Decorated novelist Chika Unigwe’s latest novel, Grace, raises several questions: Is survival ever morally neutral?…
Book Review
There is no denying the fact that childlessness is perhaps the most devastating predicament for…
In Ayo Deforge’s works, there is always an attempt to stab at the deeper intricacies…
Akinremi reminds us of the great poet Gabriel Okara, of ‘The Call of River Nun’ fame, with his poem ‘The Call of River Congo’. In this piece, his concern is plastic pollution and neglect. We see how bottles, cans and paper scraps have taken over the great body of water. It is a blow delivered on the authorities who neglected their responsibilities to this natural resource and watch with reckless abandon as it becomes a dumping ground.
The title might hint at a story about a father’s wrongdoing, but the real sins in this book belong overwhelmingly to the mother. Still, through psychoanalysis, David uncovers yet another layer of abuse, this time from another close family member. Is Sins of the Father worth reading despite its dark, unsettling themes?
The desire to have children is a complex mix of biological urges, emotional drivers and…
In a climate where social media constantly serves up a glut of unattainable beauty standards, a book like Hairstory offers a refreshing antidote to such messaging and should be valued. This quality has earned it favourable comparisons to Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o
The memoir progressively comes off as an album of eclectic cuts. If “Signs of Our Redemption” burns bright as the bold anthem chronicling the #EndSARS saga, “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” is the wistful paean for diminished talents and dreams (“Nigeria happens to the best of us…”), while “And Always Remember Them” stands out as a poetic and elegiac tribute to the fiery season of 2020 (“It is the forgotten who are truly dead” p. 192). David’s use of “We remember them” as a refrain in that chapter creates a hypnotic, incantatory rhythm that sustains emotional accumulation.
Jideonwo leans into this rule, but then, as if looking to validate his struggles, he constantly makes reference to the experiences of various celebrity guests who have graced his #WithChude talk show. In social interactions, he would be called a name-dropper. In print, these insertions come off as cross-promotion and shortchange the book’s efficacy as a memoir.
Some authors mine their lived experiences for inspiration and indeed, Hollist’s own life has been shaped by migration. Born in Freetown, he spent part of his childhood in London, pursued postgraduate education in Nova Scotia, and is currently resident in Florida, where he is a professor of English at the University of Tampa. He might be a citizen of the world
More Than A Crown offers a blend of both. Born in Kigali in 1999, Nishimwe is a member of the ‘Generation After’ — young Rwandans fortunate to not have witnessed the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but nonetheless shaped by its trauma. Her early childhood was marked by separation from her father, whose job as a member of the Rwandan Defence Force entails, ironically, reuniting families separated by the nation’s civil war
In telling this important story, Riding the Storm becomes more than a record of events. It is a meditation on leadership under pressure, on Africa’s capacity for self-organisation, and on what it means to act decisively when history accelerates. Kan’s prose allows the reader to feel the anxiety of the early days, the urgency of closed-door negotiations, and the quiet triumph of systems