from left: faith adiele, adewale maja-pearce, njabulo ndabele, tash aw, chimamanda ngozi adichie
attended a wonderful night of literature, music and conversation at the farafina trust literary evening at lagos's eko hotel, culminating the ten-day writers workshop taught by chimamanda ngozi adichie and co-facilitators binyavanga wainaina, tash aw, adewale maja-pearce, and faith adiele.

i had a wonderful time. a wonderful time. most of all because i got to spend some down time with the workshop participants--including a dear friend, elnathan john, and caine prize shortlister lauri kubuitsile--and sample the wonderful camaraderie that has made the group one of the finest in the workshop's history.

after cocktails, opening remarks from farafina's muhtar bakare, and an address from the managing director of sponsor nigerian breweries, workshop participants received certificates at center stage and took their seats. up next were readings from the facilitators and guest writers eghosa imasuen, jumoke verrissimmo, odia ofeimun, and professor njabulo ndabele.

i have too many favorite lines to quote them here, but i loved hearing from: binyavanga wainaina's upcoming memoir, one day i will write about this place, about coming of age in kenya; an unrequited love story from eghosa imasuen's upcoming fine boys, due out from farafina this year; odia ofeimun's pidgin poem; and another love story, this one from tash aw's map of the invisible world.

the evening ended with a panel discussion, book signings, music, and mingling with one of the finest crowds ever--shout out to tosin, wana, and okey adichie, chimamanda's brother and able workshop organizer to whom kudos are much deserved.

i'm looking forward to reading more from the facilitators and the participants in the future. so excited for writing, for literature, for nigeria and the world of african writing. in fact, i am thoroughly smitten. --AL.

farafina trust creative writing workshop participants
alligator legs (l.) with participant gimba kakanda

on my lunch break today, i read chimamanda's delicious new short story, "ceiling," in the summer issue of granta. i took too long on break, so i didn't have time to copy down an excerpt for you. it's only available in print, so forgive the disappointment if you visited the link. i will have to pop by mcnally jackson again this week and excerpt it for you. i wish i could also scan the image facing the story of a woman standing like an amazon over an entire city--her right foot in one neighborhood, and the left in another. but, sadly, i can't afford granta.

"ceiling" is about a man who marries and then realizes he is no longer in love with his wife or his life, the revelation brought on by an email from a former girlfriend. there's something refreshingly transgressive about stories with africans on blackberrys. i am definitely sold.

this topic, about falling out of love with one's life, keeps popping up for me, first in a short story by one of my writing workshop colleagues, and then in the film revolutionary road, that i finally saw last night. i suppose it is only because i am not happy with my life either--stuck in this job, trying to figure out what's next.

if only these stories also came with answers. --AL.

The New Yorker released their list of 20 favorite writers under 40. I'm not sure what importance to give this list, as I've never been a huge fan of the gilded, slightly esoteric and irrelevant publication, but Chimamanda made it, so I guess that's good. Although, notwithstanding ChiChi, I am also slightly skeptical of writers cosigned by the mainstream American literary establishment.

I was actually surprised that wonderboy Junot Diaz wasn't on it, but maybe he's already 40.

One of my favorite online literary mags has a piece up by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It has been published before under different cover.

I won't comment, lest I be accused of bemoaning my literary failures again, but one of the passages really tickled me. Like the protagonist, I also sport dreadlocks and refuse to eat meat. ;)

***
Excerpt from Quality Street, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
guest-edited by Claire Messud

...Perhaps Sochienne should never have been sent to school in America. But who knew a private university in Ohio would mean that Sochienne would return six years later, announcing that she was engaged to a Kenyan, refusing to eat meat, asking the baffled houseboys about fair wages, and wearing her hair in long rubbery dreadlocks. What should have alerted Mrs. Njoku, she realized now, was discovering, on her first visit to her daughter’s university, that the students wore bathroom slippers to their lectures. Oh, mummy, they are wearing sandals because of this rare blast of warm weather, Sochienne said when she pointed it out, as though giving bathroom slippers the American label of sandals would make them more respectable. There was, also, a certain alarming sloppiness to the students. Mrs. Njoku had been assured that wealthy Americans sent their children there—the outrageous tuition certainly suggested that—but here were young people in slouchy T-shirts and discolored beads around their necks. Still, she had not worried too much about her daughter then, nor did she in the following years, because she assumed that the child she raised would retain her good sense. She had wanted Sochienne to be educated in England after completing primary school and had suggested that they send her to Cheltenham Ladies College, where many of their friends sent their daughters, but her husband said Sochienne would not go abroad until university because he did not want her to turn out like those Akindele children who had spent so long in England that they referred to fellow Nigerians as “those people.” He wanted his daughter to attend secondary school in Nigeria so that she would know who she was. Most of all, he wanted her to get an American university education. America was the future. It was time for Nigerians to get over their colonial clinging. Mrs. Njoku should have resisted more. If only her husband were alive now to see what Sochienne had become; so much for knowing who she was...

asa > asa

Asa opened for Les Nubians and Oumou Sangare at Central Park Summerstage yesterday. I've been digging her for a few months after sampling her debut album on a friend's iPod, though I never copped it. A pint-sized little thing, her voice and presence are larger than life. What I can only call a cross between Lucky Dube, Fela, Wunmi, and Tracy Chapman -- whatever that means. Something old and something new in her style. She'll be playing @ Le Poisson Rouge tonight, you should check her out.

the thing around your neck > chimamanda ngozi adichie
I caught a book reading by Chimamanda @ 192 Books in Chelsea a few weeks ago. When I say caught, I mean ran frantically from work and stood in the back of the room catching my breath as her words dripped like honey into my ears. It seems unfair that someone can be so young, so beautiful, so talented, and so warm -- speaking with me later on, as she signed my book, about our mutual friend (author Marie-Elena John Smith) who co-taught her writers' workshop in Lagos.

Her latest is a collection of short stories that contemplate what it means to be an African in America, set in -- amongst other places -- New York City. So wonderful how the familiar can become foreign just by seeing through someone else's eyes. Definitely worth a read, though I almost choked up a lung paying $27 (!) for the hardcover.

the jackson 5 in africa > imagenation
Next week I will be checking out The Jackson 5 in Africa, a rare, never-before-seen documentary brought to New York City by ImageNation. It seems that the collection of African investors who funded the film ran out of money before they could finish it (it clocks in at 50 minutes). They never had a strong impetus to show it until now, given the recent death of Michael Jackson that prompted ImageNation to request a special public screening. I can't wait to see mikey jackson get down to some djembes. My homie Funmi will be on the 1's and 2's spinning some MJ classics after the show. Check out a film clip on YouTube.

If I were in charge of rewriting the canon, it would look a lot different than it does today. Now that we have a black family at the center of the world, it's time that we shifted our reading material, too.

Enjoy,
Iquo.

**********
Achebe Things Fall Apart
Adichie Half of a Yellow Sun
Ali Infidel
Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Baldwin Notes of a Native Son
Beah A Long Way Gone
Bell Gospel Choirs
Cafalli-Sforza Genes, Peoples and Languages
Dangarembga Nervous Conditions
De Beauvoir The Second Sex
DuBois Souls of Black Folk
Ellison Invisible Man
Fanon Black Skin White Masks
Fanon The Wretched of the Earth
Giddings When and Where I Enter
Guy-Sheftall Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought
Hanh Being Peace
Hochschild King Leopold's Ghost
hooks Sisters of the Yam
hooks Black Looks: Race and Representation
Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jacobs, Equiano, Douglas The Classic Slave Narratives
James The Black Jacobins
Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
Marx The Communist Manifesto
Milton Paradise Lost
Morrison The Bluest Eye
Ngugi Weep Not, Child
Okri The Famished Road
Plath The Bell Jar
Sapphire Push
Saramago Blindness
Sembene God's Bits of Wood
Soyinka Ake
Thurman Jesus and the Disinherited
Walker The Colored Purple
Williams The Destruction of Black Civilization
Wilson The Piano Lesson

I'm writing my memoirs. Yes, it has been brought to my attention that, at only 25-years-old, what could I possibly have to say about life at this point? Well, many things.

I am a first-generation American-born Naija. That distinction has always been a source of ire toward my parents for robbing me of my birthright. You see, even if you were born in NG and whisked away at four-months-old to the US, somehow you're more authentic than those of us born here. All I know is, my favorite foods are plantain & eggs and coconut rice. I can cook edikangikong, okra soup, afang soup, atama soup, pepper soup, egusi soup, fufu, jollof rice, coconut rice, akara, chin chin, and beans. I can prepare plantain at least ten different ways. Count to ten, say hello, goodbye, I'm sorry, come and eat, sit down, where are you going, what is your name, nice to meet you, how much does it cost, i love you. I know when someone's talking about me and usually, if I put enough effort into listening, I know what they're saying.

My mom used to take my sisters and me back "home," as we call it, every two years. We knew our cousins in Nigeria better than we knew the ones in the States. When my mom started a dance troupe, she took us to the village to learn traditional Ibibio dance properly. Between the palm wine and goat pepper soup, I always knew I was different from an American, but something else distinguished me from a black American too. As many identity issues as it created for me growing up -- other kids said I had snakes in my hair when I wore it threaded -- it has helped me find my place as an adult: what I am here to do, to write my life.

So I am writing a book about growing up as an African in America. It is a not-so-easy task -- not just the writing part, which takes a lot out of me emotionally, but selling the idea. I have submitted the proposal to a dozen agents and keep opening up rejection letters that say, "You're a wonderful writer, but I would have a difficult time getting this story published."

And I am not used to rejection. Usually, if I apply a certain amount of energy in a particular direction, whatever I want comes to me. But with this book, I have put out more energy than ever before without receiving much validation.

I wanted to blog a summer reading list today, but I realized that what I really want to do is publish and read my own book. I tend to believe that more women my age want to tell their stories, but I have to ask, where are they? I look to contemporary African authors like Ama Ata Aidoo, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, and Chimamanda Adichie for inspiration, but there should be so many more.

We have to tell our own stories or they die with us. And I look forward to the day when our stories, no longer at the margins, are placed squarely at the center of history. So these agents and editors see my memoir as something essential -- a must- instead of a cannot-publish -- that tells the very central story of Africans in America, of America itself.