Africa Reading Challenge joined

My colleague book blogger, KinnaReads is hosting the Africa Reading Challenge for 2012.  [Please do see her website for more details]

Challenge Period

January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012

Region

The entire African continent, including its island-states, which are often overlooked. Please refer to this Wikipedia “list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa”. Pre-colonial empires and regions are also included.

Reading Goal

5 books. That’s it. There will be no other levels. Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books. Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.

Genres

Fiction – novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children’s books. Note: You can choose to read a number of individual and uncollected short stories. In this case, 12 such stories would constitute 1 book. Individual poems do not count but books of poetry do.

Non-fiction – memoirs, autobiographies, history and current events

My tentative reading list

• Chicago, by Alaa al Aswany – North Africa/Egypt
• Tales from different tails, by Nana Awere Damoah – West Africa/Ghana
• An elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah – Central Africa/Zimbabwe – short stories
• Broken glass, by Alain Mabanckou – Central Africa/Congo – in translation from French
• The cry of Winnie Mandela, by Njabulo Ndebele – South Africa
• Half-blood blues, by Esi Edugyan – this is African/Ghanaian by descent

I am fairly sure that I will actually end up reading more than these, as in 2011 I read 19 books by Africans/about Africa.  And as I write, I am currently reading 10 years of the Caine prize for African writing (for Accra Book Club), Zoo story by Lauren Beukes and You’re not a country Africa, by Pius Adesanmi (a collection of essays)

Thanks a lot to Kinna for taking this initiative.  Now to get reading, and writing about it

Two recent literary events in Accra

Two literary events during this past week, and they took place back to back – on the 18th and 19th of January.

The first I have known about for quite some time, as it involved a senior colleague at work. The second was totally unexpected – and I literally had less than three hours notice [admittedly partly my fault]!  The first was a book launch, the second wetted my appetite for a forthcoming work.  Again the first was fairly formal – with speakers on a podium and a high table, while the other was outside, around an alluring blue swimming pool which pulled my thoughts towards a dip, even if it was only my feet!  The first was academic though impinging on policy and the Chairman did not mince words; the second was supposedly non-political – at least in the contemporary sense – though the readings from the forthcoming book written by the Vice-President of Ghana referred more to the politics of the 1970s, while blended in with recollections of growing up in the northern town of Tamale. And as I write, I realise that both books have children on their covers!

Publisher's blurb

The first book, Children’s rights in Ghana: reality or rhetoric, is edited by three academics, one of whom, Nana Apt is Dean of Academics at Ashesi University College where I work. I had already seen a hard copy version of the book, which was published in the US. This was a paperback edition, specifically meant for the Ghanaian market published by a UK based company called Mot Juste. I have to admit I was especially impressed by the Chairman, Ken Attafuah, who did not hesitate to be straightforward, yet picked up some of the essentials of each person who played a role in the event.

The second event was readings by various well-known Ghanaian writers, in honour of Bloomsbury (USA) senior editor, Nancy Miller, who was in Ghana for a brief visit, working with the Vice-President of Ghana who is publishing his memoirs – My first coup d’etat and other true stories from the lost decades of Africa. Several of the readings were amusing – mainly for their descriptions of events which many of us know or have experienced. The highlight was of course quite a long reading by John Dramani Mahama of an excerpt from his forthcoming book – he chose a  tale of first teenage love interspersed with how the Acheampong regime impinged on his own family.

A couple of colleagues have written about the event, including Nana Awere Damoah who was also present (see his blog with the same content on Facebook.)  Nana Fredua-Agyeman also commented on writing by heads of state and its relative scarcity here in Ghana.

I safely say that many of us are very much looking forward to Mahama’s book actually arriving here in Ghana.

A personal list of key Ghanaian authors

I have been making a list of Ghanaian authors who do creative writing/fiction/plays/poetry and these are the ones I came up with.  It is very much a personal list, and I have read most of them.

NB:  This is work in progress, and I am more than happy to admit that I will have forgotten some people.  Most long works are available via Amazon – though sometimes it may not be the US Amazon, but the UK or Canadian one!   For short stories I have not indicated any collections, for which I do apologize in advance.

Older writers (many are deceased)

• Kobina Sekyi:  The Blinkards ( play)
• Ayi Kwei Armah:  The beautyful ones are not yet born, Two thousand seasons, The healers, Fragments (plus some literary criticism, which I have not included)
• Amu Djoleto:  The strange man, Money Galore, Hurricane of dust + some children’s books
• Efua Sutherland: Marriage of Anansewa, Edufa, Voice in the forest  - Wrote plays mostly
• Francis Selormey:  Narrow Path
• Kofi Awoonor: This earth my brother + some non-fiction
• Mawugbe, Efo Kojo:  The prison graduate .  Wrote plays mostly

Older (in age) and still active

• Ama Ata Aidoo:  Changes, Our sister Killjoy, Anowa, Dilemma of a ghost, No sweetness here, Diplomatic pounds and other stories, African love stories (ed), Angry letter in January
• Kojo Laing : Search sweet country, Woman of the aeroplanes, Big Bishop Roko and the alter gangsters, Major Gentl and the Achimota wars
• Manu Herbstein :  Ama, Brave music of a distant drum 
• Atukwei Okai: Poet
• Kofi Anyidoho : The place we call home, Praise song for the land.  Poet

More contemporary (part of Ghanaian diaspora)

• Benjamin Kwakye: The clothes of nakedness, The sun by night, The other crucifix
• Nii Ayikwei Parkes: Tail of the blue bird, The makings of you
• Mohammed Naseehu Ali : Prophet of Zongo Street and other stories
• Kwei J Quartey: Wife of the gods, Children of the street 
• Yaba Badoe :  True murder
• Marilyn Heward Mills: Cloth girl, The association of foreign spouses
• Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond: Powder necklace
• Akosua Busia:  Seasons of beento blackbird
• Lesley Lokko: Sundowners, Bitter chocolate, One secret summer, A private affair, Rich girl, poor girl.  Architect, who also writes chick lit
• Selasi Taiye : Ghana must go (To be published in 2012) + well acclaimed short stories
• Esi Edugyan:  Half-blood blues, The second life of Samuel Tyne.  Canadian, born of Ghanaian immigrants
• Glover, Boakyewaa:  Circles
• Kuukua Dzigbordi Yomekpe:  Writing memoir; creative non-fiction mostly

More contemporary (living in Ghana)

• Amma Darko:  The housemaid, Faceless, Beyond the horizon, Not without flowers
• Camynta Baezie:  The African agenda 
• G A Agambila:  Journey
• Ayesha Harruna Attah:  Harmattan rain
• Meri Nana-Ama Danquah: The black body, Willow weep for me, Shaking the tree, Becoming American.  Writes mostly non-fiction
• Farida Bedwei: Definition of a miracle
• Mamle Kabu:   writes short stories
• Franka Andoh:  writes short stories
• Alba Konadu Sumprim :  The imported Ghanaian, A place of beautiful nonsense.  Both are satirical
• Kofi Akpabli: A sense of savannah, Tickling the Ghanaian.  Writes creative non-fiction
• Nana Awere Damoah:  Tales from different tails, Excursions in my mind, Through the gates of thought

Non-Ghanaians (with close associations to Ghana)

• Ellen Banda-Aaku:  Patchwork, Wandi’s little secret.  Also writes short stories
• Fiona Leonard:  The chicken thief 
• Sarah Mussi: Door of no return, The last of the warrior kings.  Teen/children’s fiction

What do you think of this list?

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Favourite reads of 2011

In a very belated response to my colleague, ImageNations, asking for our Favourite reads of 2011, here are
mine:

• The city and the city, by China Mieville. From one of the best contemporary SF/fantasy authors – a “noir” mystery set in two parallel but intersecting universes that seem to be somewhere in Eastern Europe
• The boy in the striped pyjamas, by John Boyne. I read this story set in wartime Germany/Poland before watching the film, and found it very moving.  I know the main character is supposed to be nine years old, but many of us can be naive about what is really going around us.
• Alice in wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. The classic, which I re-read again, and still loved, and still found something different to appreciate.  I read it on my Kindle, and did admit that I found the lack of illustrations a little disconcerting.  I guess that shows my age!
• The historian, by Elizabeth Kostova.  Normally I am not into horror/vampire lit, but this tale of Dracula was pretty good. It is long though.
• Drive, by Daniel Pink.  Someone ordered this for work, and I did find it interesting.
• State of wonder, by Ann Patchett.  Read this for Accra Book Club.
• Imperial life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.  I bought a couple of years ago, and was prompted to read it after watching the film Green Zone and noting that it was based on Chandrasekaran’s book.  The film was enjoyable but in my opinion its relationship to the book is somewhat tenuous.  And I thought the book was really good, one of the best reads of 2011.
• The education of a British-protected child, by Chinua Achebe.  A wonderful set of essays from the master of Nigerian literature.
• Hallelujah! the welcome table, by Maya Angelou.  Although I suspect I bought this because of its recipes, the stories behind the food were much more interesting.

The above are the books I gave the highest ratings to during the year – a mixture I do admit of the serious, and not-so serious, but then this is a reflection of the type of reading which I do.

Thanks Nana Fredua Agyeman for taking the initiative, so others could follow!

TEDxDzorwulu in Accra

I was privileged to attend TEDxDzorwulu (with the Twitter hashtag #TEDxDz) on Saturday 10 December 2011. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay the whole day, because of another personal commitment, but I was very glad that I did go, as one of my favourite bloggers, Kinna Likimani (http://kinnareads.wordpress.com/) was one of the speakers. My only concern when I arrived was whether she would be one of the morning speakers or in the afternoon. Luckily – for me – and for many of us,  Kinna was the first speaker of the day!

Kinna spoke passionately about the functional illiteracy which is horribly common here in Ghana, illustrating her points with her own experience. She also emphasized the fact that all Ghanaians are multilingual and that there is a “wall of English” which is a barrier to all too many children in rural areas – and which leads them to a destiny of illiteracy and often poverty.

In addition to two other speakers – Fred Deegbe and Sheila Bartels-Sam – each speaking of failure and then successful entrepreneurship, there were three videos in the morning :

• Patrick Awuah’s 2007 TED video on educating leaders in Africa  [which I have watched many times but still find moving]
• Steve Jobs now famous Stanford graduation speech 
• actor/filmmaker, Jareth Merz’s comments on identity and filming an election in Ghana+ a trailer of the actual film

Then lunch outside the comfort zone, as we were advised to sit with people we didn’t know or hadn’t met before.  And that was good – a Liberian entrepreneur, a Canadian/Ghanaian relocating to Ghana, a volunteer, someone working for an international donor organization, a photographer and a tekkie – were in the group I was sitting and talking with.  Once again I felt challenged.

I had to leave early – another engagement – but I came away inspired, and wishing that there were more of such events – with people who challenge some of our existing beliefts and encourage us to strive.

Open journal systems and public libraries in Ghana

It seems that the end of the year is particularly busy for events of all types – and books and libraries  in this part of the world are not immune.

In the course of my working life, I have done some editing and proof-reading of papers/articles etc but never going through all the processes involved in publishing material.  So an opportunity to attend a CARLIGH (Consortium of Academic & Research Libraries in Ghana) workshop on GHANJOL and online publishing was a definite learning experience to be taken up, especially as Ashesi University College is planning to start its own journal sometime in the near future.

Most of the workshop was taken up dealing with a particular platform for publishing journals online – Open Journal Systems -  which was developed by the Public Knowledge Project and hosted at Simon Fraser University in Canada.  When we started the practical aspects I realised I had actually read articles from journals published under this platform – and these are from all over the world as well.   The key roles involved in publishing journals, especially online – authors, editors, reviewers, and others were also covered, so for those of us who are new to this area, there were guidelines to take away and processes and workflows one could use.  There was also discussion about Open Access and more specifically about the possibility of there being a GHANJOL – Ghana Journals Online – which would be part of the INASP project, Journals Online.

The other event was a half-day discussion on the role of public libraries in development, the second half of a full-day consultation facilitated by EIFL and IREX, with support from Ghana Library Association (GLA).  The event came out of the six country study conducted on behalf of EIFL of public perceptions of public libraries in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.  The first part of the day was to sensitize many librarians and key stakeholders on the results of the report, and the second half, which I attended, widened the stakeholders to include non-library personnel working in information, including representatives from ICT companies such as TechAIDE and GINKS.

What was particularly interesting for me – apart from the opportunity to meet colleagues and put forth some of my own opinions – was the chance to hear some people actually saying that “some thinking out of the box” was essential for the public libraries to work effectively in Ghana.

Reading and libraries in Ghana

Thanks to two colleagues for posting subjects very dear to my heart:

• Kinnareads on The reader in Ghana - which talks about the lack of reading, except for school and academic related purposes
• Multilogue: mind and matter on Community power - which talks about the libraries that the author has used here in Ghana, very personal and emotional, but important nonetheless

I can only say thanks to both authors for expressing these sentiments which do need to be talked about.

The association of foreign spouses, by Marilyn Heward Mills: Some reflections

For Ghanaian Literature week, at Kinnareads

The association of foreign spouses is Marilyn Heward Mills’ second novel, published in early 2011,  four years after her Costa prize nominated Cloth girl. I had enjoyed Cloth Girl, and was intrigued to hear that I actually knew the author’s mother, though I had never met Marilyn herself. I was even more intrigued when I heard that Heward Mills’ second novel was to be The association of foreign spouses, as the title very much echoed the name of a real organization to which I belong here in Ghana: the International Spouses Association of Ghana (ISAG).

I wondered whether this new novel was going to be a kind of “roman a clef” – with characters who were actually people I knew. But somehow it took longer for the book to be written, and published, and it rather left my horizon, until I got a email mentioning its publication.

How could I resist? Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a copy here in Ghana, so had to resort to buying one outside.

I read The association of foreign spouses in October of this year. It was interesting, but I think more because of its descriptions being familiar, rather than necessarily because of its being a memorable novel. While reading I was constantly wondering whether certain characters were based on real people – and even though the author’s website denies this  - there is a great deal in the descriptions of people, place and events which rings true, even though it is fiction.

Some of the characters are more clearly drawn than others, with women definitely coming off better than men:

• Eva: British, married to architect Alfred, not working, spending a lot of time on her house and garden. Definitely the main focus of the book.
• Dahlia: West Indian British, married to high-powered lawyer Vincent, who is the “baddy” of the book
• Margrit: German, married to doctor Kojo, devoted to her dogs and garden, but without children
• Yelena: Russian, with twins fathered by doctor Wisdom who has a wife , runs a beauty salon in her house to earn enough to support herself and her children.
• Auntie Gee: Alfred’s mother, and Eva’s mother-in-law – always seemingly “meddling” – at least from Eva’s point of view – yet in her own way trying to get Eva and her children to adapt to Ghana.

To some extent people in this book could be considered stereotypes, but many of the incidents described – and the atmosphere surrounding the coups and successive military governments – are actually what happened or pretty close to it. Personally I feel that the families and individuals portrayed actually lived lives at the higher end of the economic scale even one did hear that life was not as good as it had been at the time of independence.  I was also a little surprised that so few of the key women characters were working.

Ghana in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a difficult place to live – whether you were a national or a foreigner married to a Ghanaian. There were real shortages of what we called “essential commodities” – such as sugar, milk, soap, toilet paper and bread – not to speak of the not so essentials of beer and soft drinks. At times food in sufficient quantities was difficult to obtain and required considerable effort.  These were times of real hunger for many; many had the prominent neck bones, locally described as “Rawlings collar”.

I am not saying that the lifestyle my family lived during those times was completely Ghanaian – it wasn’t, but it certainly wasn’t the full-blown expatriate lifestyle either. We didn’t have the money, or access to specially imported goods that made that possible.

So I guess my reaction to Heward Mills’ The association of foreign spouses is very much an emotional one – of remembering, and reliving times which were not the best, but out of which I, along with the characters in her book, developed into stronger and more capable human beings.    I will not deny that I appreciated their struggles, and empathized with them.

Recent books, libraries and information events

The last couple of weeks have been full of events related to books, reading, libraries and information, so
maybe I should take a bit of time to mention some of them.

The first two were what I would call “regulars”:

Ghana Voices, which part of the Writers Project of Ghana , featured prize-winning author Elizabeth-Irene Baitie reading from her latest novel for teens, The twelfth heart,  a boarding school based story. This was the evening that Accra suffered floods, so the audience wasn’t as large as expected, but Baitie is not only a good reader, but enthusiastic about both her writing, and her professional work. I already had a copy of the book, so at least I managed to get the author’s autograph, plus it has moved from a TBR shelf to my desk, which is definitely up on my priority list.

Accra Book Club had its monthly gathering, and this time the book was Ann Patchett’s widely acclaimed book,
State of wonder, which interesting enough I think we all read on Kindles! Although we were all somewhat critical of certain aspects of the book, that didn’t detract from its being a good choice for a book discussion. Our next discussion will be Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, so I’ve started that – again on my Kindle.

The last three are more work and professionally oriented:

One of the Africa representatives of Elsevier,  a large
publisher of STM (science, technology and medicine) books, journals and other materials, did a presentation
of several of their database products, including ScienceDirect and Scopus . It was obviously a sales pitch, but still interesting
nonetheless. And a good opportunity to meet three colleagues whom I hadn’t seen for a while. The only thing
which upset me was the fact that twenty-seven people had signed up to attend, but only ten actually came!

I also did a quick visit to the 10th Ghana International Book Fair, which took place at the Ghana
International Trade Fair. As I went in the afternoon, there were large numbers of schoolchildren in uniform
around – some looking at books, the odd ones reading some, and others just rejoycing in being at the Fair on
an officially sanctioned outing. I didn’t buy much – as most of the books available are either textbooks,
supporting material for basic education, or books for children. I did want some dictionaries but couldn’t
find the variety I was looking for. I wasn’t happy.

The last event was the Ghana Library Association Seminar and AGM – a one day event which alternates every
year with a two day Congress and AGM at which elections are held. This year’s event was held a bit earlier
than usual – to coincide with the GIBF – whose theme did include libraries, after all – and was held at the
Ghana International Trade Fair. Close to a hundred librarians from all over Ghana gathered to discuss the
future of libraries, and how our own association will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2012. There was lots
of interaction between friends and colleagues, though as usual there were many issues left unresolved.

Now I have to catch up with work!