Batuo's world

BATE BESONG: THE FINAL INTERVIEW

  by Joyce Ashuntantang

A few days before his death in a ghastly accident, the feisty Anglophone Cameroon playwright and Poet, Bate Besong recorded this interview with ace CRTV Producer, Robert Ekukole. Little did both of them know that the interview would be BB's Last. Bate Besong, the celebrated champion of the masses, died in a ghastly car accident on March 8 2007 along side, Veteran producer, Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a, Ambe Hilarious and their driver, Awoh Franklin. Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) later broadcasted this interview posthumously.

In this prophetic interview, Bate Besong states, "Everyday I leave my house...my family knows...for the past twenty years...when I leave my house I know I will not come back home. Every play I write, Any poem I write,  I write as if it is my last poem, as if it is my last book". He died less than a day after a heavily attended launch of what has become his last  book , Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus. He was on his way to Yaounde for a visa interview at the American Embassy in order to attend the 2007 ALA conference In West Virginia.

A Tribute to Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a

Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash).

This is a poem written and performed by Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang, a star actress in in several productions by Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a. Thomas died on March 8th, 2007 along the Douala-Yaoundé Highway as a result of a ghastly auto accident. He died along side Dr. Bate Besong, Dr. Hilarious Ambe and their driver, Mr. Awoh Franklin.

A Tribute to Dr. Bate Besong

Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash)

 

This is a poem written and performed by Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang in Memory of Dr. Bate Besong. Dr. Besong died on March 8th, 2007 along the Douala-Yaoundé Highway as a result of a ghastly auto accident. He died along side Thomas Kwasen Gwan'gwaa, Dr. Hilarious Ambe and their driver, Mr. Awoh Franklin.

Cameroonian Men change Perceptions on Valentine’s Day.

 By Joyce Ashuntantang*

In a rare show of emotion and public display of affection for their spouses and significant others, a bunch of Cameroonian men a.k.a African men, defied the stereotypes to actually profess their love openly on February 13^th in Dallas, Texas. They did it with red roses, gifts, poems, sultry looks and kisses. Maybe it had to do with the particular women involved, just maybe!

The occasion was a Valentine’s day party dubbed “An affair of the heart” organized by the Ex Saker Students Association (EXSSA USA), Dallas chapter. This is an alumni organization of the prestigious Saker Baptist College, in Limbe, Cameroon; a Christian based boarding secondary school for girls. These girls, now grown women are a combination of fine intelligence and positive energy that revitalizes. On this day, they went all out to set the mood and the results were there for all to see. The hall was transformed into a banquet fit for royalty, and surely the EXSSA ladies were bent on treating their guests as such.

I Cry When It's Cold

Every winter I cry

Tears bathe my face as winds slap my eyes.

At work the question is always the same

"Are you crying?"

“I cry when it’s cold” I say.

They don’t believe me

And now I wonder…

May be I cry

For lost Totems,Wars, Spaces, Rivers, Springs, Mountains, Trees, Stories, Hearths, Laughs, and Faces.

Or may be I cry for me and you

Displaced, misplaced, misused, abused, disused, misjudged, dislodged!

HYPERBOLE

By Joyce Ashuntantang

Your form curves right into my heart
Your lips drip honey, I'll forgo water
Your nose is straight, it must smell my love
Your eyes eat sleep, I stay awake for you
Your voice is a book, I've read every page
Your smile speaks French, Je t'adore cherie.
"All Hyperbole"
Does that mean "yes"?

VIRTUAL DOOR (For you in my world)

    By Joyce Ashuntantang

Without knowing your face
I built a home for us
So each day I wake up
Did she come? Did he come?

So now you're here
Let your words feed mine
Let your laughter wet mine
Let our worlds touch

Tomorrow  when I come
I'll look for footprints
Left just for me
By this virtual door

Happy Valentine's Day to you all...in my world!

Love it When I be Chilling with You Like This

By Joyce Ashuntantang

I like it when I be chilling with you like this
You be looking at me; I be looking at you
We be playing silly
And all dem logic leave your brain and go to your legs
And your legs got no control.
Then I touch you all over the hilly and valley places
And you shake like a freedom train going north
Then my fingers be really wet
And I look at your face
And you be smiling like Jesus is your own born son
Then you give me the invite
And I take the plunge
After, I be tired and want to sleep, so you say "what's wrong with y'all?
Can't you'll visit Jerusalem and stay awake?"
And I tell you,
"Girl, dem miracles and wonders inside knock us out each time
No way can mortal man ever git used to that"
Then I rest me some and go visiting again!
And now you be tired like Mary don give birth to Jesus
And I be looking at you mum like you aint got speech.
Then you ask me "what you thinking about?"
When you ask, I know logic don leave your legs back to your brain
Can't tell you the truth 'cause my mind done already leave the room.
So I say "Baby, just love it when I be chilling with you like this".

Poetry Equals You

 By Joyce Ashuntantang

Being with you is poetry itself.
Lines sprint in laughter, song and silence
Punctuations run riot:
Commas stretch in stride
Exclamation marks abound

Stanzas embrace orality:
Tales of folks long gone
Legends of heroes around us
Myths of bodies enlaced
Riddles of our essence

Images glide in bodily spaces
Words submerge in fall colors.
Labial sounds in legato rhythms
dance and dissolve in end-rhymes.
There's no need for scansion

A Buea Childhood

 

   By Joyce Ashuntantang

I lick the nightly mountain fires

And taste the morning honey

 

The sun cradles the mountain’s scalp

 My clock on a school day

 

The mountain cries of ancestors

“Amos Evambe, e mokala a ma ja”*

 

Binding in Love (for EXSSA-USA)

In celebration of the 48th anniversary of Saker baptist College, an all girls christain college founded on January 29th 1962 with a vision to groom girls with a high moral and academic acumen. Saker has become a beacon of dynamic womanhood in Cameroon. The alumni (Ex Saker Students Association, EXSSA) of this prestigious college cover the globe and there is an energetic chapter in the USA.    

  By Joyce Ashuntantang
 
With God’s grace freely given,

From Saker Baptist college,

we’ve travelled afar to Atlantic’s other side

But no snow, sleet or slush

 

Will keep Saker off our minds

 

 

Yes, women we’ve now become

 

In different careers of life

 

But we join here in love, as ExSSA USA.

 

Giving back to Saker

 

To glorify our maker

 

 

Every now and then

 

We meet valleys on our paths

 

But armed with our God, we make "a climbing out".

 

Walking in our faith

 

and duty to His word

EduART Awards For Cameroon Literature in English

Published in The Post, Cameroon

EduART Launches 2nd Edition Of Awards For Literature
Friday, January 08, 2010

By Azore Opio

EduART, a US-based corporation, has launched its second edition of awards for Cameroonian Literature, written in English by Cameroonians and published in Cameroon or any other African country. This edition will carry a cash prize of FCFA 200,000 each for the three literary genres; novel, drama and poetry.

Competitors are required to submit three copies each of any works besides fulfilling the following criteria; there is no restriction on setting, theme or mode. EduArt accepts any fictional work which falls in any of the categories below: fiction (novel or collection of short stories) drama and collection of poetry. Non-fiction books are not eligible for these Awards.

To be eligible for the 2010 award, the work must have been written by a citizen of Cameroon; must have been published in Cameroon or any other African Country; must be of a reasonable length; must have been first published between 1st January 2008 and 31 December 2009; the author must be alive on the closing date for entries; the entry must be originally written in English (works translated from other languages are not eligible) the book (s) should have been published with an adult readership in mind. For a collection of short stories or plays to be eligible, at least half of the short stories or plays in the collection must have been published after January 1, 2002.

Furthermore, entries must be made by the author and or copy right holder; self published works are eligible given the dearth of publishing houses in the Cameroon Anglophone territory. To encourage more submissions, publishers or writers may submit up to three books not limited to any category. Where publishers or copyright holders are submitting works, they must obtain the author's consent before submitting her/his work (s). This written consent must accompany the application form.

To enter a book for the competition, send a completed Registration form and 3 copies of the book through ESSICO Express mail services to:

EduArt Awards for Literature 2010

c/oAmity law firm
P. O. Box 90, Buea
Southwest Region
Republic of Cameroon

The deadline for submission is May 15, 2010.

The maiden edition of EduART Awards for Literature; the Victor E. Musinga Award for Drama,
Jane and Rufus Blanshard Award for fiction and Bate Besong Award for Poetry, was launched in July, 2008. It was highly contested and the winner was John Ngong Kum for his poetry collection, "Walls of Agony". The chief judge was renowned poet and Distinguished Professor, Tanure Ojaide of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

According to  Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang, Founder and CEO of  EduART Inc., this organization seeks to use both creative and performing arts to educate, enrich and entertain both Africans on the continent and African immigrants in the USA on varied social and economic developmental issues in order to increase a productive lifestyle. EduArt will also use these artistic media to educate non-Africans on African values, cultural heritage and social lifestyle to facilitate

Friendship

By Joyce Ashuntantang

I miss the days when you were my friend.

When your eyes saw my words

Long before they were born

Those days when my laughter

Was a belt around your waist;

Those days when the hands of the clock

Held my phone to my ear

Those days when I thumped your pages for the sun

But we pushed our friendship to the ground

Now dust has come between us.

Personality

By Joyce Ashuntantang

 

Mami Njaliko, I remember:

Bangles flushed her hand from elbow to wrist

She walked in strides

And swayed to the jingle in her brain

Her eyes flushed the world up and down, left to right.

Her rags were robes

Her soles were shoes

Her hair knotted.

She owned her world and wares;

How we saw her, she did not know

She knew she was cool!

 

 

Either /Or

By Joyce Ashuntantang

 

Either:

Words charge through tunnels

Battlefronts of humanity rage

Targets blur edges

Words crafted in patience

Honed in persistence

Bullets for warring hearts

 

OR

Poets or pistons

Words or bullets

Hearts or targets

Which?

Happy New Year!!!

It's a new day and a new year

like a sun-baked riverbed,

my soul longs for the rain of new beginnings...

 

 

Mbella Sonne Dipoko Dies at 73

(Author of A few Nights and Days, 1969, Because of Women, 1969, Black and White in Love, 1972)

Mbella Sonne Dipoko, Novelist, Poet and politician died on Saturday December 5th 2009 in Tiko, Cameroon after a brief illness. He succeeded his father as chief of Missaka village in 1991, but he continued writing, contributing poems and articles to local and international magazines. His poem, below, was submitted to The Post newspaper, Cameroon, a few days before his death.

Copenhagen

By Mbella Sonne Dipoko

It was foretold long ago
That after Noah's deluge
The next destruction of the world
Would be by fire
And can't you feel the heat building up already,
The global warming up?
 
And so to fulfil the prophecy
Copenhagen is going to be
Just some more hot air
Presaging the sparks that would turn
Into the flames in which the world will be consumed
And then out of the ashes of ecocide capitalism
It won't be Christ on His second coming presiding
On Judgment Day
But Karl Marx returning like a revolutionary phoenix
Out of the ashes of the busting bubbles
Of the lopsided economies
Of our over-heated world

Dipoko in his own words culled from Cameroon Life Magazine (May 1990)

 In the West they would call me a romantic, one of the last breed, I suppose. A romantic and not a mad man, as some people do here, in Africa, fearing the beard and scared of the head of hair...So let them be scared of my look, of my beard, of my head of hair. They are just philistines who are afraid of originality. They wish to be caricatures of Europeans. When they are scared of a mere beard, what would these people do when war comes, when the horizon suddenly begins to sneeze smoke and spit flames? Who will save the nation? For only the courageous can defend the colors of a country.

I did two stints at the university. First, it was when I imagined I could become a lawyer. So for a couple of years I studied law and economics at Paris University. But I gave this up when I began to work on my first novel, A few nights and Days. I really could not reconcile the drudgery of law school studies with the flamboyance of compulsive creative information. And also, what news was coming out of Africa, spoke of the death of freedom, and I thought it would be spiritually stultifying to try to function as a lawyer in a totalitarian environment.

That Boy Obama

       By Joyce Ashuntantang

 

That boy Obama don enter the white house

But ma tears still wet the rose garden

So new days can grow

 

Last night skip Gates* was arrested

He no criminal

But they put the ‘cuffs on him all right.

Don’t know what he be doing in them China

But child, he had no country to come back to

Memory lane 2: (1989) Bole Butake's The Survivors

After surviving what seems like a natural disaster, five survivors are caught in a web of corruption and human rights abuse. They are trapped as refugees and used as pawns by the government to attract international aid. Finally, one of the survivors, Mboysi (a woman) takes charge, manoevers the lead military officer (Bannavti Joseph) and kills him....how long will this victory last? Your guess is as good as mine! This performance took place at the legendary Amphi 700 of the University of Yaounde. It was filmed for Cameroon television by Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a.

This TV Drama Launched Late Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a's career as a veritable TV Producer with Cameroon Television. Joyce and Valentine were 2nd year students at the University of Yaounde at the time. Here with excerpts of the play- Pamela is forced to live with her father's friend while waiting for accomodation at the student hostel. What happens next becomes more than a violation of friendship...

by Joyce Ashuntantang

           

I fell headlong for you

Your saintly face goaded me to sing

Your seminary days lured me

Your snippets of my language at dawn caught me

I matured on the wings of your new deal

 

But you betrayed me too soon

What happened to the ring binding us?

The “united” in our names?

 

I obeyed you as my lord

I draped you in clothes of hue

I made my house home

And called you “fon of fons”

 

Everything of mine became yours

The nectar from my tea leaves

The pods from  my cocoa

The coffee from my farms

 

Blog reviewed by George Esunge Fominyen

Originally published in http://www.gefominyen.com/

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

How many contemporary Cameroonian women would hate to be given the choice to terminate or keep a pregnancy they got because a group of brutes (in that insecurity infested country) stormed into a home, asked the “head of the family” to hand-over the Njangi money he just received,sexually abused him, gang raped his wife and three daughters and asked him (father of the house) to have sex with his own daughters under the pressure of a gun to his temple?

The protestors were told it (the protocol) was ratifying homosexuality (I didn't see that in the Protocol) and murder.

Article 14, paragraph 2C of the Maputo Protocol simply requires of states to: “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the unborn child”

If a woman’s body is hers, to paraphrase Ashutantang, isn’t she entitled to decide whether it is a gift from heaven or hell to carry (for nine-months) the foetus from a violent sexual relationship with an HIV infected gangster or live to nurture a child born of one’s own father?

Beyond what meets the eye

The rhythm, tempo and colour of Ashutangtang’s poems on Batuo’s world are so entrapping one may miss the undertones.

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

How many contemporary Cameroonian women would hate to be given the choice to terminate or keep a pregnancy they got because a group of brutes (in that insecurity infested country) stormed into a home, asked the “head of the family” to hand-over the Njangi money he just received,sexually abused him, gang raped his wife and three daughters and asked him (father of the house) to have sex with his own daughters under the pressure of a gun to his temple?

The protestors were told it (the protocol) was ratifying homosexuality (I didn't see that in the Protocol) and murder.

Article 14, paragraph 2C of the Maputo Protocol simply requires of states to: “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the unborn child”

If a woman’s body is hers, to paraphrase Ashutantang, isn’t she entitled to decide whether it is a gift from heaven or hell to carry (for nine-months) the foetus from a violent sexual relationship with an HIV infected gangster or live to nurture a child born of one’s own father?

Beyond what meets the eye

The rhythm, tempo and colour of Ashutangtang’s poems on Batuo’s world are so entrapping one may miss the undertones.

By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D. *

                                                 (originally published at http://www.postnewsline.com/2009/07/sakerettes-converge-on-obamacity-for-annual-convention.html)

 

 The ex-students of the all girls secondary school, Saker Baptist College, Limbe Cameroon popularly known as Sakerettes will be holding their annual convention in Washington DC from July 30th -2nd August.  This will be the second time the Sakerettes are matching on the nation’s capital, but the  mood that pervades the convention this year is inspiring and this is in no small measure connected to the person now inhabiting the White house- Barack Hussein Obama. One of the highlights of the convention this year will be a tour of Washington DC’s historic monuments which will of course include the White house. But this  time around this visit to the white house will be “ a moment in time” where history, dreams and hopes converge to fuel a  new vision for our sojourn here in the United States of America. 

By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.
 
You did not know I was listening
As you sang in the shower.
It was a simple old song
But it jolted the strings of my past.
The arrows of water poked my heart when you asked:
"Where's your mama gone?"
I answered in our living room in Buea
Where mama dusted her LP brought from London.
 You lathered soap and intoned
"Where's your papa gone"
I felt a sting in both eyes.
And answered by Papa's Grundig radiogram
Another memory of two lives I carry.
You did not see me wipe the tears nor hear me whisper:
"Far, far away"
  Far, far away"
 You did not see me bury my head in both hands and rock my body.
You came out in your towel smiling
I smiled back, got up and we chorused:
"ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep
chirpy chirpy cheep cheep chirp.
Singing my past into my present.

By Joyce Ashuntantang

Will we be there for him, now that he is gone in flesh?

Will we be there to protect his name, his children, his love, his care, and his dreams?

Will we be there beyond the tears and songs, beyond our own myopia and sins?

Will we be there in the fullness of time when the media comes swinging

And the racial bigots in envy swim? Will we be there?

 Will we be there for a mother who grieves and a father who cared?

Will we be there to heal the world and be the world?

Will we be there with a smile like Jermaine sang?

Will we be there when it is black or white?

That's all MJ is asking: will we be there??

 

 

 

From "Will you be there"  by Michael Jackson:

Spoken:

In our darkest hour
In my deepest despair
Will you still care
Will you be there
In my trials
And my tribulations

Through our doubts
And frustrations
In my violence
In my turbulence
Through my fear
And my confessions
In my anguish and my pain
Through my joy and my sorrow
In the promise
Of another tomorrow
I'll never let you part
For you're always in my heart

 

Yes today is my birthday…and I am simply excited to have shared my life with you all, my relatives, friends and the many well wishers I have garnered over the years.  I leave you all with three new videos, as my gift to you for all the love, support and even challenges you have thrown my way.  When you are done with the videos, take your time and browse around especially for those of you who are not physically with me today. Through my website you can spend some quality time with me. Remember, you have contributed to the person I now call “me”. And for that I am grateful. I look forward to many more years plus good health by the Grace of our God and the good spirits that be. Enjoy!

From yours truly, Joyce, Dr. J, Prof., Batuo, JB, JAB, Ngore, Manoh,  plus all the other ways you have referred to me over the Years.

YES THE KING/CHILD OF POP MUSIC IS DEAD- A legend was born, a legend lived, a legend has died!!!! Now we can weave myths for our unborn children. We will gather them in the twilight and whisper the story to them..."once upon a time there lived a boy...he was born Michael..Michael Jackson

 

So I cry and weep for this son of a mother who has gone before his time but I have a story to tell and where there is a story, lives are born!!! May Michael Jackson be reborn a thousand times as we pass his name down for generations to come...

 

Adieu,

Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande and originally published at www.dibussi.com (Scribbles from the Den) and http://www.langaa-rpcig.net/+As-long-as-foreign-publishers+.html

“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:

“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:

 By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

Originally published in Palapala Magazine at:

http://www.palapalamagazine.com/2009/05/composing-and-desire-.html#more.
 
When it hits me, my pupils dilate, my breathing doubles in speed, and my heart races. I can't contain myself; I smile and sometimes notice the onset of perspiration. At this juncture, I must rush to the object of my desire. I get there with my left hand on my bosom trying to stop my heaving breasts from tearing through my blouse.

Originally published in:

http://234next. com/csp/cms/ sites/Next/ Home/5413479- 147/story. csp

By Ikhide R Ikheloa May 15, 2009

 

I am married, happily married. I am a woman wrapper, yes, I won't lie, I am a woman wrapper, I do whatever my wonderful, lovely, gorgeous wife wants me to do, who wan die? I have said it; o ya, sue me. as I write, she is looking over my shoulders and dictating every word of this wonderful essay. No, it is the truth; I am happily married to my wonderful, lovely, gorgeous wife. Actually every happily married man is a woman wrapper. Any man who says he does not take "nonsense" from his wife is divorced or dead or both.

Priceless marriage tip: If a man ever tells you, "I will not take that from my wife, mba O!" na lie, it is a big lie, the yeye man takes that and more from his wife and thanks his wife for the privilege of taking nonsense from her! Even my father, the dreaded Papalolo, was a woman wrapper. Don't mind him, he is still very alive and he is still a woman wrapper. When I was growing up, we called him "Na Because Of You" behind his back. You see, my mother was a very reasonable person, however, whenever she was pregnant, she loved driving my father insane. In the middle of the night, she would wake up and sweetly request that my father go out and split the firewood for tomorrow's cooking. My father would gnash his teeth like Okonkwo, turn to me and hiss: "Na because of you O, it is because of you that I am going to do this!" And he would go out and split the firewood! At midnight! Whenever my dad resumed splitting firewood in the dead of night, the village knew Mamalolo was pregnant again. I am lying of course, in the sixties, we cooked with gas and we used our microwave to warm our low-fat milk and NO ONE would dare interrupt my father as he watched American Idol on his plasma TV - but you get my gist sha.

 

By Pius Adesanmi

 

America invaded my formative years in Nigeria through culture, mainly books and music. Indian (Amitabh Bachchan!) and Chinese (Bruce Lee!) films relegated American (John Wayne) films to a distant background. In High School (Titcombe College), James Hadley Chase was our most mesmerizing path to America. The irony of prefering the America of an enthralling British author was supremely lost on us. We did not just read Chase, we lived each title and its captivating characters. You boasted to schoolmates that the trouble was finding which Chase you hadn’t read. Confessing to having not read a particular Hadley Chase title was a felony. I learnt the hard way when I owned up to having not read Want to Stay Alive? in Form Two. “Ah, you mean you don’t know Poke Toholo?”, my friends asked in horror, their tone acquiring an instant whiff of superiority.

Joyce B. Ashuntantang. Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature. Langaa Publishers, 2009. 188 pages. Available on amazon.com and African Books Collective.

  This is a foundational text on the production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature. The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as the official languages.

Ashuntantang shows that the pattern of production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature is not only framed by the minority status of English and English-speaking Cameroonians within the Republic of Cameroon, but is also a refl ection of a postcolonial reality in Africa where mostly African literary texts published by western multi-national corporations are assured wide international accessibility and readership.

This book establishes that in spite of these setbacks, Anglophone Cameroon writers have produced a corpus of work that has enriched the genres of prose, poetry and drama, and that these texts deserve a wider readership.

 By Joyce Ashuntantang

She can kill a moose, I can’t

She touts a gun, I hate guns

She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine

She’s white and privileged

I’m black and sidelined

But I will not join the laughter

I will not cast a stone

The flower between her legs connects us

 

We have been stoned as heretics in Europe

We have been given up at birth in China

We were killed as witches in Salem

We were refused land in Africa

We are property in Pakistan

We have been killed for honor in Bangladesh

We have been raped and maimed the world over

And so I will not nail her

 

The bumps on her chest connect us

Me, Hilary and Amina Lawal.

We’ve been refused equal pay

We’ve been forced to hide our belly bumps

We’ve been hanged by our PMS*

We’ve been judged by our lipstick

We’ve been dared to grow a penis

We’ve been called nutcrackers

And so I will not stone her

 

 

Let her deeds hand the stones

Let her words nail her

Let her faults trip her

And you can call me what you will:

Fuckn’ Femminist

 

* Pre-menstrual syndrome

(This version originally published in Palapala Magazine)

 Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

I grew up speaking English. In fact, I was born into English and never considered it a foreign language. I was also born into Kenyang, the language of the Bayangis, and Pidgin English. I learnt all three languages at the same time and in the same house.  Actually, my love for literature in English is rooted in both African and British literature including Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Eze goes to School, The Drummer boy and Things Fall Apart.  Also, my parents studied in England in the nineteen sixties and as I grew up, I visited England through their stories, pictures, music, my mother’s kitchen utensils and my father’s bookshelf.

Indeed my childhood was immersed in English.
Buea, where I grew up, is situated at the foot of Mount Cameroon. It is a town built by Germans in the 19th century. What is remarkable about Buea is the cool weather, the German architectural relics and the English Language, a British legacy. Inhabitants of Buea are known in Cameroon as “I was” because they prefer speaking English amongst themselves instead of Pidgin English.

 Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

I grew up speaking English. In fact, I was born into English and never considered it a foreign language. I was also born into Kenyang, the language of the Bayangis, and Pidgin English. I learnt all three languages at the same time and in the same house.  Actually, my love for literature in English is rooted in both African and British literature including Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Eze goes to School, The Drummer boy and Things Fall Apart.  Also, my parents studied in England in the nineteen sixties and as I grew up, I visited England through their stories, pictures, music, my mother’s kitchen utensils and my father’s bookshelf.

Indeed my childhood was immersed in English.
Buea, where I grew up, is situated at the foot of Mount Cameroon. It is a town built by Germans in the 19th century. What is remarkable about Buea is the cool weather, the German architectural relics and the English Language, a British legacy. Inhabitants of Buea are known in Cameroon as “I was” because they prefer speaking English amongst themselves instead of Pidgin English.

        By Joyce Ashuntantang

Yes       

Petals open, nectar sweet

Eyes dimmed for sunset within

'Tis no season for "touch me nots"

Just one word: "Yes"

 

Memories

 

Memories are clothes for naked days...

I know what to wear this Valentine's day.

As I watched Larry King yesterday night, he kept asking this same question to all his guests: What does the inauguration mean to you? I have been trying to answer that question this morning. As a black person living in the United States at this time, it is imperative to find an answer to this question.

Yet I seem numb and find it a daunting task to come up with something profound. I am trying not to wrap my answers in clichés gleaned from TV news casters and talk show hosts. I am trying to reach into my soul to feel the answer.

Joyce Ashuntantang (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

In 2005, veteran Cameroonian writer, Kenjo Jumbam, author of The White Man Of God died in his native Nso, prematurely ending the career of one of Cameroon's finest writers who never lived up to his fullest potential because of the absence of viable publishing outlets. In this commemorative article, Joyce Ashutantang shows how Jumbam's literary career mirrored that of Cameroon literature in English:

To situate Kenjo wan Jumbam within the Cameroonian literary pantheon, one would have to go back to the literary history of Anglophone Cameroon.

By Niyi Osundare (Originally published in Newswatch Magazine, Monday, September 08, 2008)         

Joyce Ashuntantang, actress, writer, scholar, and founder of EduArt, organises the first Literary Award Night in Anglophone Cameroon

When, in March this year, Joyce Ashuntantang was telling me about EduArt, her pet project, her voice throbbed with so palpable an enthusiasm that I could feel it on the telephone. EduArt, she went on, is a US-based non-profit organisation whose main objective is the promotion of art as an educational and cultural tool. And this organisation is no respecter of artificial divides, as its ambition and functional trajectory cut across national boundaries, and transcend the highest mountains and widest oceans. EduArt is as involved in organising after-school diversity programmes for elementary school children in the United States as it is in prosecuting book drives for university libraries in Africa.

By Ekpe Inyang

When the name I first heard
Matched with plans of a great event
In honour of a fallen Iroko Tree
I saw in my mind’s eyes
A lady in full display of grey hair
Majestic look, pompous gait
Imperious tone to announce
Her place on the Ivory Tower
Like those we have around

By Ekpe Inyang

When the name I first heard
Matched with plans of a great event
In honour of a fallen Iroko Tree
I saw in my mind’s eyes
A lady in full display of grey hair
Majestic look, pompous gait
Imperious tone to announce
Her place on the Ivory Tower
Like those we have around

Originally published in Summit Magazine

When one talks with Joyce Ashuntantang, one is tempted to think she has lived for a hundred years. That is because Joyce has always been on the go. She has studied in Cameroon, Britain and the USA. She is widely traveled, France, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Mali, Benin, Senegal, Switzerland, Belgium etc. Some know her in Cameroon as the star actress of the Yaounde University Theatre, flame players and the golden days of CTV/ CRTV. Her talent and beauty shown on stage as she dramatized poems and plays on late Kwasen Gwan’gwa’s Focus on Art.

Some of her memorable plays on stage and TV include Seminal Dregs by Thomas Gwan’gwaa. In this play she starred as Pamela the young university student who is raped by her father’s friend, Mr. Ngange, acted by the late Joseph Ndanji. Joyce acted this role so well that one day on the streets of Yaounde, a child pointing to her, shouted in French “Voila la fille qu’on avait violée!”

By Joyce Ashuntantang, PhD

“Okonkwo was well known through out the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his clan by throwing Amalinze the cat”.

With these words Achebe began Things Fall Apart and introduced the world to modern African literature. For some of us these words have become sacred and the author, Chinua Achebe, a demigod.

I have enjoyed teaching Things Fall Apart every year since I became a professor of African Literature in the US. The work lends itself to multiple layers of interpretation which are revealed with every new reading. The novel has sold over eight million copies in the United States alone. It has been translated into 50 known languages.

Barbara Tah Gwanmesia celebrated author of Vasona's Secret is our guest in the Spotlight. A graduate of Journalism, International Relations and World Politics with a confessed avid yearning for an understanding of how the human mind works and mankind's reason for being. She generously gave EduArt  a peek into the motivations that make her tick. See full text below.

Barbara Tah Gwanmesia sits down for a chat with Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang:

African women's art is usually neglected especially because it functions principally in the domestic sphere, but we are beginning to claim our own. In the following poems, Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang celebrates Manyu women art and folklore. Manyu Division is found in the Southwest Province of Cameroon.

Memory Lane: Joyce Ashuntantang in Gwangwa'a's SEMINAL DREGS 1987

This TV Drama Launched Late Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a's career as a veritable TV Producer with Cameroon Television. Joyce and Valentine were 2nd year students at the University of Yaounde at the time. Here with excerpts of the play- Pamela is forced to live with her father's friend while waiting for accomodation at the student hostel. What happens next becomes more than a violation of friendship...

To Jump-start my week and Yours: Enjoy!

Betrayed (For my King)

by Joyce Ashuntantang

           

I fell headlong for you

Your saintly face goaded me to sing

Your seminary days lured me

Your snippets of my language at dawn caught me

I matured on the wings of your new deal

 

But you betrayed me too soon

What happened to the ring binding us?

The “united” in our names?

 

I obeyed you as my lord

I draped you in clothes of hue

I made my house home

And called you “fon of fons”

 

Everything of mine became yours

The nectar from my tea leaves

The pods from  my cocoa

The coffee from my farms

 

What African Women think inside - A review of poetry on Batuo’s World

Blog reviewed by George Esunge Fominyen

Originally published in http://www.gefominyen.com/

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

How many contemporary Cameroonian women would hate to be given the choice to terminate or keep a pregnancy they got because a group of brutes (in that insecurity infested country) stormed into a home, asked the “head of the family” to hand-over the Njangi money he just received,sexually abused him, gang raped his wife and three daughters and asked him (father of the house) to have sex with his own daughters under the pressure of a gun to his temple?

The protestors were told it (the protocol) was ratifying homosexuality (I didn't see that in the Protocol) and murder.

Article 14, paragraph 2C of the Maputo Protocol simply requires of states to: “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the unborn child”

If a woman’s body is hers, to paraphrase Ashutantang, isn’t she entitled to decide whether it is a gift from heaven or hell to carry (for nine-months) the foetus from a violent sexual relationship with an HIV infected gangster or live to nurture a child born of one’s own father?

Beyond what meets the eye

The rhythm, tempo and colour of Ashutangtang’s poems on Batuo’s world are so entrapping one may miss the undertones.

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

How many contemporary Cameroonian women would hate to be given the choice to terminate or keep a pregnancy they got because a group of brutes (in that insecurity infested country) stormed into a home, asked the “head of the family” to hand-over the Njangi money he just received,sexually abused him, gang raped his wife and three daughters and asked him (father of the house) to have sex with his own daughters under the pressure of a gun to his temple?

The protestors were told it (the protocol) was ratifying homosexuality (I didn't see that in the Protocol) and murder.

Article 14, paragraph 2C of the Maputo Protocol simply requires of states to: “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the unborn child”

If a woman’s body is hers, to paraphrase Ashutantang, isn’t she entitled to decide whether it is a gift from heaven or hell to carry (for nine-months) the foetus from a violent sexual relationship with an HIV infected gangster or live to nurture a child born of one’s own father?

Beyond what meets the eye

The rhythm, tempo and colour of Ashutangtang’s poems on Batuo’s world are so entrapping one may miss the undertones.

Sakerettes Converge on Obama-City for annual convention

By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D. *

                                                 (originally published at http://www.postnewsline.com/2009/07/sakerettes-converge-on-obamacity-for-annual-convention.html)

 

 The ex-students of the all girls secondary school, Saker Baptist College, Limbe Cameroon popularly known as Sakerettes will be holding their annual convention in Washington DC from July 30th -2nd August.  This will be the second time the Sakerettes are matching on the nation’s capital, but the  mood that pervades the convention this year is inspiring and this is in no small measure connected to the person now inhabiting the White house- Barack Hussein Obama. One of the highlights of the convention this year will be a tour of Washington DC’s historic monuments which will of course include the White house. But this  time around this visit to the white house will be “ a moment in time” where history, dreams and hopes converge to fuel a  new vision for our sojourn here in the United States of America. 

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.
 
You did not know I was listening
As you sang in the shower.
It was a simple old song
But it jolted the strings of my past.
The arrows of water poked my heart when you asked:
"Where's your mama gone?"
I answered in our living room in Buea
Where mama dusted her LP brought from London.
 You lathered soap and intoned
"Where's your papa gone"
I felt a sting in both eyes.
And answered by Papa's Grundig radiogram
Another memory of two lives I carry.
You did not see me wipe the tears nor hear me whisper:
"Far, far away"
  Far, far away"
 You did not see me bury my head in both hands and rock my body.
You came out in your towel smiling
I smiled back, got up and we chorused:
"ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep
chirpy chirpy cheep cheep chirp.
Singing my past into my present.

Will We Be there???

By Joyce Ashuntantang

Will we be there for him, now that he is gone in flesh?

Will we be there to protect his name, his children, his love, his care, and his dreams?

Will we be there beyond the tears and songs, beyond our own myopia and sins?

Will we be there in the fullness of time when the media comes swinging

And the racial bigots in envy swim? Will we be there?

 Will we be there for a mother who grieves and a father who cared?

Will we be there to heal the world and be the world?

Will we be there with a smile like Jermaine sang?

Will we be there when it is black or white?

That's all MJ is asking: will we be there??

 

 

 

From "Will you be there"  by Michael Jackson:

Spoken:

In our darkest hour
In my deepest despair
Will you still care
Will you be there
In my trials
And my tribulations

Through our doubts
And frustrations
In my violence
In my turbulence
Through my fear
And my confessions
In my anguish and my pain
Through my joy and my sorrow
In the promise
Of another tomorrow
I'll never let you part
For you're always in my heart

 

My Birthday Gift

Yes today is my birthday…and I am simply excited to have shared my life with you all, my relatives, friends and the many well wishers I have garnered over the years.  I leave you all with three new videos, as my gift to you for all the love, support and even challenges you have thrown my way.  When you are done with the videos, take your time and browse around especially for those of you who are not physically with me today. Through my website you can spend some quality time with me. Remember, you have contributed to the person I now call “me”. And for that I am grateful. I look forward to many more years plus good health by the Grace of our God and the good spirits that be. Enjoy!

From yours truly, Joyce, Dr. J, Prof., Batuo, JB, JAB, Ngore, Manoh,  plus all the other ways you have referred to me over the Years.

Go Tell IT ON THE MOUNTAINS: The King of POP is DEAD!!

YES THE KING/CHILD OF POP MUSIC IS DEAD- A legend was born, a legend lived, a legend has died!!!! Now we can weave myths for our unborn children. We will gather them in the twilight and whisper the story to them..."once upon a time there lived a boy...he was born Michael..Michael Jackson

 

So I cry and weep for this son of a mother who has gone before his time but I have a story to tell and where there is a story, lives are born!!! May Michael Jackson be reborn a thousand times as we pass his name down for generations to come...

 

Adieu,

Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

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

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande and originally published at www.dibussi.com (Scribbles from the Den) and http://www.langaa-rpcig.net/+As-long-as-foreign-publishers+.html

“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:

“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:

Composition and Desire

 By Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

Originally published in Palapala Magazine at:

http://www.palapalamagazine.com/2009/05/composing-and-desire-.html#more.
 
When it hits me, my pupils dilate, my breathing doubles in speed, and my heart races. I can't contain myself; I smile and sometimes notice the onset of perspiration. At this juncture, I must rush to the object of my desire. I get there with my left hand on my bosom trying to stop my heaving breasts from tearing through my blouse.

Confessions of a woman Wrapper

Originally published in:

http://234next. com/csp/cms/ sites/Next/ Home/5413479- 147/story. csp

By Ikhide R Ikheloa May 15, 2009

 

I am married, happily married. I am a woman wrapper, yes, I won't lie, I am a woman wrapper, I do whatever my wonderful, lovely, gorgeous wife wants me to do, who wan die? I have said it; o ya, sue me. as I write, she is looking over my shoulders and dictating every word of this wonderful essay. No, it is the truth; I am happily married to my wonderful, lovely, gorgeous wife. Actually every happily married man is a woman wrapper. Any man who says he does not take "nonsense" from his wife is divorced or dead or both.

Priceless marriage tip: If a man ever tells you, "I will not take that from my wife, mba O!" na lie, it is a big lie, the yeye man takes that and more from his wife and thanks his wife for the privilege of taking nonsense from her! Even my father, the dreaded Papalolo, was a woman wrapper. Don't mind him, he is still very alive and he is still a woman wrapper. When I was growing up, we called him "Na Because Of You" behind his back. You see, my mother was a very reasonable person, however, whenever she was pregnant, she loved driving my father insane. In the middle of the night, she would wake up and sweetly request that my father go out and split the firewood for tomorrow's cooking. My father would gnash his teeth like Okonkwo, turn to me and hiss: "Na because of you O, it is because of you that I am going to do this!" And he would go out and split the firewood! At midnight! Whenever my dad resumed splitting firewood in the dead of night, the village knew Mamalolo was pregnant again. I am lying of course, in the sixties, we cooked with gas and we used our microwave to warm our low-fat milk and NO ONE would dare interrupt my father as he watched American Idol on his plasma TV - but you get my gist sha.

Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang in Action: When I Fall in Love I Talk About Buea

Don Williams: Fragments of memory

 

By Pius Adesanmi

 

America invaded my formative years in Nigeria through culture, mainly books and music. Indian (Amitabh Bachchan!) and Chinese (Bruce Lee!) films relegated American (John Wayne) films to a distant background. In High School (Titcombe College), James Hadley Chase was our most mesmerizing path to America. The irony of prefering the America of an enthralling British author was supremely lost on us. We did not just read Chase, we lived each title and its captivating characters. You boasted to schoolmates that the trouble was finding which Chase you hadn’t read. Confessing to having not read a particular Hadley Chase title was a felony. I learnt the hard way when I owned up to having not read Want to Stay Alive? in Form Two. “Ah, you mean you don’t know Poke Toholo?”, my friends asked in horror, their tone acquiring an instant whiff of superiority.

Now Available: Groundbreaking Book on Anglophone Cameroon Literature by Joyce Ashuntantang

Joyce B. Ashuntantang. Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature. Langaa Publishers, 2009. 188 pages. Available on amazon.com and African Books Collective.

  This is a foundational text on the production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature. The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as the official languages.

Ashuntantang shows that the pattern of production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature is not only framed by the minority status of English and English-speaking Cameroonians within the Republic of Cameroon, but is also a refl ection of a postcolonial reality in Africa where mostly African literary texts published by western multi-national corporations are assured wide international accessibility and readership.

This book establishes that in spite of these setbacks, Anglophone Cameroon writers have produced a corpus of work that has enriched the genres of prose, poetry and drama, and that these texts deserve a wider readership.

Sarah Palin: A poem for women

 By Joyce Ashuntantang

She can kill a moose, I can’t

She touts a gun, I hate guns

She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine

She’s white and privileged

I’m black and sidelined

But I will not join the laughter

I will not cast a stone

The flower between her legs connects us

 

We have been stoned as heretics in Europe

We have been given up at birth in China

We were killed as witches in Salem

We were refused land in Africa

We are property in Pakistan

We have been killed for honor in Bangladesh

We have been raped and maimed the world over

And so I will not nail her

 

The bumps on her chest connect us

Me, Hilary and Amina Lawal.

We’ve been refused equal pay

We’ve been forced to hide our belly bumps

We’ve been hanged by our PMS*

We’ve been judged by our lipstick

We’ve been dared to grow a penis

We’ve been called nutcrackers

And so I will not stone her

 

 

Let her deeds hand the stones

Let her words nail her

Let her faults trip her

And you can call me what you will:

Fuckn’ Femminist

 

* Pre-menstrual syndrome

A Journey Into Speech

(This version originally published in Palapala Magazine)

 Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

I grew up speaking English. In fact, I was born into English and never considered it a foreign language. I was also born into Kenyang, the language of the Bayangis, and Pidgin English. I learnt all three languages at the same time and in the same house.  Actually, my love for literature in English is rooted in both African and British literature including Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Eze goes to School, The Drummer boy and Things Fall Apart.  Also, my parents studied in England in the nineteen sixties and as I grew up, I visited England through their stories, pictures, music, my mother’s kitchen utensils and my father’s bookshelf.

Indeed my childhood was immersed in English.
Buea, where I grew up, is situated at the foot of Mount Cameroon. It is a town built by Germans in the 19th century. What is remarkable about Buea is the cool weather, the German architectural relics and the English Language, a British legacy. Inhabitants of Buea are known in Cameroon as “I was” because they prefer speaking English amongst themselves instead of Pidgin English.

 Joyce Ashuntantang, Ph.D.

I grew up speaking English. In fact, I was born into English and never considered it a foreign language. I was also born into Kenyang, the language of the Bayangis, and Pidgin English. I learnt all three languages at the same time and in the same house.  Actually, my love for literature in English is rooted in both African and British literature including Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Eze goes to School, The Drummer boy and Things Fall Apart.  Also, my parents studied in England in the nineteen sixties and as I grew up, I visited England through their stories, pictures, music, my mother’s kitchen utensils and my father’s bookshelf.

Indeed my childhood was immersed in English.
Buea, where I grew up, is situated at the foot of Mount Cameroon. It is a town built by Germans in the 19th century. What is remarkable about Buea is the cool weather, the German architectural relics and the English Language, a British legacy. Inhabitants of Buea are known in Cameroon as “I was” because they prefer speaking English amongst themselves instead of Pidgin English.

My love poetry series ends today. To crown it all, here with two short poems-make your pick. Then, enjoy all the poems again! Have a blissful Valentine's day.

        By Joyce Ashuntantang

Yes       

Petals open, nectar sweet

Eyes dimmed for sunset within

'Tis no season for "touch me nots"

Just one word: "Yes"

 

Memories

 

Memories are clothes for naked days...

I know what to wear this Valentine's day.

Potent Secrets (Movie Trailer)

My Thoughts on the Inauguration

As I watched Larry King yesterday night, he kept asking this same question to all his guests: What does the inauguration mean to you? I have been trying to answer that question this morning. As a black person living in the United States at this time, it is imperative to find an answer to this question.

Yet I seem numb and find it a daunting task to come up with something profound. I am trying not to wrap my answers in clichés gleaned from TV news casters and talk show hosts. I am trying to reach into my soul to feel the answer.

Kenjo Jumbam and the Unfulfilled Potential of Early Anglophone Cameroon Writers

Joyce Ashuntantang (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

In 2005, veteran Cameroonian writer, Kenjo Jumbam, author of The White Man Of God died in his native Nso, prematurely ending the career of one of Cameroon's finest writers who never lived up to his fullest potential because of the absence of viable publishing outlets. In this commemorative article, Joyce Ashutantang shows how Jumbam's literary career mirrored that of Cameroon literature in English:

To situate Kenjo wan Jumbam within the Cameroonian literary pantheon, one would have to go back to the literary history of Anglophone Cameroon.

Dreamer and Doer

By Niyi Osundare (Originally published in Newswatch Magazine, Monday, September 08, 2008)         

Joyce Ashuntantang, actress, writer, scholar, and founder of EduArt, organises the first Literary Award Night in Anglophone Cameroon

When, in March this year, Joyce Ashuntantang was telling me about EduArt, her pet project, her voice throbbed with so palpable an enthusiasm that I could feel it on the telephone. EduArt, she went on, is a US-based non-profit organisation whose main objective is the promotion of art as an educational and cultural tool. And this organisation is no respecter of artificial divides, as its ambition and functional trajectory cut across national boundaries, and transcend the highest mountains and widest oceans. EduArt is as involved in organising after-school diversity programmes for elementary school children in the United States as it is in prosecuting book drives for university libraries in Africa.

True African Woman (For Professor Joyce Ashuntantang)

By Ekpe Inyang

When the name I first heard
Matched with plans of a great event
In honour of a fallen Iroko Tree
I saw in my mind’s eyes
A lady in full display of grey hair
Majestic look, pompous gait
Imperious tone to announce
Her place on the Ivory Tower
Like those we have around

By Ekpe Inyang

When the name I first heard
Matched with plans of a great event
In honour of a fallen Iroko Tree
I saw in my mind’s eyes
A lady in full display of grey hair
Majestic look, pompous gait
Imperious tone to announce
Her place on the Ivory Tower
Like those we have around

Joyce Ashuntantang - A Woman on the Go!

Originally published in Summit Magazine

When one talks with Joyce Ashuntantang, one is tempted to think she has lived for a hundred years. That is because Joyce has always been on the go. She has studied in Cameroon, Britain and the USA. She is widely traveled, France, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Mali, Benin, Senegal, Switzerland, Belgium etc. Some know her in Cameroon as the star actress of the Yaounde University Theatre, flame players and the golden days of CTV/ CRTV. Her talent and beauty shown on stage as she dramatized poems and plays on late Kwasen Gwan’gwa’s Focus on Art.

Some of her memorable plays on stage and TV include Seminal Dregs by Thomas Gwan’gwaa. In this play she starred as Pamela the young university student who is raped by her father’s friend, Mr. Ngange, acted by the late Joseph Ndanji. Joyce acted this role so well that one day on the streets of Yaounde, a child pointing to her, shouted in French “Voila la fille qu’on avait violée!”

50 Years After "Things Fall Apart": A Chat with Chinua Achebe

By Joyce Ashuntantang, PhD

“Okonkwo was well known through out the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his clan by throwing Amalinze the cat”.

With these words Achebe began Things Fall Apart and introduced the world to modern African literature. For some of us these words have become sacred and the author, Chinua Achebe, a demigod.

I have enjoyed teaching Things Fall Apart every year since I became a professor of African Literature in the US. The work lends itself to multiple layers of interpretation which are revealed with every new reading. The novel has sold over eight million copies in the United States alone. It has been translated into 50 known languages.

Barbara Tah Gwanmesia

Barbara Tah Gwanmesia celebrated author of Vasona's Secret is our guest in the Spotlight. A graduate of Journalism, International Relations and World Politics with a confessed avid yearning for an understanding of how the human mind works and mankind's reason for being. She generously gave EduArt  a peek into the motivations that make her tick. See full text below.

Barbara Tah Gwanmesia sits down for a chat with Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang:

Manyu Women's Art & Folklore Poetry

African women's art is usually neglected especially because it functions principally in the domestic sphere, but we are beginning to claim our own. In the following poems, Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang celebrates Manyu women art and folklore. Manyu Division is found in the Southwest Province of Cameroon.