Nominated by Time Magazine as one of the best movies of 2021, ”Passing” is a masterpiece. But this film is so complicated, it deserves to be explained and reviewed, hence the massive online search for “Passing Film Explained”.

Particularly, the ambiguous ending. If this wasn’t the case, “Passing film ending” and “Passing film summary” won’t be trending as much as it is.

In this review of the movie Passing, we will give a synopsis, a summary and an explanation of this masterpiece. Yes, the ending was deliberately made ambiguous and we will explain why the director made the cinematic choices she made.

Passing Film Explained and Reviewed.

Directed by Rebecca Hall, this movie boasts an amazing cast of actors and actresses. It features: 

• Tessa Thompson as Irene “Reenie” Redfield 
• Ruth Negga as Clare Bellew 
• André Holland as Brian Redfield
• Bill Camp as Hugh Wentworth 

“Passing” opens with black-and-white scenes filled with random chatter and clacking, shoed feet. These scenes seem to be gently ushering the observer into the era of the Harlem Renaissance, when the concept ‘passing’ seemed to be rife. The idea sent members of the public into a panic, especially as Caucasians regarded each other with suspicion as they tried to find out who was what. Racial lines seemed to blur and disappear; and ‘passing’ seemed to make a mockery of racial segregation and racial identity. 

The movie “Passing”, is an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 widely celebrated novel about two childhood friends who run into each other at a 1920s highbrow restaurant in Harlem. And it is at this restaurant that we meet Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson, who is casually passing as white. When the camera shifts, we notice a light-skinned woman watching Irene intently, so intently, in fact, that her confident gaze makes the observer fear for Irene’s life. Soon, Irene (through whose eyes the observer sees everything) had perceived the ‘white’ woman wrongly, that the light-skinned woman was indeed her childhood friend, Clare Kendry.

This scene forces us to think about the flawed nature of perception and the power of racial segregation. Rebecca Hall does a good job of revealing these important themes at an early stage of this movie. As the first few scenes unfold, the observer is forced to question the validity of racial categorizations and the artificiality of racial constructs.

As the characters converse, the observer realizes that Irene and Claire have opposing ideas of racial consciousness and gender roles.

“Does he know?” asks Irene Redfield, when she realizes that Clare Kendry is married to a rich, White, racist man. 

Clare laughs nonchalantly and shakes her head no; of course, her class-conscious, race conscious husband does not know that she is Black. Her attitude suggests that her convictions about racial ethics are diabolically opposed to her desires of living a life free of racial limitations. Passing is a matter of convenience. And yet, Irene can’t help judging her friend for not sticking with her own people for breaking the racial code. Irene’s brows furrow with disapproval, confusion and fear even more when John Bellew comes home and expresses his racist views. 

  Irene Redfield is the quintessential moral black woman. It’s the facade she displays at home, on the streets and roads, when she’s hosting benefits events. She volunteers at African American fundraiser events, stays faithful to Brian, her Black physician husband, tries to protect her sons from the racist society and conceals her attraction to Claire by assuming that her feelings are shared by Brian Redfield.

Clare Kendry is the complete opposite and perhaps this explains why Irene seems to be attracted to Clare’s avant-gardism, brashness, self-confidence, and gumption.

In the movie, Clare sneers at the socially defined gender roles and carries herself with the self-assuredness and carefreeness of one who understands and acknowledges the ephemerality of life. She laughs a bit too loudly, dances tirelessly, drinks without apologies, weeps shamelessly, and confesses her longing for Harlem. In short, sad handwritten letters, Clare expresses her deep sadness and loneliness as an African American who inhabits the vacuous world of Caucasians. Irene and her husband discuss these letters and form opinions about the writer.

Irene is an unreliable point of view character. She is often groggy, knocked out or fatigued. However, her actions suggest she recognizes and accepts Clare Kendry’s nostalgia for the vibrant African American community. 

With time, Irene feels confident enough to take Claire to benefits and parties. From Irene’s point of view, everyone seems to gravitate towards Claire like gnats to a lamp. Everyone, it seems, includes Irene’s husband, Dr. Brian Redfield. 

As time passes, Irene suspects that Claire and her husband are having an affair. But the film overrides Irene’s point of view. Occasionally, the camera zoomed in to show a wildly different picture from Irene’s foggy, upside-down, and flawed perspective. Once the camera revealed that Irene’s husband was standing meters apart from Clare, not inches apart, as Irene had led the observer to believe. When Clare weeps and expresses her deepest desires, the observer deciphers that Irene’s eyes might be deceiving her, that Clare may not be happy about getting the best of two worlds.

Slowly, Irene Redfield sinks into a deep depression that worsens with Claire’s presence and absence. She lies on her bed in a drugged haze or otherwise, drops flower pots and teapots and anything she desires to get rid of as she tells her friend, Bill the novelist. These scenes show the observer that Irene isn’t as innocent or safe as she seems. She’s passing as conventionally harmless, when in fact, she is not. Her penchant for dropping and smashing unwanted things foreshadows the climactic event at the end of the movie.

This climactic scene unfolds naturally as the climactic scenes of great movies are wont to do. Claire, Brian, and Irene are at a party when John Bellew charges in ranting and raving about what a wicked and deceitful woman his wife had been. And just as he made to attack her, Claire slipped over the window and fell to her death. 

The movie is ambiguous about the cause of her fall. It’s difficult to decipher if Clare had been pushed by either the unsafe Irene or the racist, vengeful John Bellew or if she had jumped to her death because she couldn’t handle the repercussions of exposure. Three rounds or rewinds and replays of the scene of Clare’s revealed nothing specific. Perhaps it all goes back to perception. The observer is invited to construct or reconstruct Clare’s dying moments, to perceive what’s real and what’s hiding in plain sight.\

Wrap Up On Passing Movie Explained: A Review Of The Film Adaptation of Nella Larson’s Harlem Renaissance Novel.

The point of the movie was clear. Passing 1920s New York was a dangerous affair. Everyone knew this. And perhaps, Clare perceived and took her chance to exit life in the most glamorously ambiguous way possible.

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Like in Most of Literatures of the Empires there is Racism in Joseph Conrad’s  Heart of Darkness

 The Saturday Nation in Nairobi has been intermittently publishing discourses about Joseph Conrad the author of Heart of Darkness. On 15^th January 2017, it published a page-long article about Chinua Achebe and Joseph Conrad, the article was written by Mr. Ilosa, the article pointed out that Chinua Achebe conned the world by misleading his readers to  believe that Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is all about European racism against Africa.

The writer, Mr. Ilosa was writing about Achebe’s paper under the title, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, published in the literary Journal of Massachusetts Review in 1977.Unfortunately, this Ilosa only reacted against the title of Achebe’s paper without careful reading of the paper as well as the book Heart of Darkness which Achebe was writing about. The fact is that there is palpable racism in Conrad’s heart of Darkness. This is a fact which Dr. Suindu has pointed out even though Caroline Mwende in her recent rejoinder contradicts by saying that Conrad was a friend of black people only writing to show the colonial brutality that Europe visited on Africa. No, Mwende was not right.

A proper Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

First, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a collection of four short Stories-Outs Post of Progress, Karain, Youth and then Heart of Darkness. All these stories share common themes and style of language. The most common themes are-European imperialism, European chauvinism, white superiority, racism against non Europeans,poverty,savagery,forced labour,slavery poaching of wood and elephant tusks, steam-shipping, superiority of the English race, violence, brutality, river Congo, Indian ocean and so forth.

Out of all, Conrad was so much keen on using his characters like Kurtz and Marlow to communicate the idea of European Superiority over other races and superiority of English culture over other European cultures.

When you read an introduction to the Heart of Darkness by Cedric Watts, cases of racism in the book are clearly pointed out. Watts show that Conrad uses his characters to perpetrate English racial insolence on other Europeans as at the same he justifies colonial violence and rampage by the Europeans against other races. In fact Watts makes a remark about Conrad in the Introduction to the Heart of Darkness by saying that Rudyard Kipling justified colonialism in a polite way, but Conrad did it in a cruel way.

Understanding Conrad’s Writing

The reason why Conrad took this offensive and artistic position is attributed to three misfortunes in his childhood life-Russian brutality on Poland where Conrad was born, absence of formal learning given that Conrad taught himself English, living as well as working as a migrant labourer in London. These three demeaning social experiences shaped Conrad into intellectual sycophancy to English culture and capital by attacking other cultures that would compete with Britain in an imperial-cum-colonial scramble for world resources. This is so because Josef Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski to polish parents in Poland. Russia annexed Poland, and then his family ran to Britain as refugees. He joined the British merchant marine and later was granted British nationality in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. The virtue which earned him recognition as a British writer.

It is not only Conrad that is unique to this social problem of being an intellectual migrant, literary history show that  there are also very many other writers that have been affected by migration into intellectual sycophancy to the host culture and capital. For example, Gunter Grass was born in Danzig-Poland and Frantz Kafka was born in Czech both succumbed to Teutonic intellectual culture, Just the same way V S Naipaul and Salman Rushdie both born in India are now recognized as British writers, or the way Olaudah Equaiano the author of Equaiano’s Travel was taken as a slave from Igbo in Nigeria but now included as a British writer in the Longman Anthology of British Literature.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an Influence to Literary Personas such as Chinua Achebe

It is true Achebe accepted to be over-influenced intellectually by Conrad to an extent of adapting the title of his book Arrow of God by playing around with the title of Conrad’s book Arrow of Gold. Criticism against Achebe in this regard has it that as a professor of literature he was not to degenerate himself to this extent of compromising originality of thought and creativity. However, Achebe argued away this perceived failing in his paper about Conrad by arguing that  his focus was not about Conrad as a writer but about Conrad as a capon copy of European attitude towards other societies during the heydays of imperialism. Similar arguments are made by Achebe in his later works like Hopes and Impediments; The Education of a British Educated Child, Troubles with Nigeria, There was a Country and also in his collection of essays under the title Morning Yet of Creation Day.

However, it is not only Achebe that got over-influenced by Conrad but many other good writers in the likes of; F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, Eric Blair alias George Orwell, Graham Greene, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, John le Carré, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth and J. M. Coetzee. Evidently, the themes addressed by all these writers touch on racism, imperialism and brutality of man in power over a man in powerless station.

It is acceptable that, Achebe in his paper was able to show the actual pockets of racism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. This paper is free online and can be read against the text of Conrad as presented in the Out Post of Progress and also in the novella Under Western Eyes to establish Conrad’s proclivity towards worship of the British brutality over other societies. Thus Mr. Ilosa was technically wrong; I encourage him to read Achebe’s paper, Conrad’s short Stories and Novels again.

It is also important to note that it is not only Conrad that ridiculed humanity of black people. Most of the literatures of the empires denigrated black people. Some did it intentionally as a way of justifying colonialism, but others were doing so out of ignorance. Rudyard Kipling is known for his theory of black people as a Whiteman’s burden, V S Naipaul has been openly irritated by Africa and black men even though he comes from Trinidad a country which has black and Indian citizens. His books; In a Free State, Mimic Men and Islamic journey are a testimony of his dislike for black people. In Sir Vidia’s Shadow, a biographical novel about V S Naipaul  by Paul Theroux, it is narrated that when Wole Soyinka won Literature Nobel Prize in 1986 V S Naipaul condemned the Swedish Academy for pissing on literature. It is also narrated in the same book that Naipaul’s detest for black people made Dereck Walcott to react by scowling at him as ‘V S Nightfall’ given the evidence of darkness in Naipaul’s heart as evinced in his writtings that openly derogate black people. Conrad, Forster, Naipaul and Rushdie share same emotional weakness when it comes to use of a novel as a tool of good inter-racial relations. Their writtings did not recognize the natives of Africa. For example, there is short story written by Salman Rushdie in the Longman Anthology of British Literature under the title Zulu and Chekov. The story is plainly open that a black man is slow, not mentally gifted, a potential home-sexual, relying on the brawn, having no language but instead ever breaking English language.

Literature and Culture

Historically, Western or European intellectual heritage has to be forgiven for its failure to understand a Black man. It was Aristotle who said that slavery is the gift of Nature. Reading Alexander Pushkin’s biographies by Hughes Bareness and Henri Troyat confirms that the Grandfathers of Leo Tolstoy is the one who bought an Ethiopian slave from Turkey who was to become grandfather of Alexander Pushkin. And of course this is the key message in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. Karl Marx looked at Africans as savages that benefitted from blessings of colonialism. In his Meinekempf Adolf Hitler declared Africans as sub-humans, Gunter Grass presented a witch as a black person in the Tin Drum.

Prophet Muhammed owned Bilal a black man as his slave, even though Bilal had converted to Islam. James Watson is on record for declaring an African as not intelligent. In the Memoirs an auto-biography of Barbara Bush, it is narrated that Barbara and George Bush once shared an apartment with a black man and his wife.  The black man and his wife were qualified oil mining engineers. They were that type of black people that are somehow brown in the skin. When Bush’s mother paid a visit, she wondered what was going on, she was told that the black neighbors are a couple and qualified engineers. Bush’s mother was not convinced. She only rationalized it away that let Bush and Barbara stay there for a while before moving, furthermore those two blacks are a little bit brown like Indians.

Edward Said in both the Orientalism as well as Culture and Imperialism argues that a novel is not a peasant affair, that it is a bourgeoisie creation. It is meant for preserving bourgeoisies culture as it perpetrates bourgeoisie culture over the subaltern cultures.  And of course it is true, going by a simple historical analogy, you find that the British society has produced more novels than any other society and it is the most imperial society given the number of domestic and overseas colonies it held. Charles Dickens as often given this British picture. In the Little Dorit, even also in the Great Expectations.

Because Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was written  under the influence of the broad culture of European imperialism, it befits a digression for this paper to make a pique at wiles of imperialism as crusaded through literature. This pique is hinged on the reality that knowledge of the novel as an imperial outfit can also give victims the idea of using the novel as a counter-imperialist outfit. This is the knowledge which inspired Nuala Ni Dhomnail to take a cultural front in attempt to save Irish Culture from claws and spurs of Cultural Darwinism. She writes poems in Irish, she helped to establish a publishing firm for Irish literature, she has talked of Irish Software and Irish Orthographies as the basic requirements for survival of Irish Literature. Reading her Pharaoh’s Daughter and also the Corpse Who Sat up and Talked back you get implication that literature has a community it serves and a community it betrays. All communities have moral duties to appreciate and uphold their literatures.

By; Alexander Opicho,

(From Lodwar, Kenya).

The post A Literary Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness And Its Influence On Chinua Achebe. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

The Commonwealth Foundation is the Commonwealth’s agency for civil society. They support people’s participation in democracy and development. In this article, Alexander Opicho, intends to suggest more the foundation can do, for the betterment of all.

The London based Commonwealth Foundation has enticing leadership programs. 

This year, the Foundation held a critical conversation on how the Commonwealth Foundation can empower youths in Commonwealth countries, so that these youths can:

• hold positions of political leadership,
• earn corporate headship
• and attain professional prosperity. 

The Commonwealth Foundation Conference 

The conference is set to take place through virtual platforms from during the first two weeks of December 2020 .These arrangements are usually done through the sub-departments like the Queen’s foundation on youths & leadership, and the Commonwealth Foundation Youth Council.

For this year, the foundation invites online participation from all the youths in the Commonwealth countries. 

Thus, the writer of this article is among the invited participants hence these arguments trumpeting for the long overdue Commonwealth political commitment to support youths in professional and corporate headship through enterprise formation and oversight.

What is Commonwealth Foundation?

Before I make my suggestions on what is to be done, let me first explain to my young readers what the Commonwealth is and what its social connotations and are:

The Commonwealth refers to all the countries that are former colonies of Britain. 

These countries use English as an official language. Kenya is one of them. Some other Countries are in Asia and in Caribbean Islands. The current demographic survey by the same Commonwealth Foundation has revealed that there are 2.4 billion people in the Commonwealth countries. 

The statistics also show that 70% of the Commonwealth population are the youths, substantially educated and unemployed.

Technically, this means that the Commonwealth has the best human resource potential for entrepreneurs, if not the reverse will be the best potential for massive poverty.

Coincidentally, the Commonwealth Foundation is carrying this critical conversations with its members when Britain is on the Brexit path, a moment which nudges conscious minds to be wary of quality of honesty that is guiding the entire process of institutionalizing the Commonwealth political relationships. 

This is a fact to guide all the peripheral players participating in the formation of the Commonwealth political and economic institutions.

A fact which gathers gravitas from Samir Amin’s postulations that ‘historical experience of slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism blended to form injurious affections on the texture of self-esteem among entrepreneurs and corporate headships in the Post colonies,’. The same experience informs present and future social decisions both for the former colonized and the former colonizer.

Suggestions for the Commonwealth Foundation

Having reckoned with that, it is also imperative to realize that if at all these critical conversations are genuine, honest and driven by a win-win spirit then some basic Commonwealth institutions like the English Monarchy have to be liberalized towards racial inclusivity and tolerance to human diversity.

This position is eked on the fact that the Monarchy of England is founded on the strong economic substructure which got its strength from material and labour resources looted from India and Africa during the colonial times. 

Thus, it is logical in the present times for the Commonwealth Institutions to move away from the outdated culture of preserving the Monarchy of England for the English royal blood. Economic history of the Commonwealth and the English Monarchy justifies an Indian as well as an African to serve as a King or Queen of England . All these have both implicit and explicit leadership and entrepreneurial implications on the youths and the institutions within the Commonwealth.

Commomwealth as a weapon for youth empowerment 

The above has been just the preamble, but coming to the gist of the matter ; – about what is to be done so that the Commonwealth Foundation can enable the youths in the Commonwealth countries to achieve progress and then developed status in business and leadership is a social process whose dynamics are contingent to the specific region in the Commonwealth. However, arguments by Bjorn Lomborg in the book, ‘How to Spend 50 Billion Dollars on Solving World Problems,’ are worth our while in this juncture. 

And it is evidently true, Youths of India and Africa can not prosper in business and professional adventures unless these two regions have control on the matters identified in this book.

The facts are that putting the Commonwealth youths in the better economic and social positions through educational and some entrepreneurial adventure can only be possible if the Commonwealth countries have internal capacity to manage climate change, capacity to control domestic health care , have capacity to manage spread of communicable diseases, have capacity to manage food and nutritional intake, have the capacity to provide good quality education to their youths, have capacity to provide good governance at corporate and political levels , have internal capacity to manage armed conflicts, have internal capacity to give clean water to the local populations , have internal capacity to manage stable financial systems geared towards local borrowers, have internal capacity to add value to what they produce to export, have capacity to manage local agricultural systems and also have the internal capacity to execute South-south dialogic communications among themselves on various economic and cultural subjects without suffering interruptive policing of the mind from the former colonial masters.

Further suggestions 

These are also the same issues raised by Ali A. Mazrui in his book ‘the African Conditions’. These ideas look so radical but they are the basic minimums upon which the Commonwealth countries can stand on to achieve their capacity to create wealth internally through net profits.

Western policy intervention has never been productive for Africa and other subaltern Commonwealth countries. Like the structural adjustment programs of the last century were nothing else other overt intellectual malice aimed at fatal poisoning of African enterprise. This is also the same case when it comes to social front.

In most cases, some Western policy makers give priority to cosmetic matters like gender and sexuality when discussing social challenges to development through businesses in Africa, but this has never been an issue.Africa’s philosophy about a family as an economic unit is clear that both monogamous and polygamous families can work well with the labour intensive production environment in Africa.

This is more logical compared to the Anglo-American pressure on Africa to discard polygamy and accept self – defeating family models like voluntary or non biologically founded but commercially instigated homosexuality.

Alexander Opicho

(From Lodwar, Kenya)

Mail-opichoalexander@gmail.com

The post “Commonwealth Foundation Should Focus on Putting the Youths in Professional and Enterprise Leadership Positions,” Says Alexander Opicho appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Serious poets want to be better writers of poetry. Also, they want to learn how to edit poetry.

Many poets understand that editing is as important as the actual writing. It’s your opportunity to examine and refine your work into a better and more developed piece worthy of awards. It makes sense to learn how to edit poetry. Who knows where your reputation as a poetry editor might take you?

Editing can seem daunting, and it’s also quite exciting. So take some time to experiment and find the techniques and processes that best work for you and your poetry.  Yes, you’ll have to learn to edit your poems first.

Here’s a guide on how to edit poetry. This guide includes poetry editing strategies guaranteed to help you become a great poetry editor. One strategy is to use poem editing tools like AI PoemGenerator to help you create and edit poems in a blink of an eye.

Take a Break From The Poem. 

Writing poetry can be difficult and consuming. After completing your poem, take a break from the creative process. Let your brain relax. Reapproach your poem with a fresh mind. You want to be able to read the line with fresh eyes.

This technique works when you’re editing your own poem and when you’re editing another writer’s poetry.

You’ll do a better job of assessing and editing the poem more objectively if you implement this technique.

Save the First Draft Of The Poem.

One of the reasons editing can feel intimidating is because of the idea that you’re “killing your darlings.”

Keep your unedited first draft, so the poetry editing process doesn’t feel like you’re cutting and discarding your own precious lines of poetry.

If your poem is typed, it can be helpful to print it out. Your unedited draft will remain on your computer, and editing is often easier when you physically highlight and make notes on the poem.

This way, instead of killing your darlings, you’re still letting them hang around, and the unused ones can be used in other poems.

In addition, your edits will be reversible, and you can compare your unedited and edited versions for even more improvements. All the best poetry editors use this strategy. It’s a good tactic for anyone who’s still learning how to edit poetry.

Read your Poem Like a Reader Would.

Read your poem in its entirety. Don’t make edits or think about adjustments. Let yourself enjoy the words and experience your poem like a reader would. After a complete read, note down your immediate thoughts and impressions. 

• Do any words or lines feel strange? 
• Which parts could use reinforcement? 
• Do some areas seem choppy or cramped? 

Think about the reader’s perspective. 

• Is the writing clear or confusing? 
• Is the theme or message of your poem coming across?

It can also be helpful to read your poem aloud so you can pick up on how it sounds. 

• How is the rhythm and flow? Is your writing eloquent enough?

Reading through your poem and breaking down what exactly needs to be fixed will result in more productive and efficient editing. Now you’re prepared to make your first level of edits.

Enhance the Style

After making the first round of adjustments, begin focusing on style edits. The style of a poem is all the choices that are made to create the poem’s meaning. Coleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner is a good example of a well edited poem.

This can range from literary devices to punctuation to rhythm to mood. Examine your style elements and how they contribute to the poem; they should enhance your writing and complement the themes and meaning of your poem.

That being said, you should also make sure that your poem isn’t crowded with style elements. Poetry is a form that operates by the “less is more” policy, so sometimes it can be helpful to remove excess.

• Does your style complement your poem?
• What elements could be enhanced to contribute to a more developed piece?
• What elements could be taken out to clear unnecessary crowding and confusion?

Assess the Language Of The Poem.

Carefully study your word choice. Every word should be contributing to the theme, structure, and rhythm of your poem. Also examine your diction and what it is implying. 

• Does the diction match your theme and style? 
• Are there ways to maximize the effect?
• What is one way to revise for word choice?
• Is this poem good enough for oral reading?

This is a good time to take out your thesaurus and experiment with word choice. Also, poetry usually isn’t as word-heavy as other forms of writing. Keep that in mind while editing; it’s better to remove unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. Additionally, make sure you are beginning and ending with powerful lines for a stronger poem and greater impact.

Reorder and Restructure

Once you’ve done all your writing-based edits, give your poem another read. Assess the order and structure of your poem. Experiment with different stanza and line orders to find which sounds and flows the best. This will help you to learn how to edit poetry.

Poetry also involves an aesthetic element; try altering your lines to make your poem look better on the page. If your poem is typed up, a helpful tip is to change the font.

Your brain gets accustomed to observing the same text; changing the font will let you assess it with fresh eyes and assess the structure better. As a bonus, grammar and spelling errors are easier to detect with a font change.

• Can your stanzas be reordered to flow better and make a better poem?
• Could your lines be rearranged within the individual stanzas to emphasize meaning?
• Could your lines be shortened, lengthened, or combined to create a better structure?

Ask Others for Feedback

After you’ve made all your edits, it can be helpful to ask others for their suggestions. Share your poems with trusted friends, family, or other writers and ask them for feedback.

A good practice is to ask others what they think the poem is about. You may get some interesting poetry analyses that can indicate whether your poem is being understood the way you want it to or not.

Keep in mind that you get to decide what to do with the feedback you receive. If you found it insightful you could use it to do another level of edits. You could also choose not to act upon the feedback; it’s your poem, edit it as you see fit. 

You can also seek feedback on the behalf of the writer whose poem you’re editing. The feedback you’ll get will help you do a better job of editing the poem. With time, you’ll figure out everything you need to learn about how to edit poetry.

Rewrite Your Poetry.

Every poet has heard this saying, ‘the first draft is always trash.’

While editing a poem, be prepared to revise some lines. Writing experts advice poets to edit until your poem says what you want it to say. Writing experts advice poets to edit until your poem says what you want it to say before getting it published.

Edit the poem until it sings. If you’re still learning how to edit poetry, don’t be in a haste to rewrite ‘imperfect’ sentences. Be careful to avoid editing out the writer’s voice. Strike a balance between maintaining the writer’s voice and improving the lines of the poem.

Read The Poem Out Loud.

After a few rounds of revision, read the poem aloud. This will help you to spot errors you might have missed.

Read the poem to a small audience, and listen to their opinion. Good poems are often good for oral reading.

Also, ask yourself if you’re satisfied with the edited poem. If you aren’t, revise the part that require some improvement.

Congratulations on completing your poem, if you feel satisfied with the completed poem!

If you aren’t happy with the finished work, no worries! You can always return to the editing process and write as many drafts as you need.

Use A Grammar And Spell Checker Like Every Good Poem Editor.

Every poet who’s still figuring out how to write a poem must use a grammar checker or a spell checker. This will go a long way to help you to correct small grammatical and spelling errors.

Wrap Up On How To Edit Poetry.

Poetry editing isn’t a small feat. It requires a lot of writing and reading, as well as a ot of practicing. You have to learn to take a break from the poem with the aim of backing back to the poem with fresh eyes. Other strategies include:

• rewriting the poem
• Getting feedback from seasoned poetry critics or writers
• Restructure your poem
• Read the poem aloud to yourself and them to a small group of cohorts.
• Using a grammar checker
• Take a break from the poem.
• Using a thesaurus or a dictionary. 

It’s standard practice for every editor to use a dictionary or a thesaurus. This ensures that only the apt and concise words make it into the final draft.

While figuring out how to edit a poem, strive to choose the best words in the poem you’re editing. Many editor poets often wonder, “what is one way to revise for word choice?” My answer: revise awkward-sounding lines and use a thesaurus or a dictionary.

Did you ever have to actively learn how to revise a poem? What lessons have you learned from your experience? Please share your story in the comments section below. There are thousands of poets who want to learn how to edit a poem.

You can find more poetry writing tips in this article.

The post How To Edit Poetry: A Guide On How To Become One Of The Best Poem Editors In The World. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Lunch Ticket has announced that it would be honored to serve as the host for the Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction in 2020.

The award was named after Author Diana Woods who, during her lifetime, exuded unwavering intellectual commitment and zeal, pursuing and receiving secondary degrees in law, social work, political science, and most recently, creative writing.

She received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2011 at the age of 70.

Diana was born on May 31, 1941 in Long Beach, California and passed on November 2, 2012 at the age of 71 from a perennial battle with ovarian cancer. She is survived by her son Brian, his wife Emily, their son Benjamin, as well as her daughter Rani and Rani’s fiancée Sonia.

When asked how she wanted to be remembered, Diana wrote, “I had so many goals and too little time.” Her passion for exploration of place, self, and identity remains ageless. Diana wrote and published regularly throughout the last decade of her life.

About the Award

The Creative nonfiction award was established in Diana’s memory by her family, friends, and the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA community. Diana Woods Memorial Award serves as a special opportunity for authors worldwide to be published in the literary journal Lunch Ticket. Established in the spring of 2012, Lunch Ticket is produced by the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA program, an innovative creative writing graduate program devoted to the education of literary artists, community engagement, and the pursuit of social justice.

Twice each year an author of a work of creative nonfiction will be selected for the Diana Woods Memorial Award award by a special guest judge. One author will be chosen for the Summer/Fall issue of Lunch Ticket and one in the Winter/Spring issue. The winning submissions will be published in Lunch Ticket and the recipient will receive $250.

HOW TO SUBMIT FOR THE DIANE WOODS MEMORIAL CREATIVE NON FICTION AWARD.

• Creative nonfiction authors are invited to submit an essay of up to 5,000 words on the subject of their choice to be considered for the Diana Woods Memorial Award in creative nonfiction. This can be a biography, memoir or autobiography.
• Chosen entries will receive $250 and their work will be featured in the next issue of Lunch Ticket.
• Each award recipient must submit a 100-word biography, current photo, and send a brief note of thanks to the Woods family.
• To submit, please click on the button called “Submit to Lunch Ticket” above, and choose the category called “Diana Woods Memorial Award.”
• The reading period for the award is the month of February for the issue that publishes in June, and the month of August for the issue that publishes in December.
• Please note that any work that has been previously published will not be accepted.
• All submissions for the award will be considered for publication in Lunch Ticket.

THE COMPANY POLICY

The Memorial Award is dedicated to upholding the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses code of ethics, defined as such:

CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. They believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, they agree to:

1) conduct the contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of their readers, judges, or editors;

2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and

3) to make the mechanics of their selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. The organizers have adopted this Code to reinforce their integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that the contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

Additionally: friends, family, and associates of the judges are not eligible for consideration for the award.

Good Luck!

The post Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction 2020/ How To Submit (250$ + Publication) appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Until very recently, I didn’t know how to stop worrying. I worry about everything I can think up. I refreshed my email so many times a day that if it, my email, had a kind of hand, it would have run a fist into my face for not letting it rest.

I worried about the fact that the previous year was folding up already and I was still yet to be laid, and that it may not happen this new year—and that, even if it does, it will be shabby.

I worried about my GCE result; I had failed maths in two exams and I couldn’t make myself believe I wouldn’t fail it this time again. I worried about how to tell the danfo driver that I was getting down at the next bus stop; I rehearsed how my voice would sound in my head.

I worried about my loneliness, about cold nights with no one to ring and trouble (broke up with my girlfriend a few months before).

I worried that one day one day, my ex would be a big woman riding a big car and I’ll be just one wretch walking the streets and she’ll just park next to me and make jest of me.

Read: Top Remote Job Ideas For Writers

I worried that I won’t get admission to the university next year; that, even if I get admission, I won’t have money to go—because I am not cool with my father, because he is not one who wants me to be cool with him, and because my mom is having a long sleep or staring down at me with bright eyes from some place I don’t know.

I worried that I’ll never be such a big writer, that I’ll never see the world I want to see, except on my phone screen of course.

I worried that I’ll never be rich, that I’ll get some girl pregnant and I’ll have a child I won’t be able to give the kind of life she deserves. I worried that the life I’ve been given is not the life I deserve; I deserve better.

Until very recently, I worry about everything I can think up.

These worries might make you laugh, at how stupid I was, but those worries made me unable to sleep at night. They made me forgetful.

Once, I was going to my exam center for an exam, and I was worrying so much. I don’t even remember what I was worrying about now, but I remember that my worry made me forget my photocard at home, and without my photocard I couldn’t write the exam.

I had to use five hundred naira to take a bike to and fro—to my house, to pick the photocard, and back to the center. On the bike, worrying, I wished that the bike would crash into a car, so that I could die and have peace.

Later at night, the thought of death wouldn’t let me sleep because I worried that I wouldn’t wake the next day, that I’ll die and go to hellfire. Sometimes, my worrying made me unable to move, just made me fixed in a moment, at a spot, daydreaming my life turning to ruins.

And because worrying is the sister of fear, it always seemed my heart was fighting some war in my chest. Peace was the last thing I knew.

When Chioma, a writer-friend, and somebody I’ve come to see as an aunt—when she suggested that I read Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, I didn’t want to, because I felt there was nothing another motivational book could do for me.

Writers, or a good deal of writers, have such gross egos that it would be enough for a room full of people to share, and they’ll still have plenty left. So, my ego didn’t want to read it.

But then I read the preface, where Dale wrote, “Please read the first forty-four pages of this book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”—and if by that time you don’t feel that you have acquired a new power and a new inspiration to stop worry and enjoy life—then toss this book into the dust-bin. It is no good for you”, and I thought, well, it doesn’t hurt to read the first forty pages.

Writers, or a good deal of writers, have such gross egos that it would be enough for a room full of people to share, and they’ll still have plenty left.

First published in 1948, over seven decades ago, when there was no internet or social media (two things which are feeding us so much noise these days, it has become so hard for us to have quiet on the inside, not to talk of peace), the book contains what Dale rightly calls “old, obvious, and eternal truths”.

Most of the “hows” in “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, are not ones I didn’t know (they are ‘old’ and ‘obvious’), but ones I wasn’t acting upon. And one of the reasons why I wasn’t acting upon them is, I had gotten comfortable worrying, even though worry was eating up my comfort by the minutes.

So what Dale does in the first part of the book is to present “Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry”, and he doesn’t list them; he writes about the lives of people who have worried and what they’ve found out about it.

One of the cheapest advice, “Live in Day-Tight Compartments”, is the title of the first chapter of the book. In this chapter, Dale writes about the lives of some very notable people who worried, about little and big things: a medical student who was worried about passing his final examinations, a publisher who was worried about the future (Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times), a soldier who was worried about making ‘embarrassing and serious mistakes’. And he shows us how each one of these men dealt with it. All of these people dealt with their worries by “Living in day-tight compartments”, by asking only for this day’s bread.

Reading that chapter, I began to realize that tomorrow is none of my business, really, that it’s something I don’t have any control over. All I have is today, and what matters is what I do with today. Ironically, the success of tomorrow is dependent on what is done today, but sadly, worrying will make one unable to plant anything today.

The moment I realized and accepted that fact, that it didn’t matter what kind of writer I will be in the next ten years, that what matters is what I do to make myself a better writer today—I started feeling a kind of peace.

I felt more peace when I applied the same thinking to rejections and publications and awards—like tomorrow, those things are not in my power; what’s in my power is to write good works and send it out and have it live its own life.

The moment I started seeing it this way, the moment I started focusing on LIVING today, the war in my chest began to quiet. I didn’t feel bitter seeing somebody else’s success, wondering why mine was taking so long to happen; I began to understand that success is what happens every time I do what I have the power to do.

Success is what happens every time I do what I have the power to do.

A few pages in, Dale wrote,

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

He expands on this in Chapter Seventeen where he wrote about the lives of men and women who “turned their minus into plus”, and he advised:

“If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade”.

(Coincidentally, I began reading Mary Oliver’s collection of poems, “Swan”, at the same time I was reading Dale Carnegie’s book, and what struck me is how Mary Oliver sees joy and beauty in the things we consider ‘trivial’ or ‘mundane’ because we have become so accustomed to the miracle of always having those things that we’ve stopped seeing them as miracles. I recommend “Swan”.)

My loneliness, I am learning, is more of a gift that it is an opportunity to grieve.

I have come to the understanding and acceptance of the fact that, to paraphrase the singer James Arthur: It’s not really about the life you were given; it’s a matter of: Are you living it right? My loneliness, I am learning, is more of a gift that it is an opportunity to grieve.

This life I was given is not the best for anyone else, but I could sew it to be just the perfect size for me. Understanding this, I began to spend more time with books, watch more movies, and I sat with my aunt and cousins, listened to the stories that are now the source of what might be a collection of stories.

When taking a walk, instead of worrying, I look up at the sky and wonder; sometimes I ask questions. Why is the sky blue? What kind of blue is the sky today? How will you describe these clouds—not as thick smoke, or soaked balls of cotton wool, think up something else?

And I find out that, as Ben Okri wrote in one of the poems I hold dearest, “There is wonder here”, and as Logan February wrote, “Look up at the steady strike of lightning/ It’s pretty scary, isn’t it? But, it’s pretty also.”

Until we start seeing the prettiness of the lightning, until we stop seeing the same yellow, black-striped danfo and we start wondering why they are yellow and not green like those in Abeokuta, until we start trying to understand why the agbeero shouts all the time, wondering if he smiles at all, if he kisses, how does he kiss, does he have a mother, is she sick, does he need money to take care of her, how about my mother, have I called her today, told her I love her—until we begin to see wonder here, we will forever think the life we are given isn’t the one we deserve, and we won’t make the move to upgrade it.

Most of the issues we have is rooted in the fact that we size up our life by other people’s, without considering that not the same factors work in your favor and theirs. As a result, we always wish that could be us or ours. I wish I won that award. I wish I was published in that magazine. I wish I had such a nice body. I wish ____________.

And that is how we keep wishing the miracles that we are away. Dale Carnegie advised: “Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You”. It is that simple. And so are some of the other advice he gave: Think and act cheerfully; give for the joy of giving; count your blessings; develop a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness.

“Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You”.

However, the delight of reading “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, a book I’ll return to over and over, is not just the wisdom in its pages, but the humor and frankness with which Dale Carnegie wrote it—and the fact that the stories he shares feel so relatable, even though they’re about the lives of men and women who lived decades ago, in lands distant from where I live, with experiences that aren’t really close to mine.

Here, writing about how chronic worriers may be struck with angina pectoris: “Boy, if that ever hits you, you will scream with agony. Your screams will make the sounds in Dante’s Inferno sound like Babes in Toyland. You will say to yourself then: ‘Oh, God, oh, God, if I can ever get over this, I will never worry about anything—ever.’ (If you think I am exaggerating, ask your family physician.)” I don’t know how that excerpt reads, but it reads like one from a Junot Diaz story, but it’s Dale.

Final thoughts on How to Stop Worrying

It’s a new year and a new decade, and all I want for the new year and decade is peace, and whatever peace is, I know it is the absence of worry.

I also want you to have peace, perfect peace, so I’m recommending “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, to you. Read it. Live by some of the instructions here. Return to it often.

I tell you, the book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, is as relevant as it was seventy years ago when it was first published, if not even more important now.

Written By: Ernest Ogunbiyi

The post Learning to Un-Worry, On Reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Some short stories make you cry, others make you gasp. But there are some that just show you something and that’s all they do. This week’s recommended stories include stories by Simbiat Haroun, an alumnus of the 2018 Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Trust, Adams Adeosun whose “Beloved” (published in “Limbe to Lagos”) is so achingly beautiful, and Chidiebube onye Okohia. The stories featured are from Omenana, The Offing, and COUNTERCLOCK Journal. I hope you enjoy reading these reviews and, more, that you enjoy the stories.

“The Story of How You Died” by Simbiat Haroun (Omenana 14)

“We had just settled into bed when we heard you climbing up the wall.”—from “The Story of How You Died”.

In an issue that includes works by Wole Talabi (whose story “Wednesday Stories” was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2018 and whose first book—“The Incomplete Solutions”—was recently published by Luna Press), Haku Jackson, and some other amazing writers, there is a not-too-loud but beautiful work by an amazing new voice in speculative fiction.

Simbiat’s story is one that leaves you wondering what you have read at the end of the tale, but one that leaves you feeling something on your inside—that something may be anger, a tiny one, or pain, a prickling one, or admiration, the kind that makes you want to drink water.

Because there are almost no new stories again, the work of the writer today is to take the stories that we know and tell them in ways that make us want to read them again. This is exactly what Simbiat did in “The Story of How You Died”: the story of a man who comes to steal the “Eni Egbere” (the Bush Baby’s mat) in order to take care of something, narrated by the “Egberes”.

In the Yoruba Mythology, the “Egbere” is said to be “a malevolent spirit with a short stature known to carrying a mat of wealth wherever it goes” (steemit.com). The mat, “Eni Egbere”, is believed to make whoever steals it rich, but then it is very difficult to steal. However, in Simbiat’s story, the “Egberes” aren’t all malevolent; our narrators—the “we” of the story—are, surprisingly, very thoughtful and round characters. The malevolent ones (Grandpa, for an example), in fact, had reasons for been that way.

Here, Simbiat writes: “We saw that you didn’t really want our mat. Under the light of the sun, you were a civil servant, slaving away for long hours and receiving a paltry salary in return. We saw your mother, lying in bed from an illness she would never recover from, and we felt pity for you. We saw the fear in your eyes, raw, naked, unfettered. We could see that you didn’t really want to do this, but what could we do? We were merely threads in fate’s spool.” Somewhere else, she writes: “We knew Idowu thought you were handsome. We could see why she would think so. You were dark-skinned, the kind of man we liked, and you had a strong jaw.”

Simbiat’s “Egberes” felt things—pity, fear, admiration—and, when you read this story, this one thing is sure, you’d have no choice but to feel something, too.

Want to read more of Simbiat’s work? Click to read her Personal Essay: On Getting Writing Advice From Chimamanda Adichie, Bonding With The Literati and Enjoying The Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop 

“A Natural History of Briefly Gorgeous Vegetables” by Adams Adeosun (The Offing)

“If this was my father’s story to tell, what would he tell you?”—from “A Natural History of Briefly Gorgeous Vegetables”

Exactly! The story is as beautiful as its title. I believe Adam should just write sixty thousand words of different sentences and call it a novel (it doesn’t have to be a plot-driven story or anything; that’s not important for me, what’s important is the voice and the prose), we will read it because we won’t be able to not read it.

This story is called “speculative” (according to Adams in a tweet), and it is. It is the story of ??? Yes, “family history”. It’s about history, the history of “tree people”: “Aunty Sola was a fig tree. Uncle Abdul, a palm tree. Baby grandpa Howard, a jacaranda. Cousin Yetunde, cherry. Grandpa, walnut…”

When you begin reading you read about trees, but don’t be surprised when the story becomes one about running (which is triggered by a particular incident in the story), and don’t be when it becomes something about sex, when the main character is rode “so hard that of the quarter century I’ve spent peddling my body… that first time is distinct in my memory the way a whale out of water would be.”

Though the piece reads like there is more to it than we are reading on the surface, which may be true to an extent, but whatever else the piece is saying, it becomes difficult for us to pause and think of it because of the gorgeousness of the prose. Also, one thing that Adams does in this story is to bring a number of moments together, treading them with the trees’ history, in a way that is so gorgeous.

And, he does this well, so well, I get thirsty when I’m reading this piece.

You just have to read it.

“No City for Young Bloods” by Chidiebube onye Okohia (COUNTERCLOCK Journal, Issue 7)

“Brown. Everything brown. Brown is the weight and hue of this city.”—from “No City for Young Bloods”.

In the latest issue of COUNTERCLOCK Journal, issue 7, there are so many amazing works, and this short story by Chidiebube is one of them.

A short story that opens with J.P.Clark’s well known poem “Ibadan”, the piece is about a corps member’s experiences in Ibadan: from seeking transfer from Ibarapa to Ibadan, taking an okada, the music of Ibadan, the food, to the snake that is killed in their compound one night. This short story is a kind I have not read by a Nigerian before, a short story about a particular place, Ibadan, that is just about that place and nothing else.

Like J.P. Clark’s poem, this story is not concerned about the political scene or anything; what it is is a word-painting of what Ibadan looks like, narrated by a corps member.

While any other person writing about this same place, and telling the story as a corps member, might have slipped into the cliché zone of dreams and hopes and the uselessness of the government, Chidiebube does not—he only paints us the Ibadan that he experienced; he does not even add a word on how that experience affected him.

The prose is also very descriptive (although it is difficult, or goes too far for me in some places). It is a remarkable piece.

The post Recommended Short Stories You Can Read Online. This Edition Features Stories by Simbiat Haroun, Adams Adeosun, and Chidiebube onye Okohia appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Yes, I found some good stories, and I am sharing them. Two from Jalada’s most recent issue, the Afterlife issue, and one from Agbowó, I hope you enjoy them.

“The Replica” by Mayowa Koleosho (published in Jalada: The Afterlife Issue)

“I had lost my mother ten years to the date. Ten years since a vital part of me left, effectively upending my life and what I came to know of it.” – from “The Replica”.

This story begins with a very fine idea—when the narrator writes: “I am going to resurrect the dead!”

The resurrection of the dead is not the lazarus kind of resurrection and it is not the calling of the dead’s spirit, but it is the creation of a digital replica of the dead. The dead is the narrator’s mother. But to make that—the replica—happen, the narrator, who is also the main character, Jide, has to come to Nigeria from the United States, to gather information on his late mother.

Brilliant storyline, but the delivery is not what I expected. The story is told and not shown in anyway (except in a few places: “I still recall his sigh, caressing his eye-brow as he thought up the right words to say”; “I can still hear the generator humming outside, the whirling of the fan as it dispersed humid air around the room and the silence that followed after I outlined my plan of bringing my mother to life.”).

I really felt cheated while reading this story, because there were places (too many places) where I wanted to see what had happened happen, not the other way round. There was the visit to Jide’s mother’s sisters for example. As if we, the readers, don’t deserve to be witnesses to whatever happened, in five paragraphs that include no dialogue from any of the sisters, we are told about the visits.

Then there is the resort to cliché. In this story, there is a whole lot of not just clichéd sayings, but even of tired scenes. Like when the narrator writes: “Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. I was hit with a bout of malaria that sidelined me for a good week.” Or when he describes a guy named Mojeed as “a recent graduate from the University of Lagos, who was having difficulties finding work post-graduation and resorted to using his car for taxi or rental services.” All those scenes are tired scenes that you’ll find in stories about Nigerians in America coming to Nigeria. There is also the “ajo o dabi ile” that his maternal grandfather says when they visit. The truth is: a very old Yoruba man won’t say “ajo o dabi ile” to his late daughter’s son, he would use a proverb taken from top of the shelf.

What kept me in this story was what I wanted to find out about the replica, you should read it for that reason, too.

“Vertigo” by Adams Adeosun (published on Agbowo)

“They make love violently—like an invasion. They both climax, clutching each other as if scared they would transcend their bodies and dissolve. And like everything that climaxes, their romance races to a denouement.”—from “Vertigo”.

The architect weaves a story about architecture and painting and loves. In this story, a lady finds what appears to be love, but it isn’t and it breaks her. Then she finds another, and “the president, on a cable TV, garbed in black like an executioner, outlaw(s) queer love.”

Adams’ magic lies in the way he weaves through different lives—in a space of not more than a few thousand words—swiftly and neatly, without making us feel like we’ve been cheated.

But it seems the most fascinating thing about Adams’ work is not just the story, which is in itself beautiful, but much more beautiful is his descriptive power. There is a part of the story where he writes that a landing looks like the transcription of a Beethoven classic—! Later in the story, he writes that two buildings, a bank and a shopping plaza, make a character think of marriage; he adds that a neon sign glows “where a vagina should be”.

However, his descriptive power pales compared to his ability to show how things happen in our lives in the moment when we do not even expect them; how there might really be something called fate after all. There’s the scene where a lady leaves a conference room to escape the stupid action of a man who was running his hand under her skirt. While walking she finds out there are portraits on every landing. She then follows the portrait to the top floor where she finds Alheri, where she finds love.

“Vertigo” is as beautiful as it is interesting and painful; it is the gentle hand of a motherless child on yours, it will stay with you no matter how small the space it takes in your heart.

“The Spider Queen”—Temitayo Olofinlua (published in Jalada: The Afterlife issue)

“You find yourself alone at the doorsteps of a church but cannot say how you moved past the church’s elaborate gate and up its short steps.”—from “The Spider Queen”.

When do we really know we are gone after we are gone? When the spirit leaves the body, is the spirit always conscious of its leaving?

You have to read this story to find out.

A lady—the Spider Queen—was killed, but not until she had scheduled her story for the world to hear. It’s a story about how we do not take note of the assaults against women, even when they are our daughters, until what we ask them to bear—because of the notion that we have that it is always a woman’s responsibility to bear, even if what she is bearing will end her—ruins them. The irony is, the same people who say “Bear it” are the ones who will ask what’s wrong, and when you tell them what it is that’s wrong, they give you the same advice they’ve been carrying for years—Endure.

The writer makes this very clear. There was a scene in the story where Rita—the Spider Queen—’s mother called and realized she was crying. The woman asked her daughter what was wrong and her daughter told her, and her reply was: “Rita, a wife does not do what her husband does not want. Whatever he says you should do, biko, my dear, just do. A good wife submits to her husband.” In an earlier scene we now meet the same mother who was preaching submission crying, when the knife had done its deed.

What I find interesting in this story is how the writer weaves different scenes together in a way that nothing is left off and it is not confusing, especially with the use of the numbering—I guess the way the story is done is a kind of representation of the web of a spider. There is also real suspense in this story, something that keeps you in it. And the twist at the end was nice.

“The Spider Queen” also has a Nollywood feel to it, a cinematic narrative style—I was almost seeing every movement and hearing every sound—and it is one of the story’s major strengths.

Read this story, it will thrust a dart in your heart, but it will make you see women differently; it will help you understand that women have a reason to be angry, to be whatever they choose to be that you are uncomfortable with—because they mostly pay dearly for offenses they never committed.

Drop your comment on the stories.

The post Recommended Short Stories You Can Read Online. This Edition Features Stories by Mayowa Koleosho, Adams Adeosun and Temitayo Olofinlua. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Book title: Fabiola

Author: Musih Tedji Xaviere

Publisher: Maryland Printers, Bamenda

Year published: 2017

Number of pages: 221

Where I got it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073WY8XCH

             https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/xaviere

Why I read it: I was intrigued by the idea of reading an African YA novel

When I read it: 2017

Review written by:  Eric Ngea Ntam (PhD)

The first few lines of Musih Tedji Xavière’s Fabiola immediately draws a reader’s attention towards the pattern of child development at school. The novel can be aptly described as a bildungsroman in progress because it presents the nine-month development of Fabiola, the protagonist. Xavière’s setting, characterisation, themes, style and point of view come along with the physical and psychological growth of Fabiola, all of which culminate in a verisimilitude of the lived circumstances that those familiar with boarding life would fit their own experiences into.

The term bildungsroman (coined in 1819 by German philologist, Karl Morgenstern and later legitimated by Wihelm Dilthey in 1870 and made popular in 1905) is a German word succinctly defined as a “novel of formation” or described as “the coming-of-age novel”. A bildungsroman generally revolves around a sensitive protagonist poised for the achievement of a goal. Its plot is thus tailored to depict the hurdles, the aide and the near or complete achievement of the hero or heroine. The less than twelve years old Fabiola goes through this trajectory for an academic year and emerges a largely reformed [my emphasis], at least at her age, bildungsroman protagonist.

A careful reading of Xavière’s Fabiola reveals a plot knitted to portray the psychological and moral growth of Fabiola from child to youth or semi adult. This is evident in the setting or choice of the school, St Francis Girls’ Vocational High School (GVHS) Bafut. As an all-girl institution, Fabiola has to intermingle with her kind for a psychosocial awareness of both her sex and gender. The young Fabiola is modestly accompanied to school by her mother and are both given a hand by the taxi driver to offload her belongings (Ch. One, p. 2).

The ancient appearance of the campus is proof of its having churned out a myriad of the great ladies of all walks of life in the society. The senior who is on hand to check and usher Fabiola to the St Clare dormitory, as her counterparts do to the other foxes, is just one of the budding ladies GVHS is preparing for the global society. Fabiola is immediately put in a psychological battle the moment she sees a difference between the seniors and the foxes. The seniors’ appearance does not in any way correspond to the dictates of the school prospectus. In fact: “What fascinated Fabiola most about these girls was the grace with which they carried themselves. She envied them, their refinement, and somewhere in the back of her mind she wanted to be just as beautiful and just as curvy one day” (Ch. One, p. 3). In this yearning lies the trigger that sets our protagonist in motion.

The protagonist grows from child to semi-adult

The protagonist in a bildungsroman is often a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. Fabiola’s quest to understand her environment is facilitated by her meeting Yvonne, a onetime primary school mate: “What were the chances that she would end up in a place like this, thousands of miles away from home with someone she had spent almost every day of her childhood with? Though Yvonne’s company, just like Helen’s to Jane Eyre at the Lowood School in Charlottë Brontë’s Jane Eyre, lightens the burden of loneliness, it nevertheless stops the introspective Fabiola to watch with stifled emotion the departure of her mother through the oxblood coated bars of the school after having promised to come and see her again on Visiting Day.

Henceforth Fabiola is supposed to be strong in order to gradually achieve her youthfulness or near adulthood. Her entire first term is full of intimidating, if not shocking, surprises. This begins on day one of her arrival at GVHS. and include the chaos perpetrated by the foxes in the St Clare dormitory, the abrupt and harsh instructions and nightmarish tails from Ngala Geraldine (Dorm-cap), harassment from Atabong Atem and crew, Senior Nahbila Laura’s compelling lessons on using cutlery adequately in the manner of established women or ladies, insults (Grandmami-face) from three unknown girls, among others lead to the conclusion: “… boarding school was a direct contrast to the reverend sisters’ campaign promises at her old school” (Ch. Five, p. 26).

The struggle, which continues with routine activities such as getting up at 5am and bathing under strict supervision with cold water in order to get ready for morning mass, tidying up individual bunks and spaces, sweating, stumbling and falling on the hill leading to church, adhering to Senior Limnyuy and Bessem’s assigned portions for regular maintenance, learning new vocabulary such as ‘clad’ and ‘mop’, holding one’s own cup, tea spoon and cutlery when going to the refectory, eating stale bread, unpleasant combination of cooked garri and okro soup, weevil infested corn-chaff and beans, and compulsory siesta all combine to form part of the heavy cross Fabiola must shoulder on her way to experience.

Fabiola observes that some students have complementary snacks (chocolate, tins of sardine, Ovaltine), which they either supplement with or take as alternative for what the ‘refecto’ provides.  She further learns that GVHS is a religiously inclined school because it engages in the endless battle between God and the devil, consequently the girls are urged to inculcate constant prayer as a modus vivendi. It amazes Fabiola that most tribes are stigmatised for either their abnormal behaviour or phonological renditions. She finds it absurd and a taboo when girls like Agatha talk back to the captain.

A tip of the iceberg of what awaits her in the months ahead comes when the foxes are made to pay a visit to the Up-campus. Fabiola comes to understand that GVHS has two campuses and that there are many students and levels in the school than she earlier thought. The St Francis Children and Adult Home (SAFRACAH) Street unravels another hidden connection between school and the outer world. Her keen observation makes her figure out that she could easily fight starvation by sneaking out early enough to buy accra and other snacks.

The arrival of the rest of the school on 9 September begins the real ordeal and set the pace for the rising action of the novel. All the ten dormitories are inhabited and typical boarding experiences become manifest. For example, Fabiola records that there is a desperate search for ‘Smalls’ by the supposed ‘Bigs’, there is outright confrontation that almost result in flexing of muscles between Yvonne and Atem, but for her timely intervention which is followed by a ‘Mami cry-cry’ insult at her from the dreaded Atem. Fabiola’s courageous interference which evokes “I cannot believe this” from Atem portrays the survival of the fittest attribute Fabiola has quickly imbibed as the way out. She even goes further to warn Atem: “We are not afraid of you. Touch any of us and we will report you.” This offensive temperament not only brings out the hidden rebel in Fabiola, but also speaks of the courage and mature personality that is already being built in the hither to docile girl. As a matter of fact, the scary Atem is left with no option than to shake her head and turn away.

Stresses of self-identity continue to develop. Unlike other girls who are being cajoled and won over by Bigs, Fabiola waits until when she desires one. Though Joan, her acquired Big, is recommended to her by Yvonne, this is only after Fabiola’s wish to have one. She timidly but courageously moves up to Joan and requests her to be her Big – a demand Joan willingly grants.

The ritual of cutting of the foxes’ tails ushers Fabiola into the stark reality of the intimidation junior students must endure in the hands of seniors. The foxes are slapped and obliged to dance without music, as real foxes do. Coming on the hills of the cutting of foxes’ tails is the introduction night. This event gives Fabiola and her mates the opportunity to discover the extracurricular potentials of their school in domains such as choir, drama and dance. The courageous and imaginative skills of Hiris, a fox, who sings a sarcastic song to ridicule the senior students astonish everyone and provokes Sister Jude to laugh out her lungs, to the amazement and delight of Fabiola and the other foxes. This night draws the curtains on the empirical learning for a week and sets the green light for real academic business in GVHS:

“When she was certain that Fabiola was ready to go, she gave her a pat on the back, wished her good luck, and left” (Ch. Sixteen, p. 92) – these are the narrator’s description of the setting the ball to roll in Fabiola’s academic life by Joan, her Big. Ngam Fabiola from now on is left alone to climb the academic ladder. With Joan’s pat on her back, Fabiola hurries to be first Up-campus and scrambles for a well located seat in their classroom. Once safely seated the fight between the tallest girl in their class and a smaller girl animates Fabiola and her mate until Senior Laura’s timely arrival. The rush to be first Up-campus and the racing for seats in the classroom consciously or unconsciously drives home the fact that the attainment of education is also another battle that must be fought with all energy. In this battle, the inexperienced, like Fabiola, soil themselves and tend to wonder how the old-students maintain their immaculate look.

The typical first day experience of learning in a secondary school thrills Fabiola. The entrance of Mr Mokum Clement, the mathematics teacher, the confusion of which book to get out when instructed to take out mathematics books, the biting morning hunger that the baskets of bread presented for breakfast are unable to assuage, the mocking laughter of the foxes’ overflowing pleated black skirts and oversized pullovers that barely fit, the repeated introduction of each other as teacher after teacher enters the class with punctuated thirty minutes pauses, mark Fabiola. Nevertheless, Fabiola’s overall impression of being over-taught and the grip of hunger draw the difference between her former school and the secondary. This is the route to transformation. The routine of waking at 5.30am, taking a bath, going for morning mass, climbing the to the Up-campus, learning Mathematics, breakfast, more classes, trekking back Down-campus, lunch, siesta, another bath, evening prayer, night preparations (prep), and back to bed, characterize Fabiola’s stay in GVHS for the next two months, with expectations of seeing mama again on Visiting Day.

With classes now in full gear, Fabiola is obliged to come to terms with other activities and behaviours during and after school as well as on weekends. Tiredness and drowsiness during morning masses and night preps, the lurking of Mr Cane (the discipline master) around, ready to lash defaulters, cold nights, especially in the refectory, regrets of not having brought other items not mentioned in the school prospectus, coercing from Antoinette (Yvonne’s Big) to move her snacks to her trunk, little enmities between space-mates and bunkmates (ndang’a and mbong’o), indiscriminate punishment in order to fish out a culprit who commits an indecent act such as defecating in another girl’s bathing buckets (Hiris as a victim) (Ch. Seventeen, pp. 99-104), involvement in one activity after another on Saturdays, receiving special help and favours from a responsible Big such as Joan gives Fabiola, classroom mockery, nicknaming and stigmatisation of tribes, among many others are routine experiences and occurrences in GVHS.

The Fabiola becomes disillusioned (disappointed) as the new world does not match her shining hopes and dreams, but finally accepts, after painful soul-searching, the sort of world she lives in

The climax of the novel begins with the ‘warmsun’ or the period of extreme hunger in boarding schools. At this moment Fabiola realises that no girl, including herself, rejects or brags about not eating certain school meals such as cooked garri or crank-crank, meals they rejected when pockets were still full and supplementary snacks aplenty. Some of the foxes exchange toiletries such as toothpastes for bread, others begin to produce candy out of melted sugar by means of their spoons and candle light, Fabiola and Yvonne even go as far as deceiving Bapete, who brags of her riches because the prime minister is her uncle, and eat up her cookies in return for friendship that they later fail to give. Fabiola learns a lot about lies telling in the dormitory when Fusi, whom they constantly mock for wetting the bed, lies in their favour though truly she is aware that they duped Bapete: “‘Thank you,’ Fabiola said to Fusi once they were out of earshot, too relieved to ask why Fusi lied for them. Fusi acknowledges Fabiola’s gratitude with a nod and walked away.” (Ch. Nineteen, pp. 114-18).

Fabiola also observes that stealing is a common practice in their school. Personal belongings such as socks, pullovers, headscarves, white gowns, Bibles and hymnals, sandals, cutlery and even underwear are pilfered. Many cases of theft are reported to the dorm-cap who only threatens in vain. The effect of snatching away the pullovers is rampant influenza and related diseases, which Fabiola also has to cope with. Some of the robbers are caught and dismissed while others are never identified.

Warmsun also leads to the breakup of cordial relationship between Fabiola and Yvonne. Yvonne is no longer ready to share her trunk with Fabiola because their snacks have been completely done away with. Yvonne’s decision is taken by Fabiola with equanimity.

Despite Senior Laura’s reprimand and punishment of Asongwe Camela, Mbaku Veronica, Atabong Atem, Vegah Madeleine, Suh Antonia, Wiysahnyuy Hilda, Achu Tina and five others for visiting shops and secretly buying items from vendors at SAFRACAH Street, Fabiola still indulges in the same illicit dealing. She seems to have accepted that it is a context where survival depends on one’s smartness and not on the strict obedience of rules and regulations.

Fabiola resolves to use up the 2000 CFA franc note her mother gave her on the day they arrived GVHS. She leaves the dormitory alone early Tuesday morning and buys balls of accra for herself. This becomes an obsession until her money is completely used up (see a vivid description of her manoeuvre: Ch. Twenty-One, pp. 126 -7). It is interesting to note that her skilfulness in sneaking and buying whatever she wanted along the SAFRACAH Street is monitored and admired by Fusi, who opts to bring her own money so that they can be partners in crime.

Preparations to welcome parents on Visiting Day intensify. The generosity of the girls know no bounds a few days to Visiting Day. Those who still have some reserves empty their trunks in preparation for the new and fresh snacks their parents, especially mothers, would bring. Fabiola spends all she had jealously hoarded in the hope that her mother would replenish her purse and trunk upon her arrival.

It is Visiting Day. This marks the climax of Fabiola’s disillusionment and at the same the acceptance of her circumstance and the world secondary school introduces her to. The school mobilises in every aspect as the parents are awaited. Everywhere is kept clean and the students too look clean. Those who had scored good marks in the tests look forward to sharing the news with their parents. Parents come with goodies, sit with their daughters in small groups chattering and showing love and concern.  Fabiola is highly disappointed when at 5.30pm every parent who came visiting has left and the road ahead stares at her. Fabiola’s hysteria is only calmed by Sister Jude, who takes her to the office and a plastic bag containing a medium sized baked cake with frosting and a bag of candy – these become the girl’s own Visiting Day package (See Ch. Twenty-two, pp. 132-7). Mama’s failure to pay Fabiola a visit on a day when all other children enjoy the warmth of their mothers kills the child in her. The child is mother of the woman is a suitable responsibility she assumes. Though Fabiola overcomes this disheartening circumstance, resilience teaching her the trick, and returns to school even more determined to compete with Tang Asahmbom for the first position in class, she however “… she retreated into herself … and no amount of coaxing got her out of her shell.” (Ch. Twenty-three, p.138).

The rest of the term becomes child’s play. The young heroine ignores Ngum’s complaint that her own mother did not also come, she shows pride towards Dorm-cap’s plea that those whose parents came should donate food to the needy, she stands tall to see that she is not in the group of those who mess up the latrines because of overfeeding from their visitors, she continues to go to the refectory without any complex, the trekking for miles in search of water at Nkiwah stream owing to adverse drought does not bother her, with Ngum’s help she treats herself to a handful of palm kernels from a nearby bush, she even questions why an Anglophone Cameroonian as herself should study French, and above all she now boldly accompanies Ngum to sneak out of the way to school to get whatever they desired. With these resilient and questioning spirit, Fabiola writes her second and third tests and is ready to go home for the Christmas break.

The starvation that sets in before Rascal week is trifle to Fabiola. All she is interested in is to experience the unruly atmosphere that now characterises GVHS. During this week the girls get involved either in plotting, fighting, gossiping, quarrelling or loitering the school campus, looking for possibilities of getting palm nuts, avocado, guavas from nearby bushes in Bafut and even mocking at the gateman who dare to consider himself part of the staff of the school by constantly using the expression “We the staff.” Fabiola also observes that the threat of withholding one’s report card deterred many of the girls from certain exaggerated acts. Fabiola becomes involved in the activities marking preparations for Christmas, which entail drama, carol, reconciliation and general socials. She wonders if the reconciliations are actually genuine for, it seems to mean little to Atabong Atem.

The sledge harmer of dismissal, a dreaded punishment, befalls those who resort to excesses during the rascal week. For instance the exorcism manifested by Jesus-freak or Chukwunenye Nnednma earns her outright dismissal from Sister Jude. Khaki-night or the night of result declaration marks the end of Fabiola’s first three months in the secondary school. The entire school assembles in the refectory and results are read out. The last three and first three in each class come up to the stage for everyone to see them. Sihngum Monica 16/20, Ngam Fabiola 17.4/20 and Tang Ansahmbom 18.2/20 are the first three in ascending order in her class. The Bigs, whose Smalls make it in flying colours, are proud and shout out to let everyone identify them with their brilliant Small. Fabiola receives congratulations from Joan. It is with these results that Fabiola goes to bed ready to collect her report card the next day and depart for the village.

Closing day breaks with all students ready to depart from campus to various destinations. Fabiola receives her report card and as a big girl, whom she has become, does not bother about her mother’s coming to pick her up. With the help of Ngum, she boards a taxi to her uncle’s house at Foncha Street where she passes the night and leaves for Njinikom the next day to meet her parents.

Fabiola returns to school for the second term on January 4 a completely courageous heroine. She is indifferent happenings around her and only excited to begin classes. Total metamorphosis has had an effect on her:

It took a lot of self-loathing to admit it, but home wasn’t home anymore now that she knew she had somewhere else to be. The disconnection with her childhood friends had only grown, inasmuch as she tried reconnecting with her former self. Her friends did not understand why she felt the need to constantly conduct herself like a lady. They saw her conduct as pride, and frankly, she did not care that much about their opinion of her. (Ch. Twenty-seven, p.165)

Since ‘education’ is always crucial to the protagonist of a bildungsroman, in that it is part of the child’s maturation and preparation for impending adulthood, or in other words considering that the inner development and maturity of the protagonist takes place after his/her “education” in the new place, it is this newfound self-knowledge that signals the ultimate maturity of Fabiola. Fabiola’s drastic transformation has everything to do with both education and suffering. Her ability to withstand traumatic experiences catapults her into a class and psyche of her own. Little wonder therefore that the noise she hears on the reopening day of the second term means nothing to her, she simply waves “her way expertly through the horde”; her determination to uphold her parents’ pride suppressing any weak thought of escaping back home and the firm resolve to topple Ansah, urging her forward. Fabiola is no longer little Fa.

Major heroine feats displayed by the heroine include her journey all the way from Njinikom to GVHS Bafut unaccompanied, her not minding the extra work they carry out in preparation for Youth Day and school feasts, the ignoring of Yvonne’s fuss about her friendship with Ngum Winfrey, her courageous accompanying of Winfrey to frighten old-students chattering beside a fire behind the dormitory in the night and later reprimand of Winfrey for causing her to inflict pain on the students, her fierce refusal of Winfrey’s proposal that they should go into a video club on Youth Day, her not bothering much about her mother’s absence at the PTA meeting, her polite decline to leave her money with the school bursar, her ability to understand most terms like ‘curtsy’, changes brought in by the newly elected prefects do not affect her in any way, her contemplation on Women’s Day and what possibly happens on Men’s Day, her confiding in Yvonne that she has contracted sugar-sugar and being taught how to ‘pee like a boy’ by Yvonne and Winfrey, her interest in Sister Carine’s teachings about the ‘Self-esteem concept’, her unregretful spitting in Dorm-cap’s drinking water for calling her ‘red-face’, her being chased by a man with a gun when she accompanies Winfrey and other girls into a dark wild bush, her and Hannah’s peeping at “Mr Moses (the French teacher) and his—and Senior Jennifer, the labour prefect” and being warned by the teacher never to mention it anywhere, peeing in Antoinette’s buckets to punish her for highhandedness and insulting habit, and trying to mislead Ansahmbom on purpose in order to take the first position in class.

From this avalanche of courageous acts, it becomes clear that for only nine months, Fabiola experiences the good, the bad and the ugly. Not only is she aware of sneaking habits of young girls, she comes to understand the reasons why a woman must stand up for her rights, experiences the commonest female infection, observes a man caressing a young girl, devises strategies to revenge/avenge wrong deeds to her and struggles to manipulate her classmate in order to take the first position in class.

Separation from family and Home (usually from a small, provincial place, venturing into a much more complex place) because of desire to gain Self-identity

Fabiola can be said to have made a name for herself by the time we sing the Cameroon National Anthem on page 226 of this novel. She attains this partly because she courageously severs from her parents in search of education and also partly because she becomes engrossed within a complex setting. Though GVHS is a confined environment, it is however much more sophisticated than her primary school and quarter in Njinikom. This is so because it is a forum for budding intellectuals and the occupants come from different homes with varied childhood experiences. Fabiola needs just this kind of context in order to experience a dramatic transformation.

The protagonist returns home, reaches out and helps others after having achieved maturity

Armed with moral, academic and social experiences from GVHS, Fabiola arrives home again, but this time a transformed girl. Not only is she bold enough to ask her mother why she failed her on Visiting Day, she now helps the mother at home as well. Her anger against her mother is abated by the simple reason that she understands her mother had gone back to school. In fact Fabiola is now conscious of the demands of school. 6am the next morning meets Fabiola assisting her mother to bathe her siblings, assigning her siblings to different portions to clean and taking part in the tidying up of the house, ensuring table mannered eating and then imposing a compulsory forty-minute siesta for all. How quick the heroine puts theory into practice. Fabiola’s mother’s satisfaction is revealed in the pride with which she introduces her secondary school child to her colleagues. The rest of the holiday follows this routine and Christmas celebration is void of any exaggeration. But for the unfounded fear that nobody was to see New Year’s Day 2000, Fabiola shows no anxiety and so does the New Year’s Day pass and Christmas break comes to an end.

Fabiola’s reaching out and helping others is seen in her subsequent relationship with Winfrey. When Antoinette hurts Winfrey by spreading false rumour about her being dirty, her being infected with ‘cam-no-go’ and mumps, Fabiola gets very disturbed to see her friend in misery:

The last of Fabiola’s reserve crumbled when she saw Winfrey crying behind the classroom one afternoon. “Why are you crying?” Fabiola asked sitting beside Winfrey on the grass. Winfrey’s bravery was something Fabiola had come to rely on and seeing her reduced to tears by cruelty angered Fabiola.…

Fabiola chuckled. “Shut up! You don’t have mumps or cam-no-go” …

Winfrey regarded Fabiola carefully before abandoning the scepticism. She wiped at the remainder of the tears in her eyes and turned to gaze into space. (Ch. Thirty-four, p. 217).

As a true bildungsroman heroine, Fabiola must necessary reach out to help Ngum Winfrey to be or remain strong.

Is Fabiola an autobiography?

As to whether this novel is an autobiography, the answer is negative. An autobiography is the life story/history of an individual told by him/herself. Even if aspects of Xavière’s own life are embedded in the story, this comes indirectly. That Xavière adopts the third person omniscient point of view distances her novel from being autobiographical. The author’s preference is “an all-knowing narrator who is able not only to recount the action thoroughly and reliably but also to enter the mind of any character at any time in order to reveal [and even conceal too] his or her thoughts, feeling, and beliefs directly to the reader” (Murfin and Ray, 2003). The choice of this vantage point is also convincing because Xavière’s protagonist, fresh from a primary school in Njinikom might have only spoken Kom but would not have rendered the Banso accent, pronounce words in Bafut or relate the dormitory jargon and clichés adequately.

Xavière’s style is simple but very erudite. Instances of suspense, allusion, vivid description, flashbacks, irony, contrast, humour, to cite these, are numerous in the novel. Her delving into boarding school lifestyle and mannerisms helps the reader better understand the psyche of ex-boarders, especially the female sex within the global society.

Conclusion

The choice of the title of this review: “Bildungsroman in Progress” is justifiable. A bildungsroman ends with the hero attaining maturity by accomplishing what he or she set out to acquire – thus coming full circle. However, despite the fact that he/she has come full circle, the memories of the boy/girl that was at the beginning are perfectly suited to emphasize the man or woman that he/she has become. There is no doubt that Fabiola has changed drastically from the little girl who was led into the gates of GVHS by her mother to an independent traveller and introspective girl. For a period of just nine months remarkable transformation is noticeable as earlier indicate. However, that Fabiola is yet to rich full maturity by becoming one of the seniors or prefect in GVHS, perhaps also actually get involved in some of the other deeds she only hears or observes, and also the fact she is yet to return home as a full blown woman to bring total dynamism in her family in particular and Njinikom at large, qualifies the novel as an advancing bildungsroman. Xavière is therefore challenged to come up with a sequel to Fabiola in order to portray a full circle transformed Fabiola.

References

Abrams, M. H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, eds., A Glossary of Literary Terms, Ninth Edition, Boston, Wardsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.

Cuddon, J. A., The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London, Penguin Group, 1998.

Murfin, Ross and Supryia M. Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Xaviere, Musih Tedji Fabiola. Maryland Printers: Bamenda, 2017.

About the Author

Eric Ngea Ntam holds a PhD in British Literature from the University of Yaoundé I. He undertook training as a secondary and high School teacher in the then Higher Teacher Training College (ENS) Annex Bambili (1998-2001) and the Higher Teacher Training College (ENS) Yaoundé (2007-2009) from where he obtained the Secondary and High School Teacher Diploma Grade I and Grade II, respectively. He is thus a teacher of English Language and Literature in English for sixteen years now. Eric Ngea Ntam is a former German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Scholarship holder. He is also the co-author of two books:  Learn English: Understand Climate Change and Majors in English. Dr Ngea Ntam is currently the Head of Service of Relations with the Business World at The University of Bamenda, where he also lectures literature in English as part time lecturer.

The post Musih Tedji Xavière’s Fabiola as a Bildungsroman in Progress: A Review By Eric Ngea Ntam (PhD) appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Can you make your first $10,000 as a ghostwriter?

You can! The industry of ghostwriting has grown to a whole new level. From freelancing to even large agencies that provide ghostwriting services.

These agencies have numerous ghostwriters who said they earned as much as $10,000-50,000 for their first ghostwriting project. This was one reason why I wrote this article, on ways by which new writers can make such money, too.

Read: Successful Writing Ideas

Ghostwriting is mostly associated with book projects that can range from academic papers to comic books and even screenplays. Book writing is a comprehensive, qualitative, and time-enduring task. So, being a ghostwriter is not as easy as one may think.

The figures that one can earn through ghostwriting are certainly not a reason to become one. However, skills are important. You can’t pursue a career in ghostwriting if you don’t know how to present yourself in words.

An independent study revealed that investors spend trillions of dollars hiring Ghost Book Writing Consultants & Services.

This article presents steps provided by experienced ghostwriters who were able to take advantage of this opportunity.

This post will answer any question on how to enter the industry and also on how to secure your first large pay cheque as a ghostwriter.

These are the key points to consider and take into account to become a ghostwriter that can earn a handsome amount in a single project:

How to start as a ghostwriter

Read. Read. And Read.

The first thing you need to possess as a ghostwriter, as in any other profession, is skill. And, there is enough information on the internet; all one needs to do is read. Read articles on how it works, and read articles on how it doesn’t work.

Also, there is the need to write. After writing, one can go ahead to pitch to writing agencies, or one can submit to or approach renowned blogs and magazines, asking them to place your article on their site as a guest blogger’s post. This will create a strong portfolio for you to directly present yourself as a potential writer/ editor who is willing to offer her services to anyone who is in need of them.

The writing experience as a ghostwriter

Experience cannot be overemphasized. Before you decide you want to pursue a career in ghostwriting, you must have done pretty well at writing.

This is because the amount you earn as a ghostwriter is based on your experience as a writer. Therefore, to earn $10,000 for your first ghostwriting project, you must have a reputable portfolio as a writer. Recently, the trend of presenting gathering previous writings on blogs (or old write-ups in different magazines) and compiling them into a book began. A few ghostwriters confessed that it is indeed a very good idea for them, and they advised others to do the same.

For example, a friend of mine used to write on dating, and how to make relationships work. Recently, he got a project related to a love story. All he had to do was to extract from some of his previous writings and write some more. What this did for him was, it saved him the time and effort it would have taken to begin work on a blank page and with a mind that knows little about the project.

What you will encounter as a newbie ghostwriter

Just as in every job, at the start of a ghostwriting career, one will have to start with an entry-level task or job. The entry-level job or task involves taking on lower budgeted projects of writing books that wouldn’t require much comprehensive and in-depth researching to it. Though if you come ready-made, there will be a line of books for you to work on even before you have completed the first project.

Many ghostwriters, in the beginning, tend to give up or give in to the pressure, considering ghostwriters do a lot of multitasking. However, as time goes by, you will find out it’s not as impossible as it could appear to be.

How long does it take a ghostwriter to compile a book

As mentioned above, most ghostwriting comprise book writing, which is a time consuming and a comprehensive task. Approximately 90% of the projects provided to a ghostwriter are book-oriented.

A novel-length book, for example, could take from six months to a year or even more to finish. Proving to be a long-time commitment and that exactly is why the quality criteria are essential and so is the time consumed. In return, the pay provided to the ghostwriter is high.

Other than a good pay and time relaxation what is the plus to ghostwriting?

Many ghostwriters went on to answer this in various ways, all leading up to the same point:

The thrill of writing and presenting a story to the audience; the excitement that comes with writing a book. There is a kind of self-satisfaction that comes with it.

That you write for a living shows your an intellectualism and boosts your confidence. It also and makes you an exception, as not everyone can proudly proclaim that they are a writer/ author or have written a book. The feeling of accomplishment is indescribable and acts out as a constant feeling of inspiration.

Best of luck.

The post How to Make Your First $10, 000 as a Ghostwriter appeared first on Creative Writing News.