caine prize for african writing 2002 essay

But once you start down this line of thinking, you find yourself asking another question: if the prize is for the best short story, why have writers like A. Igoni Barrett, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, or Taiye Selasi never been shortlisted? Some people love books. Read the stories; they’re good. To the extent that short stories are a warm-up for writing novels, in other words, the Caine Prize celebrates and rewards potential and promise more than accomplishment and arrival; the highest prize for African literature is a prize for writers who have not yet “emerged.”, In retrospect, this approach made sense when the Caine Prize was founded. The Caine Prize, in short, is an important institution in promoting African writers. of third party cookies. This cut-off is so starkly arbitrary as to be more than a little bit silly: Chile, Argentina, Poland, Hungary, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Croatia, and Venezuela would all be just slightly too wealthy to be included in this rubric, strictly speaking; among the nations that are deemed to be poor enough, we find Brazil, Kazakhstan, Panama, Turkey, Malaysia, Mexico, Lebanon, Costa Rica, Romania, and China. In any case, whether or not the Afropolitan is all it’s cracked up to be, Africa is less exceptional, today, than it has ever been, less structurally excluded and more globally integrated, for better and for worse. Yet if “African literature” is having a renaissance, does it need a prize for emerging writers? An admirable and essential gateway to current African fiction. Bushra al-Fadil, Sudan, 2017 Some people fall in love. (Indeed, the year after Wainaina won the Caine, he and a group of writers in Nairobi founded Kwani?, still the most prominent literary publication in East Africa; in their first issue, they published the short story that would win the prize for Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor the next year). It’s the biggest and most prominent prize for African Literature—or at least the best publicized—and in the 17 years of its existence, what it means to say “African Literature” has changed quite dramatically, a transformation the Caine Prize has in part reflected, and in part helped to produce. With the exception of the 2008 winner, Henrietta Rose-Innes—who may have found South Africa a more hospitable publishing climate, having already published several novels—the list of winners tells the same, uniform story of How to Become An African Writer: write some stories, win the Caine Prize, then publish a novel. If we go beyond the individual level, the Caine Prize is a more problematic entity. We had to wait until 2011 for Wainaina’s One Day I will Write About this Place and until 2013 for Owuor’s magnificent novel, Dust, but (at least in retrospect) the Caine Prize marks the moment when most readers heard their names for the first time. After all, if the prize is meant to foster emerging writers, why was Segun Afolabi shortlisted last year, after having won the prize in 2005? ⓘ Okwiri Oduor, Kenya, 2014 Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenya, 2002 Kola, then, whose lovely “A Party for the Colonel” was her first publication. Writers were under siege, like the continent as a whole: the beautyful ones were (still) not yet born. Obviously, they wrote the books themselves—and this is, of course, the main thing—but it was the Caine that helped these books be recognizable as African literature, and to make them marketable as such. Deserves to be widely read. This is easy to see at the level of the individual writers: few of the people that the prize has recognized and celebrated had, at the time they were selected by the Caine judges, achieved much public recognition. For individual writers, then, the Caine Prize can have very concrete results: it gets the attention of agents and publishers, the money gives writers some breathing room, if they need it, and the exposure often gives writers the opportunity to network with a variety of people they might not otherwise have encountered. Despite being a tenured professor at the University of California, Namwali Serpell, for example, had had no success in finding a publisher for her first novel until she won the Caine Prize a few months ago. The prize tends to change that. But if it wants to foster new and “emerging” African writers—to help unknowns become knowns, and help to bridge the gap between the obscure toils of unread writers and the potential audiences that might potentially read them—can it also claim to reward and celebrate the best writers from the African continent? Olufemi Terry, Sierra Leone, 2010 by Jacana Media, Discovering Home: A Selection of Writings from the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing (Caine Prize for African Writing series). To contrive “special” categories for artists in poorer countries, and to use their GNI to justify such tokenism is not praise, but diminishment. Helon Habila, Nigeria, 2001 At the level of the literature as a whole, in fact—to the extent that it makes any sense to talk about African literature as a totality—it may do precisely the opposite, producing the conditions for a stagnating field. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. It’s hard to tell the story of contemporary African literature without talking about the Caine Prize for African Writing. Why has Tope Folarin been shortlisted this year, after winning the prize in 2013? Almost immediately, Random House snapped up the rights to The Old Drift, before she had even left London. (Read this essay here) Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan writer. Namwali Serpell, Zambia, 2015 What happens to the Caine Prize after African literature has emerged? And some people fall in love with books about falling in love. Start by marking “Discovering Home: A Selection of Writings from the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing” as Want to Read: Error rating book. I am. Snapshots Before the War: Saying Goodbye in 1944, Announcing the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Recipients, September's Best Reviewed Science, Technology, and Nature Books, Why Most Con Artist Stories Are Also About Social Class, The Strange Life and Mysterious Disappearance of a Very American Painting, Two Assassinations (and One Attempt) That Changed The Course of the Russian Revolution, What's New to Streaming in October: Crime Edition, On Drawing Inspiration From a Rich History of Ruins. Henrietta Rose-Innes, South Africa, 2008 Since Everything Was Suddening Into A Hurricane Binyavanga Wainaina. NoViolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 2011 Welcome back. EC Osondu, Nigeria, 2009 He passed away in 2019 in Nairobi at the age of 48. Is that what the broken egg shell on their website is meant to signify which—let us note in passing—is not how human beings are born, but oviparous animals like insects, birds and reptiles? Entertaining. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. This was also how the Caine Prize’s own press release framed the issue (“In a sign of the established calibre to be found in African writing and as the Caine Prize matures in its sixteenth year, the shortlist includes one past winner and two previously shortlisted writers.”) But does that mean that an emerging writer was kept off the shortlist to make room for Afolabi, a respected writer who already has the Caine Prize, an agent, a press file, and a published novel and short story collection? Afolabi ends up alongside F.T. It makes sense, then, that the prize focuses on short stories, effectively confining itself to writers who have not yet published a long work, whether because they had not yet produced one or because they had not found a publisher who was interested. Was Abstract Art Actually Invented by a Mid-19th-Century Spiritualist? According… This is not to say that we would never have heard of Brian Chikwava, Segun Afolabi, Mary Watson, or Monica Arac de Nyeko if they hadn’t won the Caine Prize (between the years 2004 and 2007, respectively). The same is true this year with Tope Folarin: another Caine Prize will do little for him that the first one didn’t do. Generalizing about Africa as a continental unit is always treacherous, but for those who did, the view of the field in the late 1990s was gloomy. Afolabi and Folarin have been on the shortlist for a very simple reason: their publishers submitted their story to the competition, and the others probably didn’t. Read the reviews and interviews; they’re also good! The greatest job in the literary world is accepting applications again. This is a satirical essay about the common prejudices held by foreigners or non Africans (who write books) about Africa. The Caine Prize also has a less concrete effect: it recognizes writers for whom recognition can be difficult to come by. The Caine Prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The Museum by Leila Aboulela (Egypt), winner of the 2000 Caine Prize, Love Poems by Helon Habila (Nigeria), winner of the 2001 Caine Prize, Discovering Home by Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), winner of the 2002 Caine Prize, Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya), winner of the 2003 Caine Prize, Seventh Street Alchemy by Brian Chikwava (Zimbabwe), winner of the 2004 Caine Prize, Monday Morning by Segun Afolabi (Nigeria), winner of the 2005 Caine Prize, Jungfrau by Mary Watson (South Africa), winner of the 2006 Caine Prize, Jambula Tree by Monica Arac de Nyeko (Uganda), winner of the 2007 Caine Prize, Poison by Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa), winner of the 2008 Caine Prize, Waiting by EC Osondu, winner of the 2009 Caine Prize, Stickfighting Days by Olufemi Terry (Sierra Leone), winner of the 2010 Caine Prize, Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), winner of the 2011 Caine Prize, Bombay’s Republic by Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria), winner of the 2012 Caine Prize, Miracle by Tope Folarin (Nigeria), winner of the 2013 Caine Prize, My Father’s Head by Okwiri Oduor (Kenya), winner of the 2014 Caine Prize, The Sack by Namwali Serpell (Zambia), winner of the 2015 Caine Prize, Memories We Lost by Lidudumalingani (South Africa), winner of the 2016 Caine Prize, The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away by Bushra al-Fadil (Sudan), winner of the 2017 Caine Prize, Fanta Blackcurrant by Makena Onjerika (Kenya), winner of the 2018 Caine Prize, Skinned by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria), winner of the 2019 Caine Prize. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African writing, and has written for Vanity Fair, Granta and the New York Times. A jailer’s love poems ghost-written by a prisoner… Love blossoming between two girls despite the horror of their community… Street kids stick-fighting or stealing guavas from the rich… A dystopian world where women must go naked until they marry… Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Caine Prize for African Writing – often referred to as the ‘African Booker Prize’ – this collection showcases all twenty prize-winning short stories, each with its own unique take on modern African life. Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition. Segun Afolabi, Nigeria, 2005 This volume also contains the stories written by participants at the first African Writers’ Workshop held in Cape Town in March 23. Be the first to ask a question about Discovering Home. A lot of stories were written that year, by people you’ve never heard of. This essay has been adapted from a piece originally published in the second volume of Oduor Oduku’s KUT Anthology. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. If “African Literature” is no longer a field to be helped through its transitions, but has become a body of work that stands on its own two feet, does the prize need to evolve? He won the 2002 Caine Prize for his short story "Discovering Home". Lidudumalingani, South Africa, 2016 I could go on, easily, but I think it makes the point: there are so many well-established African writers whose short stories don’t make it on the Caine list, and the reason is not quality. He won the Caine Prize for African writing in 2002 and was best known around the world for his satirical essay How to Write About Africa. If its winners are the best unknown and emerging writers, does this qualifier mean they are not the best, full stop? Is African literature still “emerging”? After all, if the biggest and most prominent prize for African Literature is a prize designed to shepherd the best young and unknown African writers into prominence, can it also be a prize for the best African short stories, full stop? Before Barrett’s Blackass was published, he was a short story writer, and his Love is Power or Something Like It is one of the great short story collections I have read; Adichie’s novels are great, but she’s at her best as a short story writer (I would humbly suggest); Makumbi won the commonwealth prize for “Let’s Tell This Story Properly,” and it’s a fantastic story; and Selasi’s “Driver” and “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability” are quiet demonstrations that Ghana Must Go was just the opening salvo of remarkable career. Refresh and try again. Writing is a slippery and uncertain vocation at best (and a hellishly unrewarding path at worst); prizes can make it real and give it substance, converting an eccentric and immaterial activity into something that seems almost respectable. If the Caine Prize helps apprentice individual writers into the profession, it only does this at the individual level. They simplify a complex world, so that excellence in “developing countries” is rendered as invisible, as rare, and as exceptional as poverty and human rights abuses in supposedly “developed” ones. Mary Watson South, Africa, 2006 Monica Arac de Nyeko beat four other finalists to get the $20,000 (£10,000) prize for her story Jambula Tree. We tend to tell this story, in other words, about writers at a very particular moment in their development, about writers who are constrained by under-development, and to fetishize—in strangely Rostow-ian terms—the moment of “takeoff.” It is about writers in obscurity becoming celebrated, about making that jump. We use cookies for site personalization and analytics. Consider the meaning of emergent: fledgling, embryonic, infant, in the early stages of development. This is not to say that we would never have heard of Brian Chikwava, Segun Afolabi, Mary Watson, or Monica Arac de Nyeko if they hadn’t won the Caine Prize (between the years 2004 and 2007, respectively). By focusing on emerging writers who write short stories, the most prominent prize for African literature therefore tends to privilege and promote writers only at the earliest stage of their career, celebrating them when they are relatively less accomplished. In some ways, certainly, it unquestionably has. Even if you decide that Afolabi’s story was better, say, than Pemi Aguda’s “Caterer, Caterer,” it would be hard to deny that winning would do much more for her (or for any writer in her position) than for him. The Ugandan writer who won the Caine Prize for African Writing with a story about lesbianism, often a taboo topic in Africa, says she is "very excited". Last year’s winner, Namwali Serpell, might have allowed the judges to have it both ways: while she’s relatively unknown as a fiction writer, she’s an accomplished literary critic who has already written the book on uncertainty in literature, and if she’s an “emerging” writer because she hasn’t finished her book of essays (Faceless Books) or her novels (The Furrows and The Old Drift), she’s also already a tenured professor at the University of California, and this isn’t her first time to be shortlisted. Established African novelists do not, as a rule, win the Caine Prize; it is a prize designed for and aimed at writers in a stage of emergence. This is a well-established pattern: when Okwiri Oduor’s novel is published—and when it is, we will be glad it is—the Caine Prize will have played a role in helping get it to print. Why not let one of them have a shot? When the South African writer Ishtiyaq Shukri asked that his work be removed for consideration from the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds “Emerging Voices Award,” he explained his objection by pointing out that the award is “just for people from poor countries.” Indeed, this award defines “emerging” in very concrete terms: only artists from “emergent market countries” are eligible, which the organizers take to be “defined by the World Bank Atlas Method (i.e. Leila Aboulela, Sudan, 2000 But for them all, the prize marks the transition from relative obscurity—having published a few scattered short pieces, here and there—into relative success: they each, shortly, became a writer with a book. And yet, when people talk about the good things that the Caine Prize does for African writing, they tend to tell the story the way I’ve told it, as the story of individual writers, individual achievements. Discovering Home is the third collection of stories from the Caine Prize for African Writing and includes works by writers from Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Caine Prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. You can opt out Or will it go to a writer no one had heard of before?—the one certainty is that the conversation about the Caine Prize will continue. Discovering Home: A Selection of Writings from the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing (The Caine Prize for African Writing #2002) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Literary or Genre, It's the Plot That Counts. After Leila Aboulela won the first Caine Prize in 2000, her novels began appearing and haven’t stopped since. Rotimi Babatunde, Nigeria, 2012 It is about a relationship between young girls in a country where homosexuality is illegal. Got it. Has that changed? Perhaps it is too easy: all the talk of “Africa Rising” can effectively paper over growing and glaring disparities of wealth and opportunity; waves of democratization a decade ago, in a great many one-time one-party states is hard to argue with, but new regimes of violence and dispossession have taken their place, too. At “The Time of the Writer”—two conferences of African writers held in 1997 and ’98, in Djibouti and South Africa—there was no celebratory talk of renaissance, literary or otherwise; despite the end of Apartheid, Africa as a whole was not an optimistic panorama; as Pius Adesanmi would summarize the conference for Research in African Literatures, in 2000, the “frightening realities on the continent” were still the “simulacra of revolution that have yielded the most grueling absurdities like one-party states.”. To see what your friends thought of this book, Discovering Home: A Selection of Writings from the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, (The Caine Prize for African Writing #2002), The Caine Prize for African Writing #2002, About The Caine Prize for African Writing, Books by The Caine Prize for African Writing. This third edition of stories from the Caine Prize for African Writing includes works by writers from Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, most of whom have never before been published. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. More info in our privacy policy. Lesley Nneka Arimah, Nigeria, 2019. Some will think me sensitive. Whether it is the celebration, the marketplace, the bus stop, the ritual, the family, the funeral, comradeship, grisly death, sexual awakening, the short story catches the experience, holds it at an angle, illuminates it.’, This celebratory collection includes: The literary Internet’s most important stories, every day. Shukri’s statement of “thanks, but no thanks” could easily be applied to the Caine Prize: I oppose such ghettoised categories because, however euphemistic the terminology and well-meaning the intentions, they overlook the reality that southern countries are already home to artistic brilliance of the best kind—despite their GNI. Osondu and NoViolet Bulawayo won in 2009 and 2011, and their first novels were published in 2015 and 2013, respectively; the other winners—Olufemi Terry, Rotimi Babatunde, Tope Folarin, Okwiri Oduor, and Namwali Serpell—all have novels in varying states of progress. These are not beginning writers; these are writers on top of their game who have all written powerful work over the last few years. Monica Arac de Nyeko, Uganda, 2007 Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published It’s in this context that the Caine Prize’s problem has become glaring, the way it is trying to do two irreconcilably different things. We’d love your help. More about the author → More on Granta.com. He is the founding editor of Kwani? The Prize is known as the ‘African Booker’ (and is named after the Booker Prize founder, Michael Caine) and for the past twenty years has showcased writers who go on to successfully achieve great literary success, such as Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brian Chikwava and NoViolet Bulawayo. In this way, by drawing annual attention to African literature only, always, and still, as a story of transition, the Caine Prize contributes to making that the endless single story of the literature. Makena Onjerika, Kenya, 2018 The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition. For family, colleagues, and skeptical friends—as well as, perhaps, creditors and employers—a prize which can be weighed in English pounds has a way of transforming a foolish dream into something you can hold in your hands. And if triumphalism is dangerous, excessive gloom is risky, too: If it was hard to see the better, in the late 1990s, one must struggle, today, to see the worse: African literature is thriving. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Kenya, 2003 Eastern European poverty does not, quite, qualify those countries for the prize, while nations who have managed to break out of “emergent market” status are nevertheless grandfathered in for inclusion. But then we must ask a follow-up question: are these writers and these stories also the best in African literature? E.C. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition. The same is true of its literature: the global profile of African writers has never been greater. Instead, the prize divides the world into three regions of underdevelopment—Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific—and these regional associations are clearly the primary qualification. ), a literary magazine. It’s exciting, an opportunity to celebrate underappreciated writers. In terms of the Caine Prize, she’s both emerging and emerged: if she hasn’t yet published a book, her name is not unknown. The Caine Prize, in short, is an important institution in promoting African writers. There are a variety of reasons why writers do and don’t put their work into the ring for this particular prize competition, but the result is this very mixed bag: because the Caine Prize judges only select from the pool of stories that are sent to them, the shortlist places the “best” new writers alongside the “best” old ones. Brian Chikwava, Zimbabwe, 2004 At the individual level, it is hard to complain about the steady, annual boost for new and unknown talent; the prize has had real, practical consequences for real, working writers, and one must give it its due. It is hard to complain about it. But no matter who wins—will Tope Folarin be the first repeat winner? Especially given how stretched thin literary publishing in Africa was in the early 2000’s—and in many respects, still is—these have been and still are very good things for African writers, precisely the kind of vital sustenance that writers (on any continent) need to continue. Some would prefer the Caine function as a prize for the best short story, full stop; last year, for example, Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire suggested that that shortlist represented the Caine Prize “coming of age,” that the prize has moved beyond spotlighting new and unknown talent to focus on rewarding the best work of the year. There are still frightening realities, one-party states, and a dearth of free spaces for literary expression in Africa—as there are in many places in the world—but it’s much easier to be optimistic. Tope Folarin, Nigeria, 2013 On Monday, July 4th, the winner of this year’s Caine Prize will be announced. The idea that China and India are “emerging,” while Equatorial Guinea is too rich to be included is… an interesting conceit. (So What? April 1st 2005 But the fact that two Argentine artists were longlisted demonstrates that this rubric is not being strictly applied. The return of familiar names has, for many, marked a shift in how the prize has been administered; many of us had assumed that former winners were not eligible; since they had already enjoyed their takeoff, shouldn’t the prize go to a more deservedly unknown writer? those with a GNI per capita of less than $12,746).”. In “emerging markets,” writers lack the connections and material conditions to succeed, so the Caine Prize gives them a boost at a key moment in their development, allowing them to establish themselves and their careers to take off. Helon Habila won in 2001 for a short story that would anchor his first novel Waiting for an Angel, published a year later, and perhaps the two most prominent writers in Kenya, today—Binyavanga Wainaina and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor—won the prize in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Apprentice individual writers Into the profession, it only does this at the individual level, winner. Winners are the best in African literature ” is having a renaissance, does this at the individual level House... And essential gateway to current African fiction you keep track of books want. Written by participants at the age of 48 problematic entity does it need a Prize emerging! Who write books ) about Africa at the age of 48 age of 48 has written for Vanity Fair Granta... 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