(Link Gems is a round-up of interesting articles and essays from around the web)
I’ve been hoarding links so you’ll find some oldish articles mixed in with newer ones.
This One Ghana, One Voice’s interview with Billy Kahora, Managing Editor of Kwani? if for nothing at all, this section:
Mawiyoo: What are your greatest concerns as an editor and writer?
Kahora: The general lack of [literary] tools in the material we receive. When present, those with these tools seem disconnected from local realities, narratives and expressions. One specific technical question I’ve being trying to grapple with for the last few years is the dearth of ‘honest’ voice – that which brings forth a real subjective experience located in our idea and experience as a space but understands literature as an artistic register with aesthetics, technical rules and a larger vision. It is often ‘either, or.’ Many writers have access to interesting subjective experience but hardly understand the aesthetics of literary narrative. Those who seem to grasp the latter might well be writing from Mars – which is actually fine – if you are in Mars. (Please understand that my comments are written with a certain bias for literary mimetic representations).
Madhu Krishnan’s Interview of Okey Ndibe at Africa Writes
Black Life, Annotated – Christina Sharpe’s brilliant review (and commentary on the perils of urban ethnography) of Alice Goffman’s On the Run (The New Inquiry)
On the dispute between radical feminism and trans people – such amazing writing from Juliet Jacques (from NewStatesman)
Ben Okri on the State of African Writing (at Books Live)
No Selasi, African Literature Exists
Schulz: The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature
What’s Up With That: Why It’s So Hard to Catch Your Own Typos (Wired.com)
At The Awl: The Book I didn’t Write
Another World Waits: Towards an Anti-Oppressive SFF
The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto
The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas
Do We Need So Many Re-translations of Classics?
Coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations”
Kinna Reads 