It’s the last Wednesday of March 2016! Seriously, where has the time gone? Regardless, enjoy some links!
Shout out to our own Elyse for passing this around. As someone who is addicted to all kinds of “housewife” and “women living it up” shows, this Ghanaian quasi-reboot of Sex in the City seems amazing and of course, everyone is gorgeous:
These women and the men they date are Africa’s 1 percent. They’re highly educated and come from families with connections. Nana Yaa’s father is the minister of energy in Ghana, and Sade’s dad is the pastor of a megachurch in Nigeria. The ladies dress fabulously and are always perfectly coiffed and accessorized.
NPR’s Morning Edition did a seven-minute spotlight on the show as well. You can listen to it at the top of the article page!
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There’s pretty much a vending machine for everything, and now there’s one for books! All you need is a couple bucks. I’m very curious about what sort selection the Biblio-Mat has because $2 for a random hardcover book seems like steal, considering hardcovers cost your first born these days:
The Biblio-Mat was dreamt up by Monkey’s Paw owner Stephen Fowler, who initially had a much different plan for operating the machine. “Originally, I thought maybe we would just have a refrigerator box and paint it to look like a vending machine,” he told NPR, “and put a skinny assistant of mine inside and have him drop books out when people put a coin in.” Instead, when Fowler told Small about his idea, the animator suggested building a working vending machine instead.
The Biblio-Mat is located in the Monkey’s Paw used bookstore all the way in Toronto, Canada. Maybe a future trip is in order!
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The Explorers Club was founded in 1904, but didn’t allow women until the 80s. Recently, they held their 112th Annual Dinner and it was filled with some pretty adventurous, world-traveling women:
Attending the dinner were a number of remarkable women explorers, such as marine biologist and co-chairwoman of the dinner Gaelin Rosenwaks. When she was just two weeks old, Rosenwaks was already aboard her first boat, as she traveled the world with her parents — reproductive endocrinologist Zev Rosenwaks and ceramic artist Stacy Rosenwaks. Gaelin knew at the age of 8, when she snorkeled for the first time in Bali, that she wanted to learn more about the ocean.
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Glenna Gordan discovered the world of Nigerian romance novelists while covering weddings in the country. Though most of the novelists handwrite their stories, the books are incredibly popular:
Gordon said a few years ago the writing was a bit more risqué, but things have changed after the state governor burned books that were thought to corrupt youth or that might lead to moral indecency. Many of the writers censor themselves a bit in order to avoid hassle. Most of the women don’t have computers so they write in composition books that are then transferred to a computer either by middlemen who act as editors or the publishers themselves. The books are widely distributed—often with a first print run of 10,000 copies—and widely shared and cost about $1 or $2. Although some of the writers didn’t want to participate in the series—sometimes their husbands said no—many were happy to work with Gordon.
Both the slideshow and article are fascinating and it really shows are far-reaching romance is as a genre
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The Toast is at it again with literary humor. This time, it’s “Classic Short Stories, Summarized By Someone Who Has Never Read Them.” My personal favorite is:
“There’s one,” she said, pointing.
“Where?” she said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Right over there,” she insisted. “Look at him.”
She looked. “Well,” she said after a moment, “I suppose you’re right.”
“It was a little difficult to find him,” she said, not wanting to rub it in.
“A little,” she agreed.
“But the important thing is that we found him.”
“We sure did,” she said.
– A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O’Connor
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See anything great this week? If so, feel free to share! And we’re always looking for more great links. Don’t be afraid to send them my way!
Thanks so much for the link on Glenna Gordon’s work on Nigerian romance novels. I followed it to an eye-opening and far more detailed page by a translator who worked on the project. Hope I get this right-
http://carmenmccain.com/2016/02/21/translators-note-glenna-gordons-striking-photobook-diagram-of-the-heart-and-its-many-reviews/
Hazel, thanks for your comment and for your track-back to my blog! The novels are lovely (many are romance and many are not–there is a great amount of diversity in what is published), but I’m not sure they are less risque now than they were previously. I came across an erotica novelist who writes for the okadabooks mobile phone publishing platform the other day–who writes potentially the most “shocking” stuff I’ve read in Hausa, even more “shocking” than the controversial writer named Al-Khamees D. Bature Makwarari who wrote explicit sexual content in the 1990s. Neither are women, but then there have always been plenty of men who write in Hausa as well, although the media attention has been on the women who write. I find the word “discovery” for Glenna’s lovely photographs of the writers a bit too “columbasy” for my liking (and she doesn’t like that word either, as you can see from an interview I quoted in my post), but she certainly has done a great job helping to publicize writing in Hausa. Thanks for featuring the novels here.
And thank you, Carmen. I was impressed by your article. In the West we tend to forget that other parts of the world also have literary traditions. I’m going to go look for translations of that ‘shocking’ erotica. 🙂
Hahah unfortunately, there are no translations of the erotica, and I would fear and tremble to do a translation of it. (A few translators refused to do them when Blaft in India wanted to include them in an anthology) But it’s just an example of the wide variety of things that are being written in Hausa. I was organizing some of my novels today, and there are fantasy adventures, detective novels, political thrillers, romance, a historical novel set in Sarajevo, comedies, historical nonfiction, and plenty of family dramas.