"She did not know what was expected of her.
She had nearly reached him when suddenly, on an outward gust of air, he half said, half announced, a name: 'Wuraola.'
Who?
She froze, not knowing what to say or do.
Of course, she knew that Wuraola was her Yoruba name, the name that her grandfather had asked in a letter for her to be called when her mother had held her Nigerian naming ceremony. Wuraola means gold.
She knew all this...
...but nobody had ever called her Wuraola, not even her mother, whom she could now see from the corner of her eye making anxious, silent gestures for her to go to her grandfather.
Here, in this stone-walled corridor where the sunlight came in through enormous, stiff mosquito screens over each window and her clothes clung to her like another skin, Wuraola sounded like another person. Not her at all.
Should she answer to this name, and by doing so steal the identity of someone who belonged here?
Should she...become Wuraola?
But how?"
From The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (2005)
Helen Oyeyemi *1984
I love reading books in English - it's such a vast land out there and gladly, English is becoming a global language transporting unfamiliar ideas to broaden our limited knowledge.
Take Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - I only knew 'bougainvillea' as a beautiful plant so far - never knew about a Bougainville island let alone about a crucial civil war in the 1990s on it. Probably, I could have looked it up in some history book and it is actually on Wikipedia - but truth be told: to have the incidents described from the innocent point of view of a child makes it more impressive and long-lasting.
And so it happened with another book I had chosen for The English Book Club last season (see the extra page on this blog): Starbook by Ben Okri. While preparing the session I came across the Yoruba Philosophy, embodied in the Ifa-ife Divination, known as the tripartite Book of Enlightenment. The novel's underlying Yoruba philosophy and its mixture of reality and imagination (actually 'dreamtime' - now think of the Aborigines...), made it like undergoing a time and sense expanding experience.
All in all, it left me ashamed of my limited European centred knowledge of Enlightenment and here I quote from Wikipedia: "Yoruba thought is mainly narrative in form, explicating and pointing to the knowledge of things, affecting the corporeal and the spiritual universe and its wellness. Yoruba people have hundreds of aphorisms, folktales, and lore, and they believe that any lore that widens people's horizons and presents food for thought is the beginning of a philosophy." This is exactly what happens with a lot of books I read and what I meant to say above: reading books is certainly widening your horizon!
And then I came across Helen Oyeyemi's book The Icarus Girl on my shelf, actually a remainder of my visit to the EdBookFest in 2011 (unfortunately, I didn't meet her). Another book largely enmeshed in the Yoruba philosophy and in this particular book the very special view on twins, but that's to you to find out by reading it...
So, another book written in the spirit of this particular African mythology and the playful usage of the literary theme of doubles. But, as usual, my focus will be here on Helen.
Helen was born in Nigeria and moved to England in 1988 at the age of four. She wrote The Icarus Girl in 2005 while still sitting for her A-level at The Vaughan in London, not yet 19 years old! While reading at Cambridge University, two of her plays, Juniper's Whitening and Victimese, were performed by fellow students. In 2007, her second book The Opposite House followed and in 2009 White is for Witching, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. In 2011, her fourth novel Mr. Fox and just this year, 2014, her latest book Boy, Snow, Bird were published. For those who follow my blog for some time: she is another author of the Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists issue of 2013 with a short excerpt of her latest book. And those of you who've read all those quotes by Zora Neale Hurston lately: Helen's fourth novel was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
She is a promising author with a quality on its own - mythical, magical, witty and spiritual, close to fairy tales in its imagination and fantasy. She is widely related by reviews to Edgar Allen Poe in its mysticism. Yet, I think this is limited in praise and is mainly because her writing is so original that assessments come short of what her writing is and does, being closely connected to her inner knowledge of other mythologies. As mentioned above, her writing is closely related to her African/ Yoruba background which leaves European points of views with a void. A void in relating to forms of 'reality' in connection to the spiritual and multilevel realities. There is a lot to learn out there and we can expect more of this gifted author!
And so it happened with another book I had chosen for The English Book Club last season (see the extra page on this blog): Starbook by Ben Okri. While preparing the session I came across the Yoruba Philosophy, embodied in the Ifa-ife Divination, known as the tripartite Book of Enlightenment. The novel's underlying Yoruba philosophy and its mixture of reality and imagination (actually 'dreamtime' - now think of the Aborigines...), made it like undergoing a time and sense expanding experience.All in all, it left me ashamed of my limited European centred knowledge of Enlightenment and here I quote from Wikipedia: "Yoruba thought is mainly narrative in form, explicating and pointing to the knowledge of things, affecting the corporeal and the spiritual universe and its wellness. Yoruba people have hundreds of aphorisms, folktales, and lore, and they believe that any lore that widens people's horizons and presents food for thought is the beginning of a philosophy." This is exactly what happens with a lot of books I read and what I meant to say above: reading books is certainly widening your horizon!
So, another book written in the spirit of this particular African mythology and the playful usage of the literary theme of doubles. But, as usual, my focus will be here on Helen.
Helen was born in Nigeria and moved to England in 1988 at the age of four. She wrote The Icarus Girl in 2005 while still sitting for her A-level at The Vaughan in London, not yet 19 years old! While reading at Cambridge University, two of her plays, Juniper's Whitening and Victimese, were performed by fellow students. In 2007, her second book The Opposite House followed and in 2009 White is for Witching, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. In 2011, her fourth novel Mr. Fox and just this year, 2014, her latest book Boy, Snow, Bird were published. For those who follow my blog for some time: she is another author of the Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists issue of 2013 with a short excerpt of her latest book. And those of you who've read all those quotes by Zora Neale Hurston lately: Helen's fourth novel was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
She is a promising author with a quality on its own - mythical, magical, witty and spiritual, close to fairy tales in its imagination and fantasy. She is widely related by reviews to Edgar Allen Poe in its mysticism. Yet, I think this is limited in praise and is mainly because her writing is so original that assessments come short of what her writing is and does, being closely connected to her inner knowledge of other mythologies. As mentioned above, her writing is closely related to her African/ Yoruba background which leaves European points of views with a void. A void in relating to forms of 'reality' in connection to the spiritual and multilevel realities. There is a lot to learn out there and we can expect more of this gifted author!
Quote of the Month - July 2014
"Though books were potentially harmful, novels were all the more dangerous. The path of fiction could easily mislead you into the cosmos of stories where everything was fluid, quixotic, and as open to surprises as a moonless night in the desert. Before you knew it you could be so carried away that you could lose touch with reality - that stringent and stolid truth from which no minority should ever veer too far from in order not to end up unguarded when the winds shifted and bad times arrived. [...]
Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced."
From The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced."
From The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak *1971
Some odd months ago, I had been to my favourite bookshop in Amsterdam: The English Bookshop in the Jordaan. I hardly leave the shop without a bagful of books. So, without much information I bought the title The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak, having a notion about the title but no further knowledge about the book.
Finally, I've found time to read the book. And the more I read, the more I grew curious about the author daring to fictionalise a very complex subject: the relationship between Armenians and Turks. It's not a political novel though she had been prosecuted for it (the charges were dropped later). It has a very different approach with the focus on a female perspective, a perspective that is less focused on political statements but on historical facts and the impact these facts have on the successors.
Her focus on a female point of view could be related to Elif's upbringing: When Elif, née Elif Bilgin in Strasbourg, was one year old, her Turkish parents separated and she grew up with her single mother, Shafak. Her mother, whose name Elif took on as her pen name, later became a diplomat which also meant that Elif grew up in various places around the world: Madrid, Amman and Istanbul. As she explains in an interview with the CNN (see here), it has been her imagination which helped her to make her feel at home at the various places. So she began writing at a very young age and published her first stories at the age of 23. With her first book Pinhan (The Mystic), published in 1997, she was awarded with The Great Rumi-Prize, given to the best works in mystical literature in Turkey. Another eight novels followed written either in Turkish or in English, awarded with various prizes and nominations and translated in numerous languages. Concurrently, she holds a Master's degree in Gender and Women's Studies and a PhD in Political Sciences, writes for major international newspapers in Turkish and English, sits in various councils and judgement panels and is active on Twitter, while commuting between Istanbul and London. A very impressive biography which leaves one breathless reading her various social and political roles and activities.
Yet, she is also an inspiring woman on a different level: When she gave birth to her daughter in 2006, Elif suffered from postpartum depression. Instead of masking her illness she went public and wrote her memoir Black Milk about the time of readjusting her inner self (check my blog on 'inner selves' - June 2013). As she was looking for other female writers, this time not for inspiration in writing but for their lives, she realized that becoming a mother brings along questions about one's new and extended identity. How to combine her previous activities and roles with her new role as a mother and the subsequent expectations of family and society. As she says in an interview: "Writing Black Milk helped me to reconstruct myself. Odd as it may sound, depressions are golden opportunities to reassemble our inner pieces. [...] You can't be your usual self, you can't do the things you have always taken for granted. In that utter chaos there is an astonishing potential to achieve a new order." (find here the interview on WildRiverReview) So Elif reassembled her inner pieces and continued writing about various subjects while breaking down categories and clichés of identity, society and history. An inspiring and courageous woman and writer - check your local bookshop (!) and you'll certainly find one of her books which is worth reading.
Being inspired not only by her book but as much by her life, I will present her in March 2015 at one of the various events around International Women's Day held in Aalen (D).
Her focus on a female point of view could be related to Elif's upbringing: When Elif, née Elif Bilgin in Strasbourg, was one year old, her Turkish parents separated and she grew up with her single mother, Shafak. Her mother, whose name Elif took on as her pen name, later became a diplomat which also meant that Elif grew up in various places around the world: Madrid, Amman and Istanbul. As she explains in an interview with the CNN (see here), it has been her imagination which helped her to make her feel at home at the various places. So she began writing at a very young age and published her first stories at the age of 23. With her first book Pinhan (The Mystic), published in 1997, she was awarded with The Great Rumi-Prize, given to the best works in mystical literature in Turkey. Another eight novels followed written either in Turkish or in English, awarded with various prizes and nominations and translated in numerous languages. Concurrently, she holds a Master's degree in Gender and Women's Studies and a PhD in Political Sciences, writes for major international newspapers in Turkish and English, sits in various councils and judgement panels and is active on Twitter, while commuting between Istanbul and London. A very impressive biography which leaves one breathless reading her various social and political roles and activities.
Yet, she is also an inspiring woman on a different level: When she gave birth to her daughter in 2006, Elif suffered from postpartum depression. Instead of masking her illness she went public and wrote her memoir Black Milk about the time of readjusting her inner self (check my blog on 'inner selves' - June 2013). As she was looking for other female writers, this time not for inspiration in writing but for their lives, she realized that becoming a mother brings along questions about one's new and extended identity. How to combine her previous activities and roles with her new role as a mother and the subsequent expectations of family and society. As she says in an interview: "Writing Black Milk helped me to reconstruct myself. Odd as it may sound, depressions are golden opportunities to reassemble our inner pieces. [...] You can't be your usual self, you can't do the things you have always taken for granted. In that utter chaos there is an astonishing potential to achieve a new order." (find here the interview on WildRiverReview) So Elif reassembled her inner pieces and continued writing about various subjects while breaking down categories and clichés of identity, society and history. An inspiring and courageous woman and writer - check your local bookshop (!) and you'll certainly find one of her books which is worth reading.
Being inspired not only by her book but as much by her life, I will present her in March 2015 at one of the various events around International Women's Day held in Aalen (D).
Quote of the Month - June 2014
"These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths."
From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurstion (1937)
From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurstion (1937)
Zora Neale Hurston (1891/1901 - 1960)
Zora was born... so
much is clear. Her birth date as well as her birthplace are
still subject of discussion resulting from the historical status of
Afro-Americans. They weren't considered full-term citizens and were
treated indifferently. At least we know that she was the fifth child
(out of eight) by preacher, farmer and carpenter John Hurston and his
wife Lucy Ann Potts. And again, it's unclear where she was born; at
least it is certain that she grew up in Eatonville, Florida in the
United States of America. Remarkably, Eatonville was the first
incorporated town and Zora's father became major of then 125
inhabitants. To Zora, this place became her utopia, a society free of
any racial restrictions. It also became the setting for many of her
novels presenting a community with only their inner limitations and
no racial harassment.
When Zora was thirteen years old her mother died, the family was split and the children were passed around the family. With little schooling, Zora worked as a household help and only with the aid of an employer did she have the chance to enter Morgan Academy in Baltimore in 1917. After graduation, Zora moved on to Howard University in 1918. Inspired by Alan Locke, professor of philosophy and an authority of Black culture, Zora decided to pursue a literary career. She published several short stories in various magazines taking her Eatonville background as a setting and became noted by poets as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, both active in the movement of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. When Zora decided to move on to Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college in Manhattan, being offered a scholarship in anthropology, she became quickly a well recognized member of the movement. Zora and her stories, a mixture of anthropological findings and oral stories of the rural South made her a major figure in the movement. Still her stories were received not only with praise for its vivid and original tone, its manifold metaphors and images but also criticised for being misrepresentative. The deep rooted wish of the members of the Harlem Renaissance to be recognized as full term citizens ran contrary to Zora's depiction of her characters as sovereign and original figures with their very own inner styles – no copies of the established, intellectual 'Negro' and no 'Nigger' that bows to any Jim Crow laws. Zora's characters are individual figures with all intrinsic contradictions combined with the folk-lore of their historical background: independent, individual and proud. But obviously, Zora's time had not yet come and she died in obscurity. Her literary rediscovery was made by Alice Walker who reread her novels and claimed her as her 'literary grandmother'. But also Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison took on Zora's style to continue telling the story of a bruised race.
Most of the quotations of the last four months were taken from her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God which is considered Zora's master work – actually it's the 'one novel' I would take with me on an island: her depiction of the main character's search of her womanhood is exemplary of any woman's search for her uniqueness interwoven with beautiful images and metaphors – just beautiful!
When Zora was thirteen years old her mother died, the family was split and the children were passed around the family. With little schooling, Zora worked as a household help and only with the aid of an employer did she have the chance to enter Morgan Academy in Baltimore in 1917. After graduation, Zora moved on to Howard University in 1918. Inspired by Alan Locke, professor of philosophy and an authority of Black culture, Zora decided to pursue a literary career. She published several short stories in various magazines taking her Eatonville background as a setting and became noted by poets as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, both active in the movement of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. When Zora decided to move on to Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college in Manhattan, being offered a scholarship in anthropology, she became quickly a well recognized member of the movement. Zora and her stories, a mixture of anthropological findings and oral stories of the rural South made her a major figure in the movement. Still her stories were received not only with praise for its vivid and original tone, its manifold metaphors and images but also criticised for being misrepresentative. The deep rooted wish of the members of the Harlem Renaissance to be recognized as full term citizens ran contrary to Zora's depiction of her characters as sovereign and original figures with their very own inner styles – no copies of the established, intellectual 'Negro' and no 'Nigger' that bows to any Jim Crow laws. Zora's characters are individual figures with all intrinsic contradictions combined with the folk-lore of their historical background: independent, individual and proud. But obviously, Zora's time had not yet come and she died in obscurity. Her literary rediscovery was made by Alice Walker who reread her novels and claimed her as her 'literary grandmother'. But also Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison took on Zora's style to continue telling the story of a bruised race.
Most of the quotations of the last four months were taken from her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God which is considered Zora's master work – actually it's the 'one novel' I would take with me on an island: her depiction of the main character's search of her womanhood is exemplary of any woman's search for her uniqueness interwoven with beautiful images and metaphors – just beautiful!
Quote of the Month - May 2014
"No I do not weep at the world -
I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife"
From How it Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston (1928)
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