Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Chinua Achebe Publishes Eagerly Anticipated Biafra Memoir

Achebe, Chinua. 2012. There was a country: a personal history of Biafra. New York: Penguin Press.

Chinua Achebe's eagerly anticipated memoirs of the Biafran war went on sale in the UK on September 26, 2012. The US edition goes on sale on October 11, 2012.


Synopsis
Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, is a writer whose moral courage and storytelling gifts have left an enduring stamp on world literature. There Was a Country is his long-awaited account of coming of age during the defining experience of his life: the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War of 1967-1970. It became infamous around the world for its impact on the Biafrans, who were starved to death by the Nigerian government in one of the twentieth century's greatest humanitarian disasters.

Major Publication on the Media in Africa Launched in Cape Town

Guy Berger (ed). MEDIA IN AFRICA: Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom. Media Institute of Southern Africa, 2011, 190 pages.

I am thrilled to be a contributor to one of the most comprehensive publications in the last decade on the state of the media in Africa, which was launched yesterday in Cape Town at the start of the Pan African Conference on Access to Information and the Highway Africa 15th conference.

Overview

 What has been the state-of-play for African media in  the 20 years since the historic Windhoek Declaration of 1991 which gave rise to World Press Freedom Day every 3 May? And what can be expected over the next decade? More than 70 commentators illuminate the trajectory in a range of contributions in this book - covering the issues of media freedom, pluralism, independence and access to information.

Just (Re)Published: N.N Mbile's Memoir on Politics in (Southern) Cameroon(s)

N.N. Mbile. Cameroon Political Story: Memories of an Authentic Eye Witness | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | 2011 | 310 pages. Available from Amazon.com

In a 2007 article titled "Individual Memory and Collective Amnesia: Where are the Political Memoirs?", I lamented about "a long list of prominent Cameroonians on both sides of the Mungo who never bothered to write their memoirs thereby depriving future generations of Cameroonians of the right to know and understand their past."

Commenting specifically about the British Southern Cameroons, I pointed out that "of the original 13 Southern Cameroons representatives who sat in Nigeria’s Eastern House of Assembly in Enugu in 1952 (the Cameroon bloc), only one, Nerius Namaso Mbile, wrote his memoirs which were published in 1999."

Just Published! "Tiko" - a Collection of Short Stories by Shandie Avwontom

Shandie Shing Avwontom.TIKO. AuthorHouse, June 20, 2011. 152 pages. Available on Amazon.com and other major online booksellers.

TIKO is a collection of four crisp and fast-pace short stories.

In a country (Cameroon) where one story is usually told in several languages at the same time, to an audience which speaks no less than four languages on a daily basis (usually English, French, Pidgin, and a local dialect) the author felt challenged by the simplicity and straighforward beauty in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Strange Maladies. He set out to express the beauty of his own urban African stories as they are told: a gripping flow of numerous languages and expressions harmonised into English that keeps the reader going and going.

Just Published: The Secrets of an Aborted Decolonisation by Carlson Anyangwe

Carlson Anyangwe. The Secrets of an Aborted Decolonisation: The Declassified British Secret Files on the Southern Cameroons. | 806 pages | 234 x 156 mm | B/W Illustrations | 2010 | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback

From book cover
A remarkable feature of the collapse of the British Empire is that the British departed from almost every single one of their colonial territories invariably leaving behind a messy situation and an agenda of serious problems that in most cases still haunt those territories to this day. One such territory is the Southern British Cameroons. There, the British Government took the official view that the territory and its people were “expendable”. It opposed, for selfish economic reasons, sovereign statehood for the territory, in clear violation of the UN Charter and the norm of self-determination. It transferred the Southern Cameroons to a new colonial overlord and hurriedly left the territory. The British Government’s bad faith, duplicity, deception, wheeling and dealing, and betrayal of the people of the Southern Cameroons is incredible and defies good sense. Ample evidence of this is provided by the declassified documents in this book.

Rosemary Ekosso's "House of Falling Women" Nominated for the Aidoo-Snyder Prize

House of Falling Women, the debut novel of Cameroonian writer Rosemary Ekosso has been nominated for the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize.

Other nominees include Kenyan novelist Wambui Githiora for her book Wanjira; Valerie Tagwira of Zimbabwe for The Uncertainty of Hope; Amma Darko of Ghana for Not Without Flowers; Kopano Matlwa of South Africa for Coconut.

The Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize is awarded annually by the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association (ASA) for an outstanding book published by a woman that prioritizes African women’s experiences. Named in honor of Ama Ata Aidoo, the celebrated Ghanaian novelist and short-story writer, and Margaret Snyder, the founding Director of UNIFEM, this award will be given during the 2010 ASA annual meetings in San Francisco at the Women’s Caucus Annual Lecture and Luncheon. Every fifth year the prize is given for a creative work, this year the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize will be awarded for a novel.

Fourth Edition of Acclaimed Historical Dictionary of Cameroon Now Available

DeLancey, Mark D., Rebecca Neh Mbuh, and Mark DeLancey. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon (4th Edition). Historical Dictionaries of Africa, no. 113. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2010. 530 pages.  

Book Flyer from Scarecrow Press
Cameroon is a country endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals, substantial forests, and a dynamic population. It is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talented and highly educated members of the population are emigrating in large numbers. Although Cameroon has made economic progress since independence, it has not been able to change the dependent nature of its economy. The economic situation combined with the dismal record of its political history, indicate that prospects for political stability, justice, and prosperity are dimmer than they have been for most of the country's independent existence.

Books by Dibussi Tande

Available on Amazon.com

Just Published: "Betrayal of Too Trusting a People" by Carlson Anyangwe

Carlson Anyangwe. Betrayal of Too Trusting a People: The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons. Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback | 260 pages | 2009

There is a growing body of literature on what was originally envisioned as a free political association of the French and British Cameroons and its dramatic effects on the 'British Cameroons' community. Anyangwe's new book is an attempt to write the history of the Southern Cameroons from a legal perspective. This authoritative work describes in great detail the story of La Republique du Cameroun's alleged annexation and colonization of the Southern Cameroons following the achievement of its independence, while highlighting the seeming complicity of the United Nations and the British Trusteeship Authority. In the process, Anyangwe unravels a number of myths created by the main actors to justify this injustice and, in the end, makes useful suggestions to reverse the situation and to restore statehood to the Southern Cameroons. The book is rich in archival research and informed by a global perspective. It convincingly shows the uniqueness of the Southern Cameroons case.

Joyce Ashuntantang: Foreign Publishers Determine the Nature of our Stories (Interview)

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande

“As long as foreign publishers remain the mid-wives of our stories, they will keep determining the nature of these stories.” Joyce Ashuntantang

Early this year, Joyce Ashuntantang published a book titled Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature which Bernth Lindfors describes as the "most comprehensive study of Anglophone Cameroon literature that has been published to date". In the book, Dr. Ashuntantang, who teaches literature at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, USA, demonstrates that contrary to widespread belief, literature from the English-speaking part of Cameroon is alive and well, in spite of a host of obstacles that have slowed its development and reduced its international visibility. In this interview, Dr. Ashuntantang discusses her ground-breaking book and the state of Anglophone Cameroon literature with Dibussi Tande. Excerpts:

Now Available! Scribbles from the Den

Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den: Essays on Politics and Collective Memory in Cameroon. Langaa publishers. 232 pages. Now available from African Books Collective, Oxford (£19.95), Michigan State University Press, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble ($29.95).

(Press Release) New Anthology to Promote Anglophone Cameroonian Writing

New writing from Anglophone authors in Cameroon is featured in an anthology to be released in July. 
 
The Spirit Machine and other new short stories from Cameroon is the first in a new series of books aiming to promote emerging Anglophone writers unknown in the West but “whose writing tells wonderful new stories in wonderful new ways”.
 
Edited and introduced by Dr Emma Dawson, of Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, The Spirit Machine will be published on July 1 by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press in the World Englishes Literature Fiction series.