Why must you bleed on those pages?
Why must you drip tears on paper? Why must you pour your heart out on every page? Often, you may wonder, why must you speak of suffering, pain, taboo, and shame to gain recognition. Do we love heartbreaks more than trust, unrequited love more than sweet love, loss more than lust, and rage or rant more than peace? Is it still African literature if it doesn’t cause heartache and grief? What happened to your voice of joy, dance, singing, galore, praises and pure craze? Where’s the room for you to write and read about boredom like Gustave Flaubert. Where can you wonder just for the sake of wondering?
Where’s the diversity of genre? Where’s the range of authors? Where can you see Africa in plain sight?
In a lens, the teenage boy that died in some stupid war is better than the female child who watched over the parents for the rest of their lives. In a lens, a silver spoon makes a story less of a story. In a lens, a eulogy is better than a memoir. Africa deserves more lenses of remarkable equity. Africa, predominantly youth, above its suffering and pain, is tensive, flamboyant, and vain. In a generation enmeshed in hope and despair, ambition and indifference, conviction and ambivalence, we should be getting more encompassing compilations of echoes. Africa requires more voices of love like Moyosore Orimoloye; more voices of wonder like Efe Ogufere.
While we still long for some heartache, the ooze of despair, and all those things we love to hate, your joys, banters, and structured madness is worthy here.
Here, we play our part.
Here, literature is an escape, as it should also be.