7pm at Clapham Junction on a Tuesday. I’d never heard of Book Slam before but the blurb on the website had said something about turning up and joining the queue, typical Naija cynic that I am I was thinking “Queue? What kind of literary event in Clapham on a Tuesday will have a queue?”
Well as they say if you don’t know now you know. And now I know! I turned up and the queue was round the corner!
A clue should have been the line up, which was what drew me in, the crème de la crème of new African talent; first off Inua Ellams erstwhile spoken word artist, playwright, graphic artist par excellence, and then Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe reborn as a proud modern Igbo woman and author of 'Half a yellow sun', 'Purple Hibiscus' and 'The thing around your neck' along with Lem Sissay and Nick Mulvey.
Hmmmm
Maybe the round the block queue makes sense now!
Getting inside I found a lively amphitheatre turned into a restaurant cum bar come spoken word theatre, it was standing room only by the time my queuing ass had gotten in!
I must at this point declare an interest, as loyal Proud to be African fans should know, Inua designed the iconic Proud to be African logo (that I call PTBA2) as well as the Born in the UK, Made in Africa series, he also did me the honour of wearing a black PTBA T shirt on the night and he did the label proud as he gave the first reading.
I had to reveal my bias as I didn’t want anyone to think my praise was a ‘backhander’ but his opening set the scene for an excellent evening, starting with a recital of ‘Ash Skinned’ from the 14th Tale, moving on to the brilliant 'Twenty five', which ends with the immortal line "........Annie is fine, Annie is doing ok"”, he finished off with ‘The Boys of Plateau Private School’ a dedication to his nerdy days hanging out with his friends at the above mentioned Plateau Private School.
As mentioned above ‘Ash Skinned’ is from Inua’s play ‘The 14thTale’ which is playing at Tara Studio. This is the second run of the play which garnered rave reviews and sold out when it ran at the National Theatre in early 2010. I’ll be there next week so wait out for the blog post from that.
After a drink and chop break Lem Sissay the MC then introduced Chimamanda Adichie, who had graciously signed my 2 hastily purchased copies of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, you see being a calculating, hard nosed Igbo man I had actually planned to take my existing copies of her books to be autographed but as I got there liver failed me and like a star struck 12 year old I meekly bought fresh copies of books that I already own for signing!
Anyway I digress; after effortlessly falling my hand Ms Adichie took to the stage and after giving a shout out to all the natural haired black women in the audience (thereby alienating all the unnaturally haired black women in the room much to my amusement!) she then gave a fascinating reading of her new short story 'Quality Street'.
As I’ve mentioned before the presentation by Ms Adichie at TED kind of encapsulates a lot of the thinking behind PTBA and this story again revolved around the generational and geographic disconnect by those of us abroad and those still at home. Kind of reminded me of how when I go home I turn up my nose and getting exasperated at everything for the first few days until I acclimatise back into life but it was again put across by Ms Adichie far more eloquently than I could. My best effort at capturing this disconnect is the Born in the UK Made in Africa series of T shirts and hoodys but then again how does that compare to The first half was rounded up by a brilliant performance by musician and guitarist Nick Mulvey whose haunting rendition of ‘Look at Miss Ohio’ captured the audience.
As it was past my bed time (e.g. 9pm!) I was compelled to leave missing Inua’s reading in the second half of ‘Fragments of Bone, Candy coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars’ and Ms Adichie’s second part of her story
As much as I kicked myself for missing the second half, I had a strange warm, fuzzy feeling in my gut that wasn’t just a combination of hunger and indigestion but a genuine feeling of pleasure at the abundance of literary riches I’d experienced, I’d met Chimamanda Adichie and made like a 12 year old school boy, I’d heard Inua Ellams perform at his brilliant best. A good evening of African literary excellence it made this African man very Proud!
PS see you at Under the Bridge for Femi Temowo's album launch on Friday 23rd September
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