"On the Wreck of the Henrietta Marie"

Accepted by The Caribbean Writer.Now this is a poem that has been hanging around my Writing folder for four years or so. Inspired by a conjunction between the travelling exhibition of the slave ship that re-opened the Pompey Museum after the 2001 Market Fire and an in-depth poetry workshop session over at the Poetry Free-For-All, it made the rounds of the appropriate journals. I thought -- wrongly -- that it might get picked up two years ago, when commemorating slavery and its detritus was a year-long affair, but it didn't. I'd almost given up on its being published, not being too sure what was not-right about it and not knowing what to do about it. I'm a big one for letting a poem be, of knowing when something's finished (or ought to be finished), of letting the time pass when it ought to, and after several years of honing and tweaking it seemed to me that "Henrietta Marie" was finished. This year, I pulled it back out, dusted it off and polished it a bit, and then sent it off with four others to The Caribbean Writer. And last month, managing editor Quilin Mars let me know they wanted to publish it.Well, yay, I say. And to others inclined to see rejection slips as always being about the quality of the work (sometimes they are, but not always; sometimes the work doesn't fit the publication), I pass on the writer's advice: never give up, never. The one that publishes you is almost always the last one you try.Here's a bit of it:

I.  Vendue House/Pompey Museum, Nassau, BahamasCome. Stand in a place to sell slaves where planters, farmers, businessmenbought planters, farmers, businessmen.  Just there, a crier stoodbefore a block.  An African stood upon it.  Shackles and lockstrammelled black legs that ached from the straightening.

Go buy The Caribbean Writer Vol 23 if you want to read more.

Hope, in the cyber age

If you're wondering where I've been for the last month or so, I'll tell you. I've been working on a project that is risky, especially during these recessionary times, but that has so much potential for wonderful stuff I can't not work on it. I'll let you know what it is later -- it deserves its own post -- but take it from me, it's frightening in its potential.But what I wanted to write about today was this story. There's a small press in the UK, Salt Publishing, that was so hard hit by the recession that it almost went under. Wait -- I'll tell it in the owner's own words:

I've had better years. Last April at our year end we'd enjoyed 70% growth for our tiny literature business. We were on target for a third of a million turnover by 2011. We weren't cocky, but we were confident we could make it. Then the recession hit, it came on slowly and ate away at our growth until, with the utter collapse of March's sales, we were 11% down on 2008 and £55,000 down against budget.I've never faced bankruptcy before. While I was a director at CUP I never felt a personal connection with business performance. It wasn't my home, my children's futures on the line.

So what did he do?He started a very simple internet campaign. Again, his words:

I was Skyping my wife looking for answers, for some way forward when I said, "Hold on a minute, I've an idea." The idea was risky—it was to go public and to use our Facebook presence to announce a campaign. "Just One Book" was a simple offer: you could save an independent literary press by purchasing one title. That's all it would take.

And it worked. It went viral, as these things can do. Once more, here he is -- Chris Hamilton-Emery of Salt Publishing:

Within 18 hours of posting that first note over 300 orders arrived from Kazakhstan to Japan, from Denmark to Australia. Over the past five days we've taken close on 1,000 direct orders and generated over £20,000 of sales: trade sales have tripled. For a little family business like ours this has been humbling and exhausting. No one likes being on the brink, now we've stepped back a few paces. We're not out of danger, but we've seen that linking a viral campaign to drive sales to bookshops and our own website can have dramatic effects. People are saving us one book at a time.

So here's the thing. We live in an extraordinary time. It's one of those times when a fundamental revolution is taking place around the world. When we call it "globalization" but we really don't understand it; this is the kind of revolution that took place when Gutenberg first printed his Bible on that first printing press, only at warp speed, or, more accurately, at cyber speed. Too many power-brokers, especially those who sit in chambers of government, do not understand what is going on; the election of Barack Obama demostrated that, as does the extension of the old ways into his new campaign by his detractors. When one appeal can save a bookseller by involving people all over the world, there's no limit to what a people, united, can do.So back to the project. It's risky, yes. But maybe, just maybe, cyberspace can offer a path around the risk.

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Indian author V.S. Naipaul

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Indian author V.S. Naipaulhttp://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?showShareButtons=true&docId=1909892151423659108%3A1844000%3A1438000&hl=enFound this interesting. The man is Trinidadian, not Indian!The sound's low, so you'll have to pay attention.I'd be interested in people's comments.

ARC Review #4 - Aya of Yop City, Abouet

 Country: Côte d'Ivoire, West AfricaAuthor: Marguerite Abouet (& Clement Oubrerie)Review: This is the continuation of the story started in Aya, about the three friends from Youpougon, the working-class neighbourhood of Côte d'Ivoire of the 1970s, three fairly ordinary young women in a working class neighbourhood (Youpougon, in Abidjan), and their teenage lives. The first book ends with the birth of Aya's friend Adjoua's son, who's supposed to be fathered by a rich boy, to whom Adjoua's engaged to be married. The second book opens with the picture of the child, who is in fact the image of his real father -- a goodlooking goodfornothing by the name of Mamadou. The stories pick up and follow the lives of the girls, meandering through various byways, including Aya's visit with her father to his work in another village, and Bintou's affair with an apparently rich man. And yet nothing's as good as it seems.In fact, the theme of this book could be the faithlessness of men. Almost every man in the book is flawed, and the women are either their victims or their saviours. It's a lighthearted look at life in Youpougon, and well worth the money I paid for it, but when all is said and done there are enough clichés for the African/Caribbean woman to fill a book.Comment: I read this book just in case -- in case I couldn't get through all of the African books I'd aimed to, and I'm glad I did so. That takes me to four of the six I aimed for. I have to say: Ngugi has swamped me, and I'm not going to finish his book, or the Challenge, by 2009. Abouet's work, though, is well worth following.

R.I.P. Harold Pinter

 How Pinteresque, to die on Christmas Eve.

LONDON (AP) — Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.Pinter, whose distinctive contribution to the stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died on Wednesday, according to his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser."Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the Nobel Academy said when it announced Pinter's award. "With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution."

Announcing tongues of the ocean

 tongues of the ocean is an online literary journal of Bahamian, Caribbean and related poetry. We’re an affiliate of the Bahamas International Literary Festival, but BILF isn’t responsible for what we decide to do (so don’t blame them!). We publish three times a year - in February, June, and October. We reserve the right to be picky about what we publish. For now we’re focussing on poems and poem-related material, but that could change. Interested in submitting? Read here for more details.Here’s some of the stuff we’ll be including in tongues:writers on writers - writers talk about the work of another writer. Like a review, only hotter. Bahamians & residents only, to begin with, but we’ll get friendlier as we go on. We’d like to start with a focus on Bahamian and Caribbean greats.bredren and sistren - section for Caribbean and Southern US writers, for West Africans - for our siblings and cousins in the diaspora, and for our spiritual kin around the world. We reserve the right.catch a fire - in every issue we’ll include a section inspired by word prompts, which we’ll post with the call for submissions.  For now, this is the only place we’ll accept fiction, and only flash fiction (for our purposes, fiction under 300 words). Prose poems are welcome. Transgress boundaries. Push.Editor-in-chief: Nicolette BethelSpoken Word: Nadine Thomas-Brown(Blurb taken from the "about us" page of the journal. Logo photograph by Eric Rose.)

Friendship Around the World Award (Part I)

Geoffrey Philp linked me in this some time ago, and I'm going to try indulge in it now. 

Friendship Around the World AwardJack Mandora, whose blog I admire, has passed this award along to me with the mandate of sharing it with friends whom I’ve met through blogging. I will add that they became my friends because of the remarkable content of their blogs.

I have to say my blogging practices have changed lately, and I haven't done as much reading as I should, but let me start. So here are mine - part I.Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot - Geoffrey PhilpThere are lots of Caribbean blogs out there, but not so many that deal with literature. Geoffrey's one that I read, partly because I know him in person, but also because I like his observations.Heraclitean Fire - Harry RutherfordOK, I'm a poet in my spare time, and I read lots and lots of poetry blogs, many of which I visit on a very regular basis. But Harry writes about more than poetry, and his links are always interesting. Unless he's talking about some sport or another, I find every post of his fascinating, probably because he's able to synthesize material really well. It's a skill that I admire and to which I aspire. Bahama Pundit - Larry Smith, et al.The idea behind this blog is to bring Bahamian columnists together in one online spot and give us a platform that reaches beyond the newspaper circulation. I like and admire Larry as a reporter. He does his homework and makes observations that hold up after some scrutiny, and his fellow columnists are also pretty interesting. (I was one of them for a while, and hope to be again, but that's not the reason I picked this blog!) Maybe it's a little to localized for most people, but it's worth a look in my books.Weblog Bahamas - Rick Lowe et al.I read Rick's blog because he and I hold opposite views of the world in just about everything except the potential and the need of human beings to make their own realities. It's good to see what libertarians, and especially white Bahamian libertarians, are thinking, even if I disagree from the pit of my stomach with 99.999999999% of what they think. But Rick doesn't only talk about politics and economics. He also reads some pretty interesting stuff, he has eclectic taste in music, he takes some cool photos, and he doesn't let you go away without having been provoked in some way or another. And some of his co-authors are almost as good.Signifyin' Guyana - Charmaine D. Valere's blogI read this blog because Charmaine doesn't just write about Caribbean issues, she also reads and reviews work by Caribbean (primarily Guyanese) writers, and her perspective is an interesting one. She's part of the diaspora, lives outside the region, but she's part of the global Caribbean that is going to transform our nations in years to come. Go Charmaine.Carter's Little Pill - Julie Carter's blogAs I said, I read lots of poetry blogs. Julie's, like Harry's, isn't all about poetry, though it could be because her poems are kick-ass. But there's a lot about Julie in it too, and I like what I see of Julie online. It's because of her and what she wrote that made me suspect Ohio was going to vote for Obama. Well worth a read.Savage Minds - Group blog about anthropologyYes, I'm a poet and a Caribbean woman, but don't forget I'm an anthropologist as well. There are other anthro blogs out there, but this one strikes closest to me and my particular training -- social anthropology with a distinct UK/European bias and a deep admiration and love for (though not always acceptance of) the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.I'll stop there for now, but I'll be back. There are some people I missed. But you have to excuse me -- Obama and the world's changing are taking up some of my time.If I've called your name, go spread the meme!

Some of my best friends

are Swedish.And one of them read my last post, and commented.  Actually, she did so over on Facebook, where my blog posts are imported as notes, but I liked what she said enough to bring it back over here.Her point is that Engdahl didn't mean cultural hegemony as much as he meant linguistic hegemony.  Now he may well have, and assumed that it would be understood by a global audience as well as it is clearly understood by his fellow Swedes (Ella picked it up immediately, and it went whooshing over my head). Here's Ella offering her support to him, and making some good points as she does so:

arrogant, Moi?ah... and perhaps this is in part a knee-jerk nationalistic reaction on my part... but i think there's an element of truth in what Horace Engdahl is saying, though by pinning it on the US alone, he undermines the credibility of his argument. I think it IS fair to say that the English speaking literary world is insular - to its detriment. in part, that's linked to the sheer volume of English language literature published yearly (and i think there are valid concerns about how the sustainability of the publishing industry's current model of swamping the market in order to trail for bestsellers, but that's another argument...) - you could, theoretically, never NEED to read something new which wasn't originally written in English, and still have plenty of unread Englsih lit and criticism to spare when you died. i get that. and, obviously, smaller languages don't have to contend with that sort of embarrassment of riches and therefore HAVE to translate work in order to be able to provide readers with enough new material to 'feed' a readership which can read as much as its englsih counterparts, but obviously can't produce as much literature. i get this too. 

but the side effect of that need for translation is that it becomes seen as a virtue in itself, and i genuinely believe that to be the case. but even in the uk, where you can take a train to mainland europe, there's a very small proportion of total new literature (both critical and fiction) which was originally in another language. and, noticeably, a lot of them are actually recent nobel prize winners. (if the nobel prize committe sees part of it's job as promoting non-english language literature, surely that's a positive thing?) from what i've seen of US bookstores and curricula, the problem is even more exacerbated there - which inevitably influences contemporary US authors. so, i actually think that horace engdahl is making a valid argument about the negative influence of cultural (or rather, linguistic) hegemony on the work of contemporary US fiction - of course its broad brush and imperfect (paul auster springs to mind as an obvious exception), though he phrases it in the most obnoxious way imaginable. 

Last week I wanted to spend some time expanding on why I found Engdahl's comment -- as it was reported (and I know that there's a gap between what he said and what was picked up) offensive.  This week, if I find the time, I'll expand more fully on what I wanted to say.  Meanwhile, it's all food for thought.

Nobel judge: U.S. too ignorant to compete

Now I'm not the biggest fan of the USA.  Let's put it another way:  I'm not a blind fan of the USA, and a lot of what the US thinks is great about itself I would question.But never would I question the greatness of that nation.  The arrogance of this Swede, though, is staggering.  

U.S. writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work.

"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

Nobel judge: U.S. too ignorant to compete - CNN.com

The Role of the Writer in Society

On Thursday past, the organizers of the Bahamas International Literary Festival (BILF), a new-brand entity, so new it don't even have itself a webspace yet, held a literary forum that served as a precursor to the festival. Six Bahamian writers were invited to present on the topic The Role of the Writer in Society. I was privileged to be among them. The others were: Keith RussellObediah Michael SmithAlex MorleyIan Strachan... Who?  who'm I forgetting? Or can't I count? ... I don't think I can count ... there were only five of us!  Gah!Well, anyhow.  The evening was memorable for a couple of reasons.  The first was the size of the audience.  It filled almost the entire length of the upper floor of Chapter One Bookstore, much to my amazement.   Now I know it's entirely possible, even likely, that a good chunk of the attendees were students who had no choice in the matter, whose classes were meeting there, who might even have an assignment about the topic later on.  But that didn't stop the fact that there were, oh, maybe fifty or sixty people in attendance from making me hold the event in awe.  Writers in this country are not used to such interest.  At least I'm not.Just for posterity's sake, and because it might be of interest, and because I've been toying with the concept of podcasting for some time and thought this is on the way to creating one, below's an updated version of the presentation I gave.  It's not exactly the same because Thursday was a runaround day and I wasn't able to get all the quotations I wanted for the presentation, but it's 90% similar.  The comment box is on, for feedback's sake, if people are so inclined.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VITJjobWLyU&w=425&h=350]So I'm not an purist when it comes to writing.  Art for art's sake, as Achebe said, being somewhat of a myth.  I don't necessarily believe that all art has to have a function, a purpose; the kind of art that does isn't really art, as it puts emotions and empathy second to function.  But on the other hand, as Ian Strachan, who spoke last, said of writing -- whatever you think about it, the act of writing is always a political act.  One needn't be a socialist (as Alex Morley is) for that to be true; you just need to write, and to share your writing with people beyond yourself.  In fact, each of us spoke about agency and writing and change and revolution of some kind.  Revelation, said one of us (don't remember which one -- if you're reading this, own it, Keith or Ian or Obie or Alex!) is revolution.  If you don't know my name, said Obie, channelling Baldwin, you don't know your own.  (Obie read an essay which meandered through various meditations about writers and society and kept coming back to just that -- if you don't know my name, you don't know your own.)  Write for change, said Alex.  Write to tell the truth.  Write to show ourselves ourselves. Write to make a difference, said Keith.  Write to tell the truth.We talked a lot about truth and difference and change among us, each of us in our own particular way.  So it's no coincidence that I'm going to post the next video here now.  Chris Abani talked about story and the power of telling a tale, the power of telling the truth, and somebody filmed him doing so.  Watch the video below to see what he said.  It's akin to what we said, only (forgive me, colleagues) better.http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

ARC Review #3 - Aya, Abouet

Country: Ivory Coast Côte d'Ivoire, West AfricaAuthor: Marguerite Abouet (& Clement Oubrerie)Review: Yes, yes, another coming of age novel. But I had to think about this one, because (a) it's not All About Me, and (b) it's a graphic novel. It's about three young women in the Ivory Coast Côte d'Ivoire of the 1970s, three fairly ordinary young women in a working class neighbourhood (Yopougon), who are having the usual teenage girl-issues, like school and boys and what to do with what's going on between their legs. It's called Aya, and that's the main character -- or rather the narrator -- but as Aya's a pretty dull person really (at least at this point in her life -- she's studying too hard to generate any real drama in her life) the story really focusses on the actions of her two friends Bintou and Adjoua.Comment: All the reviews about this book, as well as the preface, make a point of talking about the ordinariness of the story, the lack of violence and abjectness in the background, the total unAfricanness of the story (because nobody dies, no government topples, and nobody starves). To do the same thing would justify that stance and underline the idea that what happens in Africa must be very very bad. Everyone makes the point of saying that Ivory Coast Côte d'Ivoire was an exemplary African nation in the 1970s, etc, etc, rather the way Alexander McCall Smith keeps reminding us that Botswana is an exemplary African nation in the 2000s. It's the postcolonial version of the Dark Continent myth. I don't buy it, so I won't say it. But for people expecting fireworks and drama in this graphic novel, and who approach it the way they might approach, say, Speigelman's Maus, forget it. Think Archie, Betty and Veronica -- only all grown up.

ARC Review #2 - Purple Hibiscus, Adichie

Country:  Nigeria, West AfricaAuthor:  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Review:  Perhaps it's typical of novels from the African and Caribbean diaspora, but I find often that authors' first novels are coming-of-age stories.   (It's one of the things that's turned me off reading novels from my own region, and equally, what's stopped me writing The Big One.)  But that's an aside; I'm here to talk about Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus.So all right, it's a coming-of-age story.  But it didn't turn me off!  On the contrary, it's so well done, so carefully drawn, so non-solipsistic that it won me over.The narrator is a fourteen-year-old girl whose father is a Big Man in her community -- owner of a local factory, publisher of the only newspaper that dares to be critical of the government, fierce Roman Catholic convert, pillar of the community, a local hero who (like Achebe's Okonkwo) cannot bend but must break, or be broken, instead.  The father is a domestic tyrant who teaches his lessons with pain, who punishes his family with specific physical torments, and who has no tolerance for anything other than the way he has chosen for himself.  He is distanced from his own father, who has refused to abandon his traditions, and has an uneasy relationship with his sister, who has made peace with both the old way and the new, and is able to chart a specifically African course, balancing her life between the traditional and the contemporary, and finding a very Nigerian interpretation of Christianity.  The narrator and her brother live sheltered lives until they go to visit this aunt, a poor professor in a university town, and their experiences with her and her family form the catalyst that brings the story to its turning point.Adichie's style is spare and clean (is this a 21st century phenomenon?), and deceptively simple.  It's in keeping, in its female, 21st century way, with the trend Achebe set with Things Fall Apart, limpid language revealing subtext.  And the subtext is rich:  domestic abuse, the challenges of living in independent Nigeria, the challenges of remaining uncorrupted, the poverty and marginalization of intellectuals, the casual violence of everyday life.  From the fervent church services and the generosity of the father to the poor to the scar on Kevin-the-chauffeur's neck and the polishing of the mother's figurines, the gulf between the public persona and the private life is too large to be crossed, until.Comments:  I ran across Adichie on Zoetrope and am glad I finally read her book.  I'd read more by her for sure.

Update on Africa Reading Challenge

No, I haven't forgotten it.  Have you?Here's my update.  I took books, as I said, to Guyana to read.  That was optimistic; I didn't get the chance while on the ground, though I did read small bits of Purple Hibiscus in the bath once or twice.  I also didn't get the chance to attend Karen King-Aribisala's reading, much to my regret, as I know Karen personally, having attending the 1992 Caribbean Writer's Workshop with her (and Edwidge Danticat and Garfield Ellis and Geoffrey Philp -- time, hey, for me to get my behind published like my peers, huh?) Karen, if you ever chance to read this, please please accept my apologies, and start saving -- CARIFESTA's here in The Bahamas next time.I will be posting reviews -- I finished two more books -- over the next week or so.Cheers.

African Reading Challenge 2

So I've taken the books I hope to finish with me to Guyana.The one I'm reading now is Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. In short, I'm enjoying it so far. I cheated and skimmed forward -- I do that sometimes -- but now I have to read on, savour it.Watch this space -- I plan to blog about it soon.

J. K. Rowling's Speech at Harvard Commencement

On the benefits of failure and imagination.On failure:

personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

On imagination:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

Worth contemplating, no matter what one thinks about the suitability of Rowling as a choice for a commencement speaker at Harvard:

Rowling was chosen by Harvard's alumni. University President Drew Gilpin Faust applauded her selection, saying, "No one in our time has done more to inspire young people to … read."Rowling follows a long line of heavies who've spoken at Harvard's commencement. In 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall used the platform to detail his "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Europe after World War II.Since then, speakers have included such luminaries as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, other heads of state, Nobel Prize winners, and scholars."It's definitely the 'A' list, and I wouldn't ever associate J.K. Rowling with the people on that list," says senior Andy Vaz. "From the moment we walk through the gates of Harvard Yard, they constantly emphasize that we are the leaders of tomorrow. They should have picked a leader to speak at commencement. Not a children's writer. What does that say to the class of 2008? Are we the joke class?"

Courtesy of NPR.

Signifyin' Guyana speaks out on CARIFESTA

Signifyin' Guyana: Finally!

Bahamian blogger, Lynn Sweeting (womanish words) says she'll be participating in the upcoming festival of arts (Carifesta) in Guyana. Finally, somebody else (besides Ruel) who can lay claims to artistic talent has voiced a public commitment to doing something (ARTS RELATED!) for Carifesta. Okay, two down many to go.

Yes, so it's an old post. And if you go to Signifyin' Guyana's main page, you'll find a countdown to CARIFESTA. But all I wanted to say here was:It's really happening. This country (The Bahamas) is putting together a contingent of 135 performers and observers to go to Guyana. The contingent's so big because we are supposed to be the hosts of the next CARIFESTA (I know, we've been there before) and we need to know what we're getting into.I'll keep people updated. Guyanese blogs are keeping track. The countdown is on -- 12 days to CARIFESTA now! And our advance party (with me in it) leaves a week from today.There it is.Here are links to CARIFESTA news stories, courtesy of the CARIFESTA page.

ARC Review #1 - Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, (Lalami)

Country:  Morocco, North AfricaAuthor:  Laila LalamiReview:  This is a novel/collection of related short stories, and in this way reminds me of Naipaul's Miguel Street. The stories are about four Moroccans who take the risk of crossing the narrow straits between Morocco and Spain, and are separated into two main sections: "Before" and "After". The book grew on me; to be honest, I was not hooked by the prologue until I'd read the whole thing. By the end, though, I was sorry to finish the book.Lalami's style is clean and spare, and her four characters rise off the page and we care. Each of the characters gets two full stories, a "Before" story and an "After" story, and the prologue tells the climax -- the moment when they cross the straits and succeed, or fail, to make it to another life. One of the characters -- a man with an English degree, a voracious reader of American literature -- gets three; it's his POV in the prologue. By the end, the short stories lock together in a single whole, and the novel is there -- its protagonist is The Immigrant, and its resolution is variable.There were a couple of bits that stand out. One of my favourite stories in the collection, the first one after the prologue, "The Fanatic", is told from the POV of a character who never recurs. He sees, and affects the life of, one of the immigrants, someone whose story is told in the second part of the book. I suspect that it's a weakness, especially if the stories form a novel, but on its own it's very fine. Of course it is. It was shortlisted for the Caine Prize -- the African Booker.I imagine that for others part of the allure of this collection is the fact that it's rooted in Islam, which is the religion du jour for many Western literati, and that the characters do not conform to the expected stereotypes. Only one of them is particularly religious; the rest behave remarkably like people (warning: sarcasm intended).Comment: I've not read any North African literature proper, other than Camus, which masquerades as French literature, and Gide, who's an expatriate anyway. I keep meaning to read Mahfouz but haven't managed yet. My North African exposure is narrow. Lalami's a welcome change from that.I've been following her work for some time now.  I came across her blog, oh, sometime back in 2005 maybe, before Hope was published, and have often intended to read the book. I'm not disappointed I finally did.

Follow-up to African Reading Challenge

The fate of migrants is the same - Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, does it matter?Laila Lalami linked to this photo-essay taken in Italy of North African migrants.The similarities between the essay and what we see here with Haitian migrants are striking.I've been carrying around Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits for days now, trying to make time for it.  I will keep you posted.

My Africa Reading List

If I take part, that is.What's under my belt is pretty male and middle-century, and so I thought I'd branch out with some female voices and writing from more recent times

• Adichie (Nigeria) - Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun
• Emecheta (Nigeria) - The Joys of Motherhood
• Ngugi (Kenya) - Wizard of the Crow
• Baingana (Uganda) - Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe
• Lalami (Morocco) - Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
• Gourevitch (Rwanda) - We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with our Families
• Ilibagiza (Rwanda) - Left to Tell