January's gone. February's here and it's Black History Month 2019! For the past two years I've dedicated my February posts to celebrating African American authors. Finding novels that I genuinely want to read for this month's celebration was tougher than I expected but I finally settled on these four books: 1) Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes 2) A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton 3) All ..read more

Isn't it crazy that there's only 4 days left in the year 2018?! This has been an incredible year and I'm grateful for all of my experiences. Let's talk about boookssss!!! Last year I began the tradition of looking back at all the books I read during the year so let's dive in once again using lists. Here we go! Books I READ in 2018! 1) Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward  2) We're Going to ..read more

We're approaching the end of another year and so it's time for my annual review of the Caine Prize for African Writing Anthology. I've been reviewing the Caine Prize Anthology on this blog site since 2015! I find great pleasure and excitement in reading short stories from new voices and familiar voices every year.  As always, I preordered my copy of this years anthology, Redemption Song and ..read more

Kachifo Limited launched its new e-book store, farafinabooks.com, on October 20th, 2018. Now, you can buy and read on your devices your best-loved titles from any of their imprints: Farafina, Tuuti, Breeze and Kamsi. To Start Reading on Farafinabooks - Go to farafinabooks.com - Click on Free Account on the top right corner of the site and fill in your details - After completing the form ..read more

Farafina is set to publish debut novel, Of Women and Frogs, by Bisi Adjapon, in December 2018. Of Women and Frogs is a coming-of-age story of Esi, a feisty half-Nigerian girl growing up in post-colonial Ghana, with occasional visits to her maternal family in Lagos. When her curiousity about her body leads to punishment from her stepmother, Esi begins to question the hypocrisy of the adults ..read more

19 Y.O. The night before I turned 20 Ten years ago in an internet cafe on the University of Nigeria, Nsukka campus I created this blog site and published my first blog post titled My Blogenesis. I was there that night with Onyeka Nwelue but he was at a different computer station because that night the cyber cafe was packed. I had needed convincing by my friends Eromo Egbejule and Nwelue (both ..read more

There are eight short stories in Going to Meet the Man. The first is The Rockpile, a tale of a small family and its abusive patriarch. In The Outing a young black adolescent boy bears the weight of a yet to be fully understood secret that makes him different from the other boys. In The Man Child Eric and his parents celebrate the birthday of his father's childhood friend, Jamie. Jamie, who just ..read more

Junot Diaz's Drown is a collection of ten short stories. It begins with Ysrael, a tale of two brothers who set out to track down a local kid whose mauled face is perpetually hidden behind a mask. In Fiesta a family poses a united front at a party despite the patriarchs' dirty secret. I couldn't make sense of the third story Aurora soooo that's that. In Aguantando a mother and her two sons endure ..read more

The African American family at the center of Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing is broken and hurt in many different ways. Pop, the family's patriarch, is burdened by a secret from his time in prison even as he tries to be present for his grandkids and his dying wife. She's stuck in the bedroom slowly surrendering to cancer that her grandson Jojo says has "...dried her up and hollowed her out ..read more

It wasn't until January of 2017 that I paid attention to BET's TV series Being Mary Jane. My cousins were surfing Netflix for entertainment options while I read a novel on the living room couch that first week of January. I fell asleep while reading and when I woke up Gabrielle Union was on the screen looking gorgeous, bourgeois and pissed off. She was mad at an equally gorgeous man, the actor ..read more