Batuo's world

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.

Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang in Brief

Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang is presently an Assistant Professor of English/Literature at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, West Hartford, and an Associate to the UNESCO Chair and Institute for comparative Human Rights at the University of Connecticut.

Joyce has been active in using various artistic media as educational tools for twenty years and counting. She is an actress par excellance; a founding member of the Cameroon Flame Players, and a memorable member of the Yaounde University Theater. Her acting career received a boost in 1987 when she attended an international workshop on theater in Detroit, Michigan where she received training from movie/theater icons including Ossie Davies.

Who am I

It is so hard to define me. "Me" is a process and the defining will go on as long as I live, but as I experience the world I'll try to set it down so when I'm gone and I am out of mortality someone may try with little accuracy to define me.