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African Writers’ Corner
RSS FeedInterview with Zukiswa Wanner
2009-04-09, Issue 427
Conversations with WritersIn an interview with Conversations with Writers, Zukiswa Wanner discusses her books Behind Every Successful Man and The Madams.
Life is constant negotiation
An interview with H. Nigel Thomas
H Nigel Thomas
2009-04-02, Issue 426
'I write largely because reality’s surface is for me hardly more than a mask', says Canadian author H. Nigel Thomas in an interview with Conversations with Writers,'What’s worth knowing is beneath it'. Thomas talks about his life as a writer, and about his recent novel, Return to Arcadia, an exploration of a mixed-race man's quest for sanity as he tries to cast off the burdens bequeathed by his colonial heritage.
Home is not only a place but a state of mind - an interview with Rory Kilalea
Conversations with Writers
2009-03-26, Issue 425
'That is our function as writers', says Zimbabwean writer Rory Kilalea, 'to tell it as we see it'. In an interview with Conversations with Writers, Kilalea speaks about authors whose work has influenced him, his central concerns as a writer, and the novel he is currently working on, The Disappointed Diplomat. It is the story of a young man trying to forget his home in Zimbabwe and finding that home is not only a place but a state of mind.
Crying for Darfur
Lemlem Tsegaw
2009-03-19, Issue 424
The Sudan That unknown village Repugnant stage A child killed A mother raped A father tortured The whole world Witnessed Yet did nothing I You Through silence We all are accomplices...
The Liberator
Lemlem Tsegaw
2009-03-19, Issue 424
The Liberator at Markato what is his motto? The Liberator, who wore camouflage in lieu of Dr.'s gown has put a red hat on. That Liberator rules at night as Leninist. The godless, boorish but clever, works day and night sitting at the Ad...
When death stalks our land AGAIN
Kirigo wa Wanyugi
2009-03-11, Issue 423
Walumbe's* hand stalks our land AGAIN Oh, each generation has to lose brilliant lives So the rich can gorge themselves to death while we die of hunger Oh Walumbe's hand stalks this land AGAIN Oi, oi, the young fall to death!...
Writers and progress in east Africa
Ronald Elly Wanda
2009-03-11, Issue 423
Lamenting the thin supply of organic African critical and theoretical thinking about the continent, Ronald Elly Wanda argues for the place of African writers in addressing an ‘imposed history’. In light of the understandable tendency of much of the continent’s people to identify more with their own local groups than distant, largely exploitative nation-states, Wanda argues for the need for greater regionalisation as a route towards true independence from colonialism. Underlining the importance of African writers addressing African themes, the author contends that uncovering a genuine spirit of renaissance will only occur when the promotion of African intellectualism is truly normalised.
Tears of a non-resident father: A conversation with emotions
Bhekinkosi Moyo
2009-03-11, Issue 423
Originally written back in March 2008 in the wake of Kenya’s post-election crisis, Bhekinkosi Moyo offers some points of reflection on the apparent ease with which citizens’ rights can be manipulated and abused for political ends. Weighing up the emotional difficulty of being a non-resident parent, Moyo reconsiders some of the negative ideas around the supposed callousness of men willing to leave their families for business trips, and decides that there is perhaps ultimately little difference between absent fathers and those chained to their desks at the office.
Interview with Oliver Mtukudzi
Jessie Kabwila Kapasula
2009-03-05, Issue 422
In an interview with one of Africa’s musical giants at Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, Jessie Kabwila Kapasula talks to Oliver Mtukudzi. Mtukudzi, from Zimbabwe, discusses the rich themes behind his work, as well as broader points of discussion such as the contemporary misuse of cultural practices around the death of a brother, parental responsibilities, and the objectification of women in popular music.
J M Kariuki
Philo Ikonya
2009-03-05, Issue 422
Memories of this day in 1975 still live on our streets, huts and streams. Our books, hearts and thoughts, in Kenya's womb. Convinced our freedoms Our country we revive, Refusing to die inside, We hope against hope, And stem the tide, ...
Mzalendo Kariuki thirty years later
Onyango Oloo
2009-03-05, Issue 422
they flung your carcass to the hyenas of ngong not knowing that a maasai mchungaji known as musaita ole tunda would retrieve your remains and expose moi's brazen canard about your mythical excursion to zambia they bombed the otc buses in...
Interview with Monica Arac de Nyeko
Shailja Patel
2009-02-26, Issue 421
Discussing her approach to writing and her family’s response to her success, Shailja Patel interviews the 2007 Caine Prize Winner Monica Arac de Nyeko.
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Interview with Valerie Tagwira
World Press Review
2009-02-18, Issue 420
In an interview with the World Press Review, the Zimbabwean author Valerie Tagwira talks about the background to and influences behind her work.
The Cut
Maryam Sheikh Abdi
2009-02-12, Issue 419
I was only six years old when they led me to the bush, to my slaughterhouse. Too young to know what it all entailed, I walked lazily towards the waiting women. Deep within me was the desire to be cut, as pain was my destiny: it is the b...
The Obama-Nation
Jalil A. Muntaqim
2009-02-12, Issue 419
Will the Obama-Nation become an abomination if it fails to stop the bombing of nations? From Gaza to Afghanistan, the American people must take a stand and tell Obama to forge a better plan to free the land of Zionist and the Taliban. To stan...
For Oscar
Sheilagh ‘Cat’ Brooks
2009-02-12, Issue 419
Oscar Grant was brutally killed by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police (in California, USA) in the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, an event that was captured on video and widely circulated across the internet. In a poetic response, Sheilagh ‘Cat’ Brooks reflects on the impact of this event.
Looking down from Mt. Kenya
Wangui wa Goro
2009-02-05, Issue 418
Where do you hope to join my life Flowing Not like a river But as torrents and currents of the tide Buffeted by multitudinous waters of change Going back or forth? Lapping up the high and low banks Dazzling the plains with illuminous floodings...
Interview with Lilian Masitera
Conversations with Writers
2009-02-05, Issue 418
In an interview with Conversations with Writers, the Zimbabwean author Lilian Masitera talks about the background to and influences behind her work.
Manifesto 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.
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