Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Book Review - "No Turning Back" by Dibussi Tande

Reviewed by Lyombe Eko

Dibussi Tande. No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom 1990-1993. Langaa Research and Publishing (Bamenda, 2007).

   Writing is an existential act. To write is to proclaim loudly and clearly that one exists. From an historical perspective, those who would not have written something, anything, would not have existed!  However, writing is more than a mere proclamation of existence. Writers who have made their mark in life, whose proverbial pens have left strokes on the body politic of humanity are those who are engaged in the eternal struggles of human existence, ­the fight for justice, fairness, human dignity, as well as the right to appreciate the sacred and the aesthetically pleasing things of life.

Reliving The Twilight: A Review of Dibussi Tande's No Turning Back

Reviewed by Kangsen Feka Wakai (Originally published in The Frontier Telegraph Vol. II No. 8 of January 29, 2008)

Dibussi Tande No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom 1990-1993 - Available on Amazon.com and Michigan State University Press)

To suggest that Cameroon embodies the tragedy that befell African peoples when European colonialism imposed itself on the continent is quite an understatement.   

Today, Cameroon, like a host of its African neighbors has become a landscape on which real and imagined identities are contested.   This struggle within Cameroon, albeit critical in its evolution as a geo-political entity, occurs against a backdrop of political misrule, economic stagnation, social tensions, and systematic graft.

We Shall Rise Again!!!

By Dibussi Tande (Culled from No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom 1990-1993 - Available on Amazon.com and Michigan State University Press)

From the heights of the Menchum falls
And the heart of the Congress hall
Shall come the long awaited call
That will bring down these walls.

From the mysterious Barombi lakes
And the mythical Oku lake
Shall rise liberty's mermaid
Who shall come to our aid.
From the historic park of Ntarikon
The selfless martyrs shall come
To water the struggle
And break down hurdles.

Book Review: “No Turning Back” - Dibussi Tande’s Vision for a Better World

A Review by Joyce Ashutantang, Ph.D. (Department of English, University of Connecticut, Greater Hartford, USA). Published in Pambazuka news.

Dibussi Tande. No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom, 1990 – 1993. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers. 2007. Available from amazon.com and Michigan State University Press.

Dibussi Tande is an Anglophone Cameroonian. At least this is the threshold on which he stands in this collection of poetry titled No turning back. Yet Dibussi forces us to turn back and look at the pivotal volcanic moments in Cameroon’s history between 1990- 1993. During this time the wind of change which brought down the Berlin Wall and fueled the Perestroika train reached Cameroon. The result was not only the launching of the Social Democratic front by Ni John Fru Ndi in 1990, an event which ushered in multi-party politics in Cameroon, but a renaissance of Anglophone Cameroon Nationalism or what became known as “the Anglophone Cameroon question”.

Book Review: "No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom" By Dibussi Tande

Dibussi Tande. No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom, 1990 – 1993. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers. 2007. 72 pages. [$19.95 (US), £14.95 (UK), CDN$ 21.14 (Canada) and EUR 17,94 (France/Europe), JPY 4,023 (Japan) CNY 149.835 (China)

About the Book
No Turning Back relives the tumultuous beginnings of Africa’s democratization experiment in the early 1990s. The main theme of the collection is an investment in hope and in the resilience of Africans. The poems are loud and clear in their castigation of dictatorship and its miseries. They celebrate the mass resolve and thirst for democracy by Africans for whom there is ‘No turning back’!

Editorial Reviews
"A lucid and truly memorable collection of poems. Dibussi forces us to turn back and look at the pivotal volcanic moments in Cameroon’s history between 1990- 1993... As a student activist and budding journalist during this historic period, Dibussi captures cadences of this struggle eloquently… The poems are very accessible and despite Dibussi’s admiration for the prolific playwright and poet, Bate Besong’s “Soyinka style” of poetry, Dibussi instead fits into the poetic school of another prolific poet, Niyi Osundare."
Joyce Ashuntantang – Ph.D. Department of English University of Connecticut, Greater Hartford, USA.