Iya and Mambo meet each other at a moment when both are carrying something heavy. Who came to you first, and what did you want their friendship to say that neither girl could say alone? Mambo came first. She arrived…
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Q and A with Marie Helene Ngoah on Translating The Shape of Unbroken Things
When you first read The Shape of Unbroken Things, what did you hear in Comfort’s voice that you knew you had to maintain in French? As a translator, I believe our role goes beyond transferring words from one language to another.…
The Shape of Unbroken Things/Ce qu’on ne brise pas
Today marked her first day at a new school, where she would be repeating the Form 3 year. Consistently among the top ten students in her class, she had missed the second and third term examinations last year, and was…
When You Read Suzanne Césaire, You Take Your Koutla
“When you read Suzanne, you take your Koutla.” Those are the words Valérie Adam said to me in Le Bureau d’Aimé Césaire during my last visit to my home country, Martinique. It is also this phrase that reignited the…
Learning to Feel the World Differently
I first became aware that my way of seeing the world was not neutral through an encounter that felt fleeting at the time but has stayed with me ever since. I was at a community event as a reporter, working…
Killing Achebe
While my former friends were having profound literary conversations at Conference Two in Yaoundé today, I went there and stole the original handwritten manuscript of Things Fall Apart. But see eh, that didn’t just happen the way I said it…
Lifesavers
Fifteen-year-old Belinda made up her mind to take her life while in the bathroom on Saturday afternoon. She was bathing at 2 pm, because that’s what one did during school vacations when they had nothing to do. Somehow, even if…
On Contiguous Narratives and Poetic Cosmologies
Kokende Liboso Eza Kokoma Te: On Contiguous Narratives and Poetic Cosmologies is a project by Laboratoire Kontempo, curated by Dzekashu MacViban. You can read the announcement in French here and in German here. The theorization of contemporary art and art…
Kokende Liboso Eza Kokoma Te: On Contiguous Narratives and Poetic Cosmologies
So many are asleep under the ground, When we dance at the festival Embracing the earth with our feet. Maybe the place on which we stand Is where they also stood with their dreams. They dreamed until they were…
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Awono
“Great poetry lives in a state of perpetual transformation, perpetual translation: the poem dies when it has no place to go.” (Weinberger, 1987) Poetry translation is an endeavour of passion, for it may bring cultural enrichment but seldom economic…
