LITERATORS' CORNER

  Of Memories, Motherhood and Love: A review of Nkosiyazi Kan Kanjiri's Looking for Mother by Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy Indeed, the bond between a mother and her offspring is as strong as the anchor of a ship. Many a poem have I read about motherhood, but only a few have nearly bled my eyes as Kanjiri's does. Kanjiri writes with such depth of emotion and effortless surface simplicity that he easily calls us into his emotions. 'Looking for Mother' is the poet's rite de passage into the authorship world. In the anthology, the poet goes back in time to trace events from his days of innocence to a present state of experience. Nkosiyazi poems may be terse and not as lengthy as the classical types we are wont to encounter in literature classes; meanwhile, they are nonetheless quite profound. Some are in fact quite memorable and I AM certain every reader would have mastered at least one poem by the time they finish perusing the collection. Here is one for exampl

At a time when the Somali society held tenaciously to beliefs that a good woman's place was in her home and that she had no business engaging in public life or seeking education; as either path would only soil the honour of such a woman's family; 'crazy' Edna was born into the prestigious household of Doctor Adan Ismail and she was determined to change the narrative; not only for herself, but for every Somali female child. The story in her memoir, A Woman of First , is a testament to this very fact.  From a very young age, Edna was quite conscious of the fact that she was different from other girls, for example, she sought the company of boys, participated in their games, attended classes with them, and joined her father on his daily rounds as the first Somali medical doctor. Her father's love for his profession, devotion to treating the sick among his people, and the awful experience of losing two siblings at infancy would inspire Edna's life-long dreams: to pu

If there were one review I would rather not write, it would be this one. I remember that I once found it amusing hearing a professor of mine lamenting his inability to complete Buchi Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood due to the outburst of emotions welled up by the events in the story. Well, it appears nemesis has come for me in form of Nuruddin Farah's Maps ; the fictional novel is such a powerful and grief-stricken one that leaves one feeling sad every time it is recalled. More than anything, it demonstrates the power of words on paper by showing how a writer can manipulate our emotions through words and force us to empathise with their characters. If this were all there was to the novel, it would still be a powerful one, but there is more. Nuruddin Farah's Maps tells the tale of Misra, an Ethiopian-Amhara divorcee, who comes to live among the Somalis before the Ethio-Somali war of 1977-78. Misra had been abducted as a young girl by a Somali warrior following a tribal raid

Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is humorous tale which revolves around a paterfamilias; Baba Segi; and his four wives—Iya Segi, Iya Femi, Iya Tope, and Bolanle. It so happens that while illiterate Baba Segi goes around bragging about his conquests as an accomplished polygamist (his fourth and latest being a university graduate to boot) and how he dominates his household, it is revealed that our proud man is just a soldier without ammunition, or a paper tiger. Worried about his fourth wife's infertility, Baba Segi comes to discover that he is actually the one afflicted with sterility and that his purported children from his first three wives were actually fathered by other men. We also come to see that his idea of control over his household is a figment of his imagination as his home is actually run by his first wife, Iya Segi. The story is told using the voice of the characters alongside that of the narrator. By allowing the characters tell their own sides

                                                                                                            - - Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy An ill child left in a shrine to be healed by the shrine god (while the father goes in search of herbs) is found by a White Christian priest who believes the child was kept there as a sacrifice to the idol, especially as it was left there unattended. The priest supposedly rescues this child and takes him to Rome where he grows up to become a priest. The young priest hears extraterrestrial voices ordering him to seek out his roots and interprets this as God asking him to return and show the 'light' to his father and people. Meanwhile, his father; who happens to be the priest of the village deity (Okwula); suffers from a curse of dumbness placed on him by the ancestors and which could only be cured the day his lost son comes seeking him. The questions now are: How do father and son meet? Who ends up converting who? I should like to answer the

     A Short Story by Mohamed Mohamoud Ahmed Once upon a time, there was a boy whose name was Ghuled. He was living with his parents. His parents were very interested in empowering their boy educationally to become the first among others. Ghuled was a student who refused the advice of his parents. He started to follow bad students that he should not even be engaged with and they became close friends. ‘Wasting time is not good,’ his father advised him. ‘But Ahmed replied that time was not important. Despite this, Ghuled's parents promised to send him outside the country for his university education after he must have finished his secondary education. Unfortunately, he did not accept the idea of his parents and turned a deaf ear to their words. He started to smoke cigarettes and chew khat all day till he exhausted his time without anything being achieved. And this was how Ghuled burned his days which became months and then years without any achievement. Many years later