₦airaland Forum

RuuDie:
i know a whole lot of people don't yet dig what your poem is all about that's why it ain't been getting so much reviews.

but its so, so OUTRAGEOUS    --- really dig your flow man; your imagination is top-notch & i particularly love this -- "philtred" -- great ingenuity, modify words 2 suit your needs! boy, was that ending shrouded in some funny mystery!

doff my hat for u man --- really do!

I'm sure almost everyone (if not even all) who read this poem understood it. It doesn't take a genius as the message is quite clear. Maybe they have not commented because it isn't their cup of tea.

I think your story needs a lot of work. It seems like you have a good idea to begin with and you need to pay attention to the little details. There are grammatical errors in the story. Any good author will tell you that having an great idea is not what makes a good story. The devil is in the detail.

An example is "he stood under their favourite spot, the large baobab tree", should read he stood on their favourite spot, under the large baobab tree (this is unless you are trying to say that their favourite spot was not under the tree but the tree itself, which would be weird because then it wont be a spot per se ^{but if that was your intention I apologise for mentioning that line}).

Mariama Ba wrote So Long a Letter.

Ndipe:
Nobody needs a Nobel prize to prove that they are literary geniuses.

I agree. However, a million bucks will go a long way to assist a winner and there is a lot of prestige attached to the prize, as well as the fact that winning the prize opens many doors for winners.

Orikinla:
SMC,
Ben will win the Nobel Prize before he turns 52.
The Nobel Prize committee on Literature plays some politics with their nominations.
They may give it to Salman Rushdie before Ben Okri.
I see Okri winning it before 2012.

For him to prove your (and Karen King's) prediction right (i.e. of being the youngest Nigerian Nobel Literature prize winner), Ben Okri must win the Nobel prize by 2010. Though this is a possibility, I do not think it is likely. If he wins it in 2011, he will merely equal Soyinka's feat. A prize in any year after 2011 will mean he has not even managed to match Soyinka.

I think Okri is good, but in the face of numerous fantastic literary works by different authors, I honestly do not think he has a snowball's chance in hell of achieving what you say by 2010 (this is my personal opinion and I may be proven wrong. In fact, I'd be chuffed if I am proved to be wrong because that will mean another feather in the cap of our motherland ).

U learn new things everytime.

Orikinla,

Quite a number of Nigeria in diaspora also avidly subscribe to the "Ovation" and "City People" culture. What can I say, the problem of lack of reading may not have it's only roots in poverty, but I think poverty plays a role in the unwillingless of the masses to read. I mean, Nigeria is a country that has been confirmed by the World bank to have a poplulation of people in which 60% live below the poverty line. In a country of about 150 million people, if an author is lucky to gain a readership of just 750 thousand of the populace (amounting to about 0.5%), such an author will have a bestseller on his/her hands.

People always criticise me for speaking out against Nigeria generally, but the reality of the matter is that Nigeria is a country that has seriously gone astray. What will you call a country which at the time of independence was hailed as a shining beacon and which was stated to be one of the most likely countries to advance into "developed" country status. Instead, what we have is a country rated as one of the 30 poorest nations on earth and one of the corrupt countries. A country where hardwork, honesty and dedication rarely yields dividends. A country where most people are obsessed by the "Get Rich Quick" mentality.

Generally, Nigeria is a country of Greed, Corruption, Poverty and above all, Nigeria is a country of Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams.

I am not being pessimistic (so please don't start preaching to me), but except some miracle happens, I do not see Nigeria recovering within the next 50 years from the quagmire it is currently embroiled in.

ALL HAIL NIGERIA!

Orikinla,

Does this mean you are retracting your earlier assertions that Ben Okri will be the youngest winner or the Nobel Prize in Literature? I need to remind you and Karen King that Soyinka won the Nobel prize while he was 52 and Ben Okri is already 48 (so that leaves him 4 years within which he can accomplish this feat). I personally do not think he will beat Soyinka though I may be wrong. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen. Let us continue to watch.

Further to Orikinla's post titled "We need to Write and Publish More Books in Nigeria", I think that we really need to get more people reading in Nigeria. Attached below is an Interview given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  in 2005 to the Guardian Newspaper. I can't get my mind over the fact that people in Nigeria will pay more for a glossy "rag" than for a book. AMAZING!!!

What do you guys think?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  writes on on why no one reads fiction in Nigeria
(Saturday February 19 2005, The Guardian)


I went home to Nigeria shortly after my novel Purple Hibiscus was shortlisted for the Orange prize. I was in the national news. There were commentaries in the newspapers on how I had represented my country well, how I had become a role model for young people, how I
had done Nigerians proud. Yet if my novel had been first published in Nigeria, none of this would have happened. I would have had to self-publish. I would not have had an editor or publicity or marketing. The newspapers would have taken scant notice, if at all, perhaps running a summary on a review page. I would not have been entered for the Orange prize and, most of all, I would expect only family and friends to buy the novel because we are a country of people who do
not regard and do not read literature.

Many Nigerians say the reason for this is obvious: the economy. We are too poor to read. Literature is, after all, a middle-class preserve and since our middle class is being economically eroded, reading has been put aside for the pursuit of basic survival. University lecturers, for example, who were firmly middle- class 40 years ago, now straddle the line between middle and working-class conditions. They are often owed arrears of salaries and the salaries themselves are so insufficient that many turn to force-selling pamphlets to their students. In addition, electricity is erratic all over the country, fuel prices - and food prices - keep rising, running
water is a luxury and the roads are full of pot-holes. Life is precarious and harsh; it is reasonable then to expect that reading would become an irrelevance.

Yet books sell well in Nigeria. In all the bookshops I have visited, the shelves are overwhelmingly stocked with Christian and business self-help books, God's
Plan for You, The Richest Man in Babylon. This suggests, then, that our economy has not prevented us from reading; it has only prevented us from reading literature. The real reason for this may not be the economy itself, however, but what we have turned to in response to the economy: a scarcity-driven brand of religion where pastors in sleek churches assure you
that God wants you to have that new Mercedes-Benz.

Islam, a stronger force in Nigeria than Christianity, has had its own scarcity-driven mutations, but
Christian religiosity exploded in the early 1990s, when Nigeria was passed from one dictator to the other, amid the trauma of an annulled democratic election. Things had never been so bad and, in the face of a brutal government and an effete civil society, Nigerians turned to a new brand of Christianity. It was vibrant; it was intensely focused on material progress, with pastors quoting scripture that portrayed wealth as a spiritual virtue; and it was loud. People were required to talk up God all the time. Government officials were required to be publicly holy, as if this would assuage their corruption. So my former state governor, who did not pay teachers' salaries, held public prayer meetings every week. Fraudsters gave interviews where they
attributed their wealth to God. Our remarkably unpopular president said he was chosen by God.
Religion has become our answer to a failed economy; "My God is a rich God" and "Only God can save Nigeria" are popular expressions.

Christian and business self-help books sell, then, because they sustain the status quo: the former affirm that God wants you to make money while the latter teach you how to go about it. They are disquieting in their obviousness and seem informed by a rudimentary
utilitarianism: what practical and immediate 
benefit will I get from this book? Even the fiction
and poetry used as textbooks are approached in the
same way: students read them alongside pamphlets such
as  Sample Questions and Answers and they are only a
means of making up the required subjects for O-levels.
There is no room for real literature and perhaps this
is why there seems to be no room for subtlety in
Nigerian public life. Because we are not literary, we
are too literal. Because our religiosity is
individualistic, we have neglected social
consciousness.

And we have lost a sense of nuance, from the brashly self-aggrandising public letters our president writes to his detractors to the way a university student told me: "The title of your book is confusing. A book with that title should be about a flower."

Of course religion cannot be the only reason we do not read literature; there are other reasons as complex as our society. But religion is central. If our economy were to improve dramatically, our focus on scarcity would reduce, and so would our participation in the
God-give-me-money religion of desperation. The monopoly of religious and business books would be broken and publishers would take on fiction. At present, they are willing to publish and re-publish only literature used as textbooks since the market exists by necessity. General fiction has to fall back on vanity publishing - as I would have had to for  Purple Hibiscus - because it constitutes a high-risk venture. Foreign-published books don't fare much better. In Bookworm, a highbrow Lagos bookshop, there were novels by Moses Isegawa, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy. The owner was about to have a give-away sale when I visited. "Nobody buys them," she said. The fiction titles that sell to her upwardly mobile clientele are those by John Grisham; even the elite does not read serious literature. She did hope to sell a fair amount of the Nigerian edition of  Purple Hibiscus, just published by Farafina in Lagos. My publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a former banker, an idealist, a believer in literature, is selling each copy for 500 naira in a
country where glossy monthly magazines cost 1,000 naira. It is his gamble on reviving literature. We are not a nation of people who do not care for literature, he thinks, but one of enervated literary enthusiasts waiting to be jolted into reading again. Until our economy improves, his approach will be to make literature so affordable that the middle-class will
buy it in addition to books like  The Jesus Path to Making Millions .

The other day, at the Nigerian Television Authority studio where I did an interview, a woman in her early 20s came up to me and said, "Oh, you're Chimamanda. I really liked your book but I didn't like the ending. I have never finished a novel before. Now I want to read
another novel."

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
--

I thought this should come back to the front of postings. Don't you agree?

Let the Debate Rage on.

viee:
The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey--I am African."
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.
"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.
"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. "West African sepia"--and as afterthought,
"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding
"DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."
"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?" "Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused--
Foolishly, madam--by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black--One moment, madam!"--sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears--"Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather
See for yourself?"

What I love about the poem is the way it has racism down pat (especially the way it was back then predominantly in the 1950s and 1960s), although it is more subtle than what actually obtained.

Olowoaiye:
this is serious. cupid's arrow dead on target in nairaland

Hmmm, the man was only joking o. F.Y.I., He has a wife/partner so abeg o before someone else calls for my head.

Orikinla:
Hype,
Thank you.

Please, as you read, correct me if you notice mistakes in my use of English.
That is why I am posting my short and shorter stories for others to read and tell me how to improve.
Because, I am not like the "Aje Butter" writers, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ozodinma Iweala, Chris Abani, Sefi Atta and Diana Evans. So, my narrrative could be raw in - between the lines. And my "darling" SMC who would have been a good critic prefers to digress from the content and context of my prose to prick my sensitive face.

SMC,
[b]I LIKE,
What? [/b]
The more you behave like this, the more I am attracted to you.
And I don't mind to go all the way, if the coast is clear.

I will welcome you by spreading roses before your delicate feet as you walk into my arms
As I lead you to the fountain of the whispering palms
And I will anoint your feet with olive oil
For your footprints will bless our soil
And I will bring you my Persian Rose in a golden horn
In the golden horn of the white unicorn
The white unicorn descending from Orion
From Orion in the dawn of Aurora.

See what I am saying? I paid you a compliment o. I said I liked your story, but oh no, you won't take it at face value.

P.S. I don't have a vendetta against you. I have seen some stuff you have written which I didn't like and which I never said anything about. I like this one and I can see it leading to a nice juicy story.

Take the compliment graciously and quit while you are ahead mate.

Orikinla:
It's My LIFE. It's My PREROGATIVE!!! LEAVE ME ALONE !!!

N.B:

You prefer to read the posts where you can pick on Orikinla and you ignore the more solemn posts.

Is your vagina still itching you?

Give my regards to your mother.
But if she is dead, light a candle for her.
God bless.

HAAAA. Why would I want to give your regards to my mother? Do you know her or is it that you just want my mother dead or something? No thanks to you, my mother is hale and hearty and by the grace of God she will continue to be so for a long time to come. Just because I criticise some of what you write does not mean that you should wish me and my family ill. ABEG IF NA JOKE, STOP AM ONE TIME. _{I will ignore the vagina jibe}

OMG. Please hurry up and leave. Maybe after you have been to the west, you will let us hear word. Also, maybe you'll learn modesty and humility on your sojourn abroad.

I LIKE!!! [However, there are some grammatical errors/typos in the poem but still, I quite like it].

iice:
Love it!

I Don't!!! In your quest for alliterative and rhyming effect, you seem to have sacrificed substance for form.

iice:
Absolutely love it!

Me Too!!!