This month's bookshelf has books published this September, and some classics whose impact has stood the test of time. There's some poetry by Caleb Femi, YA fiction by Tomi Oyemakinde, tragic romance by Zukiswa Wanner, and a memoir by the feminist legend bell hooks- a little bit of everything.
Themes: African art, Cinema, Colonialism, Power, Craft, Culture
Summary: The African Gaze is a comprehensive exploration of postcolonial and contemporary photography and cinema from Africa. Drawing from archival imagery and documents, interviews with the photographers and filmmakers (in some cases family members/close associates if the artist is deceased), and contributions from writers, scholars and curators, it maps a comprehensive introduction to African moving and still imagery. This is a hugely important and timely publication - engagement with Black and African histories is stronger than ever before (and long overdue). The major names of African photography, such as Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory and Seydou Keïta, have become highly collectible in the art market, while African cinema, pioneered by filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène in 1960s Senegal, is now recognised for its creative innovation and storytelling. For anyone drawn to African photography and film, this book will provide an exciting and accessible overview. Featuring interviews with Samuel Fosso and Souleymane Cissé.
Theme: Love, Betrayal, Desire, Tragedy, Marriage, Family
Summary: In Bryanston, Johannesburg, one couple has loved, married and is plodding on after surviving a betrayal. In Fourways, Johannesburg, a man is holding on to a secret that he cannot share with his wife. Then on a rainy summer’s night, as if conspired by the universe, the lives of the two couples are forever changed. An instant connection leads to a safe and healing love, one that not even a designated WhatsApp family group or attempts at seduction can extinguish. But love is messy and life is complicated. And when a stylish man with a prosthetic right arm shows up brandishing a .44 Magnum, the lovers may just discover how some great love stories end. That sometimes ‘till death do us part’ has a different meaning to different people.
Themes: Memory, Coming of age, Black girlhood, Family, Class, Race, Writing
Summary: Stitching together the threads of her girlhood memories, bell hooks shows us one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming the pioneering writer we know. Along the way, hooks sheds light on the vulnerability of children, the special unfurling of female creativity and the imbalance of a society that confers marriage’s joys upon men and its silences on women. In a world where daughters and fathers are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about, hooks uncovers the solace to be found in solitude, the comfort to be had in the good company of books. Bone Black allows us to bear witness to the awakening of a legendary author’s awareness that writing is her most vital breath.
Themes: Coming of age, Intersex, Gender, Family, Love, Identity
Summary: Oto leaves for boarding school with one plan: excel and escape his cruel home. Falling in love with his roommate was certainly not on the agenda, but fear and shame force him to hide his love and true self. Back home, weighed down by the expectations of their wealthy and powerful family, the love of Oto's twin sister wavers and, as their world begins to crumble around them, Oto must make drastic choices that will alter the family's lives for ever. Richly imagined with art, proverbs and folk tales, this moving and modern novel follows Oto through life at home and at boarding school in Nigeria, through the heartbreak of living as a boy despite their profound belief they are a girl, and through a hunger for freedom that only a new life in the United States can offer. An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming-of-age story that explores complex desires as well as challenges of family, identity, gender, and culture, and what it means to feel whole.
Themes: Science-fiction, Vacation-gone-wrong, Brotherhood
Summary: The White Lotus meets Jurassic Park in We Are Hunted by Tomi Oyemakinde, a compulsive speculative thriller about the lengths we go to for power - and to survive.When seventeen-year-old Femi and his brother accompany their father on a top-secret business trip to a remote and mysterious island, they are looking forward to a summer they'll never forget. Filled with spectacular species of animal and out-of-this-world technology, the island resort welcomes them with open arms, as does its impressive curator Richard Jenkins. But beneath the sparkle and the wonder, the island is hiding a terrible secret - and it's biding its time. When the unthinkable happens and the island is put on lockdown, Femi realizes he is somehow at the centre of an operation that seeks to expose Jenkins' resort for what it really is. But the truth comes with a price. And when the bodies start to fall, Femi must decide who on the island he can trust with his life - and how far he will go to survive.
Themes: Travelogue, Memory, Trauma, Pleasure, Identity, Police brutality
Summary: A poet in a new city, a linguist at Primark, a native son meeting a familiar deity in a foreign town, in books, in the faces and voices of strangers, on trains, in the histories that intersect with traumas and pleasures, in flirtations at a bank on Euston road, in food, in contemplations of space, accents, missed connections, and police shootings in Lagos; all as part of one travel experience in the time of a global pandemic. In Èṣù at the Library, Túbọ̀sún returns to his favourite tools of travelogue as a vehicle for the interrogation of memory through the limits of language.
Themes: Womanhood, Gender, Marriage, Colonialism, Modernism, Liberation
Summary: An epistolary novel originally written in French, So Long a Letter is a sequence of reminiscences—some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined.
Themes: Community, Nightlife, Culture, Technology, Freedom, Class
Summary: This is a minute-by-minute depiction of a typical night at a legendary monthly house party known as The Wickedest. Here, we meet a vivid cast of characters, young and old, all surfing a revelry steeped in camaraderie, community, desire and a spirit of jubilant defiance.
A modern epic, The Wickedest explores the institution of shoobs or house parties and their vital role within working-class communities. The poems range from classical English sonnets to experimental forms and are immersively interwoven with photographs, text messages and ephemera. The collection playfully dissembles parties – in space, sound, law and bureaucracy – to document the precarious existence of our nightlife venues.
In Caleb Femi's inimitable, cinematic style the book builds to a crescendo that is at once euphoric and grief-soaked. The Wickedest calls us to cast our minds to the moments we stood surrounded by our loved ones on a dance floor, arms outstretched, and freed ourselves from the weight of reality to float.
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