What do Young African Writers and Beyoncé Have In Common?
Hey, you,
Before writing today’s letter, I thought about writing a letter to you where I deconstruct humour — the type of jokes that we told or listened to years ago, and why they’ll no longer be acceptable now e.g fatphobic and homophobic jokes from all our favourite shows including ‘Friends’, vs. jokes we find acceptable now, that we shouldn’t, e.g “Wetin Musa no go see for gate,” which I only just realised reinforces a tribal stereotype. I’ll leave this for an essay, that I’ll tentatively call, Tell Me Your Jokes And I’ll Tell You Who You Are and write about my week.
I’ve been on autopilot, pretending not to be sick and powering through — which is nice and all, if the little voice in my head, a look alike of Lizzie McGuire’s cartoon, Ope’s version, wasn’t always saying, “Bitch take care of yourself,” including profanities.
Ope’s Reads.
Editors are important, and that’s not me trying to overplay my role in anything. It’s just what it is. I was supposed to hit Ruth up to edit this, just to prove a point, but you see, time’s a bitch. Enjoy my grammar errors, and don’t tell me my verbs don’t agree. On a serious note, I enjoyed listening to this podcast that glosses over it. Tobi and I run our lives like a mini-office. It’s the tools, the reminder, the to-dos, the calendar events, expense trackers etc. Maybe everyone does this and I’m just a semiliterate (get this, when it comes to devices, I am). It’s ‘fascinating’ that a lot of modern American families confronted with relentless busyness have opted for software tools to keep their lives in order.
Warren Buffett has some really good ideas about how to stand out in your professional life. It’s hardly about intellect and energy. I read this one because I was curious about why exactly my brother (and maybe me, a little) has stacks of fancy notebooks and journals with only a few words on the first few pages.
This week, I decided to introduce some carbs back into my diet (guilt free because I never stopped eating bread). Then I came across this essay on the ways in which women are punished for our hunger and desire. You see Eve? Na food she chop, she no kill person. I recommend a consistent reading of that column because every month, Nina Li Coomes will use women of the Bible to dissect ideas about womanhood. I think that’s bound to be interesting.
An amazing essay to read is written by my dear friend, Lucia. See that word ‘dear’? I use it when I famz uber amazing people and writers. She’s done some magic with interweaving her family history, liturgical music, the Catholic Church and contemporary art in one essay. I stan a witch.
Quick Aside
It’s important for me to read/highlight stories by young ‘Nigerian/African writers’ when I come across them for many reasons. I was in Abuja last weekend, as a panelist on two panels of the second edition of the Abuja Literary Festival.
In one panel were I spoke about creative nonfiction with other CNF geniuses, the conversation seemed hell bent on coming back to what ‘African writers’ write or should write i.e trauma, pain, poverty porn etc. This happened in another panel with African Literature elders — going by Chuma’s beard, it’s not offensive to say this. (I was the only female panelist and the youngest on the panel by the way, which makes me wonder what the festival was thinking.)
It’s shocking that the idea of ‘poverty porn’ in literature still exists in 2019. Going by the books released in the past one year (think TJ Benson’s We Won’t Fade Into Darkness, Nnamdi Ehirim’s Prince of Monkeys etc.) and putting them on the same pedestal of works created by millennials/Gen Z for online consumption — essays, short fiction etc. — which are far from poverty porn, it makes me wonder if the older generation is even paying us any attention. It’s one of the reasons Arts and Africa, Agbowo, Afreada and other like young African magazines are tooting their own horns.
So if you’re still reading poverty porn or picking issue with it in 2019, maybe you’re the one not looking in the right places.
Oh not you, you’re reading me, so you’re doing fine! #ReadOpeAdedeji
Ope’s Reads
Back to this. You need to read Tolu Daniel’s essay on tinyessays. I was never in the choir, but there’s a nostalgia I felt for early noughties' pentecostal churches while I read it (churches that toxic. Tolu might be right in considering nostalgia as a distortion of truth.) Zainab Omaki wrote a thrilling story about the Third Mainland Bridge.
Tega’s essay on the Rumpus (again, [young] ‘African writers’ putting in the work) explores stories about death and life — how fleeting. And here, Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu reads three stunning poems.
I was so excited to put out all these stories by young people I read/heard this week that I almost forgot to share this. We have struggles in Nigeria. The Fulani herdsmen are on a killing spree, Nigerian girls and women are being raped and discriminated against and osu people, descendants of slaves are fighting for freedom. But some of us (again, not you) are fighting someone else’s battles. I didn’t mention any names oh.
Love letter to Beyoncé
My mum, Beyoncé did it again as you’ll already know. I couldn’t end this letter without saying, if you’re reading this, I love you, Beyoncé, and I cannot wait for all of it. Don’t judge me.
Finally
Zikoko is telling important stories and I want you to be a part of that magic; head over there and read everything those amazing people are curating to be a part of that magic.
PSA: Young African writers and Beyoncé keep producing magic, that's what.