To prove my point. I wrote my posting on funmi’s email concerning the new novel by adebayo guessing that the references to adichie and atwood gestured toward western creative writing programs, which are now shaping african literature produced and published in the diaspora.
Here is the wikipedia entry on her: Ayobami Adebayo was born in Lagos, Nigeria, shortly after, her family moved to Ilesa and then to Ile-Ife, where she spent most of her childhood in the University Staff Quarters of Obafemi Awolowo University.[2][3] She studied at Obafemi Awolowo University, earning BA and MA degrees in Literature in English, and in 2014 she went to study Creative Writing (MA Prose fiction) at the University of East Anglia, where she was awarded an International Bursary.[4][5] She has also studied with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood.[
I would add a footnote to my last posting. I do not see in the work of cole or abani that affection for the affect of extended metaphors or elaborate use of similes, adjectives that describe, that signify one’s sophistication. abani’s prose is anchored largely in queer literature, at its best. Cole is a modernist of the highest order.
adichie’s realism, social realism, is closer to a throwback to the kinds of literature we expect at the popular level, well polished and very pertinent to issues of our day.
Each has his or her strengths.
But my postings, here and before, concern the affectations of style which seem sooooo marked these days, marked and marketed.
And lest I be misnunderstood, I will repeat that one of my favorite writers of our times is helen oyeyemi.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-803-8839
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
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