i don't really agree. this is a new golden age of pretty strong, even great writing. a new generation of young, bright, exciting writers, many of them. celebrated, typically, by ikhide, one after another. hard to keep up.
my second point: i do generally agree with gloria re afropessimists. i can't think of much i've read recently that really falls into that category (except for cole's One Day Is for the Thief--i really wish he would disavow that novel).
but i think it is important--crucial in fact--that a distinction be made between criticism (which might well be based upon Blood-Diamonds-cliched visions of an africa that has gone wrong) versus critique, which generally can be understood as an intellectual analysis of a text or situation, which might entail strong criticisms, as in a marxist analysis of class exploitation; or, for instance, the analyses of how corruption works, how the resource trade and weapons trade function, etc.
chidi doesn't say it, but it is implied in his comment, that we shouldn't shy away from confronting the negative, without falling into the traps of what gloria fears.
i tried to open a discussion on that fine line by following up on appiah's cosmopolitanism where he ends up denying africans the possibility of museum housing of african art/masks/ statues/etc. (i don't like calling a great mask an artifact--sounds condescending)
i do believe that the thread on that issue led to the two conflicting positions--don't return anything versus return everything--which corresponded to the afro-pessimist vs the afro-optimist.
it should not be an either or. and perhaps when gloria pointed out the possibilities of housing collections in ethiopia and s africa, there might be seen a possible way of forging a path that is more realist than all or nothing.
what is still more important to me is to recognize how the power implicit in the cosmopolitanist position, especially in the case of the benin bronzes, results in an africa stripped of any possibilities of accomplishing what we all want, that is, to open up a functioning museum world of african accomplishments to an african public, without telling people you must fly to london to see them.
ken
On 8/30/15 7:17 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:
--"I absolutely have no time for the extreme Afro-pessimists. I generally press the delete button or throw their work in the garbage bin. Literally." (Professor Glory Emeagwali).
Prof,
And how do you deal with the extreme Afro-optimists?
CAO.
On Saturday, 29 August 2015 21:08:53 UTC+1, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) wrote:
I absolutely have no time for the extreme afro-pessimists. I generally press the delete button -
or throw their work in the garbage bin. Literally.
They are intellectually lazy non-thinkers with nothing to offer but moans and
groans. There is no sunlight, no bright colors, no glimmer of hope, no silver lining,
no opening for a better day, no encouragement.
No practical solutions do they have. Their mission is to kill dreams and
suffocate aspirations.
They are almost in the same category as the fundamentalist
suicide bombers - except that their aim is to blow everybody and everything up -
from a safe distance.
If F.C Osondu is one of them, I have no time to waste reading his work. But judging
from the theme, the family house that is not for sale, maybe he does not fit in this mold.
I may give his short stories a try.
Thanks for letting us know about this collection.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com ]
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2015 2:20 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Interview: The short story is not a try-out for the novel—EC Osondu
https://moonchild09.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/749/
Nigerian novelist and short story writer EC Osondu won the Caine Prize in 2009 for his story "Waiting". Since then he has released a short story collection, Voice of America and now his debut novel, This House is not For Sale, which focuses on a family house and its many idiosyncratic inhabitants. He talks about the novel and more in this interview. Enjoy!---Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Even though This House is not for Sale is a novel, it has the qualities of loosely connected short stories. What was the idea behind that?
Osondu: There is a sense in which the word novel implies newness, strangeness-if you will. In Ars Poetica, Czeslaw Milosz says that he has always aspired to a more spacious form. That more spacious form is what I aspire to. Read together they make sense, read alone they cohere. It is funny that people are more concerned with the shape than the content but then again, one is reminded that many of these comments are from people who have not read much. And one must forgive them their severe limitations. How many of them have heard of or read Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch a work that can be read according to two different sequences of chapters and comes with ninety-nine expendable chapters and a suggestion by the author to read the book from chapter to chapter or to hopscotch through it.
I have always been fascinated by the history of unoccupied houses be it the house just before the Third Mainland Bridge on the way to the Island or the one called Zik's House in Ikeja.
For the most part I think African writers have been writing the received standard version of the novel. And any attempt to stray is met by howls of bewilderment especially by our new breed of failed writers turned critics.
Cont: https://moonchild09.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/749/
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives.
http://www.cafeafricana.com<http://www.cafeafricana.com/ >
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