What I mean is that I want to bloody know something about something before I start to think I know anything. Call it research.
My teachers promptly appeared, thank God:
Inscape, a short story by Yaa Gyasi, for Guernica
and
an essay by A. Igoni Barrett in The Guardian
while
I've built a bit of a reading list (my FOMO reading list) of contemporary literature mostly by Africans now in like their 30s, 40s. Igoni's books, On Black Sisters' Street,
I have good ears, yes, but I don't listen to my mother. It's one minute, or ten minutes, or sometimes, rarely, an hour, and then I disappear to listen somewhere else - to The Guardian, to comedian Stephen Colbert's show, to musical artistes, and so on.
If you like boring gist, this is me overanalyzing: oh, I see, what my mother is trying to say is that she's passionate about food preparation.
Ok. I'll try to build on that knowledge next time instead of fleeing the scene when she starts to make small-talk with a complaint about some food or the other that she did not eat, not buy, not try because she suspects that it is bad or full of sugar or full of oil or full of overcooked oil or bad chemicals or fat or full of salt or dirty or not good or not well cooked or...
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4 comments:
my current (tentative) african lit fomo list lol :
on black sister's street - chika unigwe
ghana must go - taiye selasi
welcome to lagos - chibundu onuzo
homegoing - yaa gyasi
blackass - igoni barrett
love is power - igoni barrett
and after many days - jowhor ile
maestro magistrate mathematician - tendai huchu
MORE
our sister killjoy - ama ata aidoo
the underground railroad - colson whitehead
Now reading
White Teeth - by Zadie Smith,
and also
Becoming - by Michelle Obama.
Recently read a host of new Children's Fiction by Nigerian authors, the most complete and impressive of which is titled Boom Boom, author Jude Idada. It is now one of three finalists for this year's NLNG/Nigeria Prize for Literature. I have not read any of the other two on the shortlist, but I read a few outside the shortlist (including some on the so-called 'longlist' of eleven)
Over time, distribution will improve - don't you think? For now, I can't even add them to my list of read books on facebook, nor can I usually add Nigerian movies. That said, facebook is, I don't know, is it dying? Is it becoming more 'local', 'private' - which I instinctively feel is a regress from connecting the world but I suppose if the world wants to be a little more circumspect about connecting with strangers then the tech has no choice? Or what?
I really wish to finish the novels I'm reading now, and soon to find and read books like On Black Sisters Street, and re-read one I read in childhood called "When A Child Is Motherless" by Andrew Okogba.
Also, today, I decided that my next novel will be titled Four Students - which in my head is so prosaic and simple that it's almost daft. I'd been thinking Four Seasons or something more poetic, but now I know that I want this one. It translates incredibly well. Also, because I've finally (just last month) produced Three Sisters for sale in the format I finally decided on - Three little books, three parts of one project - I can visualize that I want something similar for the next "novel" - the overall project name will be less emphasized than the names of the four parts (or characters, or elements, or wott-evah)
Have fun.
Re: The next novel is Four What?
I got the perfect title: Quartet.
That's it. One word. And it's not daft at all, it's elegant and fitting.
Now to write it :-)
I haven't finished Becoming and White Teeth. Stopped months ago, about halfway through both books. Ready to continue now.
I discovered a "reader" something that would convert books I put on my small cellphone into a most-readable large-text format. This is exciting, as it means I can try reading more books on my phone, which may be easier (in this readable format) than reading even on my laptop. Thank you, app makers of Readera. It's called Readera.
What else?
I found you can download books pdf, epub, online, including some I'd thought not available when I used to download torrents. So I snagged a few African works (from the list above too) and a few others. Altogether, I'm very happy. I don't understand how people get bored lol, I always have too many reading projects going on :D
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