Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - GRANTA highlights Chinelo Okparanta - New Voices: Runs Girl

Ikhede, thanks for directing us to this painfully poignant and beautiful
"story". It breathes a poetic realism into the difficult choices and decisions
compelled upon people, in this case, young women, in the face of the brutal
and crass inequalities that have become normalized. That Mama is a metaphor
(among many others) for the pain and suffering of many, but also a symbol of a
departed moral order, does not elide the obvious: that, indeed, many Mamas
accept Ada's experience as necessary. There can be no more Eves.

I'm going to make this compulsory reading in my undergraduate course.
P.

Quoting Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>:

> "The year Mama fell sick was the year
> Njideka confessed to me that she was a runs girl. I should have known.
> She walked around campus with shiny silk blouses hanging low on her
> shoulders, her stilettos making tiny dents in the earth. That year, the
> runs girls began to circulate the University of Port Harcourt campus.
> Or, maybe they'd always been around. Maybe I only noticed them that
> year, with their expensive outfits and accessories – money written all
> over their bodies – because Mama was falling apart, and there was almost
> nothing I could do."
>  
> - Chinelo Okparanta
>
> - Read the piecehere...
>
>
> - Ikhide
>  
> Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com
> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
> Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
>
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