Bolaji Olatunde Speaks

  Review of "Vagabonds" by Eloghosa Osunde This is a novel that makes the bold attempt to be a literary manifesto of sorts for Nigeria’s LGBTQ community. The introductory pages of the book make that clear. The opening pages have the following notices from the author: “There are simple and good and straightforward and well-behaved people, I’m sure. But this is not a book about them.” The author also defines the word “Vagabond” as a Nigerian noun (used) “In the states of Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara,” to refer to “any male person who dresses or is attired in the fashion of a woman in a public place or who practices sodomy as a means of livelihood or as a profession.” In the author’s definition for the female vagabond, the word covers “any female person who dresses or is attired in the fashion of a man in a public place.” The novel is also an ode to Lagos, exploring some of the myths and fascinations that the city holds for...

                                Hi there! After a long hiatus from blogging and some of my social media accounts, I am pleased to unveil an extract from my latest novel " The Heptagon Revolt ." It is an Orwellian novel, inspired by "Animal Farm," set in Abuja, Nigeria with an up to date examination of the world today. I'd like to also believe it can be equally enjoyed by a teen class in a secondary school/high school class room, and a sociopolitical or socioeconomics class in a university.  Below is the except from the novel, "The Heptagon Revolt."                                                  Revolution  The two human guards who watched over the dogs when the Big Fight occurred left the farm the following week. They were replaced...

  Nikki May says she wrote Wahala because she wanted to see herself in a book — middle-class, mixed-race Nigerian living in Britain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iq5NJMhxL8. It’s a novel inspired by a “long and very loud lunch with her Nigerian friends in London”.  That aspiration has been met. She also believes the success of the book will mean that she has been forgiven for dropping out of medical school. She shares this characteristic with a character in the novel. The average helicopter Nigerian parent sparingly forgives such acts but it’s not unknown to happen.   Three female best friends based in London have a close bond. They share several characteristics, as close friends often do. They are all of mixed race (more popularly described in Nigerian society with the word “half caste” which is a pejorative in the West and a compliment in Nigeria). All of their fathers are Nigerian, their mothers are Caucasian. Ronke (Ronks), Boo (Bukola) Whyte and Simisola (Simi) fi...

  Buchi Emecheta was once described by her son as a “womanist”, a word that is perhaps closely related to the more popular word, “feminist”. Her ideas about the place of a woman in what is ostensibly 1970s and 1980s Nigeria are explored in this novella that packs a punch that is far greater than its small weight. “Going to the United Kingdom must surely be like paying God a visit,” Buchi Emecheta declared in a BBC One programme The Light of Experience about her perceptions about that island as a little girl growing up in Ibusa, Nigeria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cAwemP-u8 She vowed to someday visit that country; she would go on to live there for decades. Bintu, the narrator of Naira Power by Buchi Emecheta, follows this path. “I am a woman who has stayed more than half of her life in the United Kingdom, pursuing one set of studies and then another,” Bintu introduces herself at the beginning of the novella. The book opens with Bintu explaining that she has been visitin...