Anderson Tepper introduced Ben Okri; Ben Okri introduced the empty chair. The empty chair takes on more power, the more PEN events one attends. Okri's introduction was so beautifully felt and spoken that it resonated as the best I've heard so far.
Okri was a surprise to this reader of the dazzling novel THE FAMISHED ROAD. He is more professorial than I had expected, and several of his poems were lists of rules. However, I tried to follow his credo of approaching things with an open mind. Why should I have expected him to be any way at all?
Most interesting to me were his words about the sources of his own writing. His mother a storyteller, and his Nigerian life imbued his...
Fela!
Written by Jim Lewis & Bill T. Jones
Music by Fela Anikupalo Kuti
Choreography by Bill T. Jones
Performed by Antibalas Afrobeat
With Sahr Ngaugha, Lillias White, Saycon Sengbloh, Ismael Kouyate Performing at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York
The music icon Fela Anikupalo Kuti was the unlikely culmination of generations of talent and courage. His grandfather, Jay Jay, was a classical musician with an international reputation. His father was a devout man-of-the-cloth and the strict headmaster of a high school. His mother, Funmilayo, organized a successful women's movement in Nigeria, stood firm in the face of the colonial authorities, and traveled the world -- even meeting Mao Zedong in China during the height...
Fifteen years after the death of author Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Niger Delta region of Nigeria remains embroiled in conflict. Kidnappings and murders are on the rise, and America is more dependent on Nigerian oil than ever. If there is hope, it may be found in Saro-Wiwa's legacy of non-violent activism. But the window of opportunity may soon be closing.
A Little Background: Why we care about Saro-Wiwa
A little background is in order. Ken Saro-Wiwa largely became known to people outside Nigeria for his activism against the degradation of his homeland in the Southern part of the country. Oil companies, particularly Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum, had destroyed this once fertile wetlands through a combination of mismanagement, gas flaring, and regular oil...
The night sky swarmed with pale insects like snow flakes fluttering outside the window of the airplane as it landed at the small airfield in Northern Nigeria. At first they looked like moths, but they were hundreds…thousands of grasshoppers...
The “Youth on the Frontlines” panel was absolutely packed! So full, in fact, that I ended up sitting with my 12-year-old son upstairs watching the event on a grainy videotape (though the image was poor, the sound was good). The unfortunate conditions (for me anyway) didn’t rob the panel of any of its power.
I was sorry to be late but it couldn’t be helped—my 8-year-old daughter had a poetry reading of her own work along with her classmates first thing this morning (delightful!). But that made for a late departure from Brooklyn. I was feeling harried and annoyed when we got to the panel but once we got there, I was...
