Pregnancy is a life-changing event, affecting not only a woman’s body—evidenced by a growing stomach and other physical changes like an increased nose size—but also her mental state and emotional well-being. This is the core of Dear Zimi, the debut novel by Chiziterem Chijioke, the 2023 Quramo Writers’ Prize winner.

Dear Zimi follows Zimife, the youngest child of the Ike-Stevens family, who becomes pregnant after an impulsive Valentine’s Day date with Tobore, a youth corps member. After a failed abortion attempt, Zimi must face the harsh reality of being an unmarried undergraduate who is pregnant. Her once-normal life spirals into an emotional whirlwind, testing friendships, family bonds, and her own sense of self. Zimi must confront her selfishness and prove herself worthy of the love and sacrifices of those closest to her—her best friend, Belema, her family, and the father of her child, Tobore.

This book is a must read for lovers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Zikora, Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, and An American Marriage by Tayari Jones as it paints the powerful portrait of what it means to be a young, unmarried, pregnant woman in an African society. It delves into the disappointment and stigma families feel and the attitudes others may display, whether openly or behind closed doors. The book emphasizes the importance of a supportive community, like Belema and Zimi’s family, and the transformation that comes with love and acceptance. 

Why You Should Read Dear Zimi by Chiziterem Chijioke

In an interview with Creative Writing News, Chiziterem Chijioke shared that the judges of the Quramo Writers’ Prize praised Dear Zimi for being a “compelling narrative that explores the theme of love, friendship, and self-discovery against the backdrop of Nigerian society.” This is evident in the concise, engaging writing of the novel. Chijioke captures the reality of an average Nigerian girl living under her parents’ roof. Though the novel focuses on a family’s growing acceptance, it also addresses the broader consequences of life-altering mistakes. The pacing is enough to carry us through the stages and changes in Zimi’s life, covering her entire journey in 204 pages.

Zimi starts the book in a state of panic, and this feeling persists throughout as she navigates a future that was never part of her plans. The characters in this story aren’t strictly good or bad, instead, the novel highlights how selfishness can sometimes block us from the life we need, with Zimi constantly trying to reshape the actions of those around her to create the life she expects. 

The novel shows that we can only control our own actions, and Zimi learns this the hard way—a needed experience as she heads into motherhood—by facing the disappointment her father carries in silence, her mother’s loud disapproval, and her brother’s reaction, all while being supported by her sister’s warm love.

Friendship also plays a significant role in the novel, particularly Zimi’s bond with Belema who is the first character we are introduced to, as well as the last to close the book, emphasizing the importance of their relationship throughout Zimi’s journey. Tobore, the baby’s father, is another key figure. In Nigerian society, we often hear stories of men who disappear when faced with unplanned pregnancies, but Tobore is the opposite. He chooses to be there for Zimi, no matter her decision, testing the strength of their relationship and teaching Zimi the value of people who truly care.

Read: How to Identify Themes of Your Story

One of the standout moments in the novel is when a character says, “…when you love someone, you must stop at nothing to show it to them.” This encapsulates the fundamentals of the book—that love requires action and commitment, not just words.

Beyond the theme of friendship, the novel briefly touches on abortion and the taboo that surrounds it while also raising important questions: How different would Zimi’s life have been if her abortion plan had succeeded? Would she have grown as a person or remained the same as she was at the beginning of the book? It also helps us question society’s impact on the decisions most girls who share a similar experience with Zimife make.

Aside from the stigma that follows pregnancy out of wedlock, there is also the issue of putting life on pause to cater to the needs of the child. Chiziterem still weaves a subtle but powerful feminist narrative that encourages young women to chart their own paths in the face of a society that seeks to control women’s choices.

Throughout the book, we can easily forget that Zimi is an undergraduate who was fortunate enough to go through this experience with her school on strike. However, the backdrop of a university strike acts as a significant narrative device. It allows Zimi to experience her pregnancy away from the judging eyes of her peers. It is interesting, though, to imagine how this story might have unfolded if she had been thrust into the academic spotlight with her growing belly and what experiences would shape her character at the end. The author mentioned getting the story inspiration during one of the long federal university strikes, thus inspiring the setting of the novel.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Dear Zimi is a soft story that invites readers to reflect on the power of love in guiding us through our darkest moments. Zimi teaches us about vulnerability, responsibility, and replacing fear with hope for the future. Her growth is remarkable, offering a story that resonates with readers of all backgrounds. The message is clear by the end: actions speak louder than words, and we must prove ourselves worthy of the love and support we receive from friends and family by giving back in kind.

Dear Zimi is published by Quramo Publishing Limited and will soon be available in bookstores nationwide. You can order your copy from Quramo’s Official Instagram. 

Also Read: Book Review of Who Drove Nearly All The Men in Lagos Mad?

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Poetry Review: A New American Monarch by Marcel Fable Price

Reviewed by Joseph Awujoola

There are different ways a poetry book can stir up intrigue within a reader before the poems are even read. New American Monarch by the former poet laureate intrigued me with the poem titles. The poems invigorated me, and the audio piece impressed me. This work of art was created with so much intentionality you can’t help but applaud the author.

The Introverted Caterpillar’s Guide To Becoming An Introverted Butterfly is divided into three sections: Pupa (8 poems), Chrysalis (14 poems), and Transformation (12 poems). These sections are also available as albums on Spotify.

I recommend listening and reading as it elevates the experience entirely. I read the book first before listening to the album. Then I just had to read it again to appreciate it again. If you are thinking audiobooks, you’re wrong; this is a musical experience.

Section 1: Pupa

The first section feels introductory in the sense that Marcel sets the stage with poems exploring identity. In “Pupa,” Marcel introduces us to the transformative state of a caterpiller yearning to leave the cocoon that has held him down and shaped his identity going as far as 2005.

The section captures the need for personal growth and the beauty of embracing change. As the section unfolds, Marcel delves deeper into the complexities of relationships. He weaves a narrative that resonates with readers on a profoundly emotional level. Marcel uses expressive language and vivid imagery. He invites us to ponder the intricacies of human connection. He also invites us to consider the ever-evolving nature of self-discovery. Each poem serves as a poignant reflection of a human experience. This infuses the collection with a sense of profound introspection and emotional depth.

Marcel tells his story in a way that captures the reader’s attention. His lyrical prose gently guides us through the maze of emotions and offers a glimpse into the vulnerability and strength that coexist within every individual.

The thematic exploration encompasses not only personal growth but also the interconnectedness of human experiences, drawing parallels between the intimate and the universal. This contemplative journey invites readers to embrace change, acknowledge the fluctuations of life, and find solace in the shared experiences that bind us as humans on this beautiful, complex journey of existence.

The scribblings add a pinch of personality to the poems, giving them a raw and authentic essence that connects with readers on a deeper level. Each stroke of the red pen tells a story of the poet’s creative process. Every crossed-out word and the smudges invite the audience to delve into the intricate layers of emotion. They are encouraged to explore the thought woven alongside the lines.

My first favourite poem in the book is Collateral Damage. Imagine a poem born of a hurricane in the book is structured as a hurricane.

Read: Learn How You Can Make Money From Your Poetry Writing.

Section 2: Chrysalis

As I mentioned before, the notes in red added a fascinating layer of depth and character to the book. It’s remarkable how they had me turning my laptop and, on some days, my phone upside down to read them. Every time I did, it felt like a discovery. It was as if I was delving into the author’s innermost thoughts and experiences. It truly felt like I was unearthing secrets from the author’s diary, gaining insight into his memories and emotions. The experience was akin to stepping through a portal into his history. This only served to heighten the intrigue. It deepened my connection to the narrative and compelled me to eagerly turn each page in anticipation of what lay ahead.

Some of the themes explored in this section revolve around racial prejudice and anger resulting from racism. The impact of systemic oppression, the struggle for racial equality, and the resilience of marginalized communities are also central topics. Marcel focuses on the effects on the pupils in his class. The children are exposed to these harsh realities.

In Waiting To Be Judged, I was impressed with the reverse at the start that was effected in the end. In That Mourning, I was brought to the verge of tears as I, too, would never get used to this.

Read: Tips From Poets About Handling Rejection

New American Monarch is a powerful portrayal of the black experience in America. It delves deep into the emotions and struggles faced by the community. This section (and album) captures the raw hurt and pain experienced daily, as seen in poems (tracks) like “That Mourning“, where the poet lays bare the emotional toll of systemic injustices. “When I Die” expresses a palpable sense of anger.

It reflects the deep-seated frustration and anguish that accompanies navigating a society plagued by racial inequality. However, amidst the pain, there is also a stirring call to action, inspiring readers (and listeners alike) to rise and enact meaningful change. This section (album) serves as a poignant testament to the realities of being black in America. It sheds light on both the anguish and the unwavering resilience of the community.

Section 3: Transformation

This section starts with humour with “More Flavor Than A Good ‘Yo Mamma’ Joke.” It maintains a lightheartedness akin to an ice bath after a gruelling workout session, evoking a sense of playfulness and joyous energy.

The humorous tone invites readers to engage with the content while adding a touch of levity to the overall narrative. It sets the stage for a delightful and entertaining reading experience, infusing the text with a vibrant and dynamic quality that captures the audience’s imagination.

In my opinion, the poem “What A Wonderful World” epitomizes the author as a teacher every young growing child would be blessed to have. The poem’s vivid imagery and heartfelt message serve as a guiding light. They inspire young minds to appreciate the beauty of the world around them. Its uplifting verses portray a sense of hope and optimism, instilling valuable life lessons in an enchanting and accessible way. This makes it my favourite poem in the section so far, as it encapsulates the essence of innocence and joy in a way that deeply resonates with me.

In “The Stories They Share“, it is essential to protect the voices and lives of the individuals involved. Marcel’s reference to Ottawa Hills High School underscores the significance of the experiences shared by the children. It also emphasizes the connection within the staff in that environment.

Tour Log was the most emotional in the book, and as it led into the last poem, Butterfly, I was in awe of the journey that had brought me there, and as I read the final words in the book, I came full circle.

Closing Thoughts on New American Monarch

New American Monarch by Marcel Fable Price delves into deeply personal experiences, offering a profound exploration of emotions and perspectives. The collection skillfully captures the essence of life, evoking a range of emotions in the reader. Each poem and revelation within the book resonates with a unique intensity, leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s soul. Price’s work reflects a life rich in experiences, inviting readers to empathize with emotions they may not have encountered.

The uncovering, the gradual growth and transformation that led to the final metamorphosis, as a caterpillar persevered amid life’s travesties and challenges, emerging at last as a beautiful butterfly, is a testament to life’s incredible power of renewal and rebirth. This awe-inspiring process mirrors the journey of personal growth and transformation. Many individuals experience this journey throughout their lives. It illustrates the potential for beauty and resilience to emerge from even the most difficult circumstances.

New American Monarch is worth reading and listening to. I implore you to delve into this captivating exploration today.

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Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad? was written by  Ugochukwu Ugonna and published by Agbalumo Publishing Services in 2023. The collection of short stories caught the attention of Nigerian readers due to its title. Thereby stirring curiosity for readers. 

This article takes its readers through a review of Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad? to know why it became one of the most read books in Nigeria as of late 2023.

Book Blurb 

Deep in the heart of Lagos — the center of excellence, from Festac to Ikeja, Surulere to Sangotedo, the sizzling love lives of the diverse humans parading the dating space of this boisterous city are examined through this collection of eleven short stories. These stories beg the question: Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad?

There’s a story of the wife of an Afrobeats legend living her best life, another of a girl returned to the streets where she belonged, a Christian nurse who could not afford to exceed a certain body count before marriage, a mother unsuspectingly raising a mad man in her toxic home, the guy satisfied with just-the-tip, another of a match that was made in heaven, a girl who swiped right for hook-up but fell in love, and another who wants to burn down her Grandma’s house because of penis.

Introduction

Surely almost every one who reads stories about Nigeria has heard a lot — and for some, enough about the city of Lagos. But to be honest, the writers who take up Lagos as the location of their stories, make readers want to know more and more.

Who drove nearly all Lagos men mad? Has been termed a response to Damilare Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos are mad.

The collection of stories has 11 short-stories and are written in varying point of views. Every story showcases the madness in the City of Lagos. And this review would give an insight on whether the story is worth you reading or not.

The Review of Who Drove Nearly All Lagos men mad?

The first story in the collection begins with one of the most captivating hooks this reader has ever come across. A hilarious hook with just the right amount of action to get readers ready for the men and women of Lagos.

Bella’s tinder match considers her a hook-up partner and not a real girlfriend, and although Bella would have not minded this term, she had something she was trying to protect and Jidenna might have to bend for her to have her way. This first story ‘Swiped Right’ is perfect for the collection’s introduction, as it gets one ready for the bumpy ride ahead.
More so, the narrative style of this story keeps the readers at attention and prepares you for the next!

The short stories announces itself and the author’s distinct writing style. Outstandingly, Ugochukwu mixes modern day internet slangs in his writings, showing how contemporary his plot, writing style and voice is.

In Just the tip, a story of a supposedly virgin girlfriend and her celebate relationship, Ugochukwu writes

“Woke up today and chose Violence”

Further more, in Mugu from Mushin, a good samaritan returns a through and through Lagos babe, to the street where she belongs.

There are a lot of hilarious stories in this collection, one cannot flip a page without having a good laugh. These serve as comic relief for the depth behind the traumatic experiences of these characters and their love lives.

Characterization and more 

On characterization, the author does exceedingly well. He portrays Lagos people just rightly, the hook-ups, big boys wanting to show off, influencer lifestyle, everyone in Lagos dating everyone, stereotypes based on area of residence— Ugochukwu taps into every aspect of Lagos — from the mainland to the island.

In the short stories, the depth of various characters can be seen. The author took his time carefully crafting these identities and it must be applauded.

However, whilst kicking off with the most interesting stories, it is easy to miss how the fire begins to burn out from three stories towards the last. Wednesdate, Follow-come wahala and that weekend in August, reads a but dull — there seems to be no thrill while reading these — as though the writer’s excitement has waned.

Although the writer makes up for this in the last story! Which gives us twists and turns and also, directly relates to the book’s title! 

The collection of stories all have a similar theme that shines through — and that is Love, in all its forms. Romantic, unrequited, past love, even agape. Other themes that can be seen are betrayal, deception, stereotype, desperation, relationships, sex. Also, the portrayal of what relationships in Lagos are said to be, was excellently done by the writer. In some stories, he highlighted and emphasized on stereotypical happenings, while he in some, he gave true love stories.

The dabble between true love and lies goes on and on in the story, and I think this is its distinguishing feature — showing us every kind of relationship, the ones that fail and the ones that excel.

However, the erotic scenes in the novel were at some point disturbing. Nearly all the men in the short stories easily masturbated or sort sexual pleasure. This addition became distracting at some point.

Overall, Ugonna Ugochukwu has delivered a collection of stories that would take you on a range of emotions— especially hilariously. It is a light read. If you’re looking to laugh, and see Lagos through the eyes of many, Who drove Nearly all Lagos men mad? Is the go-to.

About the Reviewer

Chiziterem Chijioke is a Writer, PR and Advertising Strategist. She is a graduate of communication and Media Studies, as well as an enthusiastic for digital marketing. When she’s not reading novels, she’s watching an action packed movie or writing book reviews. 

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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).

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From a notable flash fiction writer, Nancy Stohlman, comes a book on the craft of flash fiction, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction. The book, which drops October 15, 2020, is a magical thing, packed with smart tips on doing flash fiction well.

So, What’s Going Short About:

From the press release: “Flash fiction is changing the way we tell stories. Carving away the excess, eliminating all but the most essential, flash fiction is putting the story through a literary dehydrator, leaving the meat without the fat. And it only looks easy.”

What would you like to know about flash fiction writing? Nancy Stohlman in Going Short answers some of the very basic but important questions on flash fiction writing. 

Starting with an introduction to what flash fiction is, she takes us through the process of writing flash fiction (confronting a blank page and crafting wonder from the void), as well as the process of sculpting flash fiction, and in the middle of it all, she writes about flash fiction books. 

In a chapter titled “The Story Is Dead! Long Live the Story!”, Nancy writes about the Flash Revolution, drawing examples of revolutions in music and art generally – from France’s rejection of impressionists exhibition in the country in 1873, to the public’s reception of Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” when it was first performed. 

To wrap things up, Nancy drops hundred flash fiction prompts.

In Going Short, Nancy shows and not just tells: each chapter is a practice, a flash piece.

What You Should Know About the Author:

Nancy Stohlman has been a writer, editor, publisher, and professor for more than a decade. She’s published multiple books of flash fiction and flash novels including  The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories and  Madam  Velvet’s  Cabaret  of  Oddities, a finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the W.W. Norton New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Macmillan’s T he  Practice  of  Fiction, and  The  Best Small Fictions 2019, as well as adapted for the stage. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

To inquire about booking Ms. Stohlman for a speaking engagement, please contact her directly: nancystohlman.com, Facebook.com/nancy.stohlman, Twitter: @nancystohlman.

You can preorder the book here.

Also, check out this book.

The post New Awesome Book Alert: Going Short, An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Book Title: Mmirinzo

Author: Achalugo Chioma Ezekobe

Length: 283

Genre: African Speculative Fiction

Publisher/ Year: Winepress/ 2020

Source: Got a copy from a friend

Reviewed by: Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí

Mmirinzo by Achalugo begins simply. Olivia will be twenty-eight in a few months. She has bucket lists to tick before her twenty-eight birthday, and her younger sister, Nwanneka’s wedding, is just around the corner.

Things are going well until she starts dropping unconscious anytime she sees moving water, and her very fantastical dreams keep getting intense. The fainting and the dreams become so serious that she realizes she needs answers.

That sets us up for an interesting novel, one that would be difficult to put down. And, yes, Achalugo does not disappoint. Her writing is fast-paced enough. 

However, the strength of this novel lies in how it juxtaposes – like a juggler juggling two oranges, to borrow an analogy from Robert Louis Stevenson – the plain ordinary and the intense magical, without focusing on one at the detriment of the other. Or we might say: To the writer, Mmirinzo isn’t a work of speculative fiction; it is a work of realism. This is because, while this might read to a foreigner (by this I mean, a person not familiar with Igbo metaphysics) as speculative fiction, to a person who is familiar with Igbo worldview and spirituality, this is a realistic work.

Olivia, like the reader, wants answers and she seeks it. Thankfully, she finds answers. However, while finding answers, her relationship with Sir Leo, a colleague, begins to blossom. (Again, the power of Achalugo to balance the ordinary and the magical.) In Olivia’s quest for answers, she has to go back to the village where she must perform some rites and be initiated.

Here is where I must give Achalugo her due as a brilliant, brilliant writer. She unveils the rites of the initiation and the whole process, showing the reader everything it entails in clear prose, so that the reader, like Olivia (who is almost like the reader in every sense), might make their decision about what is being done.

How do I mean?

Turn on your TV and tune in to African Magic Igbo. Almost all the movies you’ll be shown portrays Igbo Spirituality as demonic and show the priests as bloodthirsty and human-flesh-hungry people. However, Achalugo shows us that this is very untrue. That Igbo priests and those who accept the calling of Chukwu, which she writes that each individual chose in the premortal world, are not in anyway bloodthirsty or human-flesh-hungry. 

As Onyeka Nwelue wrote in his blurb, reading Achalugo is like “listening to an old woman tell stories.”

“You are not being forced against your will…, yours is a predestined choice, it is what you chose when you stood between the place Chukwu carves us and the wall to the birth canal of your mother.”

“Yes. Just before we are born, we say what we are going to earth to be or do.”

In Mmirinzo by Achalugo, we meet a whole cast of characters who have accepted their callings and are doing what they promised to do in the premortal world, as well as living their normal, every day life.

There is Amaoge, a young, energetic woman who works in Lagos and follows Odinani; Eloka, a priest who lives with his family and works in Abuja; Aunty Afulenu, Olivia’s guide, who is a teacher and an Mmirinzo; and Nosakhare, who runs a corporate business of rain holders and makers. Will Olivia join the list?

By showing these characters who have their normal lives and who still perform their callings, Achalugo adds another one to the two balls she was juggling: defence. She deftly makes a defence for the Igbo (can I say African?) Spirituality, without pushing it. This, in fact, is where her power lies, and, yes, this makes her a writer to watch carefully. She possesses wisdom. As Onyeka Nwelue wrote in his blurb, reading Achalugo is like “listening to an old woman tell stories.”

“Everything you need is primarily in you, for the rest, you can move around with what you need. I set up a place for my Chi where I stay the most, and even at that, I believe I can commune with my Creator, ancestral and guiding spirits, anywhere and anytime.”

Olivia struggled with comprehension.

“Where is God?” Eloka asked.

“Everywhere,” Olivia answered.

“It is there you have your answers.”

She nodded and asked again, “Why did this mmirinzo thing, come to only me? Will it come to my siblings later?”

“I strongly doubt.”

“But we are siblings.”

“That is not enough, ofu nne na amu, ofu chi adighi eke. You can find siblings from the same mother and father and far in behaviour or destinies from one another.”

There is wisdom in Mmirinzo by Achalugo

One thing I also really liked about this book is how Achalugo portrayed Leonard. We meet a guy who doesn’t take the consent of a drunk lady to be consent, because she is drunk. That was a brilliant portrayal, I must say, for, in a way, it is opening up room for conversation about consent.

This novel made me think of Chigozie Obioma‘s most recent novel, An Orchestra of Minorities.

While there are some minor punctuation errors, Mmirinzo is an important contribution to the African speculative fiction canon, especially those that engage with the Igbo worldview. This novel made me think of Chigozie Obioma‘s most recent novel, An Orchestra of Minorities. While Mmirinzo does not have the range of Chigozie Obioma’s book, it comes close in its case for the relevance of the Igbo worldview. 

Mmirinzo by Achalugo is an important debut.

The post Juggling Three Balls: A Review of Mmirinzo by Achalugo appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Life is great for Dr. Elma York and her husband, Dr. Nathanial York. That is, until the early hours of a morning in 1952 when a meteorite hits Washington, D.C., wiping out the entire east coast. Barely escaping with their lives, Elma and Nathanial fly west and get jobs at the newly founded International Aerospace Coalition. Humanity is now in a desperate race against time to start colonizing the moon before environmental affects from the meteorite cause the Earth to become uninhabitable. Elma is determined to save the world, even if that means she must colonize the moon herself.

A beautiful blend of historical fiction and science fiction, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal is the first book in a currently growing series that explores the concept of women becoming astronauts and colonizing the moon in the 50s. It is glaringly obvious that Kowal did a mass amount of research, not just from the reference page in the back of her book, but by the ease with which she writes about the finer points of space launches and training tactics in the 50s.

If the promise of Lady Astronauts (or Astronettes, if you like) is not enough to get you to pick up this book, perhaps the wide array of diversity in this novel will. The Calculating Stars focuses on the effort of women as computers at this time, and how the space program would have failed without these incredible ladies. When throwing up barriers for Elma to face on her road toward becoming an astronaut, Kowal did not gloss over the intersectionality of this issue. Not only did Kowal draw attention to the fact that POC women were having a much more difficult time being considered qualified to become an astronaut, despite being overqualified, she spoke of several other racial barriers her characters faced.

Kowal incorporates such issues as how the meteorite affected the Jewish community, who was already struggling in the aftermath of the Holocaust; how the meteorite was disparagingly affecting Black communities, from being evacuated to getting healthcare, to how mental health may be a struggle for some but should not disqualify one from being able to do their job, as well as other issues. As a queer reader, seeing all this representation kept me on my toes, expecting to see a queer character somewhere. I did not spot one in this book, but due to the amount of diversity, I have high hopes that a queer character will be introduced (or come out) later in the series. Either way, Kowal proves that it is possible to write a historical fiction and a science fiction while simultaneously incorporating an extremely diverse cast of characters (something I see authors use as an excuse to not diversify their work).

As someone who has now fallen in love with this book, I would be enthralled to see this series turned into a television show. The plot is extremely fast-paced, and every time I thought I knew what was going to happen next, the story flipped me on my head. Characters were very well fleshed out and had their own objectives, and Kowal has a way of writing unlikeable characters in a way that makes you subtly root for them. While all these components would make a spectacular show, I feel the intense flight scenes would be even more astounding to witness. Reading about Elma frantically dodging ejecta falling from the sky is exciting, but I feel it would be even more mind-blowing to see.

Of course, there is no perfect book. The only issue that I personally had with The Calculating Stars was the scenes where Elma and Nathanial would get romantic. At first, reading about Elma and Nathanial hitting on each other with rocket-themed pick up lines was cute and cheesy, but when every other chapter ended up concluding that way, it got a little old. I realize these characters were extremely passionate about their jobs, but this felt like an overkill.

(You can also check out other reviews here and here.)

*

Author’s Bio: Spencer Fantastic, 26, lives in Rhode Island with their dog and is a full-time freelance writer and editor. They are currently working on their first novel and has several other smaller works in progress, If you would like to learn more about them, check out their website here: https://spencerfantastic.home.blog/ 

The post Review: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal 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.

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.

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