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African Roar 2014 or AR2014 (StoryTime African Publishers), the fifth in a series of annual anthologies of short stories by African writers, is a gamut of diverse themes delivered in styles that hold the reader in perpetual wonder. The short stories carry a range of styles and themes which invite the reader to dramatically roam across Africa, meeting different people and different cultures, emotions and contradictions.
AR2014 contains nine short stories only. The anthology editor, Zimbabwean writer Ivor W Hartmann, is based abroad. In previous AR anthologies, Hartmann co-edited with another Zimbabwean writer Emmanuel Sigauke who lives in the United States of America. These two men’s editorial choices are something to reckon with indeed because the stories in each African Roar anthology sparkle with Africa’s newfound literary voices yearning to be heard.
With the stories in AR2014, you drift to South Africa to meet a certain boy trapped in the loneliness of upper-class life (in the story ‘‘Flight’’), then to Kenya where you meet the character Wamboi the dreamer (in the story ‘‘Beth’s Aid’’), end up in Uganda with the lovers Karungi and Mukasa (in the story ‘The Side Dish’), then you are in Nigeria where you meet the daring old man Ngele (in the story ‘Talking to A Lizard’) and you move on and on. The anthology is as diverse as the continent itself!
Regional anthologies like African Roar bring to the fore the core of Africa’s often ignored problems. They, these regional anthologies, bridge the gap created by what the editor Ivor Hartmann sees in his introduction to AR2014 as the quest for ‘a Pan-African publishing platform for new voices and explorations’.
Issues of sexuality, power, girl child empowerment or dis-empowerment, and Christianity at war with tradition, are carved into thought-provoking short stories. For instance, the short story ‘‘Spinoza’s Monad’’ by Ezeiyoka Chukwunonso, apart from it being told from the point of view of a child born in a gay relationship (through artificial insemination), it also challenges Africa to come into the open regarding the sensitively problematic issue of homosexuality.
How, as parents or as a society, will you receive it when it comes into your house?
What is striking with AR2014 is the passionate metaphor of the ‘‘cage’’ or ‘prison’, whether mentioned or implied in a number of stories. The characters are imprisoned in specific situations, and ‘flight’ is their wish which they struggle to satisfy. The domestic worker, the student coming from a poor family, the girl child about to be forced into marriage, and various kinds of characters in the short stories are inspired by a desire for ‘flight’, for an escape from their present chains.
Some stories have happy endings; others leave a painful scar on your mind like ‘‘My Wedding Day’’ by Obinna Ozoigbo (Nigeria) in which the youth Bello, one of the rescuers, dies.
Africa is still fighting the war against child marriages, in whatever form they come, but it seems no victory will loom up unless the children and young people also take an active lead themselves. In the short story ‘‘My Wedding Day’’, 12 year old Zainab is about to be given in marriage to a powerful politician. Her mother, obsessed with money and power, is behind this scheme of tradition.
The story captures that moment just a few minutes before the “forced wedding”. Here the writer’s skill to grip the reader by alternating dialogue, memory, and description is exhibited. You are driven into the inner world of Zainab whose overwhelming strength inspires an awareness of the inhumanity of child marriages. The story leaves you yearning for more resolution…asking ‘Why does Bello have to die?’ “Has 12 year old Zainab won her freedom?” “Does she get married away?
The spirit of flight, of wanting to escape from a certain prison covers some of the stories in the AR2014 anthology. So carefully handled are the characters’ “inner yearnings” for freedom and for their right place in an almost deranged world. In stories such as “Flight” by award-winning Jane Bauling (South Africa), the motif is captured brilliantly and ‘‘Beth’s Aid’’ by Tabitha Wanja Mwangi (Kenya), you feel for Wamboi the girl who refuses to give in to poverty and she excels in school.
Russia-based Zimbabwean writer Tendai Machingaidze’s short story “A Salute To Safety Sam” is nostalgic, set in India, Zimbabwe and the UK. It explores the kombi and rickshaw dilemmas in Zimbabwe and India respectively, while celebrating the figure Safety Sam, a childhood traffic training centre in Zimbabwe which upheld excellent driving skills. Reading this story, you can see humans and animals hurriedly jaywalking in India, you can see the extent of the confusion of disorganized kombis and commuters in Harare.
African Roar has established itself as a persistent annual anthology of short stories by Africa writers. Launched in 2010, it has brought forth literary voices so brave in the manner in which they engage the genre of short story to deliver issues bedevilling contemporary African society.
To date, five African Roars have been published and each carries literary substance of value from Africa to the world.
The inaugural anthology, African Roar 2010, was actually produced from Hartmann’s fiction blog called StoryTime, a micro African press dedicated to publishing short fiction by emerging and established African writers.
By African writers is meant writers born in Africa or have been domiciled in Africa for over ten years and/or hold citizenship in an African country.
StoryTime was formed in 2007 ‘in response to the deficit of African literary magazines’. It started as a weekly online literary magazine that began to operate in June 2007 and stopped in June 2012. Hartmann would later turn the blog into StoryTime African Publisher now publishing these exciting, captivating annual anthologies called African Roar. To date, five anthologies have been published.
That blogs or the internet in general, can play a big role in advancing African literature is a truth despite fears that the same technology could take over the traditional physicality of ‘the book’.
All AR anthologies are available on the Amazon, an online book market. Ivor W Hartmann, the brains behind the African Roar anthology, is an award-winning Zimbabwean writer, editor, publisher and visual artist. Many of his works have been published in different journals and anthologies. He is also involved in local writing projects such as Writers International Network Zimbabwe where he sits on the Advisory Board.
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