MAKING AFRICA
Yes, tomorrow I will give a gallery talk in the MAKING AFRICA exhibition at the Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin.
I will title the talk, “I am Africa.”
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Yes, tomorrow I will give a gallery talk in the MAKING AFRICA exhibition at the Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin.
I will title the talk, “I am Africa.”
Yèyé
“Iya Oyo,” I called, after polishing the bowl of amala she made for me, “what does Yèyé mean? Is it different from Ìyá, which means mother?”
It was Baba Oyo who answered me, raising his glasses and looking up from a book without a cover that he was reading. Because I had also read that book on his table, I knew the book was titled “Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunlole,” by D.O. Fagunwa, one of the old books he had in his library.
FEBRUARY 16, 2020
Gina sat on the floor by the doorstep waiting for us when we returned late to Benin City from Iludun. I didn’t she was sitting there until the headlamps lit up the spot where she was and Felicia said, “Hey, is that not Gina?”
It had been a long day spent mostly on the road and it took me a minute to adjust my mind to what was happening. I was exhausted from hours of driving on rough roads to and fro Iludun, Mama Rufus’s place.
DIFFICULT PRAYERS
Iya Oyo mumbled a growl to the greeting, when a neighbor said, “A kò ní rí alákǒbá o.” It means “May we not be the victim of a saboteur,”
I said, “Iya Oyo, you did not say Àṣȩ” to that man’s prayer.”
I am pleased to announce the publication of an essay that I wrote in 2004–sixteen years later.
The journal is the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART.
The essay, on the work of Bing Davis, is titled “Flying Back Home.” I describe Mr. Davis as an “Afronaut.”
I did not use the term “Afrofuturism,” because that term was not even in theoretical usage at that time.
“Two husbands are better than one;
So also vice-versa,” this sixty-something year old woman informed me in Ile Ife.
In indigenous Yoruba systems, I still grew up to witness polygamy–when a man had several women, and when a woman engaged several men.