Yinka Book....

Almost exactly two years ago, I posted about Yinka Shonibare (can't believe so much time has already passed) wonderful artistry. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived home from my trip to find the Yinka book on my doorstep!!

{Photos: NYTimes + Ambainny}

African Woman

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to read local magazines. Whether I'm in Brussels or Amman or even small town America, local magazines tell so much about the culture of a place. Well, a friend of mine just came back from the lovely city of Kampala yesterday and got me two issues of African Woman - a magazine out of Uganda. It's like a beautiful glimpse into another place where the features are similar to magazines here in the U.S. with headlines like "Follow our Advice and Lose Weight" or "Get that Perfect Smile" but the models, the fashion and entire feel of the magazine are definitely African!

AND for a little fun, you can check out this little adventure I had the last time I went to Kampala - (talk about taking it back to the early days of this blog....)

:: Thanks so much ToH ::

{Photos: African Woman}

Chew Magazine

You may have heard the news recently, but many publi

shing companies are struggling! Due to the downturn, magazines have been put to the shredder or forced to completely rethink how they are structured and get their content out to the masses. In spite of my love for the in your hand while you lounge on the couch magazine experience, for me, being able to access magazines digitally is becoming more and more important.

One such digital magazine that I have recently discovered is South Africa-based CHEW Magazine. It's great on many levels, but what really gets in is the fact that it is done by regular talented folks like you. So here's how it works: you, oh wonderful creative type you, comes up with a story idea, puts it together and sends it off to the editors at CHEW who review it along with all the other contributions coming from around the world and put the magazine together. You get great exposure for your talents, and we get a great magazine to read. How "simple" is that?!? (Simple being relative considering how many submissions these folks must get on a regular basis.

The magazine is broken up into three sections:

You get to select what type of story your are going to submit into which category. Don't you just love how interactive it all is!?!

The magazine came out in the beginning of the year and is constantly making improvements. For example, the most recent issue allows you to click on a story to get linked directly to the contributor. As the images below show, their editorials are really awesome. There are so many folks out there doing amazing stuff and struggling to get recognized so this is a fabulous forum for it. Oh, and did I mention that it's FREE?? I know, extra fab! So head on over to CHEW Magazine to see even more...

{Photos: Chew Magazine}

Africa on Your Magazine Rack

So did you happen to catch the New York Times Special Report about the "new" market for luxury magazines?? My very dear reader Liz was kind enough to point it out to me the other day and I was so excited. While magazines in the U.S. are taking a major hit (weep weep the downfall of Gourmet), fashion magazines coming out of Africa are steadily growing and tapping into the small, but very wealthy pool of Africans who want to see magazines that better reflect their world.

I am so hopeful that this trend will continue to develop and that even more magazines can become available for men and women throughout the continent.

Here is a little list of additional types of magazines that I would love to see:

Home and Décor: while I love Elle Decoration SA, it would be nice to have something that better reflects homes across the entire continent. From coastal to modern and colonial and your just plain out there, I'd just love to see more homes.

Foodie: with all these countries packed into one slamming continent, the food options seriously have no end. A magazine which would combine great recipes paired with solid writing and the history of the various meals as well as top restaurant reviews would definitely be on my magazine rack.

I can think of a few more, but would prefer to get your take. In your greatest fantasies, what types of magazines would you like to see at newstands across the continent?

{Photo: New York Times}

Say You’re One of Them

Do you ever have moments when you just have to laugh at yourself?!? I'm having one of those moments right now! On Sunday afternoon, I ran into Borders to pick up a magazine for my trip back from New York and on my way to the counter I passed by a rack full of this book. I saw the "Oprah" seal of approval and mostly thought "what a cool picture" and just went about my business without realizing that I was passing one of the biggest things in the literary world right now. First, an African (specifically Nigerian) writer is out and about causing a tidal wave. I'm talking top five on the New York Times bestseller list people! Just the thought of it makes me blurry-eyed with pride. Second, a book of short-stories is at the heart of this craze. Umm, do you know just how difficult that is?!?! My favorite genre is making it big!

Say You're One of Them by Uwen Akpan is a collection of 5 stories set in various African countries, all told through the eyes of children. In Luxurious Hearses, Jubril, a teenage Muslim, flees the violence in northern Nigeria. Attacked by his own Muslim neighbors, his only way out is on a bus transporting Christians to the south. In Fattening for Gabon, 10-year-old Kotchikpa and his younger sister are sent by their sick parents to live with their uncle, Fofo Kpee, who in turn explains to the children that they are going to live with their prosperous godparents, who, as Kotchikpa pieces together, are actually human traffickers.

In An Ex-mas Feast tells the heartbreaking story of eight-year-old Jigana, a Kenyan boy whose 12-year-old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute to support her family. Jigana's mother quells the children's hunger by having them sniff glue while they wait for Maisha to earn enough to bring home a holiday meal. Having spent a little time in Nairobi, this story puts a face to all the street kids and malayas running around that city in a way that is nearly impossible to describe. After the first few paragraphs I literally found it difficult to continue because I know just how real it all is, but the story is just so worth it.

If you are anything like me and there is a big gulf between you and the nearest bookstore (i.e. it isn't in your actual building), don't fear because I will certainly not leave you hanging. You can click both of these two links - My Parents' Bedroom and An Ex-mas Feast - to read these stories that the gracious New Yorker has available until you can find your way to a store to get the rest of the book.

On a book-related note, I'd just like to guide you over to Tanafriti Book Blog which is all about African writers. This is a new blog that had me at Hadu and I'm definitely looking forward to all the literary treasures that Enisio has yet to reveal.

Disgrace

I'm definitely one of those people who is always skeptical about a book being made into a movie and that feeling is definitely being carried forward in the new Steve Jacobs movie Disgrace based on the famous book of the same title written by South African J.M. Coetzee. The book tackles the journey of Professor David Lurie who, in the wake of an affair with a multiracial student seeks refuge in the countryside with his daughter. While out for a walk with his daughter, they are attacked by three black men and his daughter is raped while he is knocked out and set on fire. What happens to these characters and the decisions they make is at the heart of this book. What I found amazing is the author's ability to take the reader into the very dark and ugly side of human behavior. At almost no point in the book are you rooting for the main character and yet at the sliver of a chance for redemption, you can't help but feel relieved for him. I love any writer who is able to take the reader out of their comfort zone and Coetzee definitely does that with this book. Just to add a little perspective, I am not the only one who thought this book is worth the read, those people in Sweden also found this book good enough for a Nobel Prize.

Whether this will be successfully transferred to the screen is a whole different bowl of pudding (you can check out the trailer here)! The whole black men raping white woman thing didn't go down so smoothly when the book first came out and to be honest, ten years later, I'm not even 97% sure how smoothly the movie will go down either. But in the end J.M. Coetzee is hardly a sugar and spice type writer so why should book or movie be easy to swallow? It's suppose to make you upset, force you to question circumstances and what you would do if you were one of the characters.

So, have you read this book? What were you impressions about it? Have you read anything else by this writer?

For those of you waiting for Coetzee next book, Summertime, the last part of a fictionalized memoir comes out soon (or is out if you live in the U.K.).

The Thing Around Your Neck

June and July are all about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for me. Not only is my book club reading both of her novels "Purple Hibiscus" and "Half of the Yellow Sun," but now she has a book of short fiction that you know I have to read. I love love love short fiction as a genre and when you get a great writer, well, I'm just not sure if there is anything better! Now I have already introduced you to two of Ms. Adichie's short stories (here and here), but let's be honest, a whole book of short fiction is so much better!

For me, the best thing a writer can do is tell a story; one in which the reader fits into the shoes of the characters, understands them so intimately, that the end of the story feels like a personal loss. I know this may seem extremely obvious, but I have read many a books in which the authors did not realize that this was their task. Like an seasoned designer who automatically knows the perfect type of lighting a room needs, Adichie knows just what a story needs to take it from basic to brilliant. Before you can even think twice, she draws you into her tale, transporting you to Lagos, Maine, Connecticut or anywhere else her imagination has created.

In preparing for this post, I read the title story (here) and what I can say is that you will not under any circumstance be disappointed in the stories you find here. Here is a little sample:


"The first weeks you wanted to write though, because you had stories to tell. You wanted to write about the surprising openness of people in America, how eagerly they told you about their mother fighting cancer, about their sister-in-law's premature baby - things people should hide, should reveal only to the family members who wished them well. You wanted to write about the way people left so much food on their plates and crumpled a few dollar bills down, as though it was an offering, expiation for the wasted food. You wanted to write about the child who started to cry and pull at her blonde hair and instead of the parents making her shut up, they pleaded with her and then they all got up and left."

If running to the nearest bookstore to pick up this gem isn't on your agenda for today, simply take a few minutes to read on of the three stories linked above. If you have 5 mins and 39 secs you can also click here to listen to a nice interview of the author over on NPRs All Things Considered.

Magazine Rack

I have been reading so many great magazines recently, I figured it was high time I shared my great finds.

First and foremost on my list is ARISE. I cannot tell you how much I have been looking forward to this magazine. I heard about it a few months ago during all the flutter that is New York Fashion week. While I was excited, I was also a little sad as I didn't think I would have access to such a foreign-based magazine in my little village (cosmopolitian as one may think of D.C., it is still very much a village in comparison with the New York and Londons of the world). When Ms. Shoo over at SheBreathes mentioned that it was available at Barnes and Nobles, nothing shy of hell freezing over could keep me away and let me just tell you, this new magazine certainly does not disappoint. For each giant page to the next, this magazine is stuff to the brim with all kinds of goodness coming out of Africa and such a well edited and stylized format that it makes all $12 per issue worth it!

I discovered Sunset a few months ago over at {frolic!} and I was literally hooked at first browse! This magazine is all about west coast living and it serious fuel to all my "wide open spaces" "working with hands" "be in nature" fire! Not only is there garden section amazing (and my favorite) but honestly, the whole magazine just oozes shining, happy people having fun. What's not to love about that?!? I finally bit the bullet the other day and bought the actual magazine while in the grocery store and boy oh boy, even just glancing at the cover sitting on my ottoman is enough to make me want to delay this post just for one more glimpse!


Since arriving back in the land of too many distractions, I have barely had the attention span to actually read an entire novel. I have come to rely very heavily on short story podscasts to help push me along. Not too long ago, I remembered this magazine, The Sun. I had seen it in a house while hanging out with a friend last summer and thought it was awesome. Page after page of great writing with NO ads?!? What's not to love? When the magazine appeared at my doorstep, I was over the moon. Now when it's time to wind down for bed, this is definitely a good place for me to start.


Have you ever been at a book store and kept going back to the same magazine? Well that was me and Yoga Journal for a long time. On a sucky winter day, I would go into the bookstore at my train station and just stand there going through every page, wondering how I could achieve the incredible poses of the models and browsing though the articles. I finally brought one home with me and having been loving the magazine ever since! Yoga is top on the list of things I want to stick-to and this magazine definitely helps. Now if only I could find a yoga studio that doesn't price as if yoga is only for the rich and famous.....



Bicycle has been the last to join my magazine rack (ok, it's mostly a pile near my bed), but feeds the same side of me as Yoga Journal. When I bought my bike, the shop threw in two free issues and it is soooo good. It showcases the hottest bikes, training for races, plus foodie guides, and interviews with the best and fastest in the sport. I am hardly the athlete, but riding my bike is the best thing I do for myself and this magazine makes me want to do so more and more!

Now as a lover of all things interior design, I'm sure you are shocked that no such magazine is on my little rotation. To be honest, between all the design blogs, I get more than a days worth of interior design news. Plus there are SO many design magazines, I am not sure where to even start to select.

Anyway...that's what I am reading right now....what's in your magazine pile?

Book Club

In my ever-going effort to branch out and do more of the things I love, I recently joined a book club! Next to talking endlessly about design...books are the other topic that I can go on and on about. Nothing makes me so happy as reaching the point in the book where you are so caught up there is no return until the very last word. To be able to share that moment with others who have experienced the same thing is really exciting. Even if they don't feel the same way about the book as you do, I love hearing difference perspectives which can challenge my own interpretation of what I have just read.

I'm excited to see how this will progress because I definitely have good vibes about this new venture!

Stayed tuned for another post today on Afro-Peruvians...

Picture Books

I know that I'm forever going on about how much I love to read and I do, I swear it. But right now I'm going through a drought of attention. I can barely get through a newspaper article without itching to switch my attention to something else. I miss my attention span.

Rather than fight the feeling, I've accepted that this is just what I'm going through at the moment and to just swim in it while it lasts. So in addition to making my way through newspaper and magazine articles, I would definitely love to plow my way through any of these three interior design books about African style. I have wanted them since last summer and I swear I'm going to get them soon and when I do, there will be no stopping me! I will breathe in every picture and fantasize to no end!!!

Giving Back: A love of books

Thanks to Fly Brother, today I was completely absorbed in The Art of Nonconformity and specifically, Guillebeau's A Brief Guide to World Domination. While it's way too intriguing for me to get into here, I do have to seriously encourage you to check out the guide, check out the blog, and start planning how you too can live outside the box.

While I'm still calculating my strategy for World Domination and mulling over Guillebeau's first question "What do you really want to get out of life?", I have been thinking a lot about the second question that he poses: "What can you offer the world that no one else can?" Yes I know - very big questions but on some level I think we all ask ourselves these questions anyway so it shouldn't be that big a deal.

So taking a momentary break from thinking of all the things that the world to do for me (least of all entertain me with pretty places and people), I've been thinking about what I can do for the world. What do I get so excited about that I can share with others? I don't know if it's 'service' but one things I would love to give back to the world is a love and appreciation of reading and storytelling. Every cell in my body literally cringes whenever I hear of someone who doesn't like to read. In disbelief, my answer is always the same: they just haven't found their book because if they had, no one could say such a thing. It's so saddening!

I know that stories cannot fill the stomach of a starving person or give the unemployed a paycheck, but I'm a faithful believer that stories fill an even deeper void by helping people feel connected and heard. First, I would gather all those people (especially adults) who don't know how to read and start them on the path to literacy. Second, I would gather all of those who 'don't like to read' and take them to a library. Everyone would get one companion who would first just sit and talk with that non-lover of words and just listen to what's happening in their lives and important events that have happened. Then that person would help them find the right book for them; something they can see their reflection on. But you can't stop with just handing the person a book! Maybe starting off with a short story (always a great entry point), part of the stotry would be read out loud to get that non-reader a little bit hooked. When they are at a point of no return (you all know that point where come hell or high water you cannot put the story down until your eyes have captured the very last word), then the companion can live them alone (of course with suggestions on next reads). Third, that non-lover of the written word, once converted will join the mission to help others lost souls find their book/story. I can totally see it...a whole army equiped with great books ready to convert the masses!!!

While it may not be the conventional way to serve, in honor of everyone that has given me the joy of a great book and a love of reading, I think the best way to pay it forward is to share that passion.

Pop'Africana

I'm currently loving the brand new magazine Pop'Africana. This magazine "compiled by Africans for Africans and her global diaspora" truly offers a unique take on fashion, art, films and other mediums. It's a bit edgier than the very few other magazines that I've found focusing on the continent.

BHF Magazine

The other day, Ali over at Austin to Africa, Brasil to the Bay sent me the link to a fabulous lifestyle magazine BHF Magazine Africa. Particularly wonderful is their collection of photos from the November Vlisco Fashion show in Benin. The magazine, based right here in the DC Metro area, focuses on showcasing all the gorgeousness and talent that comes out of the continent, a theme that you know really resonates with me and which I strive to reflect on this blog. Their I Am Africa series showcases great photographic work by Africans all over the world who share what Africa means to them. Anyway, thanks so much Ali and I hope the rest of you enjoy it as much as I do!

What's going in???

One of the things I've definitely noticed since I came back has been a change in my attitude to food. This is very strange because I was a pretty health (give a take a brownie or 4) conscious before left. I think I've always had a thing for gardeners, farmers and people who know a thing or two about food. I still remember my fascination with the live chickens at my grandmothers house in Liberia and how one minute I could be feeding them and the next they could be feeding me. I also remember a trip to a local farmer in Spain, milking a cow and then having that fresh milk as part of breakfast (adds a completely new meaning to 'whole milk')!

This appreciation for the people that grow food and take care of animals, and just generally giving more of a damn where my food comes from grew a lot stronger while living in Sudan. I haven't eaten red meat or pork in over ten years, but I certainly was not tempted when I actually got to see slaughter houses in Sudan. While this wasn't going to change my diet, listening to herders and butchers talk about their days, stresses about the market, and even the process of slaughtering and how to make it a clean and safe practice really opened my eyes. Of course, seeing a chicken being chased by Somehow in the morning, a random sharp cry (dying) while I was working, and then seeing a nice drumstick in the pot for dinner definitely made this point stick home for me.

I also loved the cyclical nature of everything. There, you can't eat mangos unless it's mango season and then you are eating mangos until the last one falls out of the last fruit-bearing tree. There are no strawberries (or a gazillion other fruits) because they just don't grow in that part of the world so you just live without them. And when it's any other time than harvest, you totally feel like you'd give a $1,000 bucks just to even SMELL a fresh green vegetable! If some of you remember my Planting Trees post, you will know how much even the simple act of planting tiny little seeds really fascinated me! For all my western gained knowledge, I can promise you that the Sudanese certainly have me completely defeated when it comes to actually having a clue about how to provide food for oneself!

So anyway, earlier this summer, while driving up to MA, I was listening to an interview on NPR with Barbara Kingsolver (think Poisonwood Bible) who was talking about her recent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She spent a year basically only eating what she could grow or buy from the local farmers. The interview had me so drawn in that I actually sat outside my friend's (one i hadn't seen in over a year) apartment waiting for the interview to end. While I had no crazy fantasies that I could do the same, it definitely influenced me to pay more attention. So for several weeks this summer, I got to know the local farmer's near my aunts (where I stayed a lot) and got to try new fruits and vegetables, and literally eating the best nectarines and peaches I've ever had. I even went gaga over heirloom tomatoes which basically add a WHOLE NEW MEANING to tomato!!!

Last night I started reading B. Kingsolver's book and besides reminding me of good food experiences in Sudan (which 99% of time DID NOT HAPPEN), just furthers my resolve to be a bit more conscious of what is going in and where exactly it's coming from! Besides the fact that Kingsolver is an AMAZING AMAZING writer, this book is really really good, but if you do have the time to read it, you can at least get a quick taste by listening to this interview.

Anyway - that's my mini ramble about food!

Hughes in Africa

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I must admit, I am not the biggest poetry fan. I use to be, when I was a teenager filled with angst and driven by my own confusion. Back then, it was the likes of Emily Dickinson that really use to do it for me. However, for all the poems I have read by choice or requirement, this one by Langston Hughes is probably the only one I still remember by heart.

I mention this because I just started reading the autobiography of Langston Hughes last night and just like this poem, his own account of his life is equally fascinating and beautiful. In The Big Sea, the author starts by describing how he tossed all his books of the side off the S.S. Malone during his 1923 voyage as a sailor to Africa. Obviously anyone throwing books into the ocean would grab my attention, let alone one sailing to Africa. What is especially interesting is his whole impression of Africa. First and foremost, Africa is described as basically one big country. He writes:

"We reached the Azores, the Canaries, and finally Africa. A long, sandy coast-line, gleaming in the sun. Palm trees sky-tall. Rivers darkening the sea's edge with the loam of their deltas. People, black and beautiful as the night."

He is also totally unprepared to be labeled as a white man by the 'Africans.'

"But there was one thing that hurt me a lot when I talked with the people. The Africans looked at me and would not believe I was a Negro."

"It was the only place in the world where I've ever been called a white man. They looked at my copper-brown skin and straight black hair - like my grandmother's Indian hair, except a little curly - and they said: You-white man."

It is difficult to imagine his disappointment. Looking to Africans with the hope of a connection and being totally labeled within the same category as the very people who wouldn't allow him in their bars and clubs back in the U.S.

I still have many pages to go, but it is just amazing to see West Africa through the eyes of a black traveler in the early 1920s and to see the similarities and differences compared to white travelers back then and even now.

It is also interesting to note that he was also one of many influences of Chinua Achebe.

Hughes and Achebe in 1962.

'The Headstrong Historian'

For most of this week, something small has been missing to each of my days. I've known what it is, but just have felt to lazy or preoccupied with other things to fix the problem. What has been missing, you ask??? I haven't READ!!! I'm not talking about an article in the newspaper (which incidentally I haven't done either) or blogs, which I read daily. I mean a real can't-put-this-down-till-the-entire-book-is-over kind of reading. With characters gripping me, settings that take my mind to other places, and sentences so good I have to read it again just to fully absorb the beauty. I had started a new book, but honestly, it wasn't doing it for me so I just had to let it go!

This morning, in a completely I-MUST-have-taken-drugs-last-night haze I entered the kitchen not 100% sure what I was looking for. While checking emails, I decided that what I wanted more than anything was to crawl back into bed with a good story. So in complete slacker mode, I turned to an easy short story source - the New Yorker and ta-da, what's waiting for me? Nothing less than the great Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I printed out the story, forgot about the water I had been boiling for tea, and went back to bed knowing that for 8 pages I was about to be transported to somewhere/sometime in Nigeria.

The Headstrong Historian takes place in a village near the River Oyi during the late 19th century and tells the story of a Nwamgba. She tells of her family's curse of having miscarriages, the changes in her son, Anikwenwa, who she sends to missionary school to learn English, but gains more than just language skills and begins to scorn his traditional culture. She also tells of her granddaughter, Afamefuna, who she thinks carries the spirit of her dead husband, but I believe actually carries Nwamgba's spirit.

In this story, I got everything I was looking for. I was transported to place I could scarcely have imagined so vividly without the help of Ms. Adichie; to a time when so much was changing in Nwamgba's world. For example, Adichie writes:

Nwamgba, who still found it difficult to remember that Michael was Anikwenwa, went to the oracle herself, and afterward thought it ludicrous how even the gods had changed and no longer asked for palm wine but for gin. Had they converted, too?

And finally, I got more than just a few lines that struck a me as stunning:

Once, at a moonlight gathering, the square full of women telling stories and learning new dances, a group of girls saw Nwamgba and began to sing, their aggressive breasts pointing at her.

Just the mere use of the word 'aggressive' changes everything and when I read it, I immediately remembered the breasts of young girls in villages in Sudan and could see how the word could so perfectly describes them, especially in comparison to those of an older woman, like Nwamgba, whose breasts have long headed south.

Anyway, it was the perfect story which lulled me right back to sleep and had me wanting more when I awoke!

Cell One

Now that I've gone on and on about African writers, I'll let you take a glimpse at what is out there. Click here for a short story by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published last year in the New Yorker. I know you are all busy people, but would love to hear your thoughts about this piece!

Have a great weekend!!

The Great African Novel

So my brain as clearly been in need of some stimulus recently and last night I got it in the form of a brilliant article in the New Yorker about the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. A new edition of his novel 'Things Fall Apart' has recently been published and the New Yorker has taken the time to look into this author and African literature as a whole.

Really, there are so many things jumping at me from this article that I don't even know where to BEGIN! Ok...I'll start by saying that I have NOT read this infamous novel - I know, gasp gasp!! I also have NOT read that much by other African writers mainly only Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), J.M. Coetzee (South Africa), and Amos Tutuola (Nigeria) and a few short stories by other writers. Clearly, I'm the first to admit that I need to read more, more, more!

Anyway, now that my disclaimer is out there.....I was very glad that the New Yorker even discussed this book and theme. I've read the New Yorker since high school and these days, I mainly catch up through their website or on their podcasts (the fiction podpast is particularly great for road trips), however African writers and literature is not often covered. So for me, it is always great when a notable literary magazine features someone from Africa.

Achebe writes that carrying the full weight of African experience requires “a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.” Or, as he later put it, “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English for we intend to do unheard of things with it.”

This was referring to the use of English as a literary medium for African writers. This really jumped out at me because of my post yesterday regarding 'Sudanese English.' I was joking about how English is used here and how much of it I have picked up, but the more I think about it, the more it truly is amazing. The idea of taking a language and doing 'unheard of things with it' and altering it to 'suit its new African surroundings' totally strips away any illusions about the purity of a language. Like cultures, and just about everything else, language also changes, yet pidgin English (or Spanish or French, etc) is generally looked down upon. So it is actually kinda cool when someone says, 'instead of writing in 'proper' English, I'm going to describe these people in this location using the version of English that is common to them. Later on in the article, it is also described how that same English still has to be altered to ensure that the reader (especially in primary markets of the U.S. and Europe) can still understand and appreciate the story being told.

While there are many other highlights in the article, the last line really struck me. Chimamanda Adichie (author of 'Purple Hibiscus') writes about her experience reading Achebe:

“I didn’t think it was possible for people like me to be in books.”

Can you imagine, growing up and not have ANY literature reflecting your way of life?? Worst still, growing up and just NOT reading what little there may be out there?? When I've gone to book stores in Nairobi or Kampala, the section on books by African writers, really describing the experience of maybe people living in slums, or middle-class blacks, or even the super wealthy seems so small (there are a lot more books about and by expats and their views on Africa), that I wonder what people (especially children) read. I remember a few years ago, as a birthday present for the daughter of a friend, I went to the bookstore and I can tell you, it was NOT easy to find to find a wide variety of books by African writers, but I was persistent and got a few. There is a fabulous book fair in Nairobi, (where I basically walked away with loads of books) that I feel should be mandatory for everyone in the city. While there are so many people out there trying to encourage African writers and push for more African literature, more and more needs to be done not only to encourage Africans to tell THEIR story, but to encourage each other to actually READ it!!!

African TRIBALISM

In a recent Foreign Policy article, Cornelius P. Cacho basically writes that TRIBALISM (he uses caps which seems a bit dramatic in my book) is the root cause of all the hoopla that occurs in the sub-continent. Of course, the very first example was the recent crisis in Kenya.* Anyway, here are the highlights of the article that really struck me:

'The evolution of the African system of grouping has been harmfully disturbed by foreign, mainly European, intervention. By the Treaty of Berlin in 1884 the then world powers divided the African sub-continent into fiefdoms without any regard for history, geography, culture or other factors that might have made the exercise a lasting success instead of the nightmare it continues to be.'

It was interesting (good) that the author recognized the historic root of so much of the tribal strife that exists throughout the continent. While he talks about Europe having clans, etc. at least he recognizes that those clans were not quite chopped and butchered and re-sewn together the way African tribes were and what a lasting effect that has had.

'Despite fifty years of efforts on the part of many and $600 billion worth of aid, African living
standards have hardly risen'

As someone working in the field of 'development,' I constantly see how much money is spent on development here in Sudan and I literally question ever day whether it makes a difference at all, especially when political violence over oil (or something else) can literally break out on any given day and all the money that has been invested would be lost again. It clearly isn't a morality booster when someone writes that what you do actually hasn't made a difference. So, if so much aid given has yielded so little, who exactly is benefiting from maintaining this status quo?

Anyway.....interesting article providing good food for thought.

*Brief reminder: Kenya had elections in December 2007. Major rigging, which had the old president sworn in at the exact time Brandie was entering the country after a lovely holiday in Mozambique. Violence broke out as clearly the opposition was NOT happy with the turn of events. Lots of people killed, even more displaced, millions lost on business profits, tourism industry plunged into very deep waters, Kofi had to come over, lots of chit chat later there is now a president and a prime minister.

Itchy Hands - Jhumpa Lahiri

Yesterday my hands were literally ITCHING because they didn't have the new Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth in them. While I've been a read-a-holic for years, I only recently got into short fiction and this author is one of the main reasons. I've been a groupie of hers every since I read the first short story in 'Interpreter of Maladies' called A Temporary Matter. She packed everything that is beautiful and moving about a story into a few short pages and at the end, had me wanting to reach through the pages and hug both the main characters. On one of NPR StoryCorps sessions, one woman said, referring to the end of her marriage, 'there are no villians here, just humans.' This is what comes to mind when I read Jhumpa Lahiri's work, she makes you see the human side of every character.

One of the main themes that runs through her work is identity with most of her characters being American-raised children of expatriate Indians, characters caught between their own world in the States and that of their parents and heritage. Having grown up and lived in many places, I totally relate to this feeling of in-between that her characters live with. According to all the glowing reviews, these are still the main subjects that she brings to light in her new book and is yet another reason why I can't wait to get my hands on this book!

P.S. Just to give you a taste of what you can expect from this writer, you can just click here to read the entire story of A Temporary Matter courtesy of those wonderful New York Times folks.