Black Looks

• Coming out Queer with a Green Passport

  Posted: September 30, 2010, 8:34 pm by Sokari

  Great post on BellaNaija – a young Nigerian, Z, tells her very positive “coming out gender queer” story. A story which addresses the complexity of sexuality, sexual orientation and gender variance. Honestly, it can be a little unnerving to be so open about who I am, but it’s important to me to [...]

• Cyber HyperReality – The Genesis of a Struggle.

  Posted: September 28, 2010, 11:12 pm by Sokari

  It started with four students sitting at a diner in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 50 years ago. The four refused to move and by the end of the month,   the protest was 70,000 plus strong and had spread across the whole Southern US - By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five [...]

• Women and the Nation

  Posted: September 28, 2010, 6:11 pm by Sokari

  The original idea for this piece was to write a short essay on Nigerian Feminism over the past 50 years.  However there are still those who feel that “feminism” is unAfrican and I feel there needs to be a discussion on what Nigerian Feminism is before one can begin to name Nigerian feminists.   I [...]

• A REVOLUTION OF THE MIND: PIGMENT

  Posted: September 27, 2010, 5:36 pm by Sokari

  A REVOLUTION OF THE MIND: PIGMENT – a poem by Donald Molosi speak to her in yoruba, twi, swahili, sesarwa, setswana or shona. she may not comprehend some, but in all she will delight in a rhythm natural to her ear, a movement instinctive to her tongue and hopefully a reassurance that she has a home on the other side [...]

• Saving Nigeria from Save Nigeria

  Posted: September 27, 2010, 4:30 pm by Sokari

  THIS POST IS NOW OUT OF DATE as more intrigues are appearing as I write. Nigeria’s election campaign is off to a great start. Political intrigue, a plethora of candidates – old faces which need to disappear have revived themselves and new ones provide plenty of opportunities for gossip – campaign and pro-democracy [...]

• Tweets of the Week

  Posted: September 25, 2010, 11:00 pm by Sokari

  ♥ Sign 'O' The Times Outtake by Nina Simone #lastfm http://bit.ly/baJW3W # ♥ Whatever I Am (You Made Me) by Nina Simone #lastfm http://bit.ly/agNNw9 # All #US have benefited frm the cheap gas from #NigerDelta now I am here to stake my claim # http://open.spotify.com/track/6EEdnQhgIPgS1VnNCBi5W8 Spotify: Nina Simone – Zungo # ♥ Ya Kelbi by Souad Massi [...]

• Goodluck anthems – yikes

  Posted: September 25, 2010, 5:31 pm by Sokari

  Nigerian Curiosity has posted a selection of Goodluck Jonathan’s election videos – Election videos are always crass, sentimental white washed [in this case green washed] bathroom singalongs and Jonathan should be commended for managing to keep to the genre. Its a bit difficult to take the notion of transparency seriously when confronted with some [...]

• Taking Freedom Home – 2 years in the life of the Welfare Warriors

  Posted: September 23, 2010, 5:04 pm by Sokari

  Taking Freedom Home is a truly powerful film which documents the many challenges faced by low income LGBTGNC (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming) residents of New York City and their daily survival strategies.. The stories are full of daily encounters with prejudicies, exclusionary language and frustration at a system which cannot see [...]

• Turbulence

  Posted: September 20, 2010, 5:36 pm by Sokari

  Turbulence – a poem by Donald Molosi. in the proverbial accord of hand and glove does the sea flirt with you as i watch from the plane. – turbulence! - land of Nkrumah, of gods and gold, land of Ghana: wonsu saa biom. your tears salted the sea once when it beguiled you [...]

• Ajami writing system

  Posted: September 20, 2010, 5:10 pm by Sokari

  Ajami writing system has been used for at least at least a thousands years in parts of Africa. As I understand it, the script is a modification of Arabic incorporating local languages such as Hausa [mainly the northern regions of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana] and Fula – Fulani [mainly Gambia, Senegal, Nigeria, [...]

• Tweets of the Week

  Posted: September 18, 2010, 11:00 pm by Sokari

  #BBC Africa Service wanting ppl born on #Nigeria Independence day- 1st Oct 1960- to take part in show on parallel lives # #NigeriaElections #SocialMedia http://bit.ly/93RUgv # #WOZA #ZIMBABWE sue HomeAffairs over flithy police cells http://bit.ly/bTI23D # 47th Anniversary of #Birmingham bombing – Addie May Collins, Denis McNair,Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley – Take time out to reflect [...]

• Sole Rebels – Green by heritage

  Posted: September 18, 2010, 7:38 pm by Sokari

  Making shoes from old tyres and other recycled material is not a new idea but Ethiopian social entrepreneur, Bethlehem Tilahun, founder of Sole Rebels, has taken this further to produce 80 different designs in range of colours including turning old army uniforms into shoes. This year the company expects to double its profit [...]

• “For Colored Girls”

  Posted: September 17, 2010, 10:10 pm by Sokari

  Directed by Tyler Perry, “For Colored Girls” is an adaptation of the play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf,” by Ntozake Shange. My initial excitement for the movie was dulled because I feared Perry wouldn’t get it right, stray so far away from the premise of the poetry and bring [...]

• Women Take Ownership Of Their Sexuality And The Streets

  Posted: September 16, 2010, 9:19 pm by Sokari

  The following piece was written by Cheryl Roberts on the Sparkling Women Facebook page – This is the kind of piece that should be written and to which I was referring to my post from yesterday “Telling other people’s stories” . Fighting Homophobia, Women Take Ownership Of Their Sexuality And The Streets Given our non-racial democratic South African [...]

• Nigeria: A publisher and a writer

  Posted: September 16, 2010, 6:13 pm by Sokari

  Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, who along with Jeremy Weate founded Cassava Republic Press, is interviewed on Nigerian and African literature. She is critical of the “degradation” of Nigeria’s education system and what she sees as the unwillingness of “wannabe” writers to engage with their peers so as to learn the craft of writing. Another [...]

• Every 2nd day a transperson is reported murdered

  Posted: September 15, 2010, 10:05 pm by Sokari

  From the Trans Murder Monitoring Project – The project does not as yet appear to include monitoring Africa. A year ago, Transgender Europe (TGEU), the European advocacy organisation and network of trans organizations, published the first preliminary results of its worldwide Trans Murder Monitoring. By July 2009, the research team of TGEU had documented 121 reported [...]

• Telling OTHER people’s stories

  Posted: September 15, 2010, 5:02 pm by Sokari

  Ok this is my call out moment – Another article on ‘corrective rape’ in South Africa. Another single story. Another story that tells me I am part of a tribe whilst you are part of a nation and worse we fight amongst ourselves something your nations of course dont do and in doing [...]

• Some Images of Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti

  Posted: September 14, 2010, 7:21 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Yesterday, I came across this album that contains pictures from the private collection of the much loved Nigerian feminist, shero and inspiration to several young girls and women, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. With Sokari’s help, here are some pictures from the album below but make sure to click on the link above to see more pictures and [...]

• Review of “African women writing resistance”

  Posted: September 14, 2010, 6:19 pm by Sokari

  ForeWord Book Reviews » African Women Writing Resistance:: An Anthology African Women Writing Resistance:: An Anthology African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices collects writings of thirty-six women from thirteen African countries, providing a metaphorical megaphone to those women and a clear, unflinching look at what it’s like to be female and oppressed in [...]

• The Legacy of Nigerian Feminism

  Posted: September 12, 2010, 1:04 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Since I returned to Nigeria earlier this year, I have not met any woman who openly identified as a feminist. It almost seems as though the word ‘feminist’ is blacklisted, that is to say people don’t identify with it regardless of whether their actions and behaviour screams ‘feminist’. Now there may be many reasons for [...]

• Tweets of the Week

  Posted: September 11, 2010, 11:00 pm by Sokari

  Hidden in the open – photographic essay of #Black #gay couples http://bit.ly/d1Waes # Old Lesbians Organizing for Change fight #racism and# ageism http://bit.ly/dexC4r #LGBTI [via @pazuzu_hsp] # Thanks to @kerennattiah @tommymiles @007sista for #FF # #Roma series – excellent blog which has been documenting Roma in #Greece #Europe for past 5 yrs http://bit.ly/9VXVCQ [...]

• The Kunlun Servants & African Merchants in Ancient China

  Posted: September 10, 2010, 12:18 am by Eccentric Yoruba

  In my previous post I mentioned that I had read somewhere that two slaves given as gifts to the a Chinese Emperor by an Arab delegation were the first Africans to enter ancient China. This may have been wrong really because dark-skinned people were talked in China as early as the [...]

• What happened after the earthquake: Interview with community activist, Rea Dol

  Posted: September 10, 2010, 9:27 pm by Sokari

  Rea Dol is the Director and co-founder of Society of Providence United for the Economic Development of Petion-Ville (SOPUDEP), a grassroots organization in Haiti offering education for children and adults and a micro-credit program for women. Her work in the aid effort following the January 12th earthquake in Haiti was the subject of a New [...]

• Gates Foundation holding hands with Monsanto

  Posted: September 9, 2010, 11:14 pm by Sokari

  I have never had faith in what lay behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s charitable works in Africa.  The disclosure that the Foundation has directly invested up to $21 million in the  GM Biotechnology agricultural giant, Monsanto is confirmation to me that all was never well with this pair of billionaires.    While I [...]

• Radical Soul

  Posted: September 8, 2010, 9:06 pm by Sokari

  A Quiet Legend of conscious music – Curtis Mayfield Mayfield interrogated racial oppression, challenged the status quo, and inspired the young with a number of powerfully poetic songs – “Miss Black America,” “Moving on Up; “Don’t Worry if There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go” and “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” –

• Homophobic rantings on the Atlanta metro

  Posted: September 6, 2010, 6:29 pm by Sokari

  So familiar – two friends / lovers leaning on each other, one reading, one sleeping – how ordinary is that? Very – but from the online reactions the ease and ordinariness of their friendship is their greatest offense – Rod McCollum at Rod 2.0 explains: The image was snapped of two young men apparently [...]

• Rebirthing: Grandma we are poets

  Posted: September 5, 2010, 8:01 pm by Sokari

  grandma, we are poets: lucille clifton rebirth broadcast #10 from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo. Take home message: ableism denies and perpetuates trauma. In this poem Lucille Clifton breaks down traditional definitions of autism and reminds us that every way we experience the world is poetic, and necessary for the end of oppression…i.e. the transformation we deserve. [...]

• African / China connections

  Posted: September 5, 2010, 10:06 am by Sokari

  A couple of years ago I watched this video on a different kind of migration – Nigerians living in China and of course every day something is written about Chinese investing in various parts of Africa – Nigeria, Sudan, Zimababwe to name a few. As long as I can remember there have always [...]

• Tweets of the Week

  Posted: September 4, 2010, 11:00 pm by Sokari

  #Transgender people experience of domestic abuse http://bit.ly/9kQQo7 # #Africans in ancient #China and Chinese in ancient Africa http://bit.ly/brzb6u # Rememberig Sean Rigg #DeathinBrixtonPoliceStation #London http://bit.ly/cT1DEQ Tnks @danwibg for reminder # Tribute to #Es #039;Kia_Mphahlele #South_Africa Literature #Apartheid l http://bit.ly/ctUAD1 # #Nigeria_government falling falling fall……. Stop retracting and deferring and begging on Bhalf of [...]

• Literary Nigeria: Saraba Magazine

  Posted: September 2, 2010, 1:00 pm by Sokari

  Saraba is an online literary magazine created and published by Emmanuel Iduma and Damilola Ajayi, two Nigerian students of the University of Ife. Saraba has just published its 6th edition in just 18 months and has gone from strength to strength. There are a number of Nigerian run literary blogs such [...]

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes