Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 97
June 6, 2013
On try
Originally published on BooksLive on the 5th of June And the Moral of the Story (Alternative title – Hand me some cheese to go with the whine.) Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I sat in a hard wooden pew listening to a sermon. The priest told a story about an Olympic marathon race. How when the winner crossed the line the crowds scooped him up onto their shoulders and paraded him around the stadium. Hours later the last runner came up the road. The officials detoured this runner into an empty practice stadium to finish...
June 5, 2013
On reading vs buying books
People do read in South Africa. The problem is that they do not buy books. Let me rephrase. They do not buy books by South African authors as much as they are buying literature by authors from the West and US of America. This is very unfortunate. I don’t think the problem is about books being expensive either. Honestly, I don’t think books are expensive like many people think. People just have other preferences. Except for John van der Ruit (author of the successful series “Spud”, ed.), I don’t know of any South African author who has sold more than...
June 4, 2013
On The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck - Boys who had grown up watching Sesame Street, reading Enid Blyton, eating cornflakes for breakfast, attending the university staff primary school in smartly polished brown sandals, were now cutting through the mosquito netting of their neighbors' windows, sliding out glass louvers, and climbing in to steal TVs and VCRs. - - It is one of the things she has come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope. - - As she walked back to her cabin, she wondered whether this ending, in a story, would be considered plausible. -...
June 3, 2013
On cheese sandwiches
“The tools are changing. But change is not always good. Sorry to tell you that.” As the audience chuckled, Atwood went on to explain that “tools have a sharp side, the upside, a dull side, the downside, and a stupid side, the side you didn’t anticipate and the consequence you didn’t intend." A hammer, she noted, is a tool. "You can use it to build a house, or murder your neighbor. Or you can hit your thumb." - Margret Atwood, PW Tools of Change Questioning how writers will be able to "buy the time” to write in the future, Atwood...
June 2, 2013
On Short Story Day Africa, the children, the fairy tales & me
This post was originally posted on BooksLive on the 31st May 2013. On Short Story Day Africa, the children, the fairy tales & me Dear Diary, Today I walked around The Point and picked up a dassie. When I kissed it, the dassie turned into the ugliest and hairiest man you ever saw. I am never ever doing that again! I guess you have to stick to frogs if you want a prince. For Short Story Day Africa ’12 we ran contests for the YA and kids. Children told stories of rocks that glowed and scarves that could strangle you...
May 30, 2013
On teaching reading & writing
So what goes wrong at school when learning to write? Where does the effortless learning ability go which enables children to learn to talk so easily? Could it be we interrupt their efficient learning flow through rigid methods and exercises because we have forgotten that writing and reading are also language? The essence of all language for children is the real stuff of being human – communicating and expressing what is important to us. But how can young children learn this if they experience writing at school as the production of arduous rows of squiggles and shapes, without doing anything...
May 29, 2013
On learning to write
My experience of writing was very humbling. I had to learn--I don’t think you ever stop--how to hear what is working in the story and what is not. And, while I had ideas about what kind of story I wanted to tell, I had to accept when I was wrong and be willing to change. - Yewande Omotoso on writing Bom Boy, The Voice
May 28, 2013
On helping fund Short Story Day Africa
Who We Are When Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, addressed the TED Conference in 2009, she spoke of the danger of the single story, a distorted, one-dimensional view of Africa that sees the continent only through a prism of war, disease, poverty, starvation and corruption. Short Story Day Africa has established a day, 21st June – the shortest day of the year – on which to celebrate the diversity of Africa’s voices and tell you who we really are; what we love; love to eat, read, write about. We want to bring you the scents on our street corners, the...
May 27, 2013
On Queer Africa
Karen Martin & Makhosazana Xaba, Queer Africa - She looks like you, when nobody's watching her. - - You never folded the laundry. You alphabetised the books. - - So this is how people who work in banks live. They are always being watched. - - The man stops to take pictures of bergies passed out with their mouths open outside the liquor store. If this were my first time on Lower Main, I'd be shocked to see someone taking pictures of homeless drunks. But it's not. So I'm not. - - When Mummy talked of London, we listened with...
