eish. it seems the lovely lola shoneyin, author of the secret lives of baba segi's wives, has not made the orange prize shortlist. :( as disappointed as i am, still gaining inspiration and courage from sierra leonean aminatta forna's the memory of love--competing against a smattering irish-, british-, american- and canadian-authored works for this most prestigious award.

though clearly biased, i truly believe that african writers--primarily african women writers--will inherit the earth. i have my own stake in this, of course; though equally humbled, inspired, and emboldened by the work of so many others. i am particularly fond of those who deal with this slippery matter of love. i study them well.

it seemed appropriate to post a small excerpt from the memory of love below. it's brilliant. you can read the entire first chapter here. and find out more about the book and author here. --AL.

"I heard a song, a morning as I walked to college. It came to me across the radio playing on a stall I passed. A song from far away, about a lost love. At least so I imagined, I didn’t understand the words, only the melody. But in the low notes I could hear the loss this man had suffered. And in the high notes I understood too that it was a song about something that could never be. I had not wept in years. But I did, there and then, on the side of a dusty street, surrounded by strangers. The melody stayed with me for years.

This is how it is when you glimpse a woman for the first time, a woman you know you could love. People are wrong when they talk of love at first sight. It is neither love nor lust. No. As she walks away from you, what you feel is loss. A premonition of loss."

-- from Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love

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.