50books_poc | Entries tagged with african writers

veleda-k.livejournal.com

What we have today is a selection of not very good reviews. Why? Because I'm moving into an apartment that's half the size of my current place. That means that some stuff has got to go. So I'd thought I'd do these reviews before I got rid of the books.

( Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe )

( Waiting for Rain by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay )

( All I Asking for is My Body by Milton Murayama )

( Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan )

sairaali.livejournal.com

I've totally lost track of where I was with this for 2010, so I'm starting over.

1. Secret Son by Laila Lalami

Youssef el Mekki is the son of a widow and orphan, or so he thinks. As Youssef finishes school in the slums of Hay an Najat and prepares for public university, he forces his mother to confess that his father was not a school teacher who died in a freak accident, but in fact, one of the most powerful men in Casablanca. As The Party, a hardline religious political group, moves into the slums, simultaneously providing for the people's material needs while radicalizing the jobless young graduates, Youssef struggles to enter his father's world of corrupt liberalism.

Although politics and ideology form most of the background of this story, this is not a political book, or a book about politics. The book is entirely about relationships, between Youssef and his friends, his mother, and his father; between his father, Nabil, and his wife, his daughter, and his illegitimate son; between Youssef's mother Rachida, and her lover, her former employer, and her own father.

This book has heft and weight to it. The prose is beautifully written, and would speed right by if it weren't for the emotional resonance of the story. As it was, I had to stop frequently to breathe and to put some distance between myself and Youssef's pain. The ending, when it came, was both heartbreaking and inevitable.

My only complaint with the writing is the pacing. Some of the middle portions were too drawn out, almost painfully so. The ending, while in many ways inevitable, was also rushed and choppy. Even though I believed the characters' motivations, I felt in some ways like the author was shying away from showing us the same emotional range there that she did earlier in the story.

2. Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemison

Yeine is the daughter of the disowned heir of the Arameri, the powerful ruling family of her world, and a minor noble from an impoverished and politically weak district. She wants nothing more than to be a good leader to her father's people, but shortly after her mother dies, she is summoned to the capitol city of Sky. Dakarta, her estranged grandfather, ruler of the hundred thousand kingdoms, demands her attendance at court and she cannot refuse. She quickly gets swept up into court intrigue as the struggle for who will succeed Dakarta. As she struggles to secure her position in the palace, she finds unlikely allies and realizes that the God's War that made the Arameri kings in the first place is not exactly over. Caught between gods and nobles, Yeine eventually finds a way out of the viper's den that is Sky.

So many people have been reading and reviewing this since it came out that I feel like another review would be superfluous. Also, this book delighted me so much that I'm having trouble thinking of anything coherent to say about it other than, OMG! Everyone must read it!

One of the biggest criticisms of this book that I've read is that Yeine is too passive, and allows events to happen to her instead of taking action. But, that's what I love most about Yeine, that she's not an over-powered heroine. She's a minor noble from a tiny district, with no skills at political intrigue, and no power at her disposal and it shows. Yet even with all her disadvantages, she does her best in the few days (the actions of the book all take place in less than a week) she has, in order to figure out what's going on, find allies, and make choices that will radically change her life. She has little to no control over most of her circumstances, but still manages to exercise agency in how she reacts to them, and how she relates to the other beings who cross her path.

I also really like the cosmology of the universe, where the "Bright" sun-god is anything but good, and the "evil" night-god is far more sympathetic than the role is usually allowed in most fantasy.

It really is fantastic, and y'all should all read it!

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

I initially wasn't going to count uni reading for this, but since I haven't had time to read fiction for what feels like months, I'm giving that up :). Also, I thought these articles might be of interest to a few here.

21. Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society, ed. S. Jay Kleinberg.

There are several articles by women of colour in this anthology, but the two I read were:

The Presentation of African Women in Historical Writing by Ayesha Mei-Tje Imam

Imam reviews historical writing on African women, discussing areas which have been studied, areas which haven't, and approaches taken towards African women in historical writing. I found the last bit most interesting. She outlines the four ways African women have generally been presented by historians: as oppressed and subordinate to men; as equal but different to men; as oppressed victims of colonial policy; and, most recently, as actors in social processes who have experienced a general decline in status due to colonialism.

She also outlines problems with the above four approaches, before linking the decline in status women suffered as a result of colonialism to both Christianity and capitalism. Christianity (and 'education') led to girls being raised as future wives and mothers, rather than future citizens. Capitalism, and changes in local economies, led to women losing economic power.

Breaking the silence and broadening the frontiers of history: recent studies on African women by Zenebeworke Tadesse

Tadesse gives a brief historiography of African women, before, as the title suggests, reviewing recent historical studies of African women. She explores the heroine/victim dichotomy she says has dominated the study of African women, arguing that they are either presented as eternal victims and passive objects, or as heroines of women's uprisings and as powerful matriarchs (as an example, she brings up the Igbo women's war). She then summarises various studies on subjects such as women and slavery (both women as slaves and as slave-owners), women in the colonial period, women and resistance, and urban women.

Overall, both articles are very interesting and informative for anyone looking for a quick guide to historical writing on African women.

Tags: a:imam ayesha mei-tje a:tadesse zenebeworke w-ed:kleinberg s jay

rosehiptea.livejournal.com

( Monster by Walter Dean Myers )

Two more reviews on this community are here. (Contains spoilers) and here.

( Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe )

Current Mood: awake

postingwhore.livejournal.com

I just finished reading Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and felt compelled to post about it to this community and extol its virtues to anyone who would listen.

Summary from Amazon.com: In exile now for more than twenty years, Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet and critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o has become one of the most widely read African writers.

Commencing in “our times” and set in the fictional “Free Republic of Aburiria,” Wizard of the Crow dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburirian people. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, this magnificent novel reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.

The summary doesn't even begin to describe how amazing this book is. Thiong'o himself says the aim of the novel is "to sum up Africa of the twentieth century in the context of two thousand years of world history", and the novel depicts "a battle for the control of the souls of the Aburĩrian people" by the competing forces of a corrupt dictatorship, folk wisdom/religion, fanatic Christianity, and self-serving capitalism. The novel is a gigantic political satire that strikes with great accuracy because by reducing these entities into farcical imitations of themselves, it exposes the truth about them. This novel is funny and touching and fast-paced and just *O*.

This book also follows along the tradition of African story-telling in its construction. It weaves distinct threads that eventually come back to the main narrative to create a cohesive whole, and I was amazed at the ability of Thiong'o to create a narrative of hope out of a story of chaos. This is possibility some of the finest fiction I've ever read, and although it is pretty long (768 pages in hardcover), it's worth every single minute. The time went by so fast for me because I was completely immersed in the novel, just wanting to know how it all ends, and that's what I love about this novel—it's an engaging tragicomedy that really gets into what Africa is. This novel is peopled by real Africans, men and women, all of whom are complex and none of whom are passive "victims" awaiting rescue, even if they are farcical at times.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: Waking Ashland - Charity | Powered by Last.fm

sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com

Quick-version reviews:

#22 - Infidel: My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. Her experiences of Islam cross a spectrum from her (mostly-absent) father's approach, which in some ways allowed interpretation and debate but in other ways was highly traditional, through to devotion to the calls for the renewal of Islam by the Muslim Brotherhood. She's now become in/famous for her calls to consider ways in which Islam may be problematic.

#23 - The Dreaming, Vol 1-3 by Queenie Chan
Although manga is enough of a departure from my regular type of reading that I feel justified in posting it here, I couldn't count the three volumes as separate books. Only the third volume took more than an afternoon/evening to read. In the end, I can't recommend this book, because of what I (ymmv) see as a very problematic treatment of Indigenous Australian cultures and traditions. More info at my LJ.

#24 - Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry, edited by Kevin Gilbert.
Published in 1988 as a "Bicentennial" year protest, this collection is full of anger, and I found most of it very hard to cope with. I did persevere through to the end though, and I'm glad I did, as Gilbert's own poetry is last in the collection, and despite the fact that his introductions both to other poets and himself had angered and alienated me, I found that some of his poems were *beautiful*, and that they portrayed their anger in a way that allowed me to process it, rather than just putting up a wall. Note: many readers of this comm may find my review difficult or potentially offensive, particularly on "tone argument" grounds.

#25 - The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
I started reading this before the election, but only just finished it, for the simple reason that I own it, and thus it wasn't subject to library due dates. It is a great book, and I'll have to boost Dreams from my Father further up my To Read list.

chomiji

The tradition-minded people of the Ooni Kingdom have only distant legends of what it means to be born dada, as Zahrah was. Although her family love her, they don't really understand what it's like for the young girl to grow up with living vines twining in her hair, and some of her classmates are cruel. Only her best friend, Dari, appreciates her and encourages her to explore what she is. But when a frightening episode in their experimentation and exploration leaves Dari poised on the brink of death, Zahrah must embark on a fearsome quest to save his life.

For the first few chapters, I was not impressed with this book, which has been billed as Young Adult. I finally decided that the age classification was a mistake: this is an older children's book, suitable for readers aged about 9 to 13 (depending on their reading level, of course). From that viewpoint, the book is a lot more effective, and Zahrah is eminently suited to join to ranks of Alice, Milo, Coraline, and all the other young heroes and heroines who must venture into strange lands beyond reality. In fact, this book most reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth, although the tone is far more serious. In place of Norton Juster's inventive plays on words and numbers, however, Okorafor-Mbachu presents endlessly creative biology and botany as Zahrah journeys through the Forbidden Greeney Jungle. And the tone of Zahrah and Dari's rebellious search for knowledge despite the doubts and disapproval of their overly-comfortable people reminds me of the rebels' search for the truth in Carol Kendall's all-but-forgotten 1959 fantasy The Gammage Cup.

I'd have no hesitation recommending this for readers of what seems to be the suitable age, but I don't know whether I'm going to re-read it myself. It didn't capture my heart the way my old favorites do.

Spoiler: I think the reason for the YA classification is that Zahrah hits puberty during the course of the story. This is a pretty lame reason, however. No one has yet been silly enough to force a YA classification on one of the most famous books to have this life experience as an incident: The Long Secret, which is the sequel to Harriet the Spy.

A note about my tagging: Okorafor-Mbachu's site says: "Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents... [t]hough American-born, Nnedi's muse is Nigeria." So I have tagged this as both "African writers" and "African-American."

Other Reviews of This in 50books_poc:
• by akamarykate

Current Mood: sleepy

noorie.livejournal.com

1/50: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun

From Publishers' Weekly: "When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family."

( My thoughts... )

sanguinity

(In addition to the regular 50 books challenge, I'm going to do 50 short-works, too. Not because I'm an overachiever -- which would be a fair charge -- but because I SUCK at finishing anthologies, yet I still want to point in awe at some of the amazing pieces in said anthologies-I-never-finish-reading. Also, sometimes I run across amazing stuff in anthologies that I don't feel otherwise qualify for the comm. Plus, you know, other stuff.)

(So to kick off, here's a piece I ran across while surfing links for the del.icio.us account...)

1. How To Write About Africa, by Binyavanga Wainaina, published in Granta 92, 2005.

It begins:

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions...

If you can't tell from the excerpt, it's a scything and brutal enumeration of the racist and colonialist tropes that appear in writing about Africa. 'Tis very hard not to quote the whole thing at you, it's so freakin' spot on. (The bit about the gorillas and elephants!) (And one's personal ability to eat bugs!) (And how Africa would be doomed without your book!) (And the proper use of Nelson Mandela quotes!)

Full text is at the title link. Go read it. Seriously.

waelisc.livejournal.com

Purple Hibiscus is beautifully written and compelling, and at the same time there's a lot of sadness in it. I ached for the characters.

The narrator is Kambili, a 15-year-old Nigerian girl. Her father is a wealthy and influential man - he owns factories, and a newspaper in Nigeria's capital city - and is widely respected. He has recently won an international human rights award, he gives money to every charity, he pays the school fees for scores of children from their home village. But at home he's a fanatically religious Roman Catholic and incredibly dictatorial about every detail of his family's lives. Kambili has protectively drawn into herself so completely that she rarely speaks, and has difficulty with stuttering when she does try to say anything. Her classmates envy the advantages they think she has and mock her awkwardness.

At the beginning I was horrified at how strongly Kambili's father identifies with white colonial power (including the white missionaries) and has absorbed all their worst, racist attitudes and beliefs. He criticizes everything Nigerian and aspires to do everything like the white people. As the novel goes on, though, it's harder and harder to sympathize with him. I'm still thinking through my reactions, but the question I'm wrestling with most is how the father became so extremely tyrannical. Was it only exposure to white European assumptions of superiority in his schooling that made Kambili's father the way he was? Or was he a man who was inclined to be domineering and controlling anyway, and that was encouraged and deepened by what he experienced in European-run schools and churches? The author doesn't speculate on this directly (that is, Kambili doesn't wonder how her father got to be the person he is) but there is the contrast of Kambili's aunt, her father's sister, who had the same education and religious training but lives a very different life.

Spoilers/warnings: Not a spoiler for the whole plot, just a heads-up that there is one incident of severe domestic violence 'onstage' and another half-dozen references to Kambili's father inflicting violence on his wife and children.

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

I'm going to quote from the back cover because I'm not good at summaries: A provocative portrayal of modern life in Ghana. A dead baby and bloodstained clothes are discovered near a small village. Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The man have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds it becomes clear that seven different women played their part in the drama. All of them are caught in a web of superstition, ignorance, greed and corruption.

This book is basically all about the women. They're the ones who drive the story, it's told from their POV, and the male characters are almost insignificant. The women include a businesswoman, a street girl, a grandmother, two mothers, two daughters, a teacher, and the housemaid of the title. I thought seeing Ghana from all their different points of view was fascinating, and I loved the interwovenness of the story.

It's not a mystery in the conventional sense. 'Who' is revealed, I think, about half-way through. It then moves onto the why, which isn't what I first expected. I did like that, though: at the beginning of the book, various men were giving explanations as to why a mother would abandon her child (and calling for her to be hung, or to have her womb cut out and fed to her), and of course the true reason turned out to be far more complex. The ending is quite vague. It's never really revealed what happens to the mother, although it's hinted at.

I would definitely recommend this. It's short (only about 110 pages) but powerful, and I know I'm going to end up reading it again.

maebeth.livejournal.com

Finally we are through the dead white guys (I exaggerate some, they are not all dead yet.)

So, some words on What it means to be church:

Lee, Jung Young, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology. (Fortress, 1995).
We've all been trying too hard to be in the center. True church is at the margins. This is an excellent book, hurt only by Lee's hyperbole when it comes to who is "in" and who is "out" of church. Yes, white churches are almost always focused on centrality, and have little experience on the margins. But that does not mean that ALL white people are trying to stay that way. Still, the basic theology is excellent and helpful.

Cone, James, Black Theology, Black Power (Orbis 1997).
This was actually written in 1969.
Excellent explanation of how white and black churches are tempted to buy into the idea of church as part of the status quo, and a radical call to give up that role. Sexist language was hard, but the preface to this addition includes an apology for that and an explanation that to have edited for this edition would have been to pretend he didn't have that very sexist past.

Bujo, Benezet, African Theology in its Social Context (Orbis 1992).
Radical idea of how Christian faith COULD be permitted to really adapt to local cultures, including an excellent section on how ancestor worship can be redeemed as ancestor appreciation and the idea of Christ as our common ancestor. This would lead to the idea that different tribes have the same ancestor and therefore can learn to cooperate. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the African context, but appreciated the idea of radically removing the "christian" and "european culture" connection. This text was so sexist it was hard to read. Its hard to believe that Bujo even knows that women exist.

waelisc.livejournal.com

Rehabilitating African Languages: Language Use, Language Policy and Literacy in Africa, Selected Case Studies, edited by Kwesi Kwah Prah (Capetown, South Africa : The Center for Advanced Studies of African Society, 2002).

A few weeks ago I posted about the book Afrikan Alphabets. I wanted to read more about African language issues and I'm fortunate to work in a university library with a strong collection in African studies.

Unsurprisingly, a huge proportion of the published works on African languages are by North American / European academics, but I found this one, in which all but two chapters are by black African academics. The editor addresses that in the introduction, in fact, noting that for one language group, Khoisan, there are no native speakers with linguistics training at present (or there weren't in 2002.)

I'm actually not a linguist, so I more or less floated through some of the technical issues discussed here. But the rest was very thought-provoking. Virtually everywhere in Africa, the colonial languages (mostly English and French) are used in higher education and government. (I did know that.) That means a student must learn a new language to go beyond secondary school, or in most cases, beyond primary school, because the the colonial languages are widely (not universally) used at the secondary level.

And in fact, what I did not realise at all is that students at the elementary level often don't get schooling in their own language. In Tanzania, the official languages are English and Kiswahili, but only 5% of families speak Kiswahili at home. The other 95% speak other African languages; those children have to learn Kiswahili just for elementary school. Similarly, there are more than 200 languages & dialects spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So there are several very challenging issues involved in reclaiming, or as the title puts it, rehabilitating African languages. One is that there's a lot of prestige associated with colonial languages because of their use in higher education and government; the people who've spent years learning those languages naturally don't want to give up that status. Another is that most African languages don't contain scientific and technical vocabulary; one of the chapters here was on the various ways of doing that (compounding, loan words, "calquing" - lots o' technical linguistic stuff here.)

And a third issue is the incredible number of languages & dialects involved. Printing 200 versions of every textbook? What a logistical nightmare. So the linguists see their main job as "standardisation and harmonisation" of dialects within a given language, and within language families. This involves things like choosing a single writing system (whether it's the Roman alphabet or one developed specifically for African languages) and standardizing the spelling of words that actually are pronounced similarly in different dialects. (I think the parallel to this might be if English words in the U.S. were spelled differently depending on whether they were being used by someone with a Southern accent, someone from the Midwest, someone from Boston...)

The research center that published this book has a whole series, some of which appear highly technical (Ibibio Phonetics and Phonology) and others more on cultural issues (Knowledge in Black and White: The Impact of Apartheid on the Production and Reproduction of Knowledge.) I'm interested to keep reading on this topic.

(Cross-posted to my journal.)

sairaali.livejournal.com

After months of lurking and reading reviews, I decided to actually start keeping track of my reads. My first four (possibly five?) reviews are here.

The list and just the list:

1. An African Prayer Book Desmond Tutu
2. Anatopsis Chris Abouzeid (although I'm not sure how the author identifies so I'm not sure whether to count it)
3. The Sinner Tess Gerritsen
4. Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits Laila Lailami
5. Radical Welcome Stephanie Spellers

quasiradiant.livejournal.com

This is my first post here. Thought I'd raise my head and do more than just lurk in the shadows.

So, for my first post, two books of poetry. I find poetry very difficult to discuss like this, even though I read a great deal and enjoy it a lot. I'll give a shot, though, in case there are any other poetry lovers out there looking for something new.

( Dread, by Ai )

+

( Song of Farewell, by Jane Okot p'Bitek )

kouredios.livejournal.com

I found this community by way of the RaceFail posts, and I'm inordinately happy to be able to contribute something positive other than listening, which I've been doing since January.

These first four books aren't new to me--they are books that I'm currently teaching in the 11th/12th grade English class I teach at a local charter school, the first two of which I have taught many times before as a graduate student TA at UMass Amherst. As such, I'm not sure I'm going to count them towards my 50, but I wanted to post them for others' benefit.

( Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart )

( Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories )

( Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis )

( Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner )
That's it, from me, for now.

waelisc.livejournal.com

I bought this about seven years ago, looking for something to supplement our denominational prayer book for a youth group gathering at my church. At the time I scanned through it in a hurry and never went back to it, but this challenge motivated me to go back and read it properly.

Desmond Tutu was the (Anglican) bishop of Lesotho, South Africa when he won the Nobel Peace Prize (1984) for his leadership in the anti-apartheid movement. Soon after, he was elected Archbishop of Capetown, which put him at the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa (their first black archbishop ever). He's still alive, though retired from being Archbishop now.

The prayers here are collected from many different sources. He says in the intro the intent was to represent "African Christian and non-Christian spirituality." The majority of the prayers seem to be from African traditional religions and from African Christian traditions. Many of the attributions are just to a location, or an ethnic group, so I wasn't always sure. There are also some prayers written by whites who either grew up in Africa or made their lives there. There are several hymns and quotes from African Americans. There are several from the Caribbean Council of Churches. There are a dozen or more from early Christian theologians who lived in Egypt or North Africa in the days of the Roman Empire: Augustine, Origen, Athanasius.

I was rather sorry to see so much room given to Augustine even though, yes, he lived in Africa, because his writing is available in so many other editions. I was also dismayed that there was nothing (identifiable to me) to represent Islam, which does have a long tradition in many parts of Africa.

Nevertheless there were many beautiful prayers. ( Here are a few of the ones that I read and re-read the most. ) As I recall I used several prayers from this collection with my kids at church, but the one they responded to most was a long meditation called Lord, The Motor Under Me Is Running Hot - because it had a narrative, I expect. It's told by a bus driver, reflecting on the challenges of his day and praying for the safety of his passengers and himself on the road.

sanguinity

28. Marguerite Abouet, Aya.
29. Marguerite Abouet, Aya of Yop City.

These didn't really resonate with me, I'm sorry to say -- they've gotten excellent reviews before on this comm, and I'm sure they will again in the future.

( But just not my thing. )

30. Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Skim.

Ah, but I loved this. Beautiful, poignant graphic novel about a teenage, goth, lesbian, Japanese-Canadian pagan, trying to learn to love and feel and yet not be too deeply wounded by the world. Oh, she like to broke my heart.

There were many touches here that I loved. The artwork had a way of blindsiding me with panels that would betray a thought that Skim is unwilling to voice, not even in her internal monologue. Then there's the weird, grasping futility of being a teenager, of living life in borrowed spaces, on borrowed equipment, in other people's margins. And there were the lovely inter-character dynamics: the people who ostensibly care about you are too often the people who are the most casually cruel to you; the anti-whatever crusaders trampling and destroying those who they supposedly care about; the irresistable seduction of someone who "gets" you; the way one's feelings -- especially one's crushes -- don't respond to what one knows to be true; the isolation one can feel from people who supposedly share one's identities, belying the idea that it is one's identities that isolate one from others; how difficult it can be to find someone to trust, even in a world that is full of people clamoring at you that they can be trusted. And here is a portrayal of depression, pain, and surviving someone else's suicide that rings true.

I make it sound depressing, don't I? For some, I suppose, it might be. For others, though -- for me -- it's a portrait of pushing on, grasping for a way to live life around the pain, and to find the people who aren't afraid of your pain. The people who are willing to laugh with you, even in the face of what you both know.

waelisc.livejournal.com

This is nonfiction; the full title is Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika.

Saki Mafundikwa is a Zimbabwean graphic designer and started ZIVA, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. About 20 years ago he became interested in the diverse writing systems developed in various African cultures, and started collecting info on them during his travels.

The topic is really broader than alphabets per se. The author explains in the beginning that he's going to use "alphabet" as an umbrella term to include alphabets, syllabaries, pictographs, ideographs, and written symbols in general. A linguist would probably cringe at lumping those all together, but honestly, African Writing Systems sounds dry and academic compared to Afrikan Alphabets and he does want people who aren't linguists to get interested in the topic.

There's lots of beautiful artwork, and the section on Bantu symbol writing was probably the most interesting of all because the meaning of each symbol was explained. Unfortunately, many of the other writing systems were just pages and pages of symbols without any explanation of how they were developed.

For some of the pictographic and ideographic systems this was baffling, because over time the symbols become very stylized and you can't tell if the symbol now identified as 'dou' started as a tree or a warrior with a shield or a field of maize or what. It's just pretty. Since the author is a visual artist, I guess he was more focused on appreciating the symbols for their aesthetic qualities more than I was.

So I found this book both moving and frustrating. Mafundikwa is passionate and eloquent about African people reclaiming traditional cultures and his desire to see a revitalization of writing systems developed in Africa, for African languages, by native speakers of those languages.

But I was frustrated that the book wasn't so much "the story of writing in Afrika" as "a scrapbook about Afrikan writing," and there were so many points where I wanted to know more. So, now I'm interested to find a book about African language & writing by someone with more of a linguistics background. And hopefully also a PoC.

annwfyn.livejournal.com

Two radically different books for me to review today.

First of all, the one I started first, and finished last.

'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo

I picked this book up randomly in Waterstones. Dambisa Moyo is from Zambia, but left in her teens to pursue her education. She's studied economics at Harvard and Oxford, and worked for the World Bank. She also believes that international aid is currently destroying Africa and needs to stop.

First of all, I have to say that I feel like I am far far to uninformed on this subject to be able to critique this book properly, or really at all. I don't know enough about Africa, or enough about the aid industry there, although a lot of what she said was both painful (as a well meaning western liberal) but seemed to ring very true.

( Read more... )

And now the other, slightly less brain-worky read of the week.

'Visions of Heat' by Nalini Singh

'Visions of Heat' is a sequal to 'Slave to Sensation' which was one of the book recs I picked up here. It follows a few months on from where 'Slave to Sensation' left off, and although it does feature the same characters Sascha and Lucas are no longer the focus. Instead it's the story of a new couple - Faith DarkStar and Vaughn, the were-jaguar.

( Review follows. But beware! Spoilers lurk within )