I know I am no man child. I move from home to home, from state to state in search for my daily bread. I lay my back on hard floors in the open and under the unkind fear that many lock themselves from at nights. I’ve become fear even to fear itself, because it has nothing to take from me. I’ve become a brother to hunger whose language I understand mostly. I’ve become a…
"No Man Child by ARÍYÀYỌ̀SÍ"Category: African Fiction
the way that glowing lamps die in our hands like a rose for emily planted on a famished road punctures all promises that the sun will rise again. & like crimson in the skies, the hidden star that we seek to see turns dimmer than half of a yellow sun. here we are; meshed in dilapidated histories, jagged lacerations & a wonder-world nostalgia; as though in one hundred years of solitude. there was a…
"untitled in the colour of the times by ADÉYẸMỌ E.O kàkàkíỌgbọ́n" sometimes when it rains, we go out of space and time, we dream freely like babies in the comfort of their mothers’ arms; we believe again, we traverse the thin lines of our memories, joyous as lost chicks reunited with mother hens when it rains, we hear the world in pleasant cosmic reverberations; when it rains, we are so cold wildfires become our friends, clothing us against icing like hopeless creepers on sturdy…
"In Rains By Taofeek Ògúnpérí" Joys of Innocence Pages Before it all Ends… August 29, 2005. Agbodi Prison Lagos, Nigeria. Dear mum, I wish I was never writing this letter. Or I’d better wish I was not writing it here. Some horrifying times had come turning my life into a book of stories I never told anyone, not even the God-heart lawyer that tried pleading my course for…
"Joys of Innocence – Pages before it all Ends…" SPREAD over a hundred and fifty nine pages, In One Nigeria Home by Ruth Olarewaju tells the coming-of-age story of Omotobilojumi – Tobilo, a year 2 senior secondary school student – wrung between a family’s stereotypical gender demands and biases common in Nigerian homes, and a romantic relationship peculiar to high school students and its patronizing controversies. It brings to mind Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s In Dependence and AH Mohammed’s The Last Days at Forcados High…
"Ruth Olanrewaju’s IN ONE NIGERIAN HOME; A Review by TAOFEEK ÒGÚNPERÍ" SEMENS AND COLORS… Olaronpe! Don’t tell me that your mother was there listening… Roland died after the fall of his libido. He would not wait to see the sorrows of his labour. She wanted to die as well, but she would be forced to live by the various means that lead to death. She never wanted to have a snake in the laps, but just the truth that the need to grow a seed…
"SEMENS AND COLORS…"