Last weekend I went to Perth for the Perth Writers Festival, so that I could listen to one of the writers from my dissertation, Helen Oyeyemi. She presented at three panels, and answered various questions. I chatted briefly with her at the booksigning session and asked her a question during the second panel session, but felt throughout, the sense of unease one must feel when one is writing a dissertation on living authors whom one has talked to. I like to think it keeps us literary graduate students honest. I think it’s important to put a face behind the words, even if researcher’s distance/space must be preserved, even if, in the end, it is the words that have currency and agency. Context is important, I feel.

While I was there, I was enraptured by black swans, a certain tree on the UWA campus. I didn’t really get to see much of Perth but the weekend was well-spent in various discussions about academia, postcolonial/identity, issues, writing as a craft and a way of life, and also tons of moments of geekery. It feels a little surreal right now and I am still adjusting to the time-zone shift, but more blog posts and pictures will be happening, soon-ish. I do have a thesis to write, after all.

As projected, the start of the new semester coincided with a lull in blog posts! But this was inevitable. I am slowly getting back into student mode. After an excruciating two-three weeks, there are finally some moorings in my chapter. Which is good, because there’s going to be choppy waters ahead, and many-tentacled monsters lurking in the deeps. While I’m on a sea-faring metaphorical streak, I’d suggest some of you peek at Jim Bloom’s delightful essay on seafaring narratives and other fantastical things, Fantastic Voyages: By Ship to Nowhereland and Back (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) over at Cabinet des Fees.

Also, if you’ve been pretty clueless about the past weekend’s #amazonFAIL flap over @ the twitterverse and blogosphere (ZOMG, I said blogosphere in a non-ironic way!), Cheryl Morgan’s post gives a pretty good summation of kerfuffle between two leviathans, with writers being the casualty. Also check out the excellent posts by Jay Lake and John Scalzi. I’m bemused by the war and am wondering where it will all lead in the long run. It feels like something started over the weekend and I’m interested in seeing the developments as per people switching to alternate online book distribution services. People have been mentioning indiebound and book depository as alternatives, for instance. I’ve heard good things about both services, and removed all but one of my amazon.com associate links ages ago, since I decided I wasn’t making enough revenue to justify all the hits I was sending to their site.

About the Photo

I decided not to do anything with photoshop here, so you’re just viewing the results of a pixel resize as well as the addition of copyright text. I loved these shots of wildflowers I took in the late afternoon sunlight in the tiny copse of trees on the grounds. Being outdoors is, as always, a balm. The older I get, the more I resist sitting still and working in this position for hours. I get up and do housework or various domestic activities in between batches of studying and writing. Some days it feels excruciatingly slow, but then I start getting modest results and it feels like it is somehow worth it. Every moment is like a wildflower with Blakesean eternities trapped within its petals, after all! Petals and manuscripts are in my head right now, both of them connecting in strangely whimsical ways. It’s an interesting start to February, and I am wondering what artistic adventures I will embark on this month. I am determined this year to balance the two parts of my being far more efficiently, since the lack of progress in either part of my creative/intellectual process makes me feel like half a person. I’ve been thinking about this, and the fact that we forget that research and research-writing requires creativity as well, and that creative work requires the intellect, the power of analysis and of making informed artistic judgements. In the end, are they so dramatically dissimilar?

>> American Gods, and London literary novelists
>> Review: The Opposite House By Helen Oyeyemi (the review in question, which, I just noticed was written over two years ago. Hah!)

I am posting this here because there seems to be a plethora of comments raging and I really don’t want to get involved. But, as someone who is writing her phd thesis on Helen Oyeyemi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I can’t help but be deeply irritated. You have here a young, intelligent Yoruba woman articulating a deeply sensitive and deeply personal reaction to the gods of her culture, and what do people focus on? The fact that Neil Gaiman is being overlooked! Golly, why couldn’t this fracas have happened when some woman took the idea of a school of wizardry and…

Right, because the parties appropriated from didn’t have a posse to defend them.

No, this is about privilege. It’s the privileging and value-adding of one writer above another which I take exception to. Granted, the original review could have been worded better. Granted, it was rather bold and a bit irresponsible to assert that Oyeyemi was the first to talk about displaced gods. My issue is not on that valid point. My issue is with someone saying that anyone reviewing Helen Oyeyemi’s novel should also mention American Gods and the subtext of that. What if she had been influenced by other writers who wrote about displaced Gods? Like, say, Wole Soyinka or Amos Tutuola? Both of them are Yoruba writers whom Oyeyemi has cited more than once, and who have done a considerable deal to hybridize the Yoruba Gods. What about the fact that Oyeyemi is situated between two very strong canons, the Western canon and the heritage of african literature? To me, that is what I take issue with. Do the Yoruba, the Igbo or people from other postcolonial nations not have their own personal, psychological reactions to the transference of their gods, orishas and/or mythic structures across time to different cultures? No? This smacks of the “mimic man” argument which is still so prevalent on so many levels that it makes me heartsick. Now, we all know that not all reviewers are alike and it is not the fault of one reviewer or the other that they have read predominantly in certain genres to the exclusion of the other. So I don’t know what the reading influences of the chick who wrote the Oyeyemi review are, but she shouldn’t be criticized just because she may not have read Gaiman. To me it’s a kind of reverse-snobbery. People with different cultural backgrounds and upbringings read different things. This isn’t a bad thing. On the other hand, I will assert that culturally hybrid reviewers and grad students like me are no longer that unique, not a peculiarity in being well-read in both the literary and sf/f genres. Therefore, the gap IS closing, and there are many more young academics and postgrads who are similarly situated. IMO this blowing up of the “perceived” clash of the ghettoes doesn’t help. It just manufactures reaction. Which is what MAINSTREAM CULTURE has been doing for decades. Surely we’re better than that? Why set up strawmen?

For what it’s worth, Oyeyemi’s treatment of the Yoruba Gods is definitely not the same as Gaiman’s in American Gods. Also, while she may “seem” to be mainstream, anyone who reads her novels would understand there’s some serious deep shit and genre-fuckery going on there. Why else would I be writing a thesis on her and Adichie? There may be some haunting similarity in both Gaiman’s and Oyeyemi’s work in that both deal with what happens with the Gods and the otherworld when people migrate, but if we’re going to be talking about precedence, may I also note that writers like Charles de Lint, Robert Holdstock, Terri Windling, Midori Snyder as well as countless other writers from sf/f, magic realism, as well as “emerging” or “new” literatures, primarily diasporic writers, have also dealt with the theme of myths crossing the boundaries of time and space? If we’re talking precedence, magic realism started in a non-English speaking country. If we’re talking precedence with regards to myths and the impact of modernization and culture upon said myths – gods. Where do I even begin? This is why we’ve been beating on our drums over at Mythic Folk. It’s about the diversity of different experiences of mythic and ontological structures derived from different cosmologies while there are some common themes. I think every single one of these writers have literary and artistic merit and trying to say one person comes before the other is pointless.

Also, some of us sf/f geeks are in literary academia, so we’re not nearly as blinkered as people who perceive themselves to be in “ghettoes” choose to say we are. But is it true that most mainstream publishing circuits discredit sf/f? Of course! But the same can also be said of younger, newer writers from postcolonial nations trying to juggle constructs and ideas. Some of us are fucked on both sides of the equation.

The Opposite House is a novel that stands on its own merit, as does American Gods.

If you asked me to choose which spoke to the ache inside my own postcolonial heart, I would say it was The Opposite House. This doesn’t mean I chose one genre over the other, I pretty much straddle both postcolonial literary fiction and fantasy. And I think both should support the other. Rag on the clash of the ghettoes all you like, but I do suggest people read The Opposite House before they succumb to the viralness of twitter and blogging culture with secondhand information. As usual. I suspect this post will be futile. But at least I get to vent my spleen. And look. American Gods has probably sold way more copies than The Opposite House ever will, so tell me, who is really the unknown here? And which writer would suffer more? The mere fact that Oyeyemi is young and nailed big publishing contracts doesn’t make her any less of a writer or a writer with any less integrity. As for the influences, she’s asserted in more than one interview that she’s influenced by two cultures.

To be honest, I think a lot of sf/f is going mainstream with the mainstreaming of geekhood and things that used to be subculture. And I’m not sure I like it. Sure it sells more books, but the downside of it is that writers who have more sales and numbers get privileged over others. And mainstreaming of subcultural proponents always has side-effects. FWIW I have heard of more than one postgraduate thesis on Neil Gaiman, far more than there are on Oyeyemi! AFAIK I am the only one! (if you’re reading this and you’re doing an Oyeyemi phd topic also, email me!). Also, anyone who has actually read The Opposite House or any other of Oyeyemi’s works would get why “the ghetto that doesn’t realize it’s a ghetto” stuff that’s going on over in comments is so ironic as well as offensive on so many levels – where do I even begin. Sigh.

Note: I’m disabling comments and pings because I really don’t have the time and mental energy to want to consider if this is being read and rebutted. I’m not saying you can’t! As always, there is risk in putting stuff out there, but I need to prioritize my time! I’m really writing this for my friends and people who actually follow the blog or students of African literature who visit. My hands hurt and I’ve got a backlog of work that’s a bit terrifying. Also, I hate herd mentality and viral blogging/tweets. I wish people would take the time to research things first, truly I do. My views are my own as a postgraduate scholar of African and mythic fiction, as a postcolonial gothic and mythic writer, and a woman writer of color. In no way does this reflect any organization or institution I may be affiliated with, but I respectfully assert my right to have these views.

Here’s the list of books I will read this year for the Africa challenge. I may change this list, if other books I’ve come across are more tempting/riveting to review! I’m not going to cheat, especially since I’ve read way more than the listed in January and February combined, but these are books I was going to read anyway. Some are still on my desk at uni:

So Long A Letter - Mariamma Ba (read and reviewed)
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga (read and reviewed)
An African Popular Literature: A Study of Onitsha Market Pamphlets - Emmanuel Obiechina (read and reviewed)
African Philosophy: The Essential Readings – Tsenay Serequeberhan (read and reviewed)
The Palm-Wine Drinkard- Amos Tutuola (read)
Song for Night – Chris Abani (read and reviewed)

The African Reading Challenge (Original Page)

My previous post on the challenge.

Listening to: How Do Some Trees – Too Dark For A Picture

Oh hey, I just realized that yesterday was James Joyce’s birthday.

In another, not entirely unrelated update, I finished reading Kafka on the Shore last night. Excellent story, which bookish fifteen year old does not fantasize about running away and disappearing inside a library or bookstore? On the other hand I felt the psychoanalytical elements were a little heavy handed and too deliberate but it worked. Excellent stuff, Murakami is heady.

I have now moved on to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash because I promised a friend I would read that next. If I like it, I will get the rest of the books that make up The Baroque Cycle. I have Odalisque still on my to-be-read pile.

And now I get to get ready because I’m going to a book warehouse/stock clearance sale. Whee.