In our regular Book Digest segment, we spotlight new books from Chiziterem Chijioke, Médessè Nathalie Sagbo, Yashika Graham, and Eugen Bacon.
Dear Zimi by Chiziterem Chijioke
Publisher: Quramo
Date: October 23, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Language: English
Where to find it: To be confirmed
Chiziterem Chijioke
Chiziterem Chijioke is a Creative Director, Digital Marketer, and Storyteller. She is an experienced Writer with a history of working in the writing and editing industry. Dear Zimi came about from her winning the Quramo Manuscript Prize.
Dear Zimi
Dear Zimi is the story of Zimife, a university undergraduate who gets pregnant for Tobore, a youth corps member after a one-time sex on Valentine’s Day in 2021, the same day the ASUU strike commenced. After being found out by her brother as she prepares to get an abortion, she accepts the reality of having to keep the baby. The story follows her journey to navigating how this new reality transforms her life. She goes through this journey with her supportive best friend, Belema. She learns the value of sacrifice and is forced to confront her selfishness. The book is a novel that is intended for a general audience.
Tassie Hangbe by Médessè Nathalie Sagbo
Publisher: H Diffusion
Date: November 13, 2024
Genre: Comic
Language: French
Where to find it: Eyerolles
Médessè Nathalie Sagbo
Médessè Nathalie Sagbo is a Benin professional and comic artist.
Tassie Hangbe
Tassi Hangbé is the daughter of King Houégbadja and the twin sister of King Akaba. The latter lost his life during an epic battle. But in order not to demobilize the fighters, she decided to hide her death by disguising herself. Once the battle was won, Hangbé succeeded her brother and became his Queen of the kingdom under her true identity. Hangbé is known for having created an army of AGOODJIÉ (in Fon) warriors, later referred to by European historians as the “Amazons”. She was also an outstanding singer (hence her name Hangbé). In 1711, she was forced to renounce the throne in the face of the intrigues and wickedness of the royal court of Danxomè. She was the ONLY woman to have reigned on the throne of Danxomè. This work, produced in the form of a comic strip, aims to tell his life story to our fellow citizens and to the whole world through the story of his three tumultuous years of reign from 1708 to 1711 on the throne of Danxomè. This comic strip has a cultural and educational vocation but also a historical scope.
Some of Us Can Go Back Home by Yashika Graham
Publisher: Banyan Books
Date: December 1, 2024
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Where to find it: Banyan Books
Yashika Graham
Yashika Graham is a Jamaican writer, visual artist, and the 2019 recipient of the Mervyn Morris Prize for poetry. An executive member of the Poetry Society of Jamaica, she won the 2018 and 2019 Poetry Clash Competitions at the University of the West Indies, Mona where she read for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literatures in English. In 2016, she won the Noteworthy Writer Award from the Jamaica Creative Writing Competition for her poem “Time Travel” for which she released a short film in 2017, following the release of her 2016 short film “Directions from the Border.” Graham received a 2018 Centrum Writers’ Residency and 2019 Urban Wilderness Project Research and Teaching Fellowship, and is published in journals including The Caribbean Writer, Susumba, POUi, Spillway magazine, PREE Lit, Moko magazine, Jamaica Journal, Magma 76 and anthologized in Cordite Review 81: New Caribbean Writing, selected by Vladimir Lucien. Graham has read her work, given lectures and taught cross-genre workshops internationally including for the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference in Washington, USA.
Some of Us Can Go Back Home
Some of Us Can Go Back Home is a poetry collection deeply rooted in Jamaican heritage but with a universal resonance. It combines lyrical prowess and keen insight charting a poignant exploration of home and self-discovery. This collection of poems is a transformative journey of heart and identity. They unearth stories of love, loss, and healing. These poems evoke a yearning for a new sense of belonging, a map to navigate our own reclamation. This collection breathes new life into the ordinary and the extraordinary and embolden us to break uneasy silences. It is the poet’s invitation to rediscover the profound meaning of finding our place in the world, even when that place rests on uneasy ground.
Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction edited by Eugen Bacon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Date: November 14, 2024
Genre: Nonfiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Bloomsbury Academic
Eugen Bacon (Editor)
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of several novels and collections. She’s a British Fantasy Award winner, a Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in other awards. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’, and was a 2024 Philip K Dick Award nominee. Eugen’s creative work has appeared worldwide, including in Apex Magazine, Award Winning Australian Writing, Fantasy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction.
Contributors
Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Dilman Dila, Eugen Bacon, Nerine Dorman, Nuzo Onoh, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Stephen Embleton, Suyi Okungbowa, Tobi Ogundiran and Xan van Rooyen.
Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction
In this vibrant and approachable book, award-winning writers of black speculative fiction bring together excerpts from their work and creative reflections on futurisms with original essays. Features an introduction by Suyi Okungbowa. Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction showcases creative-critical essays that negotiate genre bending and black speculative fiction with writerly practice. As Afrodecendant peoples with lived experience from the continent, award-winning authors use their intrinsic voices in critical conversations on Afrofuturism and Afro-centered futurisms. By engaging with difference, they present a new kind of African study that is an evaluative gaze at African history, African spirituality, Afrosurrealism, “becoming,” black radical imagination, cultural identity, decolonizing queerness, myths, linguistic cosmologies, and more. Contributing authors – Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Dilman Dila, Eugen Bacon, Nerine Dorman, Nuzo Onoh, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Stephen Embleton, Suyi Okungbowa, Tobi Ogundiran and Xan van Rooyen – offer boldly hybrid chapters (both creative and scholarly) that interface Afrocentric artefacts and exegesis. Through ethnographic reflections and intense scrutinies of African fiction, these writers contribute open and diverse reflections of Afro-centered futurisms. The authors in Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction feature in major genre and literary awards, including the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Locus, Ignyte, Nommo, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson and Otherwise Awards, among others. They are also intrinsic partners in a vital conversation on the rise of black speculative fiction that explores diversity and social (in)justice, charting poignant stories with black hero/ines who remake their worlds in color zones of their own image.
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