AiW note: Earlier this week we published Kwame Osei-Poku’s review of Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction From Cameroon and Nigeria (2020, The Mantle). Compiled by Dami Ajayi, Dzekashu MacViban, and Emmanuel Iduma, Limbe to Lagos is an edited collection of non-fiction… Read More ›
Rebecca Jones
A Sense of Africa in The Exploration of Reminiscences: A Review of Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction From Cameroon and Nigeria
AiW Guest: Kwame Osei-Poku (Ph.D.), University of Ghana. When a collection of stories succeeds in making its readers identify with and care about real issues, triggering sensations of empathy and reinforcing readers’ own reminiscences, we realise the powerful impact of… Read More ›
Review: A Sojourner’s Tale – Kola Tubosun’s ‘Edwardsville by Heart’
AiW Guest: Tade Ipadeola. “Light tornado alert tonight at Edwardsville. Stay indoors please, when you hear storm alerts!” a text said. ‘Tornado’, p.33 We look out for the traveler’s tale especially. They bear that extra flavour of the road not… Read More ›
2014 Africa Writes #P&P – What space is there for African travel writing? ‘Broadening the Gaze’
AiW note: Rebecca Jones was at the 2014 Africa Writes Festival in London. We republish her coverage of the African & Diaspora Travel Writing panel here as part of our Africa Writes #PastAndPresent weekender, anticipating the online conversations of the… Read More ›
Words on… Past & Present: re-presenting Jumoke Verissimo’s review of Elnathan John’s ‘Born on a Tuesday’ – The Truth Outside Context
AiW note: This re-post of Jumoke Verissimo’s review of Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday (Cassava Republic, 2016), was first published on AiW as part of the celebrations for the launch of Cassava Republic Press in the UK, back on this same… Read More ›
Responding to Carli Coetzee’s ‘Unsettling the Air-conditioned Room’: Journal Work as Ethos (1/2)
AiW Guest Rotimi Fasan AiW note: Africa in Words has long been engaged with the work of Carli Coetzee, and we particularly admire the care that she takes in thinking through the nature of our work as academics and the… Read More ›
Review – Against conventions: on Femi Morgan’s Renegade (2019)
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè. Sometimes, impositions on our spaces and feelings – in the form of law, tradition or custom – try to curtail our inclinations and stifle our freedom of expression. In some nations subject to despotic regimes, restrictions are… Read More ›
A Tragic Story of War: Discussing Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love at the BBC Bookclub
AiW Guest Zahra Banday Zahra Banday attended a recent recording of BBC Radio 4’s Bookclub discussing Aminatta Forna’s novel The Memory of Love (2011). The BBC Bookclub programme aired on 1st September 2019; you can listen again here, or catch… Read More ›
Talking #Africadia and Afropolitanism: An Interview with Artist Siwa Mgoboza
AiW Guest: Stacey Kennedy Siwa Mgboza is an emerging artistic talent from South Africa working primarily with a South African textile called isiShweshwe. He is represented by Loft Art Gallery in Casablanca, Morocco, Matter Gallery in Toronto, Canada, BoxArt Gallery… Read More ›
Defragmenting the African Creative Industry. African Superheroes Series.
AiW Guest Abena Addai Boakye The fourth post in the African Superheroes series is written by Abena Addai Boakye, Communications Manager and project lead for Afrocomix at Leti Arts. She handles the daily communicative aspects of Leti and runs point on… Read More ›
Krotoa-Eva’s suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements, by Toni Stuart
AiW Guest Toni Stuart Africa in Words is thrilled to be able to share with you this audio-visual poem by Toni Stuart, an excerpt from her collection-in-progress Krotoa-Eva’s suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements. Toni Stuart is a… Read More ›
Warsaw in the 1980’s Through African Eyes
AiW Guest Mamadou Diouf AiW Guest Katarzyna Kubin continues her series examining the relationship between Africa and Eastern/Central Europe, with this guest piece by Mamadou Diouf. I have lived in Warsaw for over thirty years, but I still remember January 1983. There was an on-going… Read More ›
“I write what I like”: Aké Arts & Book Festival 2016 in Abeokuta, Nigeria
AiW Guest: Nathan Suhr-Sytsma The fourth incarnation of the Aké Arts & Book Festival took place 15-19 November 2016, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, the birthplace of Wole Soyinka, and shares a name with Soyinka’s classic memoir of his childhood, Aké. The… Read More ›
Q&A: Ifeanyi Awachie on curating Yale’s Africa Salon: bringing African conversations and African cool to Yale
Africa Salon is a contemporary African arts and culture festival founded in 2015 at Yale University. The Salon is a week-long feast of visual art, music, dance, literature, film and more from Africa and the diaspora, and it has brought… Read More ›
Sahel Sounds: Inspiration from West Africa
AiW Guest: Kev Kelly This post originally appeared on Sign Records’ blog and is re-published with their permission. We love Sahel Sounds. Set up by the adventurous Christopher Kirkley, it started as a project to release interesting and rare music… Read More ›
Eric 1Key’s Entre 2: a ‘story about a hero and a coward’
AiW Guest: Ceri Whatley AiW Note: This is the third in a series of four posts in which Ceri Whatley discusses Rwandan artist Eric 1Key’s album Entre 2, as well as presenting original translations of 1Key’s lyrics from Kinyarwanda and French… Read More ›
Eric 1Key’s Entre 2 -Virtually Yours, an ‘online love story’
AiW Guest: Ceri Whatley AiW Note: This is the second in a series of four posts in which Ceri Whatley discusses Rwandan artist Eric 1Key’s album Entre 2, as well as presenting original translations of 1Key’s lyrics from Kinyarwanda and French to English. We are… Read More ›
Rwandan hip-hop poet Eric 1Key: Entre 2
AiW Guest: Ceri Whatley AiW Note: This is the first in a series of four posts in which Ceri Whatley discusses Rwandan artist Eric 1Key’s album Entre 2, as well as presenting original translations of 1Key’s lyrics from Kinyarwanda and French to English. We… Read More ›
An Interview with Prof. Ernest Nneji Emenyonu on Pita Nwana’s Omenuko
AiW Guest: Kalapi Sen It is a truism in today’s world that ‘African literature’ covers a major portion of literary scholarship, included now on high-school syllabi as well as at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. And one name that has… Read More ›
Les Blancs – Farber’s production provoked reflection on innocence, the personal and the political, and choosing sides
AiW Guest Katarzyna Kubin The National Theatre’s production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, Les Blancs, directed by Yaël Farber, involved phenomenal use of sound, music and lighting, live fire on stage, and a nuanced mastery of the smallest details: from the… Read More ›