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September 5, 2022 • By Masiyaleti Mbewe
All I want is for him to have what he wants. I want to be uncomplicated and undemanding. I want no friction between his fantasy and the person I actually am. I want all that and I want none of it. I want the sex to be familiar and tepid, for him to be unable to get it up, for me to be too open about my IBS, so that we are bonded in mutual consolation. I want us to fight in public. And when we fight in private, I want him to maybe accidentally punch me. I want us to have a long, fruitful bird-watching career, and then I want us to find out we have cancer at exactly the same time. Then I remember his wife, the coaster eases downward, and we fall.
Africa has 590 million people online. […]Digital offers unparalleled opportunities for African readers and global readers wanting to read African literature, for African publishers wanting to reach other African and global markets, and for global publishers to reach Africa.
The literature exists. The readers exist. The internet users exist.
What will it take to make publishers join the dots and take this incredible market of 590 million internet users seriously?
To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless.
To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?
[T]here is still no consensus on whether a “millennial novel” is qualified by an author’s age or that of its main protagonists, or even the age of the readers it is marketed to. I would argue that it is two things taken together: the age of the novelist (born between 1981 and 1996) and the novel’s own mood and preoccupations — even when these are not set in the immediate present.
That’s how it has always been. Ayoola would break a glass, and I would receive the blame for giving her the drink. Ayoola would fail a class, and I would be blamed for not coaching her. Ayoola would take an apple and leave the store without paying for it, and I would be blamed for letting her get hungry.
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Masiyaleti Mbewe
LARB CONTRIBUTOR
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