Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

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Chidi Anthony Opara

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Aug 10, 2011, 5:35:11 AM8/10/11
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Forum members have been congratulating Professor Toyin Falola for another high profile award. The awards keep coming. Who is this Professor Toyin Falola, if I may ask?

I am aware that he is a distinguished Professor of History in an Ivy League University in the USA. I am also aware that he has written over a hundred widely acclaimed books, scholarly articles, etc, including poetry. He is on the faculties of many World class Universities and chairs many distinguished organizations Worldwide, and so what?

How many chieftaincy titles does he have? During anniversaries of his birth, marriage, etc, I do not recall seeing and/or hearing congratulatory messages to him by “well wishers” on Nigerian newspapers, television and radio stations.

He does not even have a “National Honour Award” like the Nollywood comedian, “Aki” of the “Aki and Paw-paw” fame. No Street in Abuja have been named after him, soon, a major street in Abuja would be named after the late Boko Haram leader.

He was not even nominated in the last ministerial nomination, even if he was, I am sure he would not have been able to mobilize “Ghana must go” bags to the Senate chamber for his “clearance”.

How many times has he dined with his country’s President? Something Niger Delta militants do on daily basis. The Boko Haram people will soon be invited.

Does he have the clout to introduce me to someone who will give me a note to someone who will phone my state governor, Chief, Dr., Sir, Owelle, etc, Rochas Okorocha,(JP) to appoint me his Special Adviser on Poetry Matters?  I hear there is a Special Adviser on Comedy or something that sounds similar.

Does he……..? Abeg make I hear something jare! Right now I feel like joining Boko Haram.

------- Chidi

 

 




    

toyin adepoju

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Aug 10, 2011, 6:51:03 AM8/10/11
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thats a good one.
dont worry, Chidi. just keep working. 
toyin

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Ameh Dennis Akoh

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Aug 10, 2011, 8:46:54 AM8/10/11
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Oh, Chidi, this is fantastic! Well, for those of us in the ivory tower that's our lot and this is the way we can celebrate our own like Professor Falola, who, in my summation, is better than a thousand chieftaincy title holders or political appointees as is celebrated in Nigeria. There is no limit to how we can celebrate a rare comet as Prof. Falola.
Once more, thanks Chidi for adding some value to the celebration.

On 10 August 2011 10:35, Chidi Anthony Opara <pip...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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Ameh Dennis Akoh, PhD
Associate Professor & Head
Department of Languages & Linguistics
College of Humanities & Culture
Osun State University
Ikire Campus
Nigeria
Email: ameh...@yahoo.co.uk, ojod...@gmail.com, a.a...@uniosun.edu.ng
+2348035992490, +2348050293410, +2347081485254

“We ought not to court publicity for our virtue, or notoriety for our zeal; but, at the same time, it is a sin to be always seeking to hide that which God has bestowed upon us for the good of others.” – Charles Spurgeon




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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Aug 10, 2011, 10:26:52 AM8/10/11
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Chidi,

Being quite fastidious, myself, I dare-say that Professor Falola is
yet to make his mark (of excellence) in English poetry - - poetry
mostly enjoys such a limited readership anyway and you have to be
that popular to get happy birthday wishes just because you are a
poet..... .....

However, he has certainly made it in autobiography, a fascinating
genre that has such popular appeal, a genre that can contribute an
answer from the horse's mouth - an answer to the question
“Who is this guy Prof Falola?” A genre that has the potential of
teaching so many lessons, as he has done with his “A Mouth Sweeter
Than Salt: An African Memoir” which in my opinion overshadows early
fictional classics about African childhood such as Camara Laye's”
slim/ slight ”L'Enfant Noir” and in my considered opinion is on par
with Robert Wellesley Cole's classic, ”Kossoh Town Boy” and – take a
deep breath Messrs Harrow & Ikhide - in my estimation it sits well
on my aesthetic scale and at the very least provides some
equilibrium with Soyinka's “Ake” doing a balancing act , weighing in
on the other side of the scale.:

http://books.google.com/books?id=09qj0MVQFVoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Toyin+Falola+:+A+Mouth+Sweeter+Than+Salt&hl=en&ei=T4NCTsTwIs_o-gaiod26CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The rest - extended readership is a matter of advertisement and
distribution – and affordability - in the absence of good public
libraries – in the absence of gaining recognition/ attention in da
Great Literary Britain, like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Aminatta
Forna since they pen their stuff in the printed words of the
freaking English fkking Mutha tongue , sort of , as Nigerian
English King Farooq Kperogi would say.....

There is a lot more wisdom – and pure reading pleasure to be derived
from “A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt”.

Your demands are perhaps getting a little out of bounds when you
expect that apart from playing the role of political commentator on
what has transpired in Nigeria and Africa and the Diapsora's history
we now want to intrude into the very private domain of his personal/
public life with congratulatory messages streaming in or his
birthdays, (such as Wole Soyinka receives every July 13 ) wedding
anniversaries and personal assessments in the public domain of his
life as father, not just scholar but husband, too?

I'm not yet a praise singer but when I finally get round to it I'll
tune the lyrics “Alagba special: Toyin Falola” to my incomparable
guitar and apply some voice., ina English, Soukous style.....

Ayoola Tokunbo

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Aug 10, 2011, 10:44:12 AM8/10/11
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Chidi,
 
That is a small problem o!
 
I know a friend who knows a friend, who knows another friend, who knows yet another friend...who knows a friend who knows Falola.
 

From: pip...@hotmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:35:11 +0100

Pamela Smith

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Aug 10, 2011, 2:28:48 PM8/10/11
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Ahhhhh, Chidi Anthony Opara, I beg you in the name of your forefathers, PLEASE don't join Boko Haram and deprive your readership of such lampoons. 
Pieces like this bloodless one are Boko Haram enough!
Thanks for such a light-hearted virtual 'roast.'  I'm sure Professor Toyin Falola enjoyed it, albeit with his head shaking pitifully for the truth of it all!
Let the celebration continue...

-----usaafric...@googlegroups.com wrote: -----

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 10, 2011, 2:36:51 PM8/10/11
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Came out of the library for two ticks of a tock to answer Chidi

1.  University of Texas at Austin is not an Ivy League University.  It's great.  I would pee my pants if I got accepted to their Ph. D. History program, BUT, it is a state university with a measure of open enrollment.  The exceptions of state university as an Ivy League institution would be University of Virginia and University of California at Los Angeles (UVA and UCLA respectively).  Examples of Ivy League are:  Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc. and so forth.  I hope you get the picture my brother. 

2.  Stop Hatin'! (urban colloquialism)

3.  Don't be burnin' bread!  (Mississippi colloquialism created during slavery which is actually a LOOSE translation of a Yoruba proverb which guards using words to wish ill on someone, especially someone who is more successful, defenseless, or who cannot defend your accusation because you do not do so in public).  Burnin' bread on someone is an act which displays envy and/or cowardice.  The expression exists to make plain, without uncertainty, the ties between the Africans who arrived in what would become the United States and those Yoruba and Igbo (for the most part) relatives who remained back "home."

4.  The work of Toyin Falola, especially what I'm reading right now, "A History of Nigeria" is essential for independent researchers and those who have grown weary of using the accepted canon(s) of history.  What Dr. Falola does with his work is present a history from the mouths of those who populate history instead of an interpretation from outside/external to the subject(s).

5.  Stop Hatin'!

4.  

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La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
 
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit." 

KAYODE EESUOLA

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Aug 10, 2011, 3:56:58 PM8/10/11
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Congratulations prof....it's quite rare to see a scholar so committed in this generation...I doff my hat sir!


From: Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

Pamela Smith

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Aug 10, 2011, 5:01:27 PM8/10/11
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Hi Lavonda:

I find your response to Chidi's piece rather baffling; hence my uncharacteristic response since I read and have enjoyed a number of your observations, which I consider to be right on target).

Fact:  we each come at to literature (general), literary pieces (specifically) with some baggage or another which we reflect in our interpretation (loosely called 'criticism'). Unlike the dramatist who provides stage directions to guide the reader/actor a wee bit, the novelist, the poet
, etc., as in Chidi's piece, puts out his/her material for the reading public, and the rest, as we know, is history. I don't know if your response below is a "historian's" reading of Chidi's piece, but it misses the point/intent/meaning of (inherent in) the piece. Simply, this is a "Who is this PROPHET, shunned by his own, but lauded abroad" lampoon. In other words, if streets in the capital city are named for and after rogues and militants/terrorists (the blood-thirsty BOKO HARAM types); if the highest table in the land is laid daily for mean-spirited, thieving, oppressive people/politicians, .... (I think you get the point), where, oh where, can be found IN NIGERIA the name of this globally-sung, much-accomplished Professor Toyin Falola in the NIGERIAN annals of the TRULY accomplished sons & Daughters of the soil?

Simply, this piece is (and needs to be read, I think as) a:
  1. prophet/physician-not-appreciated/recognized-by-his/her-own lampoon, a satire
  2. darn good, on-the-mark, successfully written tongue-in-cheek statement about Nigeria -- a SATIRE -- in which no-one is named and therefore no-one should take offense.  If you know anything about Boko Haram and the oppressive goings-on in Nigeria, and the way the crooked folks at the helm reward or have themselves rewarded, then you'd see the broad landscape of ills Chidi's piece has recorded.
  3. top-rate, from-the-heart salute to Professor Falola, a "roast," if you will.  Salutes don't come any better.
  4. subtle statement: in-the-land of accolades, even the bloodthirsty Boko Haram militants find recognition
  5. blunt conclusion: then who cares about or gives honor where honor is due anymore? What is the value of a "hundred books published...etc.," when....?
  6. CONCLUSIVE: If Boko Haram(ing) is what brings recognition and value, then, hmmmm...? I'm thinking about it.  Why not, IF...? 
I even sense a bit of my favorite Langston Hughes' "Laughter to keep from crying" here in my reading.  I think Chidi's piece revised that slightly to: "Laughter amid the crying" -- laughter in celebration of Falola's millionth achievement award amid rueful tears for things gone bad!

Cheers.
.
-----usaafric...@googlegroups.com wrote: -----
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
From: Lavonda Staples
Sent by: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Date: 08/10/2011 01:41PM

Ikhide

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Aug 10, 2011, 5:16:08 PM8/10/11
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I could argue, that Lavonda, was in her own way, being tongue-in-cheek, albeit less successfully than Mazi Opara. In other words, our sista should keep her day job and leave the njakiri satire for those who are brave enough to dare. ;-)

- Ikhide

Sent via smoke signals!


From: Pamela Smith <pamel...@mail.unomaha.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:01:27 -0500

Ifedioramma E. Nwana

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Aug 10, 2011, 5:17:37 PM8/10/11
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Dear Lavonda,
 
I did not understand Chidi to imply what has attracted the kind of reaction shown here.  I read Chidi as praising Professor Toyin Falola and wondering why Nigeria had not granted this outstanding citizen the recognition he deserves.  Chidi is a poet and even when writing prose, poets tend to use words in a manner that requires some re-reading to understand. 
The error regarding Ivy League Universities should be overlooked.  In some instances, some people think that 'Ivy League' refers to the fame of universities with track records of outstanding performance in the US rather than a remark on their 'humble' beginning. Notwithstanding, these universities have also grown to be very famous.  But they are limited to their original number, and there are only eight of them. 
I have done so before, but I share in the joy of Toyin's successes, so i congratulate him again.  We want more of our countrymen to be so acknowledged. 
 
Ifedioramma Eugene Nwana

Sent: Wed, 10 August, 2011 19:36:51

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 10, 2011, 7:10:15 PM8/10/11
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Madame,
 
It was a joke.

Abdul Bangura

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Aug 11, 2011, 12:02:10 AM8/11/11
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This smacks linguistic/literary oppression, which is very well exposed in the work of another great Afrikan mind, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Is it not more appropriate that we learn, appreciate and respect others' modes of expression, instead of telling them to desist?
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Ikhide
Sent: 8/10/2011 11:05:48 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

I could argue, that Lavonda, was in her own way, being tongue-in-cheek, albeit less successfully than Mazi Opara. In other words, our sista should keep her day job and leave the njakiri satire for those who are brave enough to dare. ;-)

- Ikhide

Sent via smoke signals!


From: Pamela Smith <pamel...@mail.unomaha.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:01:27 -0500

Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng

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Aug 11, 2011, 3:24:20 AM8/11/11
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Thanks Pamela for a great piece. I enjoyed it equal measure with Chidi's original piece.
Lavonda should have spent more than "two ticks of a tock" on Chidi's satire, which missed completely.
 
Cheers 
 
Kwasi
 
Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng,
Journalist & Communications Consultant
Accra

President,
Ghana Association of Writers
PAWA House, Accra




 

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:01:27 -0500

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 11, 2011, 1:36:23 PM8/11/11
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This proves another cultural point.  You more than likely have never heard of "joning" "playing the dozens" or any other way African Americans have of giving each other a gentle nudge.   Ikhide uses the word, "njakiri" and he KNOWS I only speak three languages:  American English, Parisian French, and Mississippi Negro!  You understood my meaning and that's the sum total of communication and yet, my good and academic friend reverts to using words he knows I can't wrap my poor brains around.  Satire is a form of communication and if you go above your audience you aren't communicating.  Shame on Ikhide in the first and second and third degrees.  And to answer your question:  I ain't scared and as a matter of fact I ain't nevah skerred.  

Two serious issues:  It is still a problem for the mind, the African mind which I romanticize to my obvious detriment, to appear to condescend and denigrate what I wrote.  It was a light-hearted  lesson and cultural opportunity.  Did you ever think of this:  that I, and others who do not possess the heart of an African tigress, view the achievements of Dr. Falola as sacrosanct?  Do you review your comments in terms of a type of misogyny?  That is okay for Chidi to present a satire on Falola but not okay for Staples to give Opara a little nudge?  Do you think that I haven't read and praised and been inspired by the poetry of Opara?  Please, please, please (as James Brown would say) give me a break!!!  

Here's the truth:  without Dr. Falola working in African History and Dr. Eric Foner working in American/African History our work would be sorely lacking in various perspectives.  A satire or a roast of Dr. Falola in the moment of his achievement(s) and congratulations were in EXTREMELY poor taste.  If Opara has a personal relationship with Falola then the satire should have come later, in person, in private or not at all.  

Each year I read this listserv I become even more convinced that we have so far to go to touch each other's shores.  But I have to remember, very few Africans live among the people who made it possible for their entry into contemporary American society.  The people who got the water hoses, the beatings, the medical experimentation, forced sterilization, necks broken by ropes, and barns burned when they were filled to bursting ARE NOT the people of New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles.   I can't get mad because you appear, even electronically, think that I should have some kind of cultural clairvoyance towards you when you make no attempt to have any understanding towards mine.  Now I am pissed, and I'm telling you this since you can't see my face.  

Please stopped being so wrapped up in the schoolhouse, that sterile environment that you forget the warmth of the fields.  There was no discussion regarding the phrases I used.  There was no discussion on what is and is not an Ivy League university.  Only an attempt to smack me on the wrists.  

In this entire exchange you have proven me to be more African than the Africans!  How so?  I have respect for my teachers and I would NEVER publicly perceive that I was in any position to create a satire, irony, tragedy or comedy about any of the "great ones."  Chidi is a great writer and author, but my friends, he ain't no Falola.  I've read Falola in the last 48 hours.  I've read Falola from cover to cover as opposed to the academic skim.  Even more so, I've BOUGHT the works of Falola as opposed to waiting for a free copy or begging  away from public eyes.  My dear friends, I say one 'mo gin' - Chidi ain't no Falola and my only prayer is that God grants him enough time to stop sending out free poetry and start producing - which is the ABSOLUTE mandate of scholarship past the baccalaureate level.  


Chidi's comments was player hatin', sour grapes, and burnin' bread to the highest degree.  What comes out of a man's mouth is the direct manifestation of his heart.  I got the joke.  I just didn't like it, not one bit.  

La Vonda R. Staples
Independent Scholar

Pius Adesanmi

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Aug 11, 2011, 3:06:59 PM8/11/11
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LaVonda:

Chidi Anthony Opara  did two things in that short text:

1) He praised Professor Toyin Falola to high heavens
2)He critiqued the Nigerian system - a system that celebrates the mediocres, the charlatans, and the treasury looters among us and leaves true heroes like Toyin Falola unsung.

That's all he did in that piece. Besides, like you and many of us here, Chidi is an unwavering admirer of Professor Falola and has no reason to denigrate him or belittle his moment. You missed his satire completely and this, I'm afraid, has nothing to do with cultural difference. We all read, enjoy, and teach satire from the world's literary traditions and being a cultural insider is never an iron-cast precondition for getting or not getting it. And it's really no big deal if one misses it. Today, I still discover new meanings I've missed or misread all this time in even Soyinka and Achebe. Now, you may disagree with how Prof Pamela and Deopka Ikhide have attempted to point this out to you. But I think it's over the top to proceed to talk so condescendingly at those ungrateful Africans who should learn to shut up when those whose experience of slavery and racism made possible "their entry into contemporary American society.  The people who got the water hoses, the beatings, the medical experimentation, forced sterilization, necks broken by ropes, and barns burned when they were filled to bursting ARE NOT the people of New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles". Now, LaVonda, just what on earth is this condescending lecture you are giving to the Africans you are busy nativizing and primitizing here all about? What next? You guys sold us to slavery and should shut the heck up when we are talking?

Well, let me speak for myself.  I have never allowed any African American intellectual to mobilize history and memory as cultural blackmail against me in my own intellectual praxis. I have zero tolerance for that approach to cultural dialogue between Africa and her diaspora. I just won't take it from them. I give it back forcefully and unapologetically to any African American who approaches me with patronizing lectures about how my black African behind rode into modernity on the back of their memory. I taught for four years in America so I'm no stranger to that irritating tack in African American intellection. I make sure they never forget the day they engaged me from that infuriating perspective. Trust me, I do not know any Nigerian in this forum who won't give you a piece of their mind if you go down that road. This is not something we tolerate.

I'm not sorry for Deopka Ikhide, though. "God catch am", as we say in Nigeria. He had it coming. When some of us were complaining about Henry Louis Gates, the father of the you-sold-us-to-slavery-and-should-learn-to-be-grateful-that-we-let-your-African-butt-into-American-modernity choir, Deopka Ikhide went to town with his vuvuzela in support of Gates.

You do have a valid point about the need for bridging the cultural gulf between continental Africans and African Americans. I've written about that. But it ain't going to happen if your African interlocutors are going to be lectured and talked at about history and memory.

Pius
 


Sent: Thursday, 11 August 2011, 13:36

Godwin Okeke

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Aug 11, 2011, 3:27:12 PM8/11/11
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Congrats Prof. This is yet another worthy recognition of excellence. Cheers!!!
G.S.M. Okeke, PhD
Pol. Sc. Dept.
UniLag

From: KAYODE EESUOLA <gamesm...@yahoo.com>
To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:56 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

Congratulations prof....it's quite rare to see a scholar so committed in this generation...I doff my hat sir!

Kissi, Edward

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Aug 11, 2011, 4:37:03 PM8/11/11
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Amen, Pius, and not only Nigerians, but Ghanaians like myself have no patience for that Lavonda-type outburst. I nearly fell off my chair as I read Lavonda’s admonition to “Africans” to remember the crest on which they rode to modernity. I was shocked it came from her having read many of her postings on this net. But, I was not surprised either. In the bosom of many African Americans, this feeling of distaste for Africans in America burn like Dante’s Inferno.  

 

Chidi Opara’s satire, whose thrust Lavonda missed woefully, served to ignite a feeling hidden and latent in her heart. She just let it rip and we all now know what burns inside Lavonda about her African brethren. We gain nothing in our cultural bridging if we wield history and memory as tools of condescension and persecution.  

 

Edward Kissi

Chambi Chachage

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Aug 11, 2011, 5:57:38 PM8/11/11
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'COMMERCIAL BREAK': Extracts from Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America

Philippe Wamba: New Pan-African Generation

Philippe Wamba
Philippe Wamba
Photo courtesy of Barbara Eisinger.
" This book is about my own journey along the fault lines of African - African American relations and the wider historical relationship between black Americans and their counterparts in the " motherland," writes Philippe Wamba in his acclaimed memoir, Kinship.
Born in Los Angeles, Philippe Wamba was the son of Elaine Brown of Cleveland and Ernest Wamba dia Wamba from rural Bas-Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). He grew up in Boston and Dar es Salaam, finished high school in New Mexico, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1993, going on to earn a master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism. From 1999 through 2001 he was editor in chief of the Web site africana.com. Philippe Wamba died in 2002 in an automobile accident in Kenya, at the age of 31.
Reprinted by permission from Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America (New York: Dutton, 1999). Additional information about Wamba is available on the Web site of the Harvard African Students Alumni Network at http://www.hasanweb.org/memphillipelife.asp.

Philippe Wamba

The lessons of my parents and the prevailing climate of 1970s black outspokenness and pride provided me with a strong sense of identification with Africa. But though my own father was from Africa, and though a celebration of Africa was part and parcel of the pro-black rhetoric that had shaped me, I really knew very little about the continent. . . .
Africa was a place of my imagination, a mythical environment I constructed in my mind out of raw materials provided by my father, books I had read, and movies and TV shows I had seen. . . . Even my parents' ongoing critique of the stereotypical African images that appeared in the media and in books I read could not entirely shield me from the prevailing views of Africa that had long saturated the American psyche. . . . In the end, I knew more about Africa than my white classmates, but was still somewhat susceptible to the prevailing American popular wisdom, which held Africa to be a wild, untamed jungle plagued by famine and bereft of Western technology, infrastructure, and advanced social institutions. . . .
For me as a child in Boston, and for many other black Americans, despite Africa's new prominence as the inspiration for a revolution in African American culture, Africa remained a " dark" continent. . . . I venerated the glory of the African past in school projects on ancient Egypt, I expressed my cultural identification with Africa in my attire, and I eagerly absorbed my father's sentimental stories of his Congolese childhood. . . . For my brothers and me, a real understanding of Africa and what it meant to us only began when my family moved to Tanzania in 1980, an adventure that completely debunked our own myths of Africa and changed our lives forever.
In Dar es Salaam, his father taught at the university and Philippe and his brothers attended school and learned KiSwahili. But in 1981, his father, an opponent of the Mobutu dictatorship, was arrested on a visit home to Zaire. He spent almost a year in prison.
With the arrest of my father, an Africanist historian who had taught at several U.S. universities and at one of the most respected campuses in Africa, an international network of friends, family members, activists, academics, politicians, and students responded quickly to call for his release. My father had been a part of various political struggles while a student and professor in the United States, and many of those he had worked with in the 1960s and 1970s now moved to support him in his time of need. . . .
The campaign was truly international, and in many ways it was also pan-African, coordinated by his black American wife and his African, black American, and West Indian colleagues in Dar es Salaam. They alerted people all over Africa, Europe, the United States, and the Caribbean. . . . My mother shuttled between Dar, Kinshasa, and Boston, spreading the word and trying to generate political pressure on the Zairean government. Members of her family and activists in the American black community urged the U.S. government to intervene on my father's behalf, and a global coalition of Africa-oriented political groups launched letter-writing, petition, and speak-out campaigns, targeting the Zairean government from pan-African nerve centers all over the world.
But while my father survived a Zairean prison . . . we knew that the furor raised on his behalf would do little to change conditions in Zaire itself. . . . Some time after my father was released, my mother's sister in the United States told us how she had watched her TV with disgust while Mobutu was being warmly received at the White House. Reagan had smiled and embraced his African ally like an old friend. . . .
. . . I was thrilled and relieved to have my father safely back among us. . . . I resented the power of tyrants like Mobutu to imprison or even kill people seemingly on a whim . . . I began to wonder how I, too, could make a contribution to the struggle for freedom in Africa. Of course, at the time I had barely completed primary school, but in the years that followed I took an intense interest in African history and politics, and felt inspired by the courage and conviction of African freedom fighters who waged the continent's wars of liberation.
Philippe Wamba finished his secondary education at United World College in New Mexico, where he and fellow black students raised funds for the ANC school in Tanzania. He enrolled at Harvard as an undergraduate in the fall of 1989.
To my unhappy surprise, the African American students I met [at Harvard] were not necessarily any more interested in or informed about Africa than their white counterparts. I automatically gravitated toward the black students I met in those early weeks, and did establish some friendships that lasted. . . . But sometimes the cultural distance between my upbringing in Tanzania and that of African Americans from U.S. cities and suburbs seemed an obstacle to empathy. . . .
For myself and other African students, the examples of racism by the American media, as well as incidents we experienced every day, demonstrated the extent of the social obstacles that confronted us as blacks in America. . . . After the acquittal of Rodney King's torturers, some black students rallied in protest, angrily shouting our solidarity with those venting their frustrations in L.A. And we found plenty to complain about right at Harvard. We marched to protest the harassment of black students by white Harvard policemen, we demonstrated in support of the beleaguered Afro-American Studies Department, and we called for more faculty hiring of women and minorities.
Despite feeling encouraged by the black student solidarity that grew around such issues, I remained frustrated by my own perception of African American indifference to Africa and African affairs. . . . I became involved in local anti-apartheid initiatives, campaigning for Harvard's divestment from companies doing business in South Africa and raising money for South African refugees, and I also worked on campaigns targeting other African countries where dictatorships held sway. But though the anti-apartheid movement in the United States was led by prominent black American leaders, I found less enthusiasm for the struggle among my black student peers. . . . Too often it seemed as though black Americans were mainly preoccupied with their lot in America and did not see events in Africa as relevant. More than anything else, it was ignorance and apathy that kept many students from greater participation in political activism on Africa.
The most memorable political campaign of my student activist career brought me up against the despotism that had imprisoned my father. If Harvard students seemed to pay little attention to events in South Africa, they cared even less what happened in less celebrated tyrannies like Zaire. But when President Mobutu Sese Seko was invited to speak at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in the spring of 1990, SASC, the local anti-apartheid group to which I belonged, and other political organizations mobilized to protest the visit.
A coalition of campus and community organizations joined together to denounce Mobutu and the college administrators who had invited him, arguing that by hosting Mobutu's speech Harvard was needlessly legitimizing his brutal politics. The coalition organized rallies at which I spoke of my experiences in Zaire and my father's detention; we canvassed the campus dormitories, informing students about Mobutu's speech and our protest against it; and we wrote letters expressing our disappointment that Mobutu had been invited, delivering them by hand to seemingly indifferent administrators at the Kennedy School.
. . . I told many African American acquaintances about our scheduled rally, but some admitted to me that they didn't know anything about Zaire and said they'd have to hear " the other side of the story" before they agreed to participate. We distributed as much information on Zaire as we could, but it was difficult to prove to a skeptical and completely uninformed audience that millions of people in a distant African country were suffering under the iron hand of a tyrant. I felt that the black students we spoke to were especially wary of accepting our indictments of Mobutu at face value, perhaps with good reason; black people are used to hearing criticism of black leaders and have learned to treat much of the fault-finding as hostile white propaganda. . . . But I knew it was probably more likely that in many cases ignorance would become an excuse for inaction. . . .
The day of Mobutu's speech found two groups of demonstrators positioned in front of the Kennedy School building: students and community activists who had come to denounce Mobutu, including some Boston-based Zairean dissidents, and a group of pro-Mobutu Zaireans from the Boston area who chanted their support for their president in French and Lingala. I picked out several faces that I recognized from the occasional Zairean parties at my uncle's home in Lynn. . . . I saw their actions as a traitorous insult to all of those who still languished under Zaire's repressive government. When I later told my uncle about the Zaireans' presence at the protest, he laughed bitterly and told me that some days previously one of Mobutu's aides had contacted members of the Zairean community in Boston and offered them money to show their support at his speech. My uncle had also been approached with the offer but had flatly refused to get involved.
At the protest scene, police barricades separated the hundreds of demonstrators from Mobutu's convoy as it entered the parking lot at the rear of the building. Men in suits stood behind the police lines, coolly eyeing the protestors, and a man within the cordoned-off area snapped pictures of us, perhaps with which to open classified files in some shadowy government department. I led students in the South African shuffling stomp of the " toyi-toyi," the protest dance of anti-apartheid youth, and some of the Zairean dissidents began a call-and-response chant in French: " Mobutu, Mobutu - Assassin!" Inside the building, the demonstrators who had managed to get inside interrupted Mobutu's speech by unfurling a large banner that read END THE OPPRESSION NOW and were promptly ejected.
The demonstration made the local television news and was covered in the city papers. Veteran Cambridge activists said that it was the largest protest in recent memory, and student activists returned to their dorms satisfied that they had helped to discredit a dictator. But I left the demonstration alone, feeling empty, plagued by the same sense of discouragement that burdened my political activism throughout my college years. Was this really the best I could do? . . . It was [hard to] keep the wider context in mind, to somehow link my activities in Cambridge with the suffering that continued in Zaire. But when I discussed the protest with my father I felt that he was proud of me and that maybe I had actually managed to emulate some of his courage and conviction. 

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 11, 2011, 8:08:37 PM8/11/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
My bosom harbors nothing but lotion, perfume and sweat from my housework.  I get angry when we forget who we are.  My attack comes from a place of one who is too weary of feminists spouting Foucault, Hatians touting Hegel, and Africans who make no motions toward a meeting, or a mental menage towards African Americans.  

Any other assumption is absurd.  

I'll give you another African American colloquialism, "don't out-White man the White man."

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 11, 2011, 8:26:34 PM8/11/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Mwalimu Adesanmi,

Now I have to join the brother who fell off of the chair.  I raise an honest critique and I'll re-state it:  

Africans in this country know very little about the foot soldiers, the grassroots movements of the Civil Rights movement.  The same is true from us to you.  You do not know the depths of my gratitude for this forum!  I'm sent to dictionaries and all manners of resources so that I can gain a simple understanding for some of the events and personages discussed during the three or four years I have been participating.  You cannot possibly believe that I'm condescending.  

Here's my use of paucity of verbiage:  I wish we, Africans and African Americans, were not burdened with the distances created by slavery and colonialism.  My anger is rightly directed at these systems.  

I'm quite nearly romantically in love with Yoruba proverbs and I'm totally delighted when I find a commonality between the knowledge given to me by my adopted Igbo granma and my own grandmother.  I admire, more than anything, the ties between us that are unbroken.  

My "rant" was honest and passionate.  Be thankful for the screams in the front yard as opposed to the whispers in the boardroom.  The screams are more honest and lack cowardice - what's in the open can be discussed and dealt with.  

USA Africa Dialogues?  Of what end have I been searching?  For us to explore each other away from titles, degrees, documents and papers.  Those are all things that can be taken away.  You all stay away from us and we stay away from you all.  Do you know how terribly sad that is?  Do you know that we actually need each other?  But, because of stereotypes which we did not create we remain worlds apart.  

I stand by what I said.  My take on Chidi's statement on Dr. Falola's achievement.  It was rude, catty, and without reverence.  I am not saying that Dr. Falola is a candidate for beatification.  What I am saying is best encapsulated with another saying.  There is an African American song called, "May The Work That I Done (Speak for Me)."  You can't take away from what he's done.  My teacher, you just can't.  I'm not a disrespectful person so I have to tell you that if I've offended you, please forgive me.  After all, I'm only two generations away from my wild Indian ancestors (that's the truth, I'm not attempting humor).  I hope to God I NEVER get so civilized that I regard public disrespect as cute.  It isn't.  

I can defend this one 'til I good and tired but I won't.  All we're doing is proving how far apart we are.  I'll stop not because it doesn't matter but because it does matter.  I'm afraid that you never will know how this deep schism between relafolks deprives us ofsomething of which we can't even dream. 

La Vonda R. Staples

Lavonda Staples

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Aug 11, 2011, 8:42:04 PM8/11/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
If anything, I need you to know where we came from.  What came before, the history of this mess.  The history books speak of slavery and reconstruction but what of restrictive covenants (housing).  The history books speak of Brown v. Board of Education but what about the daily struggles of the children of Sunflower County, MS.  In 1974 the parents of these children were still fighting for equal education.  The history books speak of lynching and Jim Crow but what about the horrific conditions on Parchman Farm, the Dockery Plantation, and nearly 100,000 Black men who were convicted on charges of loitering and vagrancy so their prison labour could, in turn, be sold to American corporations?  I'm speaking of events which occurred after I was born (1966)?  

Read what I'm saying.  I'm trying to show you, to tell you, to point out that there is so much more to us than illegitimate births, loud voices, suggestive dancing, and rap music.  At this time, the empire of the air, American media is "empowering" the youth across the African continent to call each other and themselves "nigger."  If I, as an academic and an historian, fail to make an honest attempt at re-paying my ancestors, my teachers, and my mentors for the knowledge I have been given then what use are all the theories and ideologies I have learned?  Faith without works is dead my friend.  

We MUST begin the process of de-tribalization in contemporary African Diaspora communities.  If we do not tell our story we cannot moan when the wages of inaction are paid.  When I write these posts in my grandmother's tongue I am showing you my "home" language.  I may not have exotic words but it has been over-proven by academics, namely Dr. Bangura, that our Black southern language is NOT Ebonics but American language "sunk" into thousand year old, Igbo and Yoruba patterns.  

I see what you have as the source of what I am.  I see you as the root of my tree.  Don't ever assume what I"m thinking or what I'm feeling.  Ask me.  I have no problem whatsoever with debate, dialogue or discussion.  

Even if you started it with something as simple as, "why do you guys...?"  That's okay.  Please, for the love of God and three other White folks, please never assume that I, La Vonda Rochelle Staples have any hatred or dislike or distrust of Africans (all 959,000,000 million) as a group.  As a matter of fact, there are only two Africans I don't like and my dislike of them has nothing to do with their country of origin.  

I want to know you.  I want you to know me.  We need to know you.  You need to know us.  

That's enough.  Back to the library or rather, in my case, the basement with my books.  

La Vonda

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Kissi, Edward <eki...@usf.edu> wrote:
Message has been deleted

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Aug 11, 2011, 9:47:52 PM8/11/11
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Dear African people,

What are we witnessing here? Cultural Relativism? The beginning of a
revolution?
Is it yet another “ Clash of Civilisations” between Africa and Africa-
America?
A dis-connect?

To anyone following these exchanges it sure reads like a clash of
cultural and historical perspectives, the way that we look on history
and reflect on contemporary reality.

It's time to try bridging the gap - the yawning/gaping chasm between
the two continents as the cross cultural/ political dialogue
continues, it seems to me that what's demanded is not just some more
peace 'n' love, but peace 'n' love and understanding about who we are
and where we're coming from – and that demands a lot of listening to
and understanding the other.

Remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's famous last words:

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult
days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've
been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like
to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned
about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to
go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know
tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”




http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

We've come along way since then.

Some people paid their dues. Jesse Jackson shed tears after so many
years of singing the the Black man's blues

Today, symbolically Brother Barack Obama is a personification of
Africa-America.

Remember too that “One Black man represents all, all over this
world” ( Steele Pulse)
That includes those who hunger and thirst in the Horn of Africa, in
Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Yet, what we have here is good group dynamics in motion. After the
exchange – after the storm , after the rain the next stage is that as
a group we are stronger, more integrated as we move ahead and outta
this criss in confidence and in catharsis we can hear Sister Lavonda
or Sister Staples holler :

http://www.google.se/search?q=How+I+got+over+%28+Gospel&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en

Sister Lavonda represents an essential ingredient that's been mostly
missing from the USA – Africa Pan-Africanist list-serve, and that is
the African-American component - and here we must be able to not only
tolerate but also accept diversity of opinions and perceptives – it's
a dialogue and not a monologue series between mostly Africans resident
in North America – and Africans in Africa and other parts of the
diaspora:

LaVonda writing form the heart of Black America
Pope Pius from inside Canada
Pamela – yet another diaspora part of the US of America
Chidi from Owerri or Port Harcourt
Cornelius from Sweden and last not least – waiting for him to peak,
peek in and speak easy with his bow and arrow, Kenneth Harrow, a
resident Honorary African

“ It was a joke.” That's what Soul Sister Lavonda said in her first
retort to Lady Pamela Smith. ( When I say “Lady Pamela Smith ”you
might well imagine that she is marr-ied to some Great Englishman who
has his buttocks permanently seated somewhere in the House of Lords,
but I am not being ironic, iconoclastic, sarcastic or even satirical,
when I say “Lady” in this context, I am merely thinking of the late
great Fela's piece which begins, “ If you ask African woman, African
woman noh go 'gree, she go say – she go say “ Ah be Lady oh” and in
according the title Lady to her I am honouring her with added status
in addition to her Status of Professor of English ( we seem to have so
many of them in this series)

So, as I was saying, in her first retort to Lady Pamela Smith, Sister
Lavonda said it straight “It was a Joke”. And now we've gone beyond
the joking points of Chidi's original intention with that his light-
hearted piece and we are now exchanging historic blows and barbs in
the on-going clash of civilisations, clash of cultures, clash of
contentions, contending erudition, perspectives, even talking modes
and the only thing that's missing is to hear the pious Pius declaring
as he declares cultural war on our sister, that “ Jesus of Nazareth ”
is on his side. I dare not make fun of a Yoruba deity, or use His
name in vain.

He could set the historic record straight : not just Africa-America
saying to Africa, “ You sold us” when Africa should be apologising to
everybody “We sold each other”. Just as Joseph's brothers sold Joseph
to some Arab slave traders (Genesis 37: 26 -28 ) – and Lo – he
eventually saved a lot of people from hunger and starvation.......

My personal acquaintance with Africa-America started in Sierra Leone.
After the Peace-Corp programme started under JFK, we always had a
couple of African-American peace Corps volunteers staying with us, at
home every year, during their acculturation programme, whilst they
were getting adjusted to Sierra Leone Creole culture and language. The
experience derived from those contacts resulted in very great
closeness to our Brothers and Sisters - and I wouldn't be the same
person without that sort of background which was further developed
during my eighteen months in Ghana - to which place 600 African
Americans arrived annually – in the post-Nkrumah era, in search of
their roots. And very close relationships with the African Americans
at the Institute of African Studies to which institution my Swedish
wife and I were affiliated as post-graduate students.....

Ironically, when I first arrived in New York I was introduced not as
a Brother but as a cousin...... a slip of the tongue, I guess.

“ Ivy League” too has a place as a purposeful effect in Chidi's
piece.
So does Sister Lavonda's haute couture/ haute Culture, “ Parisian
French”

I locate Chidi playing the role of jokester in that piece. - to be a
jokester you've got to be a bit of a psychologist - satire is the
general or generic term - an approximation of the tradition in whose
voice Chidi speaks / writes. And a parallel / linear translation of
his text into the common idiom of “Broken” English/ Nigerian pidgin/
patois would make this even more clear. The whole thing would have to
be spiced up with “Oga” the kind of stuff one usually heard on Radio
Rivers Comedy hour or from the clowns in Owerri and Aba ( with very
inflated Nigerian Broken English “ Big Grammar” for Dickensian effect
( thinking of the Igbo guy who used to dress up as a woman on to do
his comic music shows..... it's a West African tradition ….. and one
more thing that Sister Lavonda will have to absorb as part of the
International Afri-can cyberspace acculturation is that West African
humour can also be very sadistic ( tragedy translates into comedy –
the fall of a great man being something to laugh about ( if you can
imagine poor Umaru Dikko arriving in Nigeria in a crate – after which
– such violence in language ! - he would have “ Vomited” the
money..... )

Professor Jones- Quartey has an essay on West African humour and you
could do well to take a look at it and not taker offence....just as we
could all do well to take a look at this:

http://www.google.se/search?q=Mother+Wit+from+the+Laughing+Barrel&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en

Lastly, e-specially to love-ly Soul Sister Lavonda: - it' s 3 o'clock
in the morning and I've also been taking these “two ticks of a
tock” to get through to you before the cock crows :

History & memory is a special junction or meeting place between Africa
and Africa America and out of all these agreements/ dis-agreements -
all part of the fruitful dialogue, this thesis and anti-thesis, we may
arrive at some meaningful synthesis as the dust gradually settles
down where the elephants have been fighting. When Pius was talking to
you, he was not only talking to you, there's no such privilege on
these public pages - he was / is also talking through you to all of
us and beyond – we shouldn't forget that even when he/ you are in an
on-going personal conversation in this secluded public space.....

At least we all have this in common: a lot of respect for Professorr
Toyin Falola. That's a good uniting factor and there's no disagreement
about that. That's progress and we can make more history as we move
on from there....

I hope that you'll like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Coltrane+:+After+the+Rain&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en&hl=en




On Aug 11, 10:37 pm, "Kissi, Edward" <eki...@usf.edu> wrote:
> Amen, Pius, and not only Nigerians, but Ghanaians like myself have no patience for that Lavonda-type outburst. I nearly fell off my chair as I read Lavonda's admonition to "Africans" to remember the crest on which they rode to modernity. I was shocked it came from her having read many of her postings on this net. But, I was not surprised either. In the bosom of many African Americans, this feeling of distaste for Africans in America burn like Dante's Inferno.
>
> Chidi Opara's satire, whose thrust Lavonda missed woefully, served to ignite a feeling hidden and latent in her heart. She just let it rip and we all now know what burns inside Lavonda about her African brethren. We gain nothing in our cultural bridging if we wield history and memory as tools of condescension and persecution.
>
> Edward Kissi
>
> From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Pius Adesanmi
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 3:07 PM
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
>
> LaVonda:
>
> Chidi Anthony Opara  did two things in that short text:
>
> 1) He praised Professor Toyin Falola to high heavens
> 2)He critiqued the Nigerian system - a system that celebrates the mediocres, the charlatans, and the treasury looters among us and leaves true heroes like Toyin Falola unsung.
>
> That's all he did in that piece. Besides, like you and many of us here, Chidi is an unwavering admirer of Professor Falola and has no reason to denigrate him or belittle his moment. You missed his satire completely and this, I'm afraid, has nothing to do with cultural difference. We all read, enjoy, and teach satire from the world's literary traditions and being a cultural insider is never an iron-cast precondition for getting or not getting it. And it's really no big deal if one misses it. Today, I still discover new meanings I've missed or misread all this time in even Soyinka and Achebe. Now, you may disagree with how Prof Pamela and Deopka Ikhide have attempted to point this out to you. But I think it's over the top to proceed to talk so condescendingly at those ungrateful Africans who should learn to shut up when those whose experience of slavery and racism made possible "their entry into contemporary American society.  The people who got the water hoses, the beatings, the medical experimentation, forced sterilization, necks broken by ropes, and barns burned when they were filled to bursting ARE NOT the people of New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles". Now, LaVonda, just what on earth is this condescending lecture you are giving to the Africans you are busy nativizing and primitizing here all about? What next? You guys sold us to slavery and should shut the heck up when we are talking?
>
> Well, let me speak for myself.  I have never allowed any African American intellectual to mobilize history and memory as cultural blackmail against me in my own intellectual praxis. I have zero tolerance for that approach to cultural dialogue between Africa and her diaspora. I just won't take it from them. I give it back forcefully and unapologetically to any African American who approaches me with patronizing lectures about how my black African behind rode into modernity on the back of their memory. I taught for four years in America so I'm no stranger to that irritating tack in African American intellection. I make sure they never forget the day they engaged me from that infuriating perspective. Trust me, I do not know any Nigerian in this forum who won't give you a piece of their mind if you go down that road. This is not something we tolerate.
>
> I'm not sorry for Deopka Ikhide, though. "God catch am", as we say in Nigeria. He had it coming. When some of us were complaining about Henry Louis Gates, the father of the you-sold-us-to-slavery-and-should-learn-to-be-grateful-that-we-let-your-Afr­ican-butt-into-American-modernity choir, Deopka Ikhide went to town with his vuvuzela in support of Gates.
>
> You do have a valid point about the need for bridging the cultural gulf between continental Africans and African Americans. I've written about that. But it ain't going to happen if your African interlocutors are going to be lectured and talked at about history and memory.
>
> Pius
>
> ________________________________
> From: Lavonda Staples <lrstap...@gmail.com>
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, 11 August 2011, 13:36
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
> This proves another cultural point.  You more than likely have never heard of "joning" "playing the dozens" or any other way African Americans have of giving each other a gentle nudge.   Ikhide uses the word, "njakiri" and he KNOWS I only speak three languages:  American English, Parisian French, and Mississippi Negro!  You understood my meaning and that's the sum total of communication and yet, my good and academic friend reverts to using words he knows I can't wrap my poor brains around.  Satire is a form of communication and if you go above your audience you aren't communicating.  Shame on Ikhide in the first and second and third degrees.  And to answer your question:  I ain't scared and as a matter of fact I ain't nevah skerred.
>
> Two serious issues:  It is still a problem for the mind, the African mind which I romanticize to my obvious detriment, to appear to condescend and denigrate what I wrote.  It was a light-hearted  lesson and cultural opportunity.  Did you ever think of this:  that I, and others who do not possess the heart of an African tigress, view the achievements of Dr. Falola as sacrosanct?  Do you review your comments in terms of a type of misogyny?  That is okay for Chidi to present a satire on Falola but not okay for Staples to give Opara a little nudge?  Do you think that I haven't read and praised and been inspired by the poetry of Opara?  Please, please, please (as James Brown would say) give me a break!!!
>
> Here's the truth:  without Dr. Falola working in African History and Dr. Eric Foner working in American/African History our work would be sorely lacking in various perspectives.  A satire or a roast of Dr. Falola in the moment of his achievement(s) and congratulations were in EXTREMELY poor taste.  If Opara has a personal relationship with Falola then the satire should have come later, in person, in private or not at all.
>
> Each year I read this listserv I become even more convinced that we have so far to go to touch each other's shores.  But I have to remember, very few Africans live among the people who made it possible for their entry into contemporary American society.  The people who got the water hoses, the beatings, the medical experimentation, forced sterilization, necks broken by ropes, and barns burned when they were filled to bursting ARE NOT the people of New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles.   I can't get mad because you appear, even electronically, think that I should have some kind of cultural clairvoyance towards you when you make no attempt to have any understanding towards mine.  Now I am pissed, and I'm telling you this since you can't see my face.
>
> Please stopped being so wrapped up in the schoolhouse, that sterile environment that you forget the warmth of the fields.  There was no discussion regarding the phrases I used.  There was no discussion on what is and is not an Ivy League university.  Only an attempt to smack me on the wrists.
>
> In this entire exchange you have proven me to be more African than the Africans!  How so?  I have respect for my teachers and I would NEVER publicly perceive that I was in any position to create a satire, irony, tragedy or comedy about any of the "great ones."  Chidi is a great writer and author, but my friends, he ain't no Falola.  I've read Falola in the last 48 hours.  I've read Falola from cover to cover as opposed to the academic skim.  Even more so, I've BOUGHT the works of Falola as opposed to waiting for a free copy or begging  away from public eyes.  My dear friends, I say one 'mo gin' - Chidi ain't no Falola and my only prayer is that God grants him enough time to stop sending out free poetry and start producing - which is the ABSOLUTE mandate of scholarship past the baccalaureate level.
>
> Chidi's comments was player hatin', sour grapes, and burnin' bread to the highest degree.  What comes out of a man's mouth is the direct manifestation of his heart.  I got the joke.  I just didn't like it, not one bit.
>
> La Vonda R. Staples
> Independent Scholar
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Ikhide <xoki...@yahoo.com<mailto:xoki...@yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
> I could argue, that Lavonda, was in her own way, being tongue-in-cheek, albeit less successfully than Mazi Opara. In other words, our sista should keep her day job and leave the njakiri satire for those who are brave enough to dare. ;-)
>
> - Ikhide
> Sent via smoke signals!
> ________________________________
> From: Pamela Smith <pamelasm...@mail.unomaha.edu<mailto:pamelasm...@mail.unomaha.edu>>
> Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.co­m>
> Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:01:27 -0500
> To: <usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.c­om>>
> ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.co­m>
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
>
> Hi Lavonda:
>
> I find your response to Chidi's piece rather baffling; hence my uncharacteristic response since I read and have enjoyed a number of your observations, which I consider to be right on target).
>
> Fact:  we each come at to literature (general), literary pieces (specifically) with some baggage or another which we reflect in our interpretation (loosely called 'criticism'). Unlike the dramatist who provides stage directions to guide the reader/actor a wee bit, the novelist, the poet, etc., as in Chidi's piece, puts out his/her material for the reading public, and the rest, as we know, is history. I don't know
> ...
>
> read more »

kenneth harrow

unread,
Aug 11, 2011, 10:42:42 PM8/11/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
thank you cornelius for these healing and bridging words. somehow this
rift has saddened me, and that's because private exchanges with lavonda
have made me really value her, her spirit especially, and of course i
feel quite close to many on this list, including pius and others, whose
wit and insights i treasure.
what a rough ride this has been, all from what many take to be a
misreading, leading to so many hurt feelings.
cornelius is saying, we can get past this, and go forward as a community
in which the rough edges have made themselves visible, which is often
needed.
when i returned from africa, the last time, it was with resentments for
all the "aid" programs, and the implications of the one-way flow of
assistance for need.
i realized that that flow needed to change, to be reversed, and that the
immense strengths in africa in negotiating differences were something
needed in the global north. from sarkozy's france to cameron's london,
the european notion of dealing with difference is to repress, with force
and brutality and indifference.
that is not the way african communities negotiate difference. sure there
are wars; but there are also longstanding means for healing and
reaffirming ways of living together.

i want to forget what lavonda said about chidi's praisesong, about the
arrogance and resentments, and ask for the healing moment, which is
crucial in cornelius's request to bridge the gap. the chasm, he calls
it, rightly.
the gap may be there; the bridge is, too, for those who are willing to
take it.
ken


On 8/11/11 8:55 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
> Dear African people,
>
> What are we witnessing here? Cultural Relativism? The beginning of a
> revolution?

> Is it yet another � Clash of Civilisations� between Africa and Africa-


> America?
> A dis-connect?
>
> To anyone following these exchanges it sure reads like a clash of
> cultural and historical perspectives, the way that we look on history
> and reflect on contemporary reality.
>
> It's time to try bridging the gap - the yawning/gaping chasm between
> the two continents as the cross cultural/ political dialogue
> continues, it seems to me that what's demanded is not just some more
> peace 'n' love, but peace 'n' love and understanding about who we are

> and where we're coming from � and that demands a lot of listening to


> and understanding the other.
>
> Remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's famous last words:
>

> �Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult


> days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've
> been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like
> to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned
> about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to
> go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the
> Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know

> tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!�


>
>
>
>
> http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
>
> We've come along way since then.
>
> Some people paid their dues. Jesse Jackson shed tears after so many
> years of singing the the Black man's blues
>
> Today, symbolically Brother Barack Obama is a personification of
> Africa-America.
>

> Remember too that �One Black man represents all, all over this
> world� ( Steele Pulse)


> That includes those who hunger and thirst in the Horn of Africa, in
> Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
>
> Yet, what we have here is good group dynamics in motion. After the

> exchange � after the storm , after the rain the next stage is that as


> a group we are stronger, more integrated as we move ahead and outta
> this criss in confidence and in catharsis we can hear Sister Lavonda
> or Sister Staples holler :
>
> http://www.google.se/search?q=How+I+got+over+%28+Gospel&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en
>
> Sister Lavonda represents an essential ingredient that's been mostly

> missing from the USA � Africa Pan-Africanist list-serve, and that is
> the African-American component - and here was must be able to not
> only tolerate but also accept diversity of opinion and perceptive �


> it's a dialogue and not a monologue series between mostly Africans

> resident in North America � and Africans in Africa and other parts


> of the diaspora:
>
> LaVonda writing form the heart of Black America
> Pope Pius from inside Canada

> Pamela � yet another diaspora part of the US of America


> Chidi from Owerri or Port Harcourt

> Cornelius from Sweden and last not least � waiting for him to peak
> peek in and speak easy with his bow and arrow, Kenneth Harrow a
> resident Honorary African
>
> � It was a joke.� That's what Soul Sister Lavonda said in her first
> retort to Lady Pamela Smith. ( When I say �Lady Pamela Smith �you


> might well imagine that she is marr-ied to some Great Englishman who
> has his buttocks permanently seated somewhere in the House of Lords,
> but I am not being ironic, iconoclastic, sarcastic or even satirical,

> when I say �Lady� in this context, I am merely thinking of the late
> great Fela's piece which begins, � If you ask African woman, African
> woman noh go 'gree, she go say � she go say � Ah be Lady oh� and in


> according the title Lady to her I am honouring her with added status
> in addition to her Status of Professor of English ( we seem to have so
> many of them in this series)
>
> So, as I was saying, in her first retort to Lady Pamela Smith, Sister

> Lavonda said it straight �It was a Joke�. And now we've gone beyond


> the joking points of Chidi's original intention with that his light-

> hearted piece and we are now exchanging historic blows in the on-


> going clash of civilisations, clash of cultures, clash of
> contentions, contending erudition, perspectives, even talking modes
> and the only thing that's missing is to hear the pious Pius declaring

> as he declares cultural war on our sister, that � Jesus of Nazareth �


> is on his side. I dare not make fun of a Yoruba deity, or use His
> name in vain.
>
> He could set the historic record straight : not just Africa-America

> saying to Africa, � You sold us� when Africa should be apologising to
> everybody �We sold each other�. Just as Joseph's brothers sold Joseph
> to some Arab slave traders (Genesis 37: 26 -28 ) � and Lo � he


> eventually saved a lot of people from hunger and starvation.......
>
> My personal acquaintance with Africa-America started in Sierra Leone.
> After the Peace-Corp programme started under JFK, we always had a

> couple of African American peace Corps volunteers staying with us, at


> home every year, during their acculturation programme, whilst they
> were getting adjusted to Sierra Leone Creole culture and language. The
> experience derived from those contacts resulted in very great
> closeness to our Brothers and Sisters - and I wouldn't be the same
> person without that sort of background which was further developed
> during my eighteen months in Ghana - to which place 600 African

> Americans arrived annually � in the post Nkrumah era, in search of


> their roots. And very close relationships with the African Americans
> at the Institute of African Studies to which institution my Swedish
> wife and I were affiliated as post-graduate students.....
>
> Ironically, when I first arrived in New York I was introduced not as
> a Brother but as a cousin...... a slip of the tongue, I guess.
>

> � Ivy League� too has a place as a purposeful effect in Chidi's
> piece.
> So does Sister Lavonda's haute couture/ haute Culture, � Parisian
> French�


>
> I locate Chidi playing the role of jokester in that piece. - to be a
> jokester you've got to be a bit of a psychologist - satire is the
> general or generic term - an approximation of the tradition in
> whose voice Chidi speaks / writes. And a parallel / linear translation

> of his text into the common idiom of �Broken� English/ Nigerian


> pidgin/ patois would make this even more clear. The whole thing would

> have to be spiced up with �Oga� the kind of stuff one usually heard


> on Radio Rivers Comedy hour or from the clowns in Owerri and Aba

> ( with very inflated Nigerian Broken English � Big Grammar� for


> Dickensian effect ( thinking of the Igbo guy who used to dress up as a
> woman on to do his comic music shows..... it's a West African

> tradition �.. and one more thing that Sister Lavonda will have to


> absorb as part of the International Afri-can cyberspace acculturation
> is that West African humour can also be very sadistic ( tragedy

> translates into comedy � the fall of a great man being something to


> laugh about ( if you can imagine poor Umaru Dikko arriving in

> Nigeria in a crate � after which � such violence in language, he
> would have � Vomited� the money..... )


> Professor Jones- Quartey has an essay on West African humour and you
> could do well to take a look at it and not taker offence....just as we
> could all do well to take a look at this:
>
> http://www.google.se/search?q=Mother+Wit+from+the+Laughing+Barrel&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en
>
>
> Lastly, e-specially to love-ly Soul Sister Lavonda: - it' s 3 o'clock

> in the morning and I've also been taking these �two ticks of a
> tock� to get through to you before the cock crows :
>
> History& memory is a special junction/ meeting place between Africa


> and Africa America and out of all these agreements/ dis-agreements -

> all part of the fruitful dialogue, this thesis and anti-thesis we may


> arrive at some meaningful synthesis as the dust gradually settles
> down where the elephants have been fighting. When Pius was talking
> to you, he was not only talking to you, there's no such privilege on
> these public pages - he was / is also talking through you to all of

> us and beyond � we shouldn't forget that even when he/ you are in an


> on-going personal conversation in this secluded public space.....
>
> At least we all have this in common: a lot of respect for Professorr
> Toyin Falola. That's a good uniting factor and there's no disagreement
> about that. That's progress and we can make more history as we move
> on from there....
>
> I hope that you'll like this:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Coltrane+:+After+the+Rain&rls=com.microsoft:sv:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en&hl=en
>
>
>
>

> On Aug 11, 9:27 pm, Godwin Okeke<sol1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Congrats Prof. This is yet another worthy recognition of excellence. Cheers!!!
>> G.S.M. Okeke, PhD
>> Pol. Sc. Dept.
>> UniLag
>>

>> From: KAYODE EESUOLA<gamesmaste...@yahoo.com>
>> To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com"<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:56 AM
>> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
>>
>> Congratulations prof....it's quite rare to see a scholar so committed in this generation...I doff my hat sir!
>>

>> From: Lavonda Staples<lrstap...@gmail.com>
>> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:36 PM
>> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?
>>
>> Came out of the library for two ticks of a tock to answer Chidi
>>
>> 1. University of Texas at Austin is not an Ivy League University. It's great. I would pee my pants if I got accepted to their Ph. D. History program, BUT, it is a state university with a measure of open enrollment. The exceptions of state university as an Ivy League institution would be University of Virginia and University of California at Los Angeles (UVA and UCLA respectively). Examples of Ivy League are: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc. and so forth. I hope you get the picture my brother.
>>
>> 2. Stop Hatin'! (urban colloquialism)
>>
>> 3. Don't be burnin' bread! (Mississippi colloquialism created during slavery which is actually a LOOSE translation of a Yoruba proverb which guards using words to wish ill on someone, especially someone who is more successful, defenseless, or who cannot defend your accusation because you do not do so in public). Burnin' bread on someone is an act which displays envy and/or cowardice. The expression exists to make plain, without uncertainty, the ties between the Africans who arrived in what would become the United States and those Yoruba and Igbo (for the most part) relatives who remained back "home."
>>
>> 4. The work of Toyin Falola, especially what I'm reading right now, "A History of Nigeria" is essential for independent researchers and those who have grown weary of using the accepted canon(s) of history. What Dr. Falola does with his work is present a history from the mouths of those who populate history instead of an interpretation from outside/external to the subject(s).
>>
>> 5. Stop Hatin'!
>>
>> 4.
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara<pip...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Forum members have been congratulating Professor Toyin Falola for another high profile award. The awards keep coming. Who is this Professor Toyin Falola, if I may ask?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I am aware that he is a distinguished Professor of History in an Ivy League University in the USA. I am also aware that he has written over a hundred widely acclaimed books, scholarly articles, etc, including poetry. He is on the faculties of many World class Universities and chairs many distinguished organizations Worldwide, and so what?

>>> How many chieftaincy titles does he have? During anniversaries of his birth, marriage, etc, I do not recall seeing and/or hearing congratulatory messages to him by �well wishers� on Nigerian newspapers, television and radio stations.
>>> He does not even have a �National Honour Award� like the Nollywood comedian, �Aki� of the �Aki and Paw-paw� fame. No Street in Abuja have been named after him, soon, a major street in Abuja would be named after the late Boko Haram leader.
>>> He was not even nominated in the last ministerial nomination, even if he was, I am sure he would not have been able to mobilize �Ghana must go� bags to the Senate chamber for his �clearance�.
>>> How many times has he dined with his country�s President? Something Niger Delta militants do on daily basis. The Boko Haram people will soon be invited.


>>> Does he have the clout to introduce me to someone who will give me a note to someone who will phone my state governor, Chief, Dr., Sir, Owelle, etc, Rochas Okorocha,(JP) to appoint me his Special Adviser on Poetry Matters? I hear there is a Special Adviser on Comedy or something that sounds similar.

>>> Does he��..? Abeg make I hear something jare! Right now I feel like joining Boko Haram.


>>> ------- Chidi
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
>>> For current archives, visithttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

>>> For previous archives, visithttp://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html


>>> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
>>> unsub...@googlegroups.com
>> --
>>
>> La Vonda R. Staples
>> Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
>> Community College of the District of Columbia
>> 314-570-6483
>>
>> "It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
>> For current archives, visithttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

>> For previous archives, visithttp://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html


>> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
>> unsub...@googlegroups.com
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
>> For current archives, visithttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

>> For previous archives, visithttp://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html


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>> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-

>> unsub...@googlegroups.com- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -

--
kenneth w. harrow
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
east lansing, mi 48824-1036
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng

unread,
Aug 12, 2011, 3:34:32 AM8/12/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Why can't La Vonda R. Staples, Adjunct Professor, say simply that she did not get Chidi's brand of satire first time, simple?

The direction this is taking - African-Americans vs. Africans - is not where this must go. It might titillate the palate of some academics eager to taste cross-cultural fight-blood, for the rest of us it just leaves a bad taste.


 
Kwasi
 
Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng,
Journalist & Communications Consultant
Accra

President,
Ghana Association of Writers
PAWA House, Accra




 


From: eki...@usf.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:37:03 -0400
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola?

Pamela Smith

unread,
Aug 13, 2011, 4:33:18 AM8/13/11
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Ara Aye (World):

I was in my garden at dusk  last week, trimming some bushes and must have disturbed, literally and figuratively, a half hidden hornets' nest.  Needless to say, I got stung, pretty badly, and quickly learned to stay away from that invisible nest in my backyard. The lesson learned: let  (uninvited)
sleeping bees lie! -- didn't have the heart to spray the suckers dead the next day. Yes, my tan-brown skin is still black and blue and itching all over like crazy, but in a weird way, I kept wondering in my usual way of trying to find "the lesson", why I didn't see the attack coming... and then I remember, it was dusk --dah!

That same night, I read Chidi Anthony Opara's best-of-them-all  "tribute" to Professor Toyin Falola and, in a broad sense, the God-awful stings and itching felt like small potatoes in comparison to the mucky "landscape", the backdrop out of which Chidi's salute to the unsung eminence of Falola emerged -- much like the way Yoruba
gongon drum ensemble would praise-drum the honored and honorable one with frenzied zeal in a not too subtle satirical put-down of his detractors.

I do not know Chidi, nor have I read any of his poems. But his prose resonated with me. Reveling in this very well-done satirical piece,  I complimented Chidi publicly on this forum, urging him in a light-hearted way to tow the line of the unsung writer-poet rather than activate his spoken thoughts of going the seemingly glamorous way of Boko Haram.  Then came a reading that appeared to see it totally outside of its cultural context  and the poet-singer's meaning and intended purpose  -- obviously obvious to those within the shared culture (my dual Yoruba-Krio cultural background and studies allow for this presumption in this instance). A bit baffled by the reading, particularly coming from someone whose previous posts have almost regularly been instructive for their  "on the markness" and spicy, folksy delivery, I slipped into my "never-waste-a-learning/teaching-moment" mode, and penned a brief rebuttal which, in its very first line, expressed both bafflement (albeit in school ma'am enumeration)  and implicit praise for the previous posts' instructiveness and "on the mark" contribution to the forum. By the next morning, a retort came, stating simply: Madame, it's a joke (the perhaps facetious tone of the "madame" not lost on me).  But, frankly, I shrugged it off as part of the "bite" I kind of enjoy in La Vonda's writing. Great, I thought, here's an opportunity to engage in fruitful dialogue on the function and subtleties of African American humor. My tons of questions, perhaps, would have led to the first published collaborative Staples & Smith Comparative African American-Yoruba Dictionary of Humor and Idioms, when...

EGBA MI O (heeeeelp!), KUSKAS DON CAM O (trouble/palaver has arrived)!


The roof caved in! Yesterday's simple, acceptable "...it's a joke" retort was not enough and had to be morphed into a beehive and turned into a full-blown declaration of war and name-calling against  those ungrateful Africans! Stunned and stung yet again!? Yes, this time figuratively! Every time I log on to this forum, it's hard to forget that the bees are still in my backyard and some had found their way into the forum.  

How did we ever get here? How did an alleged school ma'am "slap-on-the-wrist"  response to what appeared to be a slap-in-face misreading of a writer's tribute turn into a condescending lecture to and about Africans? What is the connection between the event (of the exchanged responses)  and the vitriolic raising of so many  issues? How is Chidi's piece an example of how Africans have forgotten who  and what they are, thus requiring "facts and logic" to prove this to them? If Chidi's disrespect of Falola's achievements is the issue here, then what has any of this "out-White man the White man?" got to do with Chidi's alleged bad upbringing except perhaps to provide a platform for venting about sundry things?   Really, to know nothing about me, except, perhaps, hearsay, and lay on me the brunt  below is rude, hurtful and unacceptable. In my rebuttal that started all this, I neither expected nor assumed anything since I know nothing about La Vonda Staples beyond what she has offered through her postings. My rebuttal neither intended nor bore any malice; it merely stated an observation and why, pure and simple. A reciprocative and similar, simple "school "ma'am slap-on-the-wrist" explanation of why the response to Chidi's text is "a joke" would have been not only educative but it also would've advanced the conversation and not mire it in this unproductive, hurtful mess.  I simply am more baffled and disappointed than pissed. I don't get the connections and would very much like to "get it,"  which is what we are all about in this forum.

Thankfully, peacemakers have stepped forward spoken words of balm, especially brothers  Cornelius Hamelberg and Ken Harrow. " Were meji oo le gbe ile kan (two mad men cannot inhabit the same space)" -- Yoruba proverb. Thus, to engage in a round of verbal theatrics at this point will be counter-productive.  "Eni s'oro pupo, yio si so (One who talks too much is bound to talk nonsense)" -- Yoruba proverb.

So, to La Vonda, I say, don't get pissed and rant, EDUCATE!

I hear you La Vonda, I hear you  loudly  and clearly. Your  frustration about the rift between Africans and African Americans and your passion for a "fix" are unmistakable, and your ability to articulate them with folksy candor is not only remarkable but also admirable.  But none of us in this forum need to be reminded of the tragedy of this divide.  In fact, a number of us have personal experiences with it more than you know. So you get to know some important facts about me and my experience: I've lived in this country for 45 years. I married an African American from a large Catholic family, raised two African American children, and I'm quite involved in the lives of my three grandchildren, Consequently, rueful conversations have been and still are a staple (no pun intended) at family gatherings, not to speak of the pervasiveness  of the topic in the courses I teach and in discussions with colleagues at the university. For instance, on campus, you know the extent of the rift when a Black Studies Department chair was able to pass a "They-can-apply-but-No-" African-born-black"-must- ever-be-allowed-to- chair-the-Black-Studies-Department" edict with the full backing of  Omaha's African American community. The hiring practice has remained in force for the past 20 of my 25 years at the university, where African American students express disdain openly for their  "African born Black" counterparts (and vice versa) and admitted as much during a race and racism forum just last year!  How to get the dialogue going is most challenging because it is almost always bogged down by the name-calling, blaming rhetoric.

For starters, we all in this forum need to grow some very thick skin and mothball easily bruised egos, I think part of the reason why the discussion of the Chidi tribute went sour from the very beginning is because it got mired in far too many "layers," with each response adding yet another layer of burning issues: the lack of recognition and gratitude for freedom bought and paid for; Blacks acting too White; Africans forgetting who and what they are; out-White[ing] man the White man: the condescending ... African mind; etc.

I would like to ask La Vonda to step back for a  moment and reflect on which of her many past posts garnered this kind of reaction, even when sometimes the context and her argument weren't terribly clear ( e.g. the  piece I remember was about skin bleaching and wife abuse).  So, why is this present argument  causing  such grief? Two things that would help us get out of this impasse are: 1) some clarification on why the "nudge" to Chidi is a joke, since nobody else except the creator of the joke "got it," and 2)  why Chidi's use of satire is not only respectful but is the highest form of compliment since La Vonda "didn't get it." This will naturally lead to a discussion about the nature and subtleties of African American humor.  Similarly,  a brief discussion that situates in Yoruba oral tradition Chidi's choice and use of satire as his mode of giving the highest praise and what  legitimizes it should be given. Also, a  comparative discussion of the role and uses of satire in both African American and African cultures is critical to the argument here. In all this, Chidi should not have to "explain" his art -- the role of the artist is not to explain his work. The writer has written and offered his material to his audience.  

As I always tell my students, the Lord is not quite done with me yet (in growth, that is). And as such, I intend to learn from them and whatever good information they bring to shared learning. Consequently, my "olive branch" and challenge to you is this:  Raise an honest critique (not a condescending lecture) under the right context and put our feet to the fire so that the choir may listen, learn and sing the right chords that help keep the bees at bay to ensure we do not "forget the warmth of the fields."  

Let the healing and fruitful sharing begin.

Cheers,


-----usaafric...@googlegroups.com wrote: -----

      Date: 08/11/2011 12:46PM

        Sent via smoke signals!

          1. prophet/physician-not-appreciated/recognized-by-his/her-own lampoon, a satire
          2. darn good, on-the-mark, successfully written tongue-in-cheek statement about Nigeria -- a SATIRE -- in which no-one is named and therefore no-one should take offense.  If you know anything about Boko Haram and the oppressive goings-on in Nigeria, and the way the crooked folks at the helm reward or have themselves rewarded, then you'd see the broad landscape of ills Chidi's piece has recorded.
          3. top-rate, from-the-heart salute to Professor Falola, a "roast," if you will.  Salutes don't come any better.
          4. subtle statement: in-the-land of accolades, even the bloodthirsty Boko Haram militants find recognition
          5. blunt conclusion: then who cares about or gives honor where honor is due anymore? What is the value of a "hundred books published...etc.," when....?
          6. CONCLUSIVE: If Boko Haram(ing) is what brings recognition and value, then, hmmmm...? I'm thinking about it.  Why not, IF...?  

    RKRC

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    Aug 13, 2011, 6:36:19 AM8/13/11
    to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
    Malvolio had a similar moment .  Sir Toby's advice, as I recall, was "Go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him ..."  

    Regards,
    Kayode

    toyin adepoju

    unread,
    Aug 13, 2011, 11:36:03 AM8/13/11
    to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
    Lavonda is of the view that the celebratory moment calls for pure celebration, without satire, if Chidi and his supporters insist his writing should be seen as satire. 

    True, its vital to celebrate achievement. Toyin Falola's achievements are like the sun shining at midday in a world in which such radiance is rare. So, Lavonda's outrage about anyone trying to do anything other than celebrate this wonder, a wonder not of nature but of sheer human effort created through difficult to imagine mobilisation of mental, emotional, material, interpersonal and other resources, is understandable.

    At the same time, however, a certain level of prominence of achievement would inspire various kinds of responses beyond sheer celebration. Such a scope of response demonstrates the complexity of human beings. If all people do in the face of one's achievements is to congratulate one, then one has not been adequately served by one's audience. Some people should challenge you as well as those who  celebrate you.

    Sadly, Valentine Ojo has not been able to combine acidic criticism  with a carefully tempered style of presentation. So, he has not been able to present on these fora challenges to Falola which he has expressed elsewhere. Such challenges, if carefully presented, can inspire significant questions. 

     I hereby attempt some of such responses. These are not necessarily questions I would ordinarily address myself to but I pose them to suggest that an achievement of Falola's scope can provoke questions that try to place the achievement in context in ways that are not celebratory but critical and challenging. I dont see this as Chidi's goal, however. I will address Chidi's response after presenting these questions.



    1. One reads of this great historian, Toyin Falola. One might  aglance through  a university  library in African history and African Studies, as I once did at SOAS, and the findings suggesting  that this man's achievement  and presence are  ubiquitous. One asks-where does he work-University of Texas. Is that an Ivy League University? No. If he is so good, why is he not at Harvard or Yale? If not those two, then why not the runners up of Princeton, Cornell etc?

    That is my Devil's Advocate response to Chidi's erroneous description of the unforgettable historian and man of letters as being at an Ivy League university as well as from Valentine Ojo's description on another site of Falola as teaching in a second rate university.

    Is it possible that not all the best scholars are at Ivy League universities? People who have only minimal literacy in such matters might need to be educated.

    I admit its a question I have asked myself. But you just cant argue with a universe that insists on recognising a particular person as one of the best, if not the best, in his field. Where such a person is working becomes secondary to such universal recognition. But should this question  be  dismissed  this as meaningless?  It can take us into deep discussions about the strategies  and politics of academic employment, among other issues. 

    2. Yes. We agree that Falola gives all indication of being  a great man of letters. He is more than a historian on account of the scope of his publications, including at least one hefty and sumptuous tome of poems and other/s of autobiography. . The gentleman also writes beautifully and is very good at intellectual conceptualisation, from what I have read of him so far. He also seems to drink work rather than water.

    But what is the ultimate significance of all that achievement? 

    How relevant is it to his country, Nigeria? Are his books on the curriculum? Do they impact the country's s learning minds directly? Do they do so indirectly? How many Nigerians can afford to buy his books, particularly those published since he left the University of Ife for the US?

    Those questions derive from Ojo's criticism, on another group,  of academic scholarship in relation to Nigeria's development. I see Ojo's presentation as needing refinement to highlight  unequivocally  their critical potential. That is what I have tried to do. 

    The next question derives from general questions about scholarship. 

    3. Unarguably, Falola's name is inescapable in any study of African history and to some degree African Social Sciences. But let us ask ourselves, what is the point of this endless race after knowledge? What impact does all this learning have on humanity? The good and at times evil book of the Jews states that " Of books and learning there is no end". Is the study of the "dead past" of any use to humanity? How can it help address the pressing issues of the moment? Is Falola, like many academics, not simply an overpaid, over-celebrated sedentary worker churning out material sprinkled with his brain matter  from the comfort  of his study while Somalia is burning, Kenya is famished  and Libya is convulsing? Did the entire tribe of scholars do anything by their scholarship that has aided the dilemmas of African countries?

    Christopher Okigbo putting down his pen to fight in the Nigerian Civil War, from which he did not return, his body never found, his work in progress lost, with only his slim but incandescent body of  poetry surviving him; Ernest Wamba di Wamba operating as a rebel commander in the Congo and now as a Snenator there, all this after his time an academic in the US; Vaclav Havel moving from writing to becoming  Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia.  Are these not more relevant examples of social relevance than a library of words, detached from living human experience, within the ivory towers  whose relevance in Africa is particularly questionable, texts floating in a rarefied space that does not touch the blood and sweat of the average human who makes history,    texts read only read by students in schools and their teachers? 

    Can we dismiss these questions?

    Now, to focus on Chidi's points.

     1. He is asking us to re-examine the parameters of success like Falola's. He does this by juxtaposing Falola's success with the kind the average Nigeria is more used to in the Nigerian public space, to which Falola belongs as a Nigerian.

    The sheer density of awards raining on the historian  ought to translate to celebrations in Nigerian newspapers but Chidi says he has not seen them. Are the reporter's ignorant of these achievements, achievements that are contributing to defining human civilisation,  as quality scholarship does, talk less a powerful body of scholarship, of the alumnus of the University of Ife, where he got his PhD, thereby demonstrating that a person trained at  such a much maligned  and challenged educational system can achieve global status? 

    "How many chieftaincy titles does he have? During anniversaries of his birth, marriage, etc, I do not recall seeing and/or hearing congratulatory messages to him by “well wishers” on Nigerian newspapers, television and radio stations."

     Chidi 


    Note the bracketing of "well wishers". The crowd of celebrants that gravitates around  power. 


    2. What is the social currency of a Falola achievement in the Nigerian public space? What is its value in terms of any kind of capital, including Bourdeiau's concept of symbolic capital? In an environment where the government is the central means of revenue generation, can Falola's "bukuru" -Nigerian pidgin for book study- help to put food on the table for anyone who wants a connection to the seat of government at Aso Rock? Does Falola's stellar reputation imply that he has the ears of the political powers that be in his home country as he certainly has the ears of the powers of the global academic world who will take seriously a letter of recommendation from the professor of wondrous achievement? 

    "He does not even have a “National Honour Award” like the Nollywood comedian, “Aki” of the “Aki and Paw-paw” fame. No Streets in Abuja [the Nigerian capital]  have been named after him"
    Chidi 

    One needs to wach this comedian, he should be on Youtube. Memorable.


    3. Have  these powers in his home country heard about the name  of Falola , a name inescapable in even a cursory look through the sections of libraries on African Studies and African history in particular?

    4.What are Falola's chances of being given an award from the Nigerian government, and perhaps be invited to the seat of government at Aso Rock to receive it, like Henry Luis Gates Jr. seemed to have enjoyed from US President Clinton? 

    5. Is Falola on the radar of the powers that be in Nigeria, at any level, talk less of the level demonstrated by US President Obama's instant response to the ridiculous story of a police man handcuffing  the esteemed Prof. Henry Luis Gates  Jr, when the President instantly dismissed the policeman's behaviour and stated that Gates was his friend? Even though Falola does not live in Nigeria like Gates does in the US, does the Nigerian President or his office or relevant government office/s reach out to Nigerian scholars and other creative people abroad and keep in touch with them, particularly since they could be so helpful to the country's troubled image?

    "How many times has he dined with his country’s President? Something Niger Delta militants do on daily basis. The Boko Haram people will soon be invited."
    Chidi 

     

    6.Does Falola need to be visible at home like Bart Nnanji who left his job as an engineering professor in the US   to set a power generation  company in Nigeria that gave him visibility that led to his being appointed Minister of Power, if I got the name right?

    "He was not even nominated in the last ministerial nomination, even if he was, I am sure he would not have been able to mobilize “Ghana must go” bags to the Senate chamber for his “clearance”.
    Chidi 

     

    The last two lines refer to the belief (?) that ministerial nominees bribe their way to Senate approval  with  money filled in  bags  like the kind used by Ghanaians  when they were expelled from Nigeria.The bags are big, rough and ready. The picture suggests an uncompromisingly rapacious  and vulgar attitude to money.

     

    Could Falola have mobilised such determined monetary resources to secure  recognition in the land of his ancestry?


    7.The recent appointments of Vice-Chancellors from the Nigerian diaspora implies that the government knows of these people.  If Falola was not one of those appointed, did he refuse or gave conditions that were too stringent for  the government?

    If Falola cannot demonstrate these achievements on his  home ground, can he help me, Mister or Miss A, who wants focused , personally directed uplifting in the Nigerian socio-economic-political space? Can he help me get a job or contract with any of the states,  even of his native Yorubaland? Not everyone wats to  do higher degrees or lecture in a university.

    "Does he have the clout to introduce me to someone who will give me a note to someone who will phone my state governor, Chief, Dr., Sir, Owelle, etc, Rochas Okorocha,(JP) to appoint me his Special Adviser on Poetry Matters? " 
    Chidi 

    A Yoruba syaying states that "It iswhen we have no one to lean on that we seem to be lazy.!" Western social culture sums it upin the term "networking".

     

    Is  Falola's  virtual ubiquity in African studies particularly  in history not enough or more than  enough for him to achieve such a national presence?

    8. Philip Emeagwali, who like Toyin Falola, lives in the US,  got  one price, unlike Falola who gets prices the way others change clothes, yet Philip Emeagwali was put on Nigeria's postage stamp. Gabriel Oyibo, who also lives in the US,  has  no recognition for his claims to making mathematical history, and yet his face is on Nigeria's postage stamp. 

    Yet, one is yet to even read or hear a rumour that Toyin Falola is being considered for a state or national award. If I am wrong here I wish to be corrected.

    In such an environment, the serious and the farcical walk side by side. So Chidi may hope that there may exist the position of 

    " a Special Adviser on Comedy or something that sounds similar."

    to which the lucky aspirant may be slotted into and commence in earnest his journey out of economic uncertainty.

    Thanks

    Toyin Adepoju

    Olabode Ibironke

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    Aug 13, 2011, 12:54:59 PM8/13/11
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    When I first read Chidi’s piece, I was of two minds. I wondered whether the satirical form and the disdainful anti-intellectual voice that it assumes are more an ironic reflection on the poet persona who wants recognition by every means even if it means aligning with the Boko Haram sect. (If we take this approach, it makes the piece a criticism of Nigerian banal celebrity and sycophantic  culture,  as most on the forum obviously take it to be.) Or, whether there is detectable in the piece, a subtle ingenious move to deliberately foreground that anti-intellectual persona as a means of shielding itself from the implicit toe-stepping criticism of the emerging celebrity culture and godfatherism in African academia. In other words, is it possible that Chidi is criticizing Nigerian anti intellectual culture as a means of,  at the same time that he is, without been seen as doing so, and thus without offending the real subjects of his satire, criticizing sycophantic praise singing in African intellection?

     

    Bode  

    Lavonda Staples

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    Aug 13, 2011, 3:07:38 PM8/13/11
    to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
    Toyin Adepoju:  Thank you.  Merci beau coup.  You got it.  I don't care if the next forum posting says or doesn't say.  You have caused me to lay down my arms.  That was the way to respectfully post questions, rhetorical or actual.  If this had been the first post I would have more than likely said nothing at all.  Why?  Because you crafted a complete argument without appropriate levity and gave (at least the appearance of) an even-handed argument/debate. 
     
    I felt a great big ol' woobsah! rush out of me.  That piece which Chidi wrote only amounted to a heap of cyber-cooning and shining.   You made your points, explored them, and brought the questions posed to a type of fruition.  They cannot be fully 'closed" because most academics ask themselves these questions at different times and junctures, "what am I REALLY doing here?" 
     
    That's enough.  I hardly every "get" you but I am glad that this occasion is one of understanding. 
     
    Vonda

    Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola

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    Aug 13, 2011, 3:37:33 PM8/13/11
    to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, ronr...@gmail.com, pamel...@mail.unomaha.edu
    As a man I want to take issues with your translation. Prof how can you do this to us
    Were meji oo le gbe ile kan (two mad men cannot inhabit the same space)" -- Yoruba proverb.

    Were is genderless oooo please come back here to apologize to all the men on this forum with one big keg of Palm Wine and a bag of Kola nuts...Will you Staple us or Mazi Opara us. I am waiting oooo
    Kole

    --- On Sat, 8/13/11, RKRC <ronr...@gmail.com> wrote:

    From: RKRC <>
    Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Who Is This Professor Toyin Falola? An Olive Branch Rebuttal
    To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
    Date: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 6:36 AM

    Malvolio had a similar moment .  Sir Toby's advice, as I recall, was "Go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him ..."  

    Regards,
    Kayode

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