April Bloom, Book Cases and Music

Okay, cheers of the new month. Since the last update for March, between you and I, I have not finished reading James Marlon’s ‘The Brief History of Seven Killings’. It has not been easy, keeping my day job which I have had no break from everyday since March. I am now on Page 150. Please clap for me jare. Sure, I am still reading it.

I found and joined The Port Harcourt Book Club. It has been very exciting. The book club had been existing under my nose for a while and I never knew. As usual, I stumbled upon its existence on twitter. They read a book every month and meet for the book discussion and some kind of review every last Sunday of that month by 4pm at a venue of choice in Port Harcourt. For the month of April, they, or should I say we are reading ‘Love is Power or Something Like That‘ by A. Igoni Barrett, the book is available at Bookville Bookshop, Mummy B road, Port Harcourt. It is an open book club, so if you are in Port Harcourt or passing by you can join. Find them on twitter, @ThePHCBookClub

Between March and now, I have knocked down two books, and both are short stories collections. The one for The Port Harcourt Book Club, ‘Love is Power or Something Like That’ by A. Igoni Barrett, a Port Harcourt boy himself and ‘Smithereens of Death’ by Olubunmi Familoni an Ibadan base writer. I am unto the third book, ‘We Need New Names‘ by NoViolet Bulawayo, the 2014 Etisalat Prize for fiction winner. It is a good progress on my reading habit if you ask me. And of course, their reviews are coming right up, maybe this month too.

Book Cover

Now Reading

Next on the blog should be my short review of Elnathan John’s ‘Born On A Tuesday‘. I have managed to finish the last two chapters which the pity that flushed me up for Ahmed did not allow me to read. Watch this space.

THE OTHER THINGS…

Nigeria in suffering from fuel scarcity. I know it is no news. But guys, it is not easy, the money I have spent on fueling my car since this brouhaha started is already double my monthly usual and mounting. It is not funny anymore.  I just hope that this week shall be the end of it, if not maybe what happened in 199somthing will happen again.

Among other things, I love music and of all kinds, so far it sounds good to me and fits my mood per time. There is this beautiful Nigeria  female sensation Aramide. She sings Afro Soul, and I came across her last year. She has a new music video out for her single Love Me, in which she featured Adekunle Gold, another Afro Soul sensation I will say.

A shot from the video – Aramide & Adekule Gold                     Courtesy : BellaNija

I love the feel of the song, its mixture of Yourba and English Lyrics, the flush of the African feel in the instrumentals and the lush video shoot and quality. It has been on replay on my music player for a while. Enjoy the new video here.

Catch you later guys.

 

 

African Literature is More – Oluwaseyi G. Abidoye

FROM reading my first African Literature piece to now, I have subconsciously developed the love for any writing that comes out of Africa, especially Nigeria.

Thinking about this, I have for some time now, devoted my free time to being a connoisseur of African Literature. African Stories, Poetry and Art move me. From the novel genre to short stories and flash fiction, I feel a part of me in every story.

So I have tried to collect the experiences and feelings that I have with reading these stories from back in time and reading them now. I have seen that at each point, a particular story speaks in essence of time and understanding to the reader.

What I read as meaning and contexts to Things Fall Apart, for example, when I was younger is not what I read as meaning to it now that I am older and more learned than I used to be. The reading experience gets better with time and understanding. So are the discourses that Things Fall Apart generates from 1958 till date, they have become more, and seen in new perspectives.

I want to believe that this particular experience is happening to writing in Africa. African Literature has grown from its early stage as it was to something more phenomenon. It has gone beyond stories, protests, definition and its struggles for recognition and documentation both in written and oral form to become a platform that takes these earlier stages of development as tools for projection, not as form, type or definition

African Literature is now a platform that is open to different voices, across genres. Africans alike, writers, artistes, painters, photographers, spoken word performers (in oral) have all taken to this platform to display, discourse, present and churn out issues, that as much as peculiar they are to Africa, have positioned Africa in a global discourse and recognition.

Not that African Literature is assuming a new role in this ‘platform’ nomenclature or form, it has only become grandiose. It is bigger. African Writers are now all over the place, Publishing African Writers now is big business, writing is more, readers are more, dissemination is more, so is the discourse, so is the aesthetics and literariness.

Beyond the traditional and formal single view or perspective of discourses in African Literature about the social commentaries, there is more attention to the level of aesthetics and the literary characteristics that African Literature now presents. African Literature is now finding inter-textual relations and cross continental juxtapositions both in style, structures and the level content development. Detailed attention is now being placed on canonizing African Literature not only in the social and political contexts but on style, structures, beauty and deployments as works of art.

So, African Literature has evolved, It is not just stories of cultural, political, anthropological documentation of Africa anymore, it has become more, defining its writers also, their styles, their experiences and their capabilities to deliver all these in beautiful stories that span time and holds relevance for discourses on equal grounds in global Literature discourse anywhere anytime. African Literature has come to stay.