RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Austine Amanze Akpuda: Cyprian Ekwensi - A memorial tribute

Thank you very much, Honourable Ikhide, for sharing that detailed memorial tribute!

 

It was a great 2008 published memorial tribute to Cyprian Ekwensi (who had died in November of 2007), whose Jagua Nana introduced many of us to "African romance through reading"! After perusing that book, I called a Nigerian brother and asked him to read the book, adding: "Brother, find that book to read; that book can give you a romantic satisfaction. Na waa oo!"

 

Interestingly, it is ironic that several Igbo great men and women were born outside Igboland, several of them in Hausaland. Dr. Azikiwe, for example, was one of them, born in the former Northern Region of Nigeria. Ekwensi and General Ojukwu were also born in the north, Ekwensi in Minna and General Ojukwu in Zungeru.  I understand that several of the Igbo leaders, born in the former Northern Nigeria, also spoke Hausa. That was why some of us (African students in the UK) used to tease about Okonkwo Edem's Radio Biafra references to "Hausa-Fulani Oligarchy"! Interesting!

 

A.B. Assensoh. 

 

 

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ikhide [xokigbo@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 9:30 PM
To: Toyin Falola
Cc: Ederi@yahoogroups.com; krazitivity@yahoogroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Austine Amanze Akpuda: Cyprian Ekwensi - A memorial tribute

"Jagua Nana made Ekwensi famous and it has been one of the most read African novels. No extensive discussion of the image of the urban woman in African Literature will be complete without a reference to Ekwensi's Jagua Nana or any of his other 'people of the city' novels. In The Sociology of Urban Women's Image in African Literature, Kenneth Little offers his verdict: "it goes without saying that in the literature, Jagua in Ekwensi's Jagua Nana, is the courtesan par excellence." The boldness with which Ekwensi handled his subject of the city-demonized urban woman, and the furore resulting from the botched filming of Jagua Nana may have accounted for the proliferation of this taboo subject in the later African novels of INC Aniebo (Madame Obbo in The Journey Within), Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Wanja in Petals of Blood) and Meja Mwangi (Wini in Going Down River Road). 

In response to a Bernth Lindfors' question "when did you become aware that Africans were writing?" (part of the Lindfors series, Africa Talks), Taban Lo Liyong responds: "even when I was younger, I think I had read Cyprian Ekwensi's The Passport of Mallam llia." Lo Liyong was probably twenty two years when Ekwensi's children's fiction was published. The 'pan-African' and seemingly trans-African setting of Ekwensi's adventure story which even includes East and Central African segments may also have impressed itself on Taban Lo Liyong.

Ekwensi's contributions to the growth of children's Literature in Africa is one that can be better appreciated as an aspect of his perception of the literary artist as raconteur. His first published book, Ikolo the Wrestler and other Ibo Tales (1947) is a collection of folktales for children. Further publication of his folklores in the 1950s (in the West African Review and West African Annual) prepared him for the rich harvest of the 1960s during which he issued An African Night's Entertainment (1962), The Great Elephant Bird (1965) and The Boa Suitor (1966). It was also concerning one of his works from this period, An African Night's Entertainment, that he was accused of plagiarism. In a defence offered in interview with the folklorist Ernest Emenyonu, Ekwensi sounded very much like a very knowledgeable scholar of oral performances: "It is a folk tale. It is a story which if you live long enough in Northern Nigeria as I did you are bound to hear one day. Everybody who grows up hears it… like the Igbo stories of the tortoise…""

 

- Austine Amanze Akpuda

Probably the most important, most well-documented piece of work I could find on the Internet, on Cyprian Ekwensi. Every lover of literature should read this...

Please click here and enjoy. 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com

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Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

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