Author: Shade Lapite

2014 Black Reading Challenge

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There’s nothing like a reading challenge to get your creative juices running. Maybe you have a list of authors you’ve been longing to try, or you’d like to discover some new voices. You don’t need a reason to take part in the 2014 Black Reading Challenge, just a library and the ability to read. Don’t adjust your set, I have 10 brilliant books to brighten your year. Plus, there’s a downloadable, printable version of the 2014 Black Reading Challenge. Pin it on a wall, stick it in your notebook, do whatever you want, but get reading! * March We Need New Names – NoViolet Bulawayo This debut novel centres around 10-year-old Darling, a girl growing up amidst the political decay and social devastation of Zimbabwe. Darling gets the chance to live with her aunt in America but discovers that along with new opportunities comes a deep longing for home. A brilliant novel that’s been nominated for every award going. * April A Cupboard Full of Coats – Yvette Edwards When an old friend turns up …

Melancholy and magnificent: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

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I found I couldn’t read The Twelve Tribes of Hattie as a straight shot. The narrative was so relentlessly bleak I had to take the odd break to remind myself that joy exists in the world. But I returned to the novel eagerly each time, partly because the story is compelling, but largely because the writing is flawlessly beautiful. We first meet Hattie, the title character, at 17-years-old. She’s holed up in the bathroom of her rented house, fighting to save her twin babies from pneumonia. The children, Philadelphia and Jubilee, have been named to reflect Hattie’s hopes for life in the north. She “wanted to give her babies names that weren’t chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and hope, reaching forward names, not looking back ones.” When the babies die, Hattie’s optimism leaves with them. Her grief is compounded by disappointment in her husband. He turns out to be a self-defeating man who drinks his pay cheques and sleeps around with women who …

Beyonce

Beyoncé quotes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on new album

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Beyoncé’s new self-titled album has succeeded in surprising the world not only in its unexpected appearance, but also in the choice of collaborators. Specifically the inclusion of excerpts from the speech, We Should All Be Feminists, by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When you look at the two artists there are certain similarities: they’re both female, black, and outstripping the competition in their respective fields. It’s not surprising that one would choose to reference the other in a creative piece. And yet I was surprised. Not only that Beyoncé had heard of my favourite author – I imagined that between the stage shows, studio sessions, video shoots, press interviews, film sets, product endorsements, high-end shopping and mothering a toddler, Queen Bey wouldn’t have time to read literature – but more that she’d chosen to include a feminist speech from Chimamanda. Chimamanda Adichie wears her feminism plainly on her sleeve and is always waving the flag for equality of the sexes. Beyoncé’s stance on feminism has been less clear, even to herself. When asked if she considered …

Malorie Blackman laughs at the camera

10 things you never knew about rock star author Malorie Blackman

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Malorie Blackman has written over  60 books, was appointed Rock Star of All Things Bookish – ie Children’s Laureate – in June 2013, and has now added a little icing to all that cake by being named the most influential black person in Britain.  Pour yourself a cuppa, get comfortable in that chair and let’s learn a little more about this literary powerhouse. One: She was first published by The Women’s Press It took two years and a staggering 82 rejections before Malorie got her first book deal. It was with the feminist publisher, The Women’s Press and she submitted a collection of short stories for teenagers that blended horror and science fiction. The collection was published in 1990 and called Not So Stupid. Alas, the same can’t be said about all those publishers who originally passed on her. Two: She read her first black book at 23 Malorie has said that it never crossed her mind to be a writer until her mid-20s when she read The Colour Purple. The Alice Walker novel was …

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Americanah opens with a hair salon and a major turning point. Ifemelu has decided to close her hugely successful blog, break up with her Black American boyfriend, sell her apartment and (after 13 years away) return to Nigeria. She tells herself there’s no specific cause for the move, just “layer after layer of discontent that settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her”. But while she sits in the hairdressers having her hair braided for this monumental trip home, she thinks of the Obinze, “her first love, her first lover, the only person with whom she had never felt the need to explain herself”, and it’s clear part of her homesickness is the longing to see her former flame. Impulsively she fires off an email to Obinze informing him of her return. Cut to Obinze who receives her email as he sits in Lagos traffic. From his reaction we know the feelings are mutual, which is complicated since he is now a husband and father. Amidst the turmoil Ifemelu and Obinze fall …

Jaipur Literature Festival 2013

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I’m late for the start of the Jaipur Literature Festival. I’m trying to decide between jeans and a light summer dress for the Indian winter sun when I get a call on my hotel room phone. “Are you still coming?” asks a member of my book club, “we were supposed to leave at 9.30am.” It’s 9.50am and the other 11 members of the Asian Authors Book Club have been waiting on the mini bus for 20 minutes. I throw on the summer dress. Luckily traffic moves quickly through Jaipur’s roads and the Diggi Palace venue turns out to be a short 15 minute ride away. We hustle through the huddles of khaki-dressed police – loaned to the festival after the latest round of Salman Rushdie-related death threats – through the metal barriers that seem to assessorize every Indian tourist venue and are finally tumbled into the heart of the festival. There is colour everywhere. This is India so that goes without saying, but the festival organisers have branded Jaipur 2013 in a hot pink and …

There are no easy options for the Geezer Girls

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Frankie Sullivan is one of the most ruthless Geezers in London’s deadly underworld. When the women he employs to traffic diamonds refuse an order he arranges their murder and shifts his nefarious attentions to their daughters. In a world where money talks and even arrows are crooked, fifteen-year-old Jade Flynn and three other girls are dumped in the St. Nicholas care home for children and forced to participate in Frankie’s illegal ‘special community projects.’ It takes a tragedy to lend them the courage to run. For 10 years they stay hidden. But now The Geezer has found them and he is royally pissed. Still, he might let them live if they do one last job… The Good The drama launches like a bullet from a gun and rockets along for all 435 pages. Jade and her fellow musketeers spend most of those pages battling for their lives and I admit I had to put the book down a number of times while I mustered the strength to endure their latest disaster. There is a real …

Chibundu Onuzo talks love in The Spider King’s Daughter

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“She doesn’t treat anyone like an equal. That’s the way she’s been brought up. She’s like her father; but she still manages to have moments of kindness.” Chibundu Onuzo is defending the protagonist in her debut novel, The Spider King’s Daughter. She sits opposite me in an airy delicatessen in London Bridge, a fork dancing in her hand, her youthful face animated. She’s supposed to be eating a plate of mushroom pasta, but after I suggest her story of friendship across Nigeria’s economic lines cannot really be a friendship when the rich man’s daughter, Abike, insists on referring to the book’s other central character as The Hawker, denying him an identity beyond his poverty, Chibundu launches an earnest defence. “She was raised in a very unhappy home. I applaud Abike for all her humanity,” she insists. Chibundu is softly spoken and self-effacing. There can’t be many 21-year-old university students who find themselves juggling essay deadlines with promotion for a published novel, and there are certainly no others who can claim to be the youngest female …

Murder mystery in The Woman He Loved Before Me

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It’s not easy to write a story in multiple voices and keep each one compelling and distinctive. Dorothy Koomson deserves plaudits for pulling off that feat alone. We meet Libby first. A post-graduate beauty therapist who could do more with her life but is happy as she is thank you very much. At least she’s happy until she meets Jack, trips over his stunning good looks, falls for his charms and moves into his lavish Brighton home. For about two seconds everything is perfect. The tone in Libby’s opening is lyrical and quixotic. Fanciful with a whisper of something dark, like a shadow beneath the surface of a calm lake. You keep reading trying to pinpoint what has you uneasy. You’re not sure but Jack has too many secrets and once Libby begins to prod at them, to ask questions about his deceased first wife, you begin to wish she’d just pack her bags and get the hell out of there. And then you meet Eve, the dead wife. Turns out she kept a diary. …