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African Writers’ Corner
RSS FeedManifesto Of Beginnings
Shailja Patel
2009-01-29, Issue 417
‘Manifesto Of Beginnings’ by Shailja Patel was commissioned by the BBC World Service to mark the one-year anniversary of Kenya's stolen election. The title arose from the questions in the poet's mind, ‘How do we begin to recount all the betrayals and broken promises? And where do we begin when the roots of the post-election violence go all the way back to before Kenya's independence?’ This piece was first broadcast on 27 December 2008 on the BBC World Service on The World Today programme, and is reproduced here as an mp3 file with permission. Visit Shailja at www.shailja.com.
From Africa to Haiti to Gaza: Fidelity to humanity
Jacques Depelchin
2009-01-15, Issue 415
First, not quite, but we have to start somewhere, There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians Then their land became known as Hispaniola, As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel Of French overseas possessions Thanks to Africans ...
Overheard Over S.E. Asia
Shailja Patel and Denise Levertov
2009-01-15, Issue 415
Drawing parallels with Israel’s current action in Gaza, Shailja Patel introduces the poem Overheard Over S.E. Asia by the British poet Denise Levertov. Published in her 1972 collection entitled Footprints, Levertov’s poem concerns the US’s use of white phosphorus during the Vietnam war. ...
Boundless terror
Dennis Brutus
2009-01-15, Issue 415
This is terror that surpasses words that extends the bounds of terrorism beyond inexpressible beyond unimaginable beyond inconceivable Unspeakable unutterable inexpressible That they who endured so much should, themselves, inflict so m...
African Writing Lite
Guest editorial
2009-01-10, Issue 414
African literature has, like the continent, been Balkanized. Just as the continent was fractured into 50-odd states, the literature of the continent has been sieved and funneled into French, English, Portuguese and other containers.
Of course we cannot blame Berlin for all of this. Africa has two thousand home-grown languages after all. Yet, there is an altogether different stricture that surrounds the modern language blocs. Just as passports are required to negotiate our modern political borders, the modern literatures of Africa seem to grow in hermetic zones, and even with modern communications, the average African is increasingly unaware of the great literatures flowering just across his borders - especially where it is written in an ‘alien’ language.
African Writing magazine, with its 'many literatures, one voice' vision, tries to redress some of this in its print and online incarnations. African Writing Magazine will try to do that little extra, in its new berth in Pambazuka, Africa's electronic brainstorm. We will serve up a literary takeaway - without for one moment suggesting that anything but a savour of literary Africana can be gleaned from here alone. To be sated, one can look forward to the hours of application at the many watering holes of African literature.
In this interview conducted by Jarmo Pikkujamsa for African Writing Magazine, Mamadou N'Dongo, a Senegalese writer and filmmaker and author of Bridge Road and L’Errance de Sidiki Bâ, talks about the roots of Bridge Road in Black American struggles, the art of film in relation the craft of writing, and much more.
Chuma Nwokolo,
Publisher, African Writing.
"Without form there is no meaning"
Interview with Mamadou N’Dongo
Jarmo Pikkujamsa
2009-01-08, Issue 414
In this interview conducted by Jarmo Pikkujamsa for African Writing Magazine, Mamadou N'Dongo, a Senegalese writer and filmmaker and author of Bridge Road and L’Errance de Sidiki Bâ, talks about the roots of Bridge Road in Black American struggles, ...
The night gave birth to Jesus
Extracts one and two
Mamadou N'Dongo
2009-01-08, Issue 414
EXTRACT ONE CÉLIA DANIELS Lord, will you never have enough of the crying and the screaming of your people? His Calvary became ours. His chains, our chains. The night gave birth to Jesus. The son of God was black. The hair of Christ is frizzy, t...
Unfamiliar potatoes
Elizabeth Joss
2009-01-08, Issue 414
UNFAMILIAR POTATOES We used to scrub and shine those soiled potatoes until they looked alien to the earth you once called me a potato one before the scrubbing a slob rounded and out of proportion I locked myself up for days uncomfortably...
Our babies, their dogs
Natasha Shivji
2009-01-08, Issue 414
His head wrapped in bandages
His face scared
With blood
Oozing out of the wounds
His eyes shut
Unconscious maybe dead
His arms hig...
1926 Miles of Training
Karest Lewela
2008-12-17, Issue 413
He picked up his tenor saxophone and played from memory Coltrane’s Naima. The style was not the usual hard bop. It had an overly intense feel, filled with staccato punches as if Blakey in his prime was teaching an Art class, pure drums and no cymbal....
Interview: Whiteness and African writing
John Eppel
2008-12-03, Issue 410
In addition to writing short stories, John Eppel is also an award-winning poet and novelist. His list of achievements is impressive. His first novel, D.G.G. Berry’s The Great North Road (1992), won the M-Net Prize in South Africa. His second novel, Hatchings (1993), was short-listed for the M-Net Prize and his third novel, The Giraffe Man (1994), has been translated into French. And his first poetry collection, Spoils of War (1989), won the Ingrid Jonker Prize. Other poems have been featured in anthologies that include The Heart in Exile South African Poetry in English 1990-1995 (1996) while his short stories have appeared in anthologies that include Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (2005). In a recent interview with Conversations with Writers, John Eppel spoke about his writing.
A solution in Zimbabwe is inevitable
An interview with Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza
Conversations with Writers
2008-11-26, Issue 408
A Journalist and storyteller, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza is one of the most exciting emerging voices in Zimbabwean literature. His short stories have appeared in anthologies such as A Roof to Repair ( College Press, 2000), Writing Still (Weaver Press, 2003), Writing Now (Weaver Press, 2005) and Creatures Great and Small (Mambo Press, 2006). A number of the short stories have also been published in national newspapers and magazines that include The Sunday Mail, the Sunday Mirror and Moto. In a recent interview with Conversations with Writers, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza spoke about his work.
Obama morning - yes we will
A Kenyan exile in the UK
2008-11-11, Issue 406
Yes, we can because It is written in blood In history On your hand We will because The time has come and cannot be held back by old greedy men so passé We can because we owe it to us and we are many we are bold and b...
Interview with Christopher Mlalazi
Conversations with Writers
2008-11-11, Issue 406
Christopher Mlalazi has written plays for Zimbabwean performing arts groups that include Amakhosi Theatre; Umkhathi Theatre; Sadalala Amajekete Theatre and the Khayalethu Performing Arts Project. His poems and short stories have been published in newspapers, magazine and websites that include Crossing Borders Magazine, Poetry International Web, the Sunday News and The Zimbabwean newspaper. Others have been featured in anthologies that include Short Writings From Bulawayo: Volumes I, II and III (Ama’books Publishers, 2003, 2004 and 2005), Writing Now (Weaver Press, 2005), and The Obituary Tango: Selection of Writing from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2005 (New Internationalist Publications, 2006; Jacana Media ,2006). Mlalazi spoke with Conversations with Writers about his work.
Barracking* for Obama
2008-11-13, Issue 406
It feels like it did all those years ago: close your eyes and picture the quiff and smile. Promise of Camelot, no hint of guile, until that day in November, a blow to baby boomers’ hopes for the future. Now barrack for Obama, a new dawn, a surgeon for the brave new world is born fixing gaping wounds with a suture. Country like a patient anaesthetised: a trusting smile on a slumbering face surrendering itself to healing hands; but what lurks on that table disguised waiting to ride on a needle stick trace? A virus we hope Obama withstands. * An Australian expression for supporting or rooting for. Derek Fenton was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and now lives in Australia where he teaches Mathematics and English as a Second Language. His poetry is informed by the experience of being a migrant and the difficulties of adjustment to a new country and alienation from the old. Fenton has had poems published by Les Murray in Quadrant magazine and a poem short-listed for publication in the Westerly.
Audacious hope
Wangui wa Goro
2008-11-05, Issue 405
Cast aside your fears For once, Nervously As on the day you wed, Have faith in the universe that beauty can be borne of hope, your hope and positive energy which we must radiate not on the hurts of the past or fear of ourselves but becaus...
When capitalism fails the rich
John Eppel
2008-10-29, Issue 404
When capitalism fails the rich (it always fails the poor), a jism reinvigorates the corporate bitch: let’s call it bow-wow socialism. Good ol’ Uncle Sam, he saves the big banks with tax-payers’ money, tax-payers’ sweat; Wall Street billionaires, give him thanks for winkling you fraudsters out of debt! Dogknot socialism for plutocrats, the broker-dealers’ contingency plan; ill-gotten gains made by ill-gotten brats devilling themselves in the frying pan. Where Bob’s your uncle, the Reserve Bank feeds cronyism, and the First Lady’s needs.
‘It is difficult to advise a leader who is always right’
Francis B. Nyamnjoh
2008-10-22, Issue 403
It is late into the night. Bobinga Iroko is unable to sleep. He is working on the editorial for the next issue of The Talking Drum. He has deliberately refused to carry the story on homosexuality. His priority remains the strike at the University of Mimbo, which, curiously, hasn’t attracted much coverage from the rest of the national press concentrated in Nyamandem and Sawang. He and The Talking Drum, the formidable odds against them notwithstanding, are determined to crusade along like a lone ranger, until victory day. They believe the sun must not be allowed to set on a good idea.
Strike out!
Juliet Maruru
2008-10-15, Issue 402
The street is called Mtipesa because at the head of it is an old mkanju (cashew nut tree) where the local drug dealers sit on truck tyre wheels half buried and cemented into the ground. The mabeshte, as someone decided to call them, sit here all day, selling their wares quite openly, collecting cash from their customers while the police stroll by just a few metres away, aware that they will get a cut from the collection later.
Pen Slum
Bonface Ochieng Owuor
2008-10-02, Issue 399
P eople with the voice, is what they see, Voices of the people, is what they don't heed, They chained our doors, but forgot our thoughts, Today am here, please try to adhere, To the voices of the people, don't look at the people with the voice ...
Call for papers: Africa and blackness in world literature and visual arts
African Literature Association
2008-08-26, Issue 396
35th Annual Conference April 15-19, 2009 University of Vermont Second call for panels, roundtables, and papers General Theme: Africa and Blackness in World Literature and Visual Arts The past two ALA conferences focused on various ways A...
Call for inspirational writing for Storymoja
Doreen Baingana
2008-09-16, Issue 396
Storymoja is organizing a workshop for writers of inspirational material, however broadly this can be defined. We know there are many of you with powerful, life-changing experiences to share, but may need the structure and know-how we can provide to get the story down. These stories must be presented in an attractive, informative, clear and well-edited manner so that even those with a bias against books, but are hungry for the content, can read them.
Censorship in Nigeria
Interview with Hausa novelist Sa’adatu Baba
Amina Koki Gizo
2008-09-10, Issue 395
While formal publishing companies in Nigeria languished through the economic crises that accompanied the structural adjustment programmes of the late 1980s and early 1990s, young Hausa writers began writing about their lives and contemporary problems they faced. Bypassing formal publishers, they self-published their novels, often with the help of a writers' cooperative....
Portrait
Juliet Maruru
2008-06-18, Issue 382
I look at the portrait in my mind and hope that every parent, every caregiver, every teacher can acknowledge that every child growing up is a human being, has an ethnic, physical, mental, psychological and sexual identity all rolled up and intermingled with each other, and that the education of that child needs to equip him or her to explore all aspects of it all while learning restraint and respect for social boundaries and respect for other people's choices and boundaries.
Mapambazuko
Anonymous
2008-05-28, Issue 376
Usiku wa dhuluma (The night of oppression) Usiku wenye giza (The night of darkness) Usiku mrefu mno (The long long night) Usiku bila mwisho (The night without end) Usiku huo (Even such a night) Mwishowe utaisha (Will finally end)
You enabled the heaven-hued carnival, but...
Stephen Derwent Partington
2008-04-24, Issue 365
(i.m. Aimé Césaire, Négritudist) The windward waves are storming: black. The basalt of Pelée is black. The mourners' blown umbrellas: black. The massing clouds above them: black. Umbrella bolls of cotton: black. The acres of vanilla pods: a...
Zanzibari Slave Market 2007
Nafeesa T Nichols
2008-04-08, Issue 363
dirty, rusted, corroded links of the iron chain hung innocently around the neck of a sculpture afraid to touch the layers of fossilized blood, sweat, agony and fear Fear so soul deep that one can smell it touch it intimately know it when...
Chapter excerpt from "Souls Forgotten"
Francis B. Nyamnjoh
2008-03-17, Issue 357
The following is only a short exerpt of Souls Forgotten. The extend article can be found at the link below. Four years have gone by since disaster struck the villages of Abehema, Tchang and Yenseh, killing over 2000 peasants and tens of thousand...
Promises, Choices, Spaces: Voices for women
Betty Makoni
2008-03-06, Issue 351
Ever seen a four every word punctuated title ? Question mark? comma, full stop .exclamation mark !in one Women lives full of thus Patriarchy domineering , feminism under backlash Women have negotiated, still negotiate, will ever negotiate Promi...
Offering
Shailja Patel
2008-03-01, Issue 350
you wake in the night lips shaped around a word that has not yet arrived you close your eyes wait for it to grow into a poem a poem that might breathe itself into heat, form into a body merged with yours and if you entered that body ...
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