17 August 2008
Lagos — G. Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, Ph.D., is how a business card would address our dear professor. She passionately professes the uniqueness and global relevance of African Creative Writing which she happily affirms has taken the world by storm. Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and other African writers have become citizens of the world and household names.
Oty also emphasised the fact by happily noting that "an illustrious Nigerian, leading African writer and citizen of the world, HRH Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike, won the 2008 Fallon Nichols Award, one of the more important global prizes for writers with an impressive body of works that have made a significant impact on the international audience".
"Prof" also passionately promotes and teaches Diaspora studies, and is particular about the African perspective of the two diasporas. "My research interest is in comparative Black Women Literature, the slave narrative tradition and 20th century African Diaspora fiction that re-imagine slavery and its aftermath. I have done a lot of research and recent publications include "Motherline, Mothertext and Intertext: Relocating Connections and Displacement in African Diaspora Fiction by Black Women," a book chapter, "Lifting the Yoke of Tradition: African Market Women Diaspora: From Kaneshie, Accra to Harlem, New York". A forthcoming book manuscript is titled Writing Black, Talking Womanism: Feminist Perspectives in Alice Walker and Buchi Emecheta's Novels".
Oty, our dear "Womanist", as clearly distinct from "Feminist" and "Female Chauvunist", passionately promotes the empowerment of women. " I am working on a project that will examine the effects of the Niger Delta crisis on women and children. The contradiction between desperate poverty and apparent natural wealth is an underlying factor propelling wars, conflicts and violence in the Niger Delta at the present time".
The following verse of her poem, On spousal abuse, gives an insight into the concern for her fellow women:
"She says he is a good man
Her bread and butter she says
The roof that provides shade from the elements
Protects her from the enemy outside
What about the enemy in the house?
That lurks in full view
Ingrained in age-long traditions?"
Oty knows poetry has a fairly limited audience, so she writes lead papers and speaks at conferences. She wants to do even more. "I also want to do a conference on Women In Nigeria, hopefully in 2009 or 2010. We need to see how far women have really come, see whether it is more political talk than socio-political reality. How much better off, if at all, is the 21st century Nigerian Woman?" Do not be surprised by the breadth of our guest's interests and projects, because she is also a Scholar, Critic and published poet and lives in Neptune, New Jersey. Osita found the name 'Neptune' histori-symbolic!
Professor G. Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, Nigerian educationist in Uncle Sam's country, recently visited Nigeria to put in place arrangements for the proposed conference of the African Literature Association (ALA) in 2009 in Abuja. It would be the very first time the ALA conference will hold outside the United States and is another first for her dear country. Although she had spoken over the phone with our columnist during the 2008 ALA conference at which HRH Prof Chukwuemeka Ike received the 2008 Fallon Nichols Award in the United States, Osita concluded the discussion in Lagos as she dashed back to base.
Oty has been an active member of ALA since 1994. She was WOCALA Chairperson from 2000 to 2003 and organised its international conferences. She was a Member of its Executive Council from 2005 to 2006 and was re-elected into the executive in 2007.
Proudly Nigerian and African Oty Agbajoh-Laoye is associate professor of English, Africana Studies and Comparative Literature at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey. However her foundation was solidly Nigerian at the flag ship Nigerian university. "I did my undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. I now teach an array of courses in African and the African Diaspora, Postcolonial, Non-European literature in English; World literature, and American Ethnic lives".
Oty's other presentations include "Ethnic Quilting: American Stitches," and "Talking, Quilting and Burial Grounds: Beyond Memory, Progress and Paradise in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day". She also has "The Equation Between: The African Character in Selected African Diaspora Writing;" "Paths of Convergence: African Diaspora Paradigm in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name" and "Creative Visions/Migrant Voices: Re-Configuration and Unification of the African Diaspora in selected Continental African Literature," to mention a few".
"My recent creative works include Esilokun Ojime which I wrote for Toni Morrison to mark her 70th birthday, "Yanga Woman" and "Mother to the End". I read my work widely to share the ideas and get feedback which is important for building a comprehensive body of knowledge on the various subjects. I am currently working on a collection titled Journeys: A Visual Journal of the Return of a Native Daughter. In this project, Africa is geographical space/place and spirit/consciousness and spans the continent and the African world in a global perspective. The inward journey inverts the outward historic enforced movement. Like the notion of Africa, the concept of travel/journey is both literal and spiritual", she points out.
" Native conveys the notion of an essential African consciousness/sensitivity and awareness. Daughter conveys the empowered position of African womanhood. The objective is not to create a romantic portraiture of Africa but to attempt a realistic perception in which Africa is a paradox of good and bad, sadness and immense joy, wealth and poverty, sickness and health and above all to show the beauty that lies beneath the picture of hunger, disease and poverty favoured by the western eye".
"The returning Native Daughter turns new eyes that penetrate through the sordid to show and voice the beauty, strength, ability to survive immense odds and the unconditional love and caring in film, narration and poetry. The journal will capture Africa from the creative sensitive eyes like the sunlight that often shines through the rain signifying tears and joy. Osita, you are a writer and pretty good published poet yourself so you understand these concepts, subjects and themes, as do many others here and abroad".
"The final product will be a visual and voiced journal presentation of visual images in two formats CD and book-length collection of poetry tentatively titled Journeys: Return of a Native Daughter. These includes pictures and video clips of important/major relics from the African past in contemporary perspective, evidence of culture such as the oral tradition, impromptu interviews from ordinary women in English as well as African languages and English translation. A few examples will suffice to show how the framework of the return is used to re-examine slavery relics across the continent. The first picture and poem that follows is an explorative historical excursion of Juffurey, Kinta Kunte's ancestral home in the Gambia. I have recordings of this visit in video clips and still photographs of historical relics and contemporary life in the village. The visuals include the memorial reminder "Never Again" overlooking the Atlantic Ocean as one enters the village from the shore, the museum of African experience that spans the globe, the surprising picture of three European men drumming in the "Rest House" and images of happy children playing, and male artisans vending their sculptures".
Oty's other on-going poetry collection is The Hen Also Knows the Dawn of a New Day: Voicing Women's Silences. She has presented her creative and critical work at international conferences in Ghana, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Gambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Barbados, Mexico, India and across the United States. We shall thus end this exchange with an excerpt from her poem, Snatched:
'Snatched in your prime
you meet death
as one prepared
Unflinching and strong
Warrior Man to the end'.
[For Ezenwa Ohaeto, with deep gratitude and admiration].
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