Award-winning writer, EC Osondu, has compared the naturalness of storytelling among Africans to what obtains what swimming is to fishes.
He inspired fellow writers in a reflection he published on Facebook, while condemning “pandering derivative stories and those who midwife and champion them.”
The Caine Prize winner stated:
When you hand over an important prize to professional literary hustlers, expect nothing but a downward slide into an incredibly shrinking prize.
The late Binyavanga Wainana, astute as always, was right. We as Africans must begin to claim ownership of our stories, narratives, prizes, awards, festivals, venues etc.
Our mantra going forward should be – For Africans, By Africans- FABA.
Years ago, Chimamanda Adichie said that the more interesting stories she read that year was from a different quarter, many were puzzled.
Adichie was right. Sometimes an elephant births a mouse.
The most interesting contest short story from Africa I read this year was “Ghana Boy” by Frances Ogamba.
So raw, so heartbreaking, so true. It does what the best fiction does, it swallows you, chews you up and spits you out transformed and beatified. Praise Be. Hallelujah.
Down with pandering derivative stories and those who midwife and champion them.
Africa may be considered poor by some, we may have many problems, but stories and storytelling is not one of our problems. Storytelling is to us what swimming is to fish, a liquid state, our natural habitat and our ecology.
My short story “Waiting” remains the most homaged, imitated, mimicked, aped, simulated, etc. You get the idea.
There is Writivism Literary Initiative..I know.
There is Storyday Africa…I know.
There is Ake..I know.
We should have more. Our name should be Legion.
There is this thing that bothers me. We are only allowed a place in the literary world as Africans if we accept to be one thing and one thing only. We can and should be writers of Graphic Novels, Crime Fiction and even writers of uncategorizable genres and non-genre conforming works.
One love.
Las, las, we all gonna be alright.
E. C. Osondu boasts a beautiful profile. Known for his short stories, the author of ‘Minions’ won the 2009 Caine Prize for African Writing with his tale, ‘Waiting’.
Osondu is also a winner of the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction and his story “A Letter from Home” was judged one of “The Top Ten Stories on the Internet” in 2006.
Osondu’s writing has been published in Agni, Guernica, Vice, Fiction, and The Atlantic. His debut collection of short stories, Voice of America, was published in 2010.
Epaphras Chukwuenweniwe Osondu was born in Nigeria, where he worked as an advertising copywriter for many years. In 2008, he was a fellow at Syracuse University in creative writing. In 2010, he became an assistant professor of English at Providence College, teaching courses in Creative Writing, Introduction to Literature, and the Development of Western Civilization.
“Waiting”, published in October 2008 by Guernica, describes life in a refugee camp from a child’s point of view. Meakin Armstrong, the magazine’s fiction editor, noted that “it isn’t pretentious nor rife with literary trickery. It’s simply a well-told story about a kind of life most of us couldn’t even begin to imagine.”[2] In addition to the £10,000 cash award, the Caine Prize also brought Osondu a month’s residency at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Osondu’s “Voice of America” is included in Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing (2009).
Osondu sits on the pan-African literary initiative, Writivism’s Board of Trustees, with fellow writers Zukiswa Wanner, Chika Unigwe, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nii Parkes and Lizzy Attree.
