The seventh issue of Palapala magazine, the Cameroonian/Pan-African literary Magazine is now available online. This issue features exciting essays, short stories and poems from budding and established writers from around the continent.
In another article, poet, Wirndzerem G. Barfee, laments about the dearth of literary criticism and debate around Anglophone Cameroon literature at a time when that literature is going through a rennaisance with over 50 works of fiction in the past year alone:
"I mean that gone are those ionized and lionized days when our writers, critics, literary professionals and wo/men of culture in general, held court in well-followed newspaper columns, had appetizing debates on TV, and regularly intervened and participated in literary radio programs. Dead are those days when their media interventions would be both the grist of street conversation mills and the kola with which beer was boozed within quarter bars. You would not believe those days existed, but recent publications lamenting the late Bate Besong by Kangsen Feka in PalaPala magazine and Canute Tangwa on his web-blog, remain poignant testimonies and recalls of such glorious days, now lost."
In an emotional and history-laced travel diary, Dibussi Tande narrates his recent trip into the heart of South Africa's frontier territory; a journey which "reminds you that you are travelling through an extraordinary country, chiseled out of the horrors of racial and social dispossession to become a dynamic monument to human dignity.”
In an interview with literary critic Peter Vakunta on the ramifications of linguistic innovation in African literature, novelist Patrice Nganang argues that:
The biggest mistake made in literary criticism today, and this is attributable to advocates of a return to African languages in writing African literature—Obi Wali, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Boris Diop— is to imagine that creative writing entails a face-to-face confrontation between African languages on the one hand, and European languages on the other. For Cameroonians this cannot be the case, because in a city like Yaoundé where the predominant language is French, there is a congregation of more than two hundred non-European languages spoken in the country. In my novels and in my other fictional writings, Yaoundé is the setting of my storytelling. How can I imagine that in this multilingual city, in this city where most people shift from one language to the other, and in this city where neighborhoods are organized along ethnic lines, there should only be a tandem between French and Cameroonian languages?
Palapala editor Kangsen Wakai advertises a position for:
"a highly skilled, motivated — with emphasis on ‘motivated’— and peripatetic individuals who can embark on the comfort induced, guilt cleansing, feel-good, but nevertheless pompous task of saving and illuminating a massive chunk of real estate with excess resources and not enough commonsense for its own good...But, the applicant must also exhibit a profound appreciation for NGOs and other post-modern missionary movements cloaked in self-righteous garbs with smiles and hope to share. We will not consider candidate's who want to build partnerships. These people need to be led!"
In a brief essay, Dami Ajayi writes about an arranged and loveless marriage, a brief, passionate and ultimately tragic affair, and the ensuing despair in "Henry's Hypothesis”:
What is love anyways; a concept, a consequence or sheer condescension? How can love be explained without recruiting the prefix, “con-”? But there was a time I believed in life. There was that time when I thought the concept of love was either a consequence of concession or condescension. With my wife, it was the former.
This fascinating issue also includes an excerpt of Joyce Ashuntantang’s latest movie script, We the People, along with poems from Oscar Chenyi Labang, Koonta Kintey and Denji Abdullahi.
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