#Thisisnotthereview. Threads of Gold Beads

I have suspended the reading of other books for one unfamiliar book titled Thread of Gold Beads by Nike Campbell-Fatoki. First the author was someone I didn't know and did not ring a bell in my literary circles-or should I say my circles of literati. So when I was given the book I totally ignored it.

I just read the author's profile and just said "all this diaspora people, hmn". The back of the 415 paged Novel reads of the author:

 Nike Campbell-Fatoki was born in Lvov, Ukraine to Nigerian parents. She spent her formative years in Lagos, Nigeria, listening to stories and folktales told by her maternal grandparents. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Howard University and a master of Arts Degree in international Development from American University, Washington DC, presently, She is a Budget and Finance Manager in government in the Washington DC area. She is an avid reader. She loves travelling, watching movies and listening to music. She is also the Founder of Eclectic Goodies, a party favors and gift packaging company . She lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three sons. 

I handed it to Ebony Damilola, a colleague at Fairchild Media who after reading it sent me a mail
read

When I first picked up the book, I was a little skeptic about it but as I started reading wow! The author found ways to intrigue me, love the organization and the structure of her work, what fascinated me was how she created a vivid image to her readers, that’s something you don’t see every day (chuckles}. She made it seem like we were part of the growing process of the main character, I loved the story line, the enrichment of details and the subtle use of strong grammar, anyone could understand. I must say she carried us along beautifully.
I couldn’t help but feel a little thrown off at the end of the story, the ending was rushed, she kept our interest from the beginning but she didn’t go into much detail at the end. I felt it was the crucial part of the entire story. I just wished she had given us a little more entailment but apart from that I think she’s an amazing writer. Cheers!

Damilola Ebony is an "out-of-the-box-writer" who is interested in enchanting but unique stories that are not only up to standard but also original in narration.

Her comments made me pick up the book again and I am still reading.

I am in chapter chapter, so I cannot deliver a review yet. So in the next posts of Churning Spades and Spinning Yarns, I will be spinning something that looks like a review. I will be hash-tagged on twitter as #Thisisnotareview. So look out for these posts as I drown myself in the waters and streams of her narration.

What book review do that I wont do is that is details of the US printed book, published by Three Magi Publishers. As the not a review starts to fill our pages, the story and the thoughts will be my concern.

So Thisisnotthereview  .

A Writer’s Dilemma: For the Life of me!

I have been contacted by Cederwood Productions, a publisher that had taken up Silent Drummings, my first collection of poetry, to co-author a collection of poems with Tokunbo Dada. Tokunbo Dada had published his first book with Cedarwood and with many research books roiling in his head every second. He had published a book on child abuse in Africa and the side effects using the story of Shaka the Zulu as a formidable example and the publisher, then based in Osun State was impressed.
Now, Tokunbo had moved higher with a bigger purpose, he had produced Ufiala, a radio drama on the problems of Nigeria and had gone to co-produce other ones depite the fact that he had been employed as a communication enginner at the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN.

As for me, I am just an unrepentant poet and journalist that I had been and that I had retained except that I just bagged the prestigious Megaphone News Agency’s Award for Meritorious Service to the press, with Silent Drummings doing fairly well. Poetry had never successfully fed anyone in Nigeria, so let me not boast too much.

Cedarwood has opened its new headquarters in Ibadan, the traditional publishing hub in Nigeria, that was a deliverance of some sorts, When I got wind of the romantic collection, I was supposed to co-author, I began to wonder, with who?

Tokunbo Dada had grown to be a bosom friend of mine, a more mature and unselfish friend that had this creative fire, one I respected. I had written a couple of monologues in his room using his directions of how a drama should look like, we had joked a lot about women and we had also learnt a lot from our disappointments. He had told the publisher about the idea and it was bought.

The problem was that I had left the idea of writing love poems since 2005 and I had gone from the simple romantic poet to a thorough-going modernist. I had evolved a personal style after reading TS Elliot, Segun Adekoya, Dogga Tollar, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost.



Love had not been fair to me. Apart from the fact that I had had a rough upbringing as a third child, I also had a backlash of shattered and interrupted relationships. In fact, my recent girlfriend recently called off what seem to be a compassionate union. So I had begun to retrace my steps in writing love poems, stopped listening to love songs, stopped flirting, totally shut down. It was gradually. In fact I had been mulling on destroying the ones I wrote when the going was going-I don’t know whether it’s good or bad-That was when the call from my publisher came.

Another problem was that my job as a journalist seems to only allow you to think of the next story, the ongoing story or the deadlines-there is hardly any time to write two lines of poetry. The only blessing it offers is that it exposes you to the realities and hypocrisies that make up the society, through printable and unprintable discourses.

So I took my old poems out-my fiery and passionate old poems that I had purposefully dumped at the deep ends of my home’s warehouse. A look at them-they were whack, for God’s sake, I had grown up, I had grown out of it. I am now officially in a dilemma. Can I succumb this dilemma? Will I survive?

I think so, the book must go on, for the life of me, my life is poetry!

Achebe, A month and a Writer

I am happy to tell you that I share a birthday month with one of Nigeria’s greatest writers . This does not however mean that my destiny as one of Nigeria’s youngest poets is sealed, it only means that if Achebe can make a mark as a writer, I too can.

Chinua Achebe, one of West Africa’s award winning novelists, turned 80, November 16. Born in Ogidi, Anambra State, Achebe who is known for his novels, Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), studied at the University College Ibadan, now University of Ibadan. He is a recipient of the Order of the Federal Republic, 1979 and the National Productivity Award, 1999. He was listed for the Commander of the Federal Republic in 2004 but rejected it as a protest against the lack of infrastructures in the country. Achebe is also the author of the novels, A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), amongst a long list of Short Stories, Children Stories, Poetry Collections and Essays. He is the current winner of the Gish Prize, an award for extraordinary impact in their field.

A Date with Toni Kan’s Infidelity

A Date with Toni Kan’s Infidelity



Literary Buffs and friends of Toni Kan’s have been wondering what has become of Kan’s creative stories. Kan, the current editor of The Sun’s Art page is known for Night of the Creaking Bed, his collection of Short Stories, published in 2008. He is also the author of When a dream lingers too long, a poetry collection, and Ballad of rage, a novella, which he got honourable mentions at the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, and Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG literature prize in 2003 and 2004 respectively. He is involved in Infidelity amongst other things at the moment.
Infidelity is Kan’s forthcoming collection of urbane short stories set to be published later this year. Readings of Harbinger and Wasiu Karimu don Hammer, two of the stories of the unpublished collection was organised by the author and Kaine Agary, winner of the NNLG prize for Literature 2009 and author of Yellow Yellow, at Lifehouse,Victoria Island on 0ctober 14. Kan said that infidelity talks about crime, conning, and unfaithfulness.
Harbinger is about a Nigerian military man with the responsibility of informing family members of the demise of their breadwinners fighting at the Liberian peacekeeping front. Although the harbinger keeps to his duty, the story reads “he sleeps with the widows,...who told you...my Dad told my mum, my mum told me. The harbinger truly does use the loopholes of the military structure to feather his sexual nest, as he drives his 504 to the homes of emotionally troubled widows. The Harbinger lies to the wife of a military man who is alive in Liberia and had his way with her, that began the end of such activities. Wasiu Karimu don Hammer is a funny story about the frustration of the average Nigerian who began a life of infidelity with policemen in order to gain financial standing.
see pictures,
Highlights of the event were a room for questions and discussions. One of the issues discussed was the portrayal of negatives and poverty in Nigerian Literature. While some described it as a sort of exoticism that has cast a shadow on the existing hopes, excellence and aspiration of the people, others justified these writings, they said, “it was the duty of writer’s to create out of the existing realities”. Other issues were about the Art, philosophy and influence of Fela on the individuals present, and books that gained the approval and disapproval of Toni Kan, as fela’s song played at the background.
“Infidelity is about being untruthful, not being faithful. It does not necessarily have to do with sex as one may think” Kan told the magazine. He also revealed “ I am also engrossed with writing a novel entitled Lasgidi and its so interesting, I can’t stop writing”.

Mandela Reflects, Conversations with Myself

Mandela Reflects, Conversations with Myself

What has been described as Mandela's last and definitive biography before he goes whereever he goes was made public on October 12.Conversations with Myself, a book written by Verne Harris, an archivist at the Mandela Foundation with the help of a team of archivists, editors and collaborators with materials such as notes, letters, recorded materials, amongst others. Mandela, the 92 year old South African former president’s new book throws up the psychological conflicts in humans just like in James Joyce’s Portrait of a Youngman as an Artist.
Conversation with Myself reveals the human frailties and the pains of sacrifice of Anthi-Aparthed Hero. The Book is a huge deviation from the brave and saintly tone in Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela's 1995 autobiography. Long Walk to Freedom was reported to have been used to elevate Anti-Aparthied Activists to new roles as South-African leaders and to unite the white South-Africans with the Black ones. Conversations with Myself, seem contrary with the 1995 autobiography as Mandela reavels "My installation as the first democratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa was imposed on me much against my own advice," saying he would have wanted a younger person to be the first president of the Country.
In Conversations with Myself, Mandela reveals his frustration of not spending time with his children due to the several imprisonments at the behest of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle."I find it difficult to believe that I will never see thembi again. On February 23 this year he turned 24. I had seen him towards the end of July 1962 a few days after I had returned from a trip
abroad. Then he was a lusty lad of 17 that I could never associate with death...I was deeply touched for the emotional factors underlying his action were too obvious. For days thereafter my mind and feelings were agitated to realize the psychological strains and stresses my absence from home had imposed on the children." This was an excerpt from the book, originally a letter written to his then-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, after he was informed of the death of his eldest son, thembi, in a car accident in 1969.
There is no doubt that Mandela did not only lose his youthful gait but also his relationship with children, for his activism. Mandela says in his new book that "I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying." He also talks about his many divorces, first with Evelyn Ntoko Mase was troublous as she never supported his activism while his marriage and was reportedly froth with scences of violence. His second marriage to Winnie Madikizela came crashing in 1992, two years after he came of 27 years in prison for sabotage and attempted coup plot against the Aparthied government.
All of Mandela’s life is not full of sadness, as one may be wont to think. Conversations with Myself also recalls the humour that has not left Madiba. He also reveals that he was offered up to 1 million rand ($145,500) for a picture of himself by a magazine shortly before his release,"So I refused, and poor, you know to be poor is a terrible thing," Mandela said. The romantic yearnings of Mandela towards Winne are also sources of inspiration for lovers, "my sleeping without you next to me and my waking up without you close to me, the passing of the day without my having seen you".
Barrack Obama, sums it all in the forward he wrote in Conversations with Myself, "By offering us this full portrait, Nelson Mandela reminds us that he has not been a perfect man. Like all of us, he has his flaws. But it is precisely those imperfections that should inspire each and every one of us,". Obama says in the foreword tha his full portraiture makes him gain a high respect for Madiba.