1 Minute Book Review: Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

Name of the book: Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth 

Author:    Warsan Shire

Publisher:  flipped eye publishing limited

What's the book about? 

The various female personae in Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth confront identity against a background of war, nationalism, and the conflicting claims of religion (Islam) and gender.

Why am I reading the book? I met Warsan Shire at the Yardstick Festival and was struck by the contradictions (Black British/ Somali/ Female/ Moslem) and the sensuality of her verse.

Quote from the book: 

Beauty

My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair

a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole

the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin.

For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh.

It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink,

her small breasts bruised from sucking

She smiles, pops her gum before saying

boys are haram, don't ever forget that.

Some nights i hear her in her room screaming.

We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out.

Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.

Our mother has banned her from saying God's name.

Where to buy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1905233299

Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer who is based in London. Born in 1988, she has read her work internationally, more recently in South Africa, Italy and Germany. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing. The artist and activist uses her work to document stories of journey and trauma. She curates and teaches workshops around the art of healing through narrative.

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1 Minute Book Review: Nairobi Heat by Mukoma Wa Nguigi

Name of the book: Nairobi Heat

Author:   Mukoma Wa Nguigi

Publisher:  Melville International Crime

What's the book about? 

A cop from Wisconsin pursues a killer through the terrifying slums of Nairobi and the memories of genocide

IN MADISON, WISCONSIN, it’s a big deal when African peace activist Joshua Hakizimana—who saved hundreds of people from the Rwandan genocide—accepts a position at the university to teach about “genocide and testimony.” Then a young woman is found murdered on his doorstep.

Local police Detective Ishmael—an African-American in an “extremely white” town—suspects the crime is racially motivated; the Ku Klux Klan still holds rallies there, after all. But then he gets a mysterious phone call: “If you want the truth, you must go to its source. The truth is in the past. Come to Nairobi.”

It’s the beginning of a journey that will take him to a place still vibrating from the genocide that happened around its borders, where violence is a part of everyday life, where big-oil money rules and where the local cops shoot first and ask questions later—a place, in short, where knowing the truth about history can get you killed.


Why am I reading the book? I met Mukoma Wa Ngugi at the Yardstick Festival and heard him read from Nairobi Heat at one of the afternoon panels. Coming from Miami where crime novels are de rigeur, I thought it was an interesting concept of having an African-American and African cop partnered in Kenya to solve the mystery of a dead blonde girl found on the doorsteps of a renowned African peace activist who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. I read Nairobi Heat the next day. I was not disappointed.


Quote from the book: "Were we manipulating race? The calculation was simple: one million lives did not move the world, African countries included, to intervene, but the death of one beautiful blonde girll would. We did not create that equation--we found it as it was. And we would use it to get justice."

Where to buy: http://www.amazon.com/Nairobi-Heat-Melville-International-Crime/dp/1935554646

Novelist, poet, and literary scholar, Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Black Star Nairobi (Melville, 2013), Nairobi Heat (Penguin, SA 2009, Melville House Publishing, 2011), an anthology of poetry titled Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and is a columnist for Ebony.com and a regular contributor to Kenya Yetu Magazine.  He was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009.  In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing for his novel manuscript, The First and Second Books of Transition.  Mukoma holds a PHD in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a BA in English and Political Science from Albright College. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University.


Source: http://www.mukomawangugi.com/

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I've modified this format from One Minute Book Reviews: http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/

Five Questions With...Rethabile Masilo

1. The poems in your collection re-enact various rituals. What is the connection between ritual and poetry?
   
   Ritual is an anchor. After wandering, it brings me back home to where I started, where I feel safer, and where I get re-energized. Although I recognize the benefits of leaving the nest, just about everything that has remained a deep part of me was learned at those initial rituals. Playing morabaraba with my brother taught me tactic and patience. Performing chores at home gave me a sense of responsibility. Worshipping put me firmly in a group. All these have left in me images that never tire of giving and of being my starting blocks.
   
   And so I suspect it is for other poets. The importance of getting out of one’s safe zone does not mean a whole lot if there is no safe zone to begin with.
   
   
2. "Janice's Poem" is one of my favorites. Can you explain the personal significance of this poem?
   
   The poem started as an ode to woman, a woman who loves and is loved, who works to see to the needs of her family, a woman who is good, who is sexy. But I abandoned the poem because it refused to come together, until a dear friend of mine lost his wife, who was just such a woman. I had forgotten about the poem but as soon as I heard the sad news it came roaring back and came together in a few hours, almost as it stands today.
   
   The poem is for Janice specifically; but Janice was the woman I think all women ought to be, and knowing her, however little, was enough to write over the fragments I had scribbled into that pre-poem.
   
   It is a farewell poem, to be sure, but in many ways it is also a poem of realization, of coming to terms. Woman is misrepresented in my corner of Africa and in other parts of the world, despite the fact that she does most of the work. I wanted to show her in that light: undertaking, loving, lovable, altruistic, pretty… yet undermined. I think the poem initially refused to budge because I wanted her to be African. Janice came along and took the poem and turned  it universal by representing the loss of what is dear to us all, and she did it, in her passing, in the form of woman. In her, as a result, I lost a sister and a mother and a friend and a friend’s love, all of them embodied in her person.
   
   If anyone were to ask me, I would tell them that, yes, Janice's Poem is the most complete poem I have ever written. Complete because I wouldn't move or replace one comma.
   
   When I finally stood back and looked at the poem, after finishing it in a frenzy, I phoned Janice's husband and expressed my sympathy. And knew then the power of such feelings in poetry as well as in life.
   
   
3. Originally from Lesotho, you studied at Maryville College, and you now live in Paris. How have these travels influenced your poetry?
   
   My father went to prison when I was nine, and the events of that period, the raid on our home, the sight of father hauled away, my brother later being killed, my nephew being killed, and the inevitable flight into exile, will always stay with me and nourish my thoughts.
   
   Between my father's prison stint and our exile, I learned poetry (praise poetry, essentially) as a young boy. All boys learn it in Lesotho. Traditionally, teenage boys go up into the mountains for a long stretch, a few months, to learn how to be men and husbands. Some call it initiation school. I choose to call it school or traditional school at worst. There they learn fighting skills (A Sesotho stick-fighting art called lekallo), how to be a father, a husband, a provider, a singer and a poet.
   
   I did not have that privilege because I was busy learning my ABCs, but when I was in high school we organized a mock traditional school with the help of older boys who had lived it. And suddenly I found myself learning how to sing and how to recite poetry. While at the same high school, a lady teacher introduced us to a volume of mainstream African poetry from East and West Africa, and read it to us whenever she could. Her voice and her lips have a lot to do with my poetic interests today.
   
   In Maryville, TN, at Maryville College, I encountered Frost, cummings, Whitman, Wheatley and other American poets. One of my teachers told me I had to be studying English literature instead of biology. I switched. I was hooked. Then I met my then fiancée, and proceeded to write a poem a day and slip it into her mailbox. She became my wife a few years later. There was a vibrant varsity rag and I submitted to it, poems about the plight of Africa mainly, and read other poems by fellow students. My stay at that institution served to turn me from a rhymester into an aspiring poet.
   
   Paris brought children and a new family, but also this permanent distance from Lesotho and from sibling and parent. I longed for them as I still do, and attempted to transform that longing into poetry. In essence, Paris closed the loop and took me back to Lesotho to connect with my roots and with the reasons I was in Europe in the first place. But it was also in Paris that I started "computering" and blogging, and being exposed to an even wider spectrum of poets and poems. It became much easier to find and bookmark favorite poems without the burden of having to buy books. That, to a young man looking for work in a foreign land, was a blessing.
   
   
   
4. How has living through pre- and post-Apartheid South Africa affected your life and poetry?
   
   When I was in high school we would enact a show for our year-end function. I was involved in representing a freedom fighter, which meant learning their gallows speech and reciting it in front of school mates and parents. We would wear torn jeans and rub dry grass into our hair, as if we were rubbing the struggle itself like oil into our hair. We had to look haggard. I remember my dad eyeing me proudly as I recited Mandela's trial defense speech, which I had learned by heart. Today I retain the kernel of it: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. And no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.” Or perhaps that is from the 1955 Freedom Charter. I realized early on that all people are born equal, and failed to understand why, if I was black, I was bad. That, too, was the beginning of my questioning religion, although this quest is today represented by only one poem in Things That Are Silent.
   
   Why did my father and uncles, these stern, sure, steady men, have to bow to white boys? I also went to prison in South Africa for pass laws, and learned the life lessons of being patient and subtly educational. I realized that most white folks were indeed not to blame, but truly believed they were superior, believed that I was inferior, for having been taught so. They had to be educated not through morality lectures, but by example. And greater people have died doing exactly that.
   
   When I went to the USA I immediately preferred outright racism to hidden racism. I found that the latter was more difficult to deal with, whereas in South Africa I knew that the white person approaching me thought themselves superior and an enemy. This affected me profoundly because it was to me the revelation that racism was evolving, instead of going away. I discovered that it never does go away, but instead adapts. And this was reinforced when I came to France where the practice remains, in the denial of jobs, the locking car doors when I pass, the being singled out for a pat-down in the metro, and the being systematically asked to show ID when writing a check.
   
   Experiencing pre- and post-Apartheid helped me in several ways, if only to see myself as part of a larger group, getting me to look beyond the conventional wisdom of that time to people reaching for eternal wisdom, Mandela, Sobukwe, Brutus, Fischer, Tutu, who assured me that I was OK. I have wanted to write a Mandela poem for as long as I can remember, but have so far failed. The repeated attempts, however, generate ideas and images, and I will not despair. After all, Janice's Poem is there to encourage me.
   
   
   
   
5. In the introduction, you mentioned two American poets, e.e. cummings and Robert Frost, whose work occupies the opposite ends of the poetic spectrum. What did you learn from these two poets?
   
   Frost taught me to play tennis with the net up, and cummings to play it with the net down. Both approaches are valid, as long as the absence of a net entertains the audience, too. I read so much Frost that for some time I couldn't write anything but a sonnet. Or a couplet. I am grateful. Cummings taught me imagery of tongue and eye. I still remember one of his earlier poems where he writes about a sparrow and watches its little "toe, toe, toe." That has stayed with me through the times.
   
   Robert Frost also told me that a poet should have a local voice and be proud of it. When I hear him read “The Gift Outright” at Kennedy's inauguration, with his twang and expressions, and when I hear him in The Death Of The Hired Man write:
   
   'When was I ever anything but kind to him?
   But I’ll not have the fellow back,' he said.
   'I told him so last haying, didn't I?
   If he left then, I said, that ended it.
   What good is he? Who else will harbor him
   At his age for the little he can do?'
   
   I am transformed. I discovered that there was no need to conform, but that there was instead a need to be authentic to self. All his poems opened wide this idea to me, who had grown up among imitators of everything British. Frost more than anyone showed me that the language of the people is what makes poetry good, as much as cummings showed me that if a poem is good, it is good, no matter how it is written.
   
   
   
   
6. What makes you laugh?
   
   I tend to laugh at absurd situations, especially those involving folks who before then could not have imagined themselves in such fixes. I am never amused, however, when I think people laugh at me mockingly, or at another person mockingly. I think this is a remnant of my charged childhood and adolescence, when we were ridiculed solely on account of who we were. I laugh out loud in the middle of the night when all of a sudden I get a joke, or understand something that had eluded me until then. This used to happen a lot when I was new in France, due to the then language barrier.
   
   I think we can laugh about everything as long as the joke isn’t cruel, and is funny. I laugh when I’m confronted with a silly dilemma, such as being asked an awkward question whose reply I know will hurt my interlocutor. This happens often with friends and family who do not understand my beef with religion and faith.
   
   I laugh whenever I can. Happiness tickles me, a good day or a good picnic or a sumptuous braai. I laugh when the underdog gets the upper hand. In short, I laugh when nature or a circumstance places a banana peel on the path of the unsuspecting.

About Rethabile Masilo

Rethabile Masilo was born in Lesotho and currently resides in Paris, France. He is married and has two children. Rethabile left Lesotho in 1980 and moved through South Africa and Kenya, before being admitted to Maryville College at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. He studied biology and English literature there, met his future wife, and followed her to France where she was from. Rethabile has been published in Canopic Jar, Orbis, Bolts of Silk, and in several personal blogs. His first collection of poems, Things That Are Silent, was published in June 2012 by Pindrop Press. He blogs at Poéfrika and co-edits Canopic Jar.

For more information, please follow this link: Pindrop Press.

Poéfrika Review: "Marcus and the Amazons" by Geoffrey Philp

 "I could hang tens of other names on the character of Marcus, in Geoffrey Philp's book, Marcus and the Amazons, but Marcus is perhaps the better fit after all. He reminds me of people that have in some way or another crossed and influenced my life, in Africa and on every other continent. If my children have not lived through what people of my generation lived through, I'd be happy if they lived through this book."

Read more of Rethabile Masilo's review of Marcus and the Amazons over at his blog. As a poet and scientist who studied insects, Rethabile brings an added dimension to the critique of the book.

Poéfrika: "Marcus and the Amazons", by Geoffrey Philp:

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21 Days/ 21 Poems: Elegy

Janice's Poem

When you get there, the horses of dawn
before you, the furious wheels of drawn carts,
each distance hard-won with sweated salt,
the road flat between miles, tense; only hoof
and sound of wheel loud above the air,
proof that this is not just another dream,
who can say what's best to do for our calm?
You sit like sculpted ivory among jaded colours,
something in the face you wear, hung like a mask
on walls of inner rooms, something in the sound
whose echo names you, the morning of which
rose out of the gold of you, flaring nostrils
at the world. How can we say who is to blame?
Halfway into destiny, the sun lost all hope,
shone into itself across the great Smokies.
A slow descent home. The accurate death
of the first words ever spoken: let there be light.
What do we know about the meanings
of things that work against that kind of light?

“Janice’s Poem” by Rethabile Masilo

Elegies work on two levels. They mourn the death of the loved one and extend the memory of the beloved beyond physical death.

In “Janice’s Poem,” Rethabile Masilo uses the imagery of a horse drawn hearse as a metaphor not only for the physical journey of a funereal procession, but also for the beloved’s life. The word choice with the short vowels and hard consonants, “each distance hard-won with sweated salt” add tension to the chiaroscuro descriptions of the liminal space and give the impression of a speaker who is displaying the utmost fortitude in the face of profound loss.

But then, in a remarkable turn that begins with ‘Halfway into destiny, the sun lost all hope,” the speaker shifts from the personal with an allusion to Genesis 1: 3: “Let there be light,” and brings the reader within the circle of compassion that the poem so ably evokes.

About Rethabile Masilo

Rethabile co-edits Canopic Jar (http://canopicjar.com) and says he carries a manuscript around in his back pocket. He teaches English, but says he also privately teaches Sesotho in an effort to get people to learn the language. He's the father of two and enjoys playing soccer, reading and writing, and cooking. He lives with his family in Paris, France. You can visit his Africa-inspired blog at:http://poefrika.blogspot.com

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21 Days/ 21 Poems: A Recent Memorable Poem

 If You are Lucky

If you are lucky

you will carry one night with you

for the rest of your life,

a night like no other.

You won’t see it coming.

Forget the day, the year.

It will arrive uninvoked,

an astrological anomaly.

You will remember

how every cell in your body

knew him, this stranger,

how you held your breath,

the way you searched his face.

This is how such evenings begin.

And you will be real in your skin,

bone and sinew; the way you always thought

you could be. Effortlessly

This is how you will fit together.

His parted lips between your thighs,

your half-lit nipples darkening,

the hot-breathed arrival of desire,

the frenzied coupling

as you opened soundlessly

and the world flooded into you.

In the morning, maybe,

soon after sunrise

you will walk barefoot above a waterfall in the forest,

light-headed with the smell of sex

laughing at your déshabillée.

You will carry

the music of this memory with you

and from time to time,

in the small, withered hours,

your body will sing its remembering.

“If you are Lucky” by Michelle McGrane. The Suitable Girl, Pindrop Press, 2010.

The poems in The Suitable Girl surprised me at every turn. From the harrowing lines of self-mutilation in “Skin Offerings” to the stoic “Madame Bovary’s Final Visit,” McGrane confronts gender issues with a stark resolve and subtle irony.

In “If You are Lucky,” McGrane celebrates the body and its memories of sensuality. And although the lines seem to have a casual abandon, there is a subtle intelligence in the association of “bone and sinew” with “frenzied coupling.” The poem may have a libertine tone, but this is a poet who is in control of her craft.

Michelle McGrane lives in Johannesburg and blogs at http://peonymoon.wordpress.com. Her collection, The Suitable Girl, is published by Pindrop Press.

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Writer-in-residence Chenjerai Hove for Two Upcoming Special Events

Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove, theMiami: City of Refugewriter-in-residence at the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at MDC, will hold two presentations, “The Beautiful African Mother” on March 10 at the Pinecrest Library and “The Experience of Exile” on March 11 at Temple Israel of Greater Miami.

For “The Beautiful African Mother,” Hove will read from his politically conscious and heart-wrenching work, with a particular focus on the women who inspired him. The discussion and reading will also center around a greater understanding of women in African politics with a focus on Zimbabwe. Hove will speak about social justice and share his story of exile at his presentation on the 11th.

As a Miami: City of Refugewriter-in-residence since January 2010, Hove brings his politically and culturally rich stories of exile, injustice and ultimate hope to MDC students and the Miami community. He has been well received speaking at several events and publishing several columns in the Miami Herald.

The government of Zimbabwe first noticed Hove for his political novel Masimba Avanhu? (Is This the People’s Power?) and for his play Sister Sing Again Someday, which both address the situation of women in Zimbabwe. Hove’s home was subsequently burglarized and his unpublished writings were stolen by the national police. After constant surveillance and threats to his family, he left Zimbabwe in 2001 leaving his wife and youngest child behind. Most recently, he has lived in exile in Stavanger, Norway.

Mr. Hove’s visit is made possible by the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College promotes reading and writing throughout the year by consistently presenting high-quality literary activities open to all in South Florida. Programs and activities include hosting visiting writers; classroom collaborations; public reading series; creative writing courses; the Center’s literacy-focused initiatives – Storytime, One Picture Book, One Community, Spanish Authors in America, and the Big Read in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts; and Miami Book Fair International – the nation’s largest and finest literary gathering every November at MDC. The Center also manages the college’s acclaimed Spanish-language theatre program, Prometeo, which is its dramatic arts component. For more information, please visit www.flcenterlitarts.com.

FCLA at MDC presents Chenjerai Hove: “The Beautiful African Mother”

WHEN: Thursday, Mar. 10, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
WHERE: Miami Dade Public Library System, Pinecrest Branch, 5835 SW 111 St.
COST: Free
FCLA at MDC presents Chenjerai Hove: “The Experience of Exile”

WHEN: Friday, Mar. 11, 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
WHERE: Temple Israel of Greater Miami, 137 NE 19 St.
COST: Free
For more information regarding the program and Mr. Hove, please visit www.miamicityofrefuge.org.

Media-only contacts:
Juan Mendieta, 305-237-7611, jmendiet@mdc.edu, MDC communications director
Tere Estorino, 305-237-3949, testorin@mdc.edu, MDC media relations director
Tarnell Carroll, 305-237-3359, tcarroll@mdc.edu, media specialist
Sue Arrowsmith, 305-237-3710, sue.arrowsmith@mdc.edu, media specialist

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"1945" by Chris Abani

from DAPHNE’S LOT

1945
When the magic mushroom clouding Hiroshima cleared
on peace, Daphne was fourteen. Her imagination could
not measure the desert of death that was Normandy’s
beach or the oily cough of tanks through small dusty
Italian towns where everybody wanted to be Americano!
But she remembered waking to the siren of the air-raid
alarm, disoriented by blacked out windows.
The shelter; a family huddle under the stairs
with the musty smell and the tang of cleaning products,
face pressed into the familiar hardness of the ironing board.
There was the thrill of the gasmask and the free candy
she got at the local cinema on Saturdays if she
remembered to bring it along, and the ballerina in her
music box that lived only when she hoarded sweets.
2001
I pretend to smoke my pen, listening to Beethoven.
Moonlight Sonata. This is the thing.
Long hours, late hours, much of it tortured,
waiting for sense like patterns in the sand.
Or language poetry or conceptual art.
To say: Oh my craft and the time it is taking,
10
but Derek Walcott got there first and how
do you follow a poet like that?
I cannot call Mum. It is four a.m., this late,
the tone would be loud enough to touch.
I want to ask – did Granny brush your hair,
the moment fragile yet tensile as a strand of that hair?
I need the material, but this thing, this shape
cannot be found with her. Like the rabbi said,
never give up a good question for an easy answer.
And this much I know – the deeper art
is to follow where the shape leads,
but my fear needs a map. Lines, in couplets,
to contain the uncertainty. Still it mocks me.
Oh my craft, and the time it is taking!

Praise for Feed Me the Sun by Chris Abani

“In this eclectic and imaginative poetry book Chris Abani takes us on a time-travelling journey around the world. He explores history, war, myth, religion, relationships and a poet’s personal and philosophical musings. His versatile voice is, variously, audacious, energetic, visual, oblique and always, always, thought-provoking.” ~ Bernardine Evaristo

This collection of Chris Abani’s longer poems, some previously published, the majority new, displays his astonishing energy, beauty of expression and range of reference to contemporary life, history, art and literature. Having this work together in one volume enables us to see the dialogue between a sense of the personal and an engagement with the public and historical, from ‘Daphne’s Lot’ which explores the life of an Englishwoman (his mother) caught up in the madness of the Biafran civil war, or ‘Buffalo Women’, an epistolary sequence of poems between lovers caught up in the American civil war. 


The focus of Abani’s poems is frequently on extreme situations where the unspeakable becomes too readily the doable, but where against the odds compassion and love remain and the individual determination to resist public madness. In ‘Sanctificum’ there is a profound meditation on the sacred, whether reached through religious ritual or through art, and the narrow dividing line between the urge to reach for mastery and transcendence and the abuses of power whether personal, contemporary or historical.


Chris Abani is the author of 11 books, the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, and is currently holds the position of Professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Source: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/poetry_display.asp?isbn=9781845231569&au_id=209

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My Ideal Schedule: Miami Book Fair International

The lineup of authors for the Miami Book Fair International will again present some logistical problems. Translation: I will have either have to clone myself in a hurry or borrow the Time Turner from Hermione Granger.

Here would be my ideal schedule:

Saturday

Michele Voltaire Marcelin on Lost and Found, Ruth Miriam Garnett on Chole’s Grief, Diana McCaulay on Dog-Heart and Mervyn Taylor on No Back Door.

Saturday, Nov. 20, 10:00 a.m., Room 3314 (Building 3, 3rd Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/michele_voltaire_marcelin_on_emlost_and_.aspx

Walter Mosley on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.

Saturday, Nov. 20, 10:00 a.m., Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor, Room 1261)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/walter_mosley_on_emthe_last_days_of_ptol.aspx

Gideon Hanoomansingh, Merle Hodge, Lasana Kwesi and Raoul Pantin, Earl Lovelace with moderator Winston Maynard.

Saturday, Nov. 20, 11:30 a.m., Room 3314 (Building 3, 3rd Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/gideon_hanoomansingh_merle_hodge_lasana_.aspx

Michele Norris on The Grace of Silence: A Memoir

Saturday, Nov. 20, 12:00 p.m., Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor, Room 1261)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/michele_norris_on_emthe_grace_of_silence.aspx

Dr. Paul Farmer on Partner to the Poor

Saturday, Nov. 20, 1:30 p.m., Room 3314 (Building 3, 3rd Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/dr._paul_farmer_on_empartner_to_the_poor.aspx

Kwame Anthony Appiah on Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen and Thomas C. Holt on Children of Fire: A History of African Americans

Saturday, Nov. 20, 1:30 p.m., Presentation Pavilion B (N.E 3rd Street and 1st Avenue)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/kwame_anthony_appiah_on_emhonor_code.aspx

Lynn Emanuel on Noose and Hook, Chase Twichell on Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems, Michael Hettich on Like Happiness and Lola Haskins on Still, the Mountain

Saturday, Nov. 20, 1:30 p.m., Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/lynn_emanuel_on_emnoose_and_hookem_chase.aspx

Les Standiford and Joe Matthews on Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction that Changed America

Saturday, Nov. 20, 1:30 p.m., Room 7128 (Building 7, 1st Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/les_standiford_and_joe_matthews_on_embri.aspx

James W. Hall on Silencer, Jeff Lindsay on Dexter is Delicious and Ridley Pearson on In Harm’s Way and Greg Rucka on Last Run: A Queen & Country Novel

Saturday, Nov. 20, 2:30 p.m., Room 7128 (Building 7, 1st Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/james_w._hall_on_emsilencerem_jeff_linds.aspx

Heather Russell on Legba's Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic and Donna Weir-Soley on Eroticism, Spirituality and Resistance in Black Women's Writings

Saturday, Nov. 20, 3:30 p.m., Room 3315 (Building 3, 3rd Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/heather_russell_on_emlegbas_crossing.aspx

Carlos Eire on Learning to Die in Miami, Edwidge Danticat on Create Dangerously: Immigrant Artists at Work and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o on Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (free ticket required for admission)

Saturday, Nov. 20, 3:30 p.m., Chapman Conference Center (Building 3, 2nd Floor, Room 3210)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/carlos_eire_on_emlearning_to_die_in_miam.aspx

Tigertail presents A South Florida Poetry Annual: Selected Collective, Poetry, Prose and Projects by The Miami Poetry Collective

Saturday, Nov. 20, 4:00 p.m., Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/tigertail_presents_ema_south_florida_poe.aspx

Salman Rushdie on Luka and the Fire of Life (free ticket required for admission)

Saturday, Nov. 20, 5:00 p.m., Chapman Conference Center (Building 3, 2nd Floor, Room 3210)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/salman_rushdie_on_emluka_and_the_fire_of.aspx

Sunday

T Cooper on The Beaufort Diaries, Preston Allen on Jesus Boy and Vicki Hendricks on Florida Gothic Stories

Sunday, Nov. 21, 10:00 a.m., Prometeo Theatre (Building 1, 1st Floor, Room 1101)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/t_cooper_on_emthe_beaufort.aspx

Haiti Noir with Edwidge Danticat, M.J. Fievre, Mark Kurlansky, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel and Josaphat-Robert Large

Sunday, Nov. 21, 12:00 p.m., Presentation Pavilion A (N.E 3rd Street and 1st Avenue

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/haiti_noiremwith_edwidge_danticat_m.j._f.aspx

Geoffrey Philp on Dub Wise, James Brock on Gods & Money and Nina Romano on Coffeehouse Meditations

Sunday, Nov. 21, 1:00 p.m., Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/geoffrey_philp_on_emdub_wise.aspx

C.K. Williams on Wait and On Whitman in conversation with Campbell McGrath

Sunday, Nov. 21, 1:00 p.m., Prometeo Theatre (Building 1, 1st Floor, Room 1101)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/c.k._williams_on_emwait_and_on_whitmanem.aspx

Norberto Fuentes on Autobiography of Fidel Castro, Earl Lovelace on Is' Just a Movie and Mark Kurlansky on Edible Stories

Sunday, Nov. 21, 2:00 p.m., Room 7106/7107 (Building 7, 1st Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/norberto_fuentes_on.aspx

Roberto González Echevarría on Cuban Fiestas, Gustavo Pérez Firmat on The Havana Habit, Octavio Roca on Cuban Ballet and Mark Weiss on The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry

Sunday, Nov. 21, 3:30 p.m., Room 7106/7107 (Building 7, 1st Floor)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/roberto_gonzalez_echevarria_on.aspx

Jonathan Franzen on Freedom: A Novel (free ticket required for admission)

Sunday, Nov. 21, 5:00 p.m., Chapman Conference Center (Building 3, 2nd Floor, Room 3210)

http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/jonathan_franzen_on_emfreedom_a_novel_em.aspx

Hope I'll see you there!

***

MIAMI BOOK FAIR INTERNATIONAL AND FLORIDA CENTER FOR THE LITERARY ARTS

Miami Book Fair International is the largest and finest literary gathering in America. It is the premier event of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College. The Center promotes reading and writing throughout the year by consistently presenting quality literary activities open to all in South Florida. Literacy projects target children of all ages—from kindergarten to high school—as well as college students and adults.

Established and emerging writers from South Florida and all over the U.S. read, lecture, and teach workshops. They work with K-12, MDC students, and diverse members of the community, helping to deepen their understanding of literature, and encouraging the work of writers at all stages of development. The Center envisions South Florida as a nexus of literary activity in the Americas and beyond, and will continue to champion its mission of promoting the advancement and appreciation of the literary arts in all forms.

Miami Book Fair International is made possible through the generous support of the State of Florida and the National Endowment for the Arts; the City of Miami; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Miami-Dade County Public Schools; the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau; the Miami Downtown Development; and the Friends of the Fair; as well as many corporate partners.

Kadija George @ BBC

The Ballad Of Africa

Saturday 9 October and Monday 11 October

9 & 11 October 2010 between 0300 GMT - 0600 GMT 4pm-5pm

SABLE Publisher Kadija George will be one of the guests on BBC World Service Radio talking about 50 years of independence since Nigeria's independence - and the countries that followed.


'The Ballad of Africa' is a compelling and thought-provoking examination of of the highs and lows of the continent's post-independence history through the eyes of Africans. In a specially commissioned programme marking the 50th anniversary of the independence of many African countries, this extraordinary self-narrating Ballad explores through words and music issues that have dominated African mindsets for the past half-century.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2010/10/101007_ballad_of_africa_tx.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/radio/2010/wk41/sat.shtml



About Kadija George:


Kadija George is a literary activist, editor and publisher. Of Sierra Leonean descent, she read West African studies at Birmingham University, then became a freelance journalist, specialising in black arts, black British Literature and women's issues. In the mid-1990s, she worked for the Centreprise Literature Development Project as the Black Literature Development Co-ordinator, and set up the newspaper, Calabash. She left there in 1998. In 2001, she became founder and managing editor of Sable magazine.

***

Chenjerai Hove @ Books & Books Tonight

In anticipation of Banned Books Week, Miami City of Refuge writer-in-residence, Chenjerai Hove will read entries from his book of poetry, Blind Moon (Michigan State, $22.95), and speak of his plight as a censored writer in Zimbabwe. Presented in collaboration with Florida Center for the Literary Arts. 

September 15, 2010

8:00pm

Books & Books

265 Aragon Ave.

Coral Gables, FL 33134

Mr. Chenjerai Hove (pronounced chen-jeh-rye  hoe-veh) is a Zimbabwean author, poet, essayist, playwright, and human rights activist.  He has a Bachelor’s degree in Education and holds an equivalent to a Master of Arts with specializations in African Literature, Socio-Linguistics and Literary Theory. For over thirty years, Hove wrote from his native country unafraid of the risks involved in writing and teaching about the ugliness of his government. As time went on, his work became an increasingly political target of attack and so, after endless bribes and countless death threats, Hove finally fled to exile in 2001

Hove is the founder of the Zimbabwe Writers Union and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (Zimrights).  He has lectured on the craft of writing as well as social justice at major universities across the globe. He has received the highest prize in literature given on the African Continent (the NOMA award) for his novel Bones in 1988, and his essays on social justice entitled Palaver Finish earned him the German-Africa prize in 2001.

CHENJERAI HOVE

Notable Books with Descriptions-

Bones
Publisher: Baobab Books (January 1, 1988)  
ISBN-10: 0908311036  

This proclaimed novel, and Zimbabwean classic, won both the Zimbabwe Book Publishers' Association first prize for literature, and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1989. The jury citation described the novel as 'a powerful, moving, and ambitious novel, written with exceptional linguistic control, plumbing the depths of human suffering but having the wisdom to hope'. The story is the sensitive evocation of Marita, a farm- worker, whose only son joined the freedom fighters in Zimbabwe's war of liberation. The poetic language is rich in Shona idiom.

Blind Moon
Publisher: Weaver Press; illustrated edition (December 29, 2003)  
ISBN-10: 1779220197  

A new collection of evocative and defiant poetry, the poems reflect on the plight of the individual citizen and the state of Zimbabwe, the poet's birthplace and spiritual home. They convey empathy for those who suffer anonymous deaths at the expense of tyrannical power, and yearning for a more peaceful world and spirit of common destiny; their intention being in his words' to persuade the heart and the soul and human body to be together and to gently cry out to the world'.

Palaver Finish
Publisher: Weaver Press Ltd (January 1, 2004)  
ISBN-10: 1779220014  

This volume brings together a series of articles, which have previously appeared in his weekly column in The Zimbabwe Standard. Hove, publishing in Zimbabwe, believes the voices of the nation's politically engaged writers - in tune with the mood of the people and the times - are crucial in the current climate of political violence and censorship. To outside media and observers trying to ascertain the truths of the political situation, his writings offer insights from a black Zimbabwean writer and critic. Hove writes for and about Zimbabwe from a perspective that acknowledges recent history, and debates around culture, tradition, and democracy. His case is that Zimbabwe is a police state, which has inherited pre-independence totalitarianism; members of the Government are in politics for reasons of personal gain - they are unsophisticated, poorly educated and have no notion of public office. He believes that the army and police - whom he compares with those of apartheid South Africa, are the politicians' personal weapons, committing acts of crime and terrorism in the President's name and in their own.

Ancestors
Publisher: Picador (November 22, 1996)
ISBN-10: 0330344900

This novel traces African national history and identity from the turn of the 19th century to the eve of Zimbabwe's independence.

Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa
Publisher: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd (July 31, 2009)  
ISBN-10: 190670452X  

NOTE: This volume of essays was co-written with his colleague Okey Ndibe who teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. This work could be presented in a public discussion as a dialogue between both authors articulating the political experience of writers from Africa.

The book is divided into two broad categories: in one, several writers speak directly, and with rich anecdotal details about the impact wars and conflicts have had in the formation of their experience and work; in the second, a number of scholars articulate how particular writers have assimilated the horrors of wars and conflicts in their literary creations. The result is an invaluable harvest of reflections and perspectives that open the window into an essential, but until now sadly unexplored, facet of the cultural and political experience of African writers. The broad scope of this collection-covering Darfur, the Congolese crisis, Biafra, Zimbabwe, South Africa, among others-is complemented by a certain buoyancy of spirit that runs through most of the essays and anecdotes.  

Shebeen Tales
Publisher: Serif Publishing (October 1997)
ISBN-10: 189795932X 

In Shebeen Tales, Chenjerai offers a view of his country not from the privileged and insulated perspective of the foreign correspondent of well-heeled visitor, but that of the ordinary person who, with the help of dry wit and illegal beer, pokes fun at the rich and mighty. Struggling against drivers, pompous bureaucrats and the other woes of life in the city, the man in the shebeen sees modern Africa as it really is, not as press releases or tourist brochures would have us believe.  

Shadows  
Publisher: Heinemann (October 1992)  
ISBN-10: 0435905910  

The novel was inspired when the author witnessed two young lovers who opted for death instead of life. The two lovers are innocents in a world where people have little control over their lives, struggling to survive in a barren land.

Up in Arms
Publisher: Zimbabwe Pub. House (1982)  
ISBN-10: 0949932175  

In the late 1970s, Hove taught at rural schools and witnessed horrific aspects of the war of liberation, an experience registered in the anger and compassion pervading Up in Arms (1982), his first collection of poetry.

***

Miami: City of Refuge is a project of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College, which is made possible by the generous financial support of the Knight Foundation. The projects mission is to provide a safe haven for persecuted writers for a period of two years. In January of 2010, the Center welcomed its inaugural Miami: City of Refuge writer-in-residence,  

The Center is a member of an international organization called ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network) which identifies persecuted writers and aids their safe transition to member cities around the world. The goal is to afford writers a place to live and work free of oppression and share their unique stories with their adopted communities.

Mr. Hove is here in Miami until December 2011 and will share in solidarity his story of exile with students and the community and will write about the issues of political repression and social justice in his native Zimbabwe.

For more information about Hove, please visit http://www.flcenterlitarts.com/mcor/index.htm. and www.miamicityofrefuge.org

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