9) is the ‘Woman’ Issue, and marks a refreshing departure from recent outings, design wise. The cover is simply stunning.

Edited by Toni Kan, Farafina 9 boasts an army of women contributors including poet Nike Adesuyi (making a welcome Farafina debut); the late Lynn Chukura; Kaine Agary - author of ‘Yellow-Yellow’ (who co-wrote an interesting piece with Kan on the Ogogoro Women of Lagos’ 3rd Mainland Bridge. Kan’s review of Agary's book is also in this issue); talk show host Funmi Iyanda; and Chika Unigwe (now a regular contributor, her story Sugar in my Bowl is part of the short-fiction content); and there’s an excerpt from Marie Fatayi-Williams' book, For The Love of Anthony.

Conmpleting the trio of males who get a look-in in this 'Woman' issue, are writer/artist Victor Ehikhamenor who contributes a humorous photo-essay on a dancing female, Ariya Unlimited; and Tolu Ogunlesi, whose well appointed short story, Husbands Abroad Anonymous, completes the fiction.

But with other pieces including one on breaking the ‘glass ceiling’, etiquette (presumably for women) and a whole 5 pages devoted to light-and-frothy pictures of Nollywood starlet Dakore Egbuson - Farafina no. 9 strays dangerously into the realm of ‘lifestyle/pep-talk fare' beloved of women’s mags like Genevieve. What with Farafina being a 'Culture' journal and not Marie-Claire. But because it’s the ‘Woman’ issue, Farafina no.9 pulls it off. But only just.

Farafina’s Website is currently being redesigned, but it should up and running, soon.

An Adjectival Poet in Leeds

Niyi Osundare has just concluded a whirlwind tour of 3 UK cities. Here he is @ Peepal Tree Press in Leeds 2 days ago - Saturday 12th May. He led a full-day workshop with members of the Inscribe Writers Group. 3rd from left is Seni Seneviratne whose collection, Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin, has just been published.

"They say I am an adjectival poet," Prof. Osundare said, "I like adjectives."

Palorine & Simon look on as Khadijah Ibrahiim (middle) makes a point during the workshop.

Writer Rommi Smith (whose poetry collection, Mornings & Midnights, is published by Peepal Tree) seen here with Osundare.

The workshop was facilitated by Kadija Sesay, publisher of Sable Litmag. Osundare praised her as "a great facilitator". After the workshop, the poet gave a performance @ the same venue. He also made appearances in Huddersfield & Plymouth.

• Photos by MW.
• Pics from Osundare's evening reading in Leeds @ the next blog update.

Kwabena's Cultural Literacy

Roi Kwabena (left), poet and editor of Dialogue - a journal for cultural literacy - seen here with Austria-based Zimbabwean sculptor, Tapfuma Gutsa. Photographed at the opening of From Courage to Freedom.

Kwabena poses (right) with artist Siobhan Lennon, who is featured in the current issue of Dialogue - a special edition in commemoration of the bicentenary of abolition of chattel slavery.

Kwabena is a busy man, and maintains a number of blog sites including Dialogue4Culture & Cultural Literacy

Gay Afrique

As with the previous post, we're staying with The Guardian, this time the April 14th edition, which had a centrespread on 'The gay globe'. The feature used a colour code to show how gay people fare under the law in countries across the world. Countries with liberal legislation on homosexuality are tagged with pink balloons. Nigeria is one of the 'dark blues' where a gay person may expect a grim treatment under the law. According to the Guardian, the family of one Emmanuel Obahiaghbon reported him to the authorities last year and requested that he be sentenced to death by stoning. The piece did not indicate whether the poor man was reported in the 'Sharia' states of Northern Nigeria. But I'd be very surprised if anyone, whatever their orientation, can be stoned to death South of the River Niger.
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The Africa segment was illustrated with an image of Nigerian gay activist, Bisi Alimi, engrossed in a copy of the Gay Times, supposedly in Lagos. As it happens, an interview with Alimi is in the current issue of Farafina Magazine. The interview is available online.
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The current issue of Wasafiri (Issue 50) focuses on the 'Queer Postcolonial'. Among the contents is an essay, 'If You Like, Professor, I Will Come Home With You' - a re-reading of Wole Soyinka's The Road - by academic Chris Dunton.
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Sable Litmag also did a recent LGBTQ issue (issue 9) with a spotlight on Jackie Kay.

Have you read...?

This is Farafina vol 7, guest edited by Okey Ndibe and with a pack of contributors including Ogaga Ifowodo, Patrice Nganang, Marcia Kure, Helon Habila and Patrick Wilmot. And there's myself in there too (with my story The Beaten Track).

Published in Lagos, Farafina (meaning 'Africa' in Bambara) is doing from West Africa what the journal Chimurenga ('liberation struggle'/'revolution' in Shona) does from South Africa - and which Wasafiri ('Cultural traveller' in Kiswahili) has been doing from London for over 20 years. And let's not forget Kwani? (meaning the equivalent of the Yoruba/Nigerian 'bawo ni?' - how is it?).

Interesting names, all - but must reads. Definitely.

• Related Post 1
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Chimurenga Vol. 10

The 10th edition of Chimurenga Magazine is out now and will have its official launch at the Kwani LitFest on December 14. Here's what Chimurenga's editor, Ntone Edjabe, has to say about the new edition...

Chimurenga Vol 10: “Futbol, Politricks and Ostentatious Cripples”

The new issue of Chimurenga is, yes, about football. And politics. But no, we are not talking about soccer as a capitalist apparatus, or as a substitute for war, or about South Africa’s ability to successfully host the 2010 World Cup, or about Fifa’s global developmentalist rhetoric – the writing and art actively side-step football clichés and branded discourses.

We chose instead to scope the stadia, markets, ngandas and banlieues to spotlight narratives of love, hate and the wide and deep spectrum of emotions and affiliations that the game generates. Because, after all, if you want to pitch it hardcore political, the playing field is the only area that Fifa does not and can not fully control – everything else is board-room approved.

But. Power, board-roomed or otherwise, must be confronted. Hence the issue is framed by two perspectives from Latin America, sure to inject some criticality in 2010 euphoria: the reader will enter the Argentinean fish-tank (where militants disappeared for death or brainwashing) during the 1978 World Cup, for an ethical exploration with activist Graciela Daleo, and emerge for a deep breath with Gustavo Esteva, who extracts the essence of the Zapatista movement as a radicalisation of democracy.

Between these you will find Of Fabric and Football – a travelogue in 5 parts that delivers idiosyncratic and powerful points of view on the ‘beautiful game’. Binyavanga Wainaina, with an acerbic tongue and an ironic eye, captures the chaos and transactions, the passions and textures of Togo, Ghana, and the Entire Continent Everywhere during the 2006 World Cup. Knox Robinson writes of the relationship between player and space; Diouf and Leopold Sedar Senghor stadium in Dakar; Eto’o and Yaounde’s drinking spots; Drogba and Houphouet Boigny airport in Abidjan (read an excerpt in today’s Sunday Times Lifestyle). Simon Kuper (Football against the Enemy) conducts an off-centre interview with bush war veteran, Liverpool great and droll football manager Bruce Grobbelaar (and other Whitemen who run football in Kaapstad). Peter James Hudson time-travels to 16thC Spain and its infamous Catholic-inspired inquisition. Novelist Patrice Nganang establishes, in Camfranglais, football violence (and the rivalry between the country’s top teams Canon and Union) as a metaphor to explore political violence in Cameroon in the early 90s.

In a stand-alone piece Peter Alegi (Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in SA), investigates the 2001 Ellis Park football disaster in Johannesburg, concluding with a meticulous indictment of the soccer bosses’ and the government’s roles before, during and after the tragedy.

Poetry finds its expression in two poems by Adriano Sousa (against futebol coaches who should be bullfighters); a poem by Molara Wood (for Marc-Vivien Foe) and poem by Gabeba Baderoon (on God and the Athlone Stadium). Filmmaker Lindiwe Nkutha gives a nuanced short story of hate in the dusty locale of a South African township while Julia Napier evokes the bodylove for the game in her short story about a female footballer.

There is a Tricolour Triptych – head, body and corpses. Firstly, Grant Farred produces a Derridean reading of Zidane’s world-stopping head butt. Secondly, a conversation between Achille Mbembe and Zidane’s teammate Lilian Thuram in the aftermath of the famous coup de boule. Thirdly, in a story of bones, Dominique Malaquais relocates the remains of Frantz Fanon.

There’re two pieces on football and cinema (sort-of):

First, maverick Serbian filmmaker, Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies; Underground), in a conversation with Diego Maradona, the best player EVER and the subject of Kusturica’s documentary-in-progress, about Bush Jr, Castro, John Paul II and the poor of Argentina. And Philippe Parreno, co-maker of the acclaimed Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, talks with Cyril Neyrat about the conceptual, political and technical motivations and processes in the making of the film.

The art and photography are delivered by Buyaphi Mdledle, Gerd Rohling, Andrew Dosunmu, Phillipe Niorthe, Joseph Francis Sumegne, Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah, Kate Simon, Nicola Schwartz, Joel-Peter Witkin and the Cuban Ministry of Information.

The cover is “Table Head (Evora, Portugal)” by Nicola Schwartz

Writing. Art. Politics. Who no know go know.