Month: July 2016

Book Reviews, Naomi Jackson

The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

by Darkowaa15 Comments on The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

Date Read: June 14th 2016

Published: 2015

Publisher: Penguin Press

Pages: 304

The Star Side of Bird Hill

The Blurb

After their mother can no longer care for them, young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados to live with their grandmother Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah.

Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother’s limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations, accompanies her grandmother in her role as a midwife, and investigates their mother’s mysterious life.

When the father they barely know comes to Bird Hill to reclaim his daughters, both Phaedra and Dionne must choose between the Brooklyn they once knew and loved or the Barbados of their family.

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Review โ€“ โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… (3 stars)

I bought The Star Side of Bird Hill late last year for 2 reasons: I absolutely adored the super chic, sassy cover art (designed by an amazing contemporary Caribbean artist from Barbados – Sheena Rose) and I just had to support Naomi Jackson, as she’s an alum of Williams College – Middlebury’s (my alma mater) sister liberal arts school!

The Star Side of Bird Hill is a decent coming-of-age story that focuses on Barbadian-American sisters – Dionne (16 years old) and Phaedra (10 years old) as they learn new things about their family, culture and even themselves during their summer vacation in Bird Hill, Barbados. I really appreciated Jackson’s easy-going and descriptive writing style in this novel. Her vivid descriptions of Barbados definitely made this a great summer read! I felt as if I was with the characters during the lively carnival and on the sandy, pristine beaches against the backdrop of the serene sunsets. I could even hear the voices of both Dionne and Phaedra during their dialogues – that’s how thorough Jackson’s descriptions were!

But I kept wondering if The Star Side of Bird Hill was considered a YA (Young Adult) novel because it was surprisingly a heavy read. Tough issues like depression, mental illness, death, divorce, suicide, homosexuality, bi-cultural upbringing, Christianity, voodoo etc are all tackled in this book. I must say, Dionne and Phaedra’s grandma – Hyacinth, is the real MVP of this novel. I was in awe of her strength, courage and emotional stability given the series of unexpected, unfortunate incidents that occur at Bird Hill. It seemed as if Naomi Jackson was paying homage to the women of Bird Hill by showcasing the amazing strength the Barbadian women possess.

While reading, I sensed some similarities in this storyline to Haitian writer,  Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory – even though Danticat takes the themes of mother-daughter relationships, depression, sexual assault and suicide up a notch! I wanted to gift one of my friends who is of Grenadian heritage with this book, as I initially thought she’d easily relate to Caribbean/Caribbean-American storyline, but I’ve been having second thoughts since the story becomes super depressing for a good 100 pages. I wasn’t really blown away by The Star Side of Bird Hill when I finished the book. I enjoyed how most incidents and issues were sort of resolved by the end, but The Star Side of Bird Hill is not more than 3.5 stars for me. I do look forward to whatever Naomi Jackson writes next though!

โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… (3 stars) โ€“ Good book. I recommend it, I guess.

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Purchase The Star Side of Bird Hill on Amazon

Book Reviews, Donald Molosi

We Are All Blue by Donald Molosi

by Darkowaa12 Comments on We Are All Blue by Donald Molosi

Date Read: July 5th 2016

Published: 2015

Publisher: The Mantle

Pages: 128

We Are All Blue

The Blurb

We Are All Blue (Botswana) is a collection of two plays โ€“ Blue, Black and White & Motswana: Africa, Dream Again โ€“ by the actor and playwright Donald Molosi, including an introduction by Quett Masire, former president of Botswana.

Blue, Black and White (2011), the longest running one-man show in Botswanaโ€™s history, was the first-ever Botswana play staged off-Broadway in New York City, where Molosi won a best actor award. BBW is about the countryโ€™s first democratically-elected president, Sir Seretse Khama, and his interracial, transformative marriage. Winner of several awards, the play has been performed around the world.

Motswana: Africa, Dream Again is the story of Botswana and its people as they transition from a British colony to an independent state. The play premiered off-Broadway in 2012 where it won an award at the United Solo Festival, the worldโ€™s largest solo theatre festival. Written, directed, and performed by Molosi, the play has been performed across the U.S. and is on tour in Botswana and South Africa.

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Review โ€“โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… (4 stars)

Donald Molosi is a brilliant playwright. What better way to learn about Botswana than by reading a play? The last time I read a play set in Africa was Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, back in high school. Reading We Are All Blue was refreshing and I learned a GREAT deal about Botswana from this creative collection of two short plays.

The first play entitled, Blue, Black & White takes readers to a classroom, where young students are learning about pre-independence Botswana (or Bechuanaland, as the British called it) and Botswana’s founding father – Sir Seretse Khama’s controversial marriage to his British wife, Ruth Williams. The title of this play is actually the colors of Botswana’s flag: blue represents water, which is considered the lifeline of the desert nation; black represents the majority black population; the white strips represent the white citizens with whom the Motswana want to live in harmony with.

Botswana

Botswana’s blue, black and white National flag

The play simultaneously educates the students in their classroom as well as the reader of the Khama love story, Botswana’s road to independence and the importance of being inclusive as an African nation. I found this play to be oh soo cute! I loved all the characters (students) and the side conversations they had with their annoyingly domineering teacher.

Reading about history can be boring and tedious. But this play definitely informs Motswana (Motswana – citizen of Botswana) and others – both of African and non-African descent, on some facts about Botswana’s first president and the challenges the nation overcame in order to be as inclusive of all people as possible. The film – A United Kingdom directed by Amma Asante (yes, the Ghanaian-Brit film director!) based on Sir Seretse Khama and Lady Ruth’s disputed interracial romance, has been selected to open the 60th BFI London Film Festival in October! It should be showing in cinemas by November. I will definitely keep an eye out for that!

The second play entitled, Motswana: Africa, Dream Again is essentially a play on what it means to be Motswana (again, Motswana means, a citizen of Botswana). In this play, the protagonist – Boemo, is sooo woke! Boemo is a thirty year old member of parliament who seems annoyingly conscious (to everyone else) of his identity as Motswana and as an African. As a child of the new generation, he identifies more with being Pan-African than identifying solely as Motswana,

My mind and my knowledge of myself are formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crowns, the victories we earned from Lagos to Juba, from Dimawe to Sophiatown, as the Ashanti of Ghana as the Berbers of the Sahara, as the Swahili of Tanganyika. Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that I am African. And I am a Motswana (page 80).

Motswana: Africa, Dream Again is super short and straight to the point in its criticisms and depiction of post-colonial Botswana and what it means to call yourself an African today. I truly appreciate the Pan-African nature of this play. It erases the borders the colonial masters drew around us and simply articulates the importance of celebrating all African nationalities and identities – be it Namibian, Ugandan, Chadian, Ethiopian, Burkinabรฉ, Moroccan or Africans from the diaspora – as ONE,

I want to believe that a common ancestry is what binds us as Africans. I often imagine a common ancestor holding all Africans fiercely and warmly inside her womb… (page 96).

I always thought my first read from Botswana would be by Bessie Head, but Donald Molosi beat her to it! I’m eager to see Molosi perform live on stage one day, as he’s primarily an actor. I especially love that he got his undergrad degrees (in Political Science and Theatre) from Williams College – Middlebury’s (my alma mater) sister liberal arts school! So many young people of African descent doing amazing things. Read We Are All Blue if you want to enjoy a collection of entertaining, historical plays on Botswana and on Africa as a whole. This collection is inspiring.

โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… (4 stars) โ€“ Great book. Highly recommend!

Purchase We Are All Blue on Amazon 

This review is in collaboration with the 2016 Writivism Festival in Kampala, Uganda (August 22nd – 28th 2016). I’d like to give a special thank you to Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire and the crew over at #Writivism2016 for sending me an e-copy of We Are All Blue.๐Ÿ™‚

Book chat, Bookish Stuff

Brunch Over Books – Sip ‘n’ Swap in Accra!

by Darkowaa28 Comments on Brunch Over Books – Sip ‘n’ Swap in Accra!

Ever since I moved to Accra in 2014, I’ve really been missing the variety of literary events I used to attend back in Boston and Middlebury. But Accra has its own selection of events I’ve been enjoying. Writers Project Ghana has been spearheading the literary scene with the plethora of events they host, like – Ghana Voices Series: where bookworms and literary fiends gather for monthly public book readings featuring African writers who visit Accra; Writers Project on Citi FM: an hour of poetry readings and updates on literature-related events in Accra on the radio waves; writers workshops, book club meetings and more! With respect to book festivals, GAWBOFEST – Ghana Association of Writers Book Festival has been a recurring book festival for 5 years now. Hopefully I’ll find time to finally attend this year’s event in September. Also later this year, the Storymoja Festival will be in Accra (not Nairobi, Kenya) – so that will be exciting!

To add to the eclectic and ever growing bunch of literary events in Accra is – Brunch Over Books! Two weeks ago, Brunch Over Books – a Sip ‘n’ Swap book exchange was inaugurated at the quaint Cafรฉ Kwae, in Accra. This maiden event, curated by the lovely Nana Konamah (@nanakonamah), attracted lots of bookworms, book bloggers and page slayers to sip yummy drinks and exchange book titles and actual books! After a speed book exchange activity, I jotted down a couple of book recommendations, met some folks I had been following (or stalking) on social media – like Ghanaian bibliophile, Shika of @bookpress on Instagram (@bookpresse on Twitter) and just geeked-out over books with fellow book lovers who also recently moved to the city, and long time residents of Accra!

Images via Brunch Over Books

As per my Book Chat post on book lending – you know me! I do not lend or exchange books (sorry, not sorry). So for this event, I purposely purchased a new copy of Beyond the Horizon by Amma Darko (a Ghanaian book and author I believe is seriously underrated) for whoever wanted to swap with me – but for the person to KEEP.

Its always refreshing when you can converse with book lovers and discuss why you loved/disliked certain novels. If you live in Accra, try and come to the next Sip ‘n’ Swap event! Rumor has it that the next gathering will be in August. I can’t wait to see what new activities and conversations we’ll have over yummy cocktails.

What type of literary events do you usually attend? Have you ever been to any book festivals, public readings (I feel like public readings are standard go-to’s for book lovers, right?), book signings, book exchanges, book blogger meet-ups? How many times a year do you attend literary events? Please do share!