i have read a book named "looking for transwonderland", written by ken saro-wiwa's daughter noo saro-wiwa.

wow, what a reminder for me, i can feel and see again the heat and chaos of lagos , the infringed osogbo heritage , the shrinking chad lake, the oil fields in port harcourt, the empty model city abuja, the masqueraders in calabar, the emir ceremony in kano, the lousy and exorbitant nigerian hotels without power supply....

her depiction is vivid and detailed, and she has traveled almost the whole nigeria. what a book , what a woman.

i can see she is proud of her original nationality which is nigerian, but she is objective about things she sees in nigeria, such as the dilapidated streets, the poor and uneducated majority grassroots, and corruption, the jollof rice she likes, the crazy danfos, and even the scam....

so surprised that i have experienced these many things in nigeria without realizing or remembering them , had i not read this reminder.

as a diaspora , she had chances to encounter people from different classes, somehow so did I . this brings more reason for me to feel an empathy to her. and she liked "shoddy" nollywood movies "which do not bother to cater to the international audiance", so did I. but at least, she was disappointed by the "village" shop mall in 2007 while i was happy to see the shipshape shoprite and grab a bite in it in 2015.


do you like her? she is the nigeria writer with the least african trace i have ever known. her thoughts and wording are west/international, although with a bit of abstract patriotism. to an outsider , me, i think she is very cool and impartial. she should be a gem and pride of nigeria. is she really so in your eyes? and what about her father? is he a bonus or minus for her?

Ftc

i dont want to read books written by white writers on african cointries.

i especially detest the "journalism" genre.

but this book is written by a black woman about her own country. and it is not a jumble of critique which is called "journalism" . it is a real travelogue. see what is out there, and say what one sees.

what a wonderful book. i feel privileged to read this book. by the way, she is so "non-black", but nonetheless "local" too. enigmatically fascinating.

i peruse her work very slowly, almost 40 pages per day. and it is fun to read nigerian pidgin english "wetin" "commot" , etc. among her purely immaculate english.

igbesachick:
i peruse her work very slowly, almost 40 pages per day. and it is fun to read nigerian pidgin english "wetin" "commot" , etc. among her purely immaculate english.

I stay in Lusada, are you from igbesa?