"Don’t be a fucking victim. The continent is for you to make. That whole thing of the publishers don’t, I don’t . . . can you link me up with publishers abroad? And I am like, tell me the name of one publisher abroad. You can’t be living in the age of Google and cheap internet where you can find out the resources available to you as a young African writer through the social network and other avenues, waiting for your father to make the policy or arrangements for you is immoral. In fact it is evil. It’s your job to make it." -- Binyavanga Wainaina

I really love this quote. It articulates exactly what troubles me when people ask me to help them find out about  __X__ in __Y__, particularly when X has something to do with film, literature, or the arts, and Y is the United States.

I'm not as much annoyed by the question as baffled that so many folks don't take the initiative to empower themselves with the information available free online. Every university course, publishing house, and film studio of repute has a web presence. If you like, think of Google as the Divine and the search bar as a miracle delivery service. Type: I'd like to make feature films in Accra with grant money. Hit return.

The universe awaits you.

But let's take it a little further: Is the idea that, because I'm a writer/director living in New York (and sometimes Nigeria), I must know everything about film and literature in the U.S. (and Nigeria)? How rational is that thought? In fact, I could be one of those writer/directors who lives under a rock and thinks of those who market themselves as art whores. Maybe I don't trust agents or producers, so I don't go out of my way to meet any. Maybe I think money is the root of all evil, so I just write a blog and give my work away for free.

Think about it: do you really want to entrust your future success to a madwoman? Why not trust yourself?

What I'm trying to say is, as a person who'd like to be a successful writer/director, I have had to take responsibility for my knowledge, craft, and participation in my industry of choice. I don't believe there is someone who can give or take my career away, some all powerful person who has all the connections and holds the purse strings. I empower myself to be that person. That's the only way you can make it in any business.

I cannot say I have not been guilty of wanting a mentor to tell me all the answers, give me every contact in her address book, and grease the wheels of my career--and the fact that none has materialized has not lessened the desire. But I realize I've paid myself in advance by getting up the courage to network, make those introductions myself, and start becoming more comfortable talking about my work.

And while I usually try to answer the people who ask my advice, and will continue to do so, more and more I'd like to start challenging those folks to find out for themselves (although this trial-by-fire has always struck me as harsh when I've heard it from well-seasoned film and literature veterans). Your initiative is really an outward demonstration of your commitment to any endeavor. Without it, you will squander any amount of opportunities thrown your way.

So if you really don't have the guts to get up early and write, go to the festival or conference, or send that agent a rough draft of your feature script, take a step back, regroup, and figure out what you'd rather be doing. Because the artist's path is a long road that nobody else can walk for you.

Some books that helped me figure this out:

Be Your Own Mentor by Sheila Wellington
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

--Peace and love, AL.

Some really interesting writing going on at Petina Gappah's blog. She shares the first two sentences of her upcoming novel, The Book of Memory:

"Nyaya yawanditi ndikunyorere pasi haina kutanga nekupondwa kwaLloyd Henderson kwete, asi kuti yakatanga mumwe musi muna Kukadzi, pandaiva kamwana kemakore pfumbamwe, zuva richirova nhongonya yangu nemaronda aiva kumeso kwangu, baba namai vangu ndokunditengesera kune mumwewo mutorwa. Ndinoti zvangu ndibaba namai vangu vakadaro, as chokwadi ndechekuti vaiva mai vangu chete."

I don't speak Shona, and I don't understand a word, but maybe that's okay. Gappah writes:

"As part of my commitment to being a Real Genuine Authentic African Writer, I have chosen to give these sentences to you in the Real Genuine Authentic African language of Shona. And if you don't understand it, well, that could well mean you are not as Real and Genuine an Authentic African as me...to be an African writer is to be proud to be an African Writer and it is all About the Positive Image of Africa and so on. The authentic, positive image. So that's me from now on, Really Genuinely and Authentically and Most Positively African:) And if the meaning of my authentic positive African words is lost to you, too bad, as long as I am authentic:):):) And positive!!"

She is of course joking here, responding to recent criticism of her outspoken desire to not be labeled an "African writer," but there is some truth in it. We had a conversation in one of my writing classes in college, Prof Marvina White, about writers choosing deliberately not to write in English as a political statement, instead using their native languages.

I am always searching the pages of certain books by certain writers to see how they treat this (adichie, achebe, abani), how I will treat this in mine. Adichie tends to explain the phrase right in the text. Or she sometimes writes, in anticipation, that such and such phrase was spoken in Ibo, while then writing the phrase in English.

I wonder what it is lost when these Ibo phrases are written in English? Or Gappah's Shona phrase is translated? When the English itself often lacks sufficient letters and/or meanings to represent the language of origin. I think there is something lost in the translation.

And then we can look at issues of dialect and how to represent English spoken by a non-native speaker. Or pidgin, in the work of Adaora Lily Ulasi. (Can someone please explain to me what Abani's doing in Graceland? It took reading a critical essay to learn that I am not the only one not vibing his imaginary dialect.)

There is nothing worse than writing that should sound familiar, but intead sounds foreign or false. Reading Secrets by Somali Nuruddin Farah, who has been racking up awards left and right, I couldn't help but wonder why this man is writing in English at all when it is largely useless at communicating his characters' feelings and thoughts.

And I think Achebe's English reads perfectly well, but sometimes it is overly aggressive and forceful, anti-poetic, unable to transmit the warmth or emotion he might find in his native tongue. He wields English like a sword, or perhaps that is just my impression of the man.

So many languages, so many choices. How to write them? I am having big thoughts today. Here is another perspective from Emmanuel Sigauke.

Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book Award for her collection of short stories, An Elegy for Easterly. I first heard about her in an African Voices interview (Part One below, find the rest on YouTube) with memoirist Alexandra Fuller, author of the phenomenal Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. I remember watching Petina bristle sitting beside Fuller, a white Rhodesian woman, talking about the plight of the Zimbabwean writer.

Her palpable defensiveness, though thinly veiled in pleasantries, was diffused by the authenticity with which Fuller interrogated her own entitlement as a white woman. And I found myself confused about whether hers was a fruitless anger. But I have come to understand that what I interpreted as anger was only Petina's embodiment of radical autonomy. On closer examination, she is simply engaging in a disruptive act by writing, pushing against a deeply ingrained power structure that was not meant to include her own voice. In that way, I too may appear "angry" at times (and I certainly will own up to that).

Thank goodness for vindication.

my sis hipped me to this today...oprah selected "say you're one of them," a short story by Uwem Akpan, for her latest book club selection. i am speechless. not only is he naija, but an akwa ibomite from ikot ekpene. (in case there is any confusion about my pride, my father's village is ifa ikot idang and my mother's mbak etoi. akwa ibom isong-oooo!)

his bio says he started writing fiction at night during seminary, then went on to earn an mfa in writing from UMich. what do you call a jesuit priest with a master's in fiction writing? a nigerian. :)

perhaps if oprah and her legion followers have room in their hearts for uwem then there might be some more for me. i leave tomorrow for my writer's residency. nearly hyperventilated over a bin of travel toothpaste today at Target (couldn't decide which one i wanted). i don't know how to pack. taking deep breaths...

This might be the lamest thing I've ever seen. Not the text, by the brilliant Binyavanga Wainaina, but rather the video.

Is it that they stuck Djimon Hounsou, a two-time Oscar-nominated actor, in a 10x12 bedroom with a little girl surrounded by photographs and taxidermied animals...or the cliche music...or the montage of starving children at the end that only reinforces stereotypes of Africa, turning the entire piece on its head...or the tagline/plug, "Great Music Saves Lives"? Maybe a combination of all of them.

This is exactly my problem with Bono's whole RED campaign. If making change really were as easy as buying a T-shirt, then we wouldn't need more activists, we'd need more hawkers. And I really don't think rock stars should liken themselves to politicians, but I guess I'm no expert.