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    Mami Watas, president’s wives, and a stew – The 2020 Caine Prize Stories

    July 21, 2020 /

    The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is awarded each year to one short story by an African/ African-diasporic writer. You can read all the stories online via the Caine Prize website. The winner will be announced on July 27th with a film by Joseph Adesunloye. Of course, the question had to come up at yesterday’s 2020 AKO Caine Prize Conversation organized by Africa Writes and chaired by Ifeanyi Awachi: What about the dominance of Nigerian writers? Rémy Ngamjie and Erica Sugo Anyadike – the two non-Nigerian writers shortlisted, though Ngajie in a humorous act just claimed Nigerian-ess and Anyadike revealed to much laughter that she is married to a Nigerian – shifted their gaze away from Nigeria.…

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#OctoberWrapUp My favourite novel of the month is #OctoberWrapUp My favourite novel of the month is very clearly Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. This novel was just the right pick for a gloomy, halloween-y October. Besides that, I read some other good books – and a lot of comics. For some reasons I didn’t feel like this was the greatest reading month: I started strong and then I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the month. But hey, I read a lot of great queer books – as the fun @queerbookbox delivered tattoo says: “Queer books forever”! (And in this vain check out the #QueerBookChallenge running through all of November organized @queerlesen and @bibliophilistin ). Novel/ novella: S. L. Huang - Burning Roses 4/5 Jean Kyoung Frazier - Pizza Girl 4/5 Ayesha Harruna Attah - The Deep Blue Between 4/5 Emily M. Danforth - Plain Bad Heroines 5/5 Louise Erdrich - Shadow Tag 3/5 Short Story (Collection): Bolu Babalola - Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold 4,5/5 Zine: Enby Life. Stories, poetry & art by non-binary people. Graphic/ Comic / Picture Books: Natalie Riess - Space Battle Lunchtime Vol. 2: A Recipe for Disaster 4/5 Noelle Stevenson - Lumberjanes, Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max 4/5 Noelle Stevenson - Lumberjanes, Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan 4/5 Noelle Stevenson - Lumberjanes, Vol. 4: Out of Time 4/5 Carly Usdin - Heavy Vinyl: Y2K-O!, Vol. 2 4/5 Noelle Stevenson - Lumberjanes, Vol. 5: Band Together 4/5 Shannon Waters - Lumberjanes, Vol. 6: Sink or Swim 4/5 Nnedi Okorafor - LaGuardia 4/5 Carly Usdin - The Avant-Guards, Vol. 1 5/5 Carly Usdin - The Avant-Guards, Vol. 2 4/5 Non-fiction: Eleanor Crewes - The Times I Knew I Was Gay 3/5 Amrou Al-Kadhi - Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between 4/5 The Care Collective - The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence 4/5 Katharina Oguntoye - Schwarze Wurzeln: Afro-deutsche Familiengeschichten von 1884 bis 1950 4,5/5 Kate Manne - Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women 3,5/5 _ #bookstagram #igreads #review #bookreview #goodreads #instabook #instaread #reading #booklove #bookstagramfeature #bookgeek #booknerd #bookworm
Reading Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals" also fi Reading Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals" also fits perfectly into one of my overall plans for the year to read more on disability/ illness. Another book I still want to finish in 2020 is Eli Clare's "Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation". Other books I read this year: Keah Brown "The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love WithMe" Kaleigh Trace "Hot, Wet, and Shaking: How I Learned to Talk about Sex" Eliah Lüthi (ed.) "beHindert & verrückt Worte Gebärden Bilder finden" Judith Heumann "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" Alice Wong (ed.)„Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty first Century" + a whole bunch of books on AIDS/ HIV #disabilityreads #goodreads #QueerLitEveryMonth #queerliterature #queerlit#AudreLorde #EliClare #KeahBrown #KaleighTrace #EliahLüthi #JudithHeumann #AliceWong #disabilityrights #bookstagram #booklover
Used my lunch break to rush down to the bookshop ( Used my lunch break to rush down to the bookshop (yes, it's only a one minute walk - including the five stairs in my house) where this book awaited. It's a new edition of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals. I love this cover so much. And I have actually never read it - but hope to do so in November. #AudreLorde #TheCancerJournals #PenguinModernClassics #goodreads #bibliophile #bookworm #feministshelfie #QueerLitEveryMonth #queerliterature #booklover #readersofinsta #readerslife
Black German Literature/Writing/Art - Also Giveawa Black German Literature/Writing/Art - Also Giveaway -> This has been requested over and over, so today, I bring some Black German literature to your timeline! I understand "Black German Literature" here as a very wide descriptor including different experiences, identities, languages etc. I tagged some of the writers so you can follow their work! But now let's go: 1) Novels: These seven novels/ novellas just give a glimpse into the fiction published - mostly by small publishers or even self-published. From Amma Darko's debut novel from 1991 (it has been published in English in 1995 as Beyond the Horizon) to Olivia Wenzel's 2020 debut. 2) Black History. The 1986 "Farbe bekennen" (published in English as: "Showing Our Colors: Afro- German Women Speak Out") is a classic for a reason. Katharina Oguntoye's thesis on Afro-German history has been republished this year (original date: 1997)! Both books available at @orlandabuchverlag. 3) Poetry: May Ayim might be the best known Afro German poet and she was fantastic). What less people know: Guy St. Louis' collection (1983) full of poems on queer/lesbian desire, S&M, work with the dying and more was published before Ayim. 4) The Witnessed series: Sharon Dodua Otoo edited the wonderful Witnessed series for @edition_assemblage. The series consists of English-language books (non-fiction, fiction, plays photography and more) on Black experiences in Germany/ German-language countries. 5) Anthologies/ Literary magazines: Of course, you find Black writers (poets, academics, fiction writers...) in all kinds of anthologies too. 6) And luckily, not even this stack is reflective of all which is out there. There is much more! 7)*** Giveaway I give away one copy of "the things I am thinking while smiling politely". Yes, it's in English. And yes, the giveaway is international. To participate: 1) follow me 2) like the post, 3) tag three friends. I will draw a winner on Friday!
Already twenty pages in, I felt this could become Already twenty pages in, I felt this could become a new favourite - and having made my way through the more than 600 pages I am glad to confirm: this is a new favourite of mine. Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M. Danforth's sophomore novel (and first for an adult audience), is the queer gothic romp I never knew I was always looking for. Sarah Waters described the novel in her blurb as full of "sly humour and gothic mischief" and this is very fitting In 1902, Flo and Clara are students at The Brookhants School for Girls, they are obsessed with Mary MacLane's scandalous writing, and they are in love. They die in midst a swarm of yellow jackets, next to them a copy of Mary MacLane's autobiography. Is that wicked book the reason why? Or is it the Brookhants curse? The novel is split in two timelines: one following Libby, the Brookhants School's headmistress, and her "companion" Alex, in the aftermath of Flo's and Clara's deaths; and the other one, more than a hundred years later, follows a film crew trying to make a movie about the happenings at The Brookhants School for Girls. This book is very difficult to sum up. It is deliciously slow and very meta. This novel is a book within a book (it has footnotes abound!) and horror is less about jump scares but more the lingering gothic variety. Danforth layers queer story over queer story over queer story which is such a delight even though some of these end tragically. I, for one, will now go read Mary McLane and I see myself rereading this book in the not the so far future! #EmilyMDanforth #PlainBadHeroines #QueerLitEveryMonth #igreads #bookstagram #goodreads #bibliophile #queerliterature #queerlit #booklover #MaryMacLane #spookyreads #spookyseason
Started my weekend with the @akefestival interview Started my weekend with the @akefestival interview of Bolu Babalola. Her beautiful debut short story collection takes myths from different places of the world and re-tells or re-imagines them in ways that don't repeat patriarchal narratives. Babalola's heroines have agency and are complex. I highly recommend reading up on the myths which are the inspiration for the stories to appreciate Babalola's takes even more. Babalola makes - predominantly - Black women her romantic heroines who find kind and appreciative love without having to dim their lights. There is (unfortunately only) one queer story in the book - but it is a truly great one. (Or spoke to some of my personal favourite themes.) In any way, I highly recommend picking this one up. And in the meantime you can still watch the interview with her at the Ake Festival's youtube channel. #BoluBabalola #LoveInColour #igreads #akefestival #goodreads #booklover #bookish #booknerd #bookreview #justread #bookreview
What kind of future are we fighting for? Some wee What kind of future are we fighting for? Some weeks ago (I think, what is time anyway?) @stuckonthetipofmytongue asked a similar question in one of her posts. We often know what we are against (police violence, racism, capitalism, you name it) but how often to we pause and really think about the version of society we are working towards to? I thought again about these things when I read The Care Collective's "The Care Manifesto. The Politics of Independence". The form and idea of a manifesto is usually not what I am drawn to but I did love this one. The Care Manifesto asks one question: How could our lives/ our politics/ our societies look like if we centred "care". The collective works with a quite broad understanding of "care" but while a wide definition other times is unhelpful, here it functions perfectly as a unifying but complex focus and starting point. In brief chapters, the book looks at different levels: politics, kinships, communities, states, economics, world. What I loved most about the book is that it combines broad ideas on what needs to change to centre care with examples of how people already practiced certain aspects. They draw from a big fundus of projects, laws, discussions, activist movements etc to illustrate their points and this helps so much to start imaging such a future - and even present right now! - in the concrete. #versobooks #thecaremanifesto #carecollective #goodreads #bibliophile #bookreview #instaread #booklover #bookish
Let's talk about the expectations to perform as th Let's talk about the expectations to perform as the perfect reader (tm), capitalism, and publishers pointing everywhere but at themselves. I had this post in my drafts for many months and I had put in some notes - which I can now hardly decipher. I can't even remember if there was a specific occasion when I started to prepare this post (though I am sure there was). The thing is, there is always a current example, always a discussion simmering somewhere. Often, I - and I know many of you - think about how to best support authors I love and books I am excited about. And quite regularly there are posts, slides, tweet chains about what to do and not to o as a reader. Write reviews at Amazon (but also don't buy from Amazon which then again might prevent you from reviewing at Amazon but...). Pre-order books. Don't give bad ratings at Goodreads (but also you need to be real and authentic so people believe in your reviews). Buy books in a certain week. The list goes on and on. The pressure on readers to perform perfectly seems an especially twisted version of the market regulates itself" (barf) in which we all just need to try really hard to become a better market. And of course, the pressure is not distributed evenly, the pressure is most evidently on readers who want to support marginalized writers, stories, books. >> Continued in comments
Still catching up on comics published in the last Still catching up on comics published in the last few years. Yesterday I read Nnedi Okorafor's LaGuardia (which is illustrated by Tana Ford). This story - which can be read as being set years after the happenings in Okorafor's novel - follows pregnant Nigerian-American doctor Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka who smuggles alien plant Letme Live into New York City. It's a story immigration, fear mongering, the other. It's a four issue mini-series, so it's one complete story but I also wouldn't mind getting more from this universe. #bookstagram #nnediokorafor #comics #review #igreads #booklover #bookworm #readerslife #igbooks #justread #bookgeek #bookish #goodreads
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