Stories Fly: A Collection of African Fiction Written in Europe and the USA
edited by Brenda Cooper
(David Philip)
They give a fresh view of such issues as: What do we mean by ”home”? What is ”identity” and how does globalisation and cultural exchange really affect us?
In one of the most sobering extracts, Beyond the Horizon, by Amma Darko, a Ghananian woman, tells of how she gradually came to realise the extent to which her own husband was prepared to exploit her, first at home in Ghana, then in Germany.
In Admiring Silence, Abdulrazah Gurnah tells of a young man who fled persecution in Zanzibar, describing with a light satirical touch his marriage to an English girl and her parents’ ignorance and racism.
He himself has not been able to tell his own family back in Zanzibar of the marriage, while he learns to mouth the polite nonsense required of him in England. He is cocooned in silence, and isolated.
Probably the most daring writing in this collection is that of B Kojo Laing, who describes, in an excerpt from his novel, Woman of the Aeroplanes, a cultural exchange between the imaginary twinned towns of Tukwan in Ghana and Levensdale in Scotland (part of ”the Benighted or Blighted Kingdom”).
The reader is taken on a crazy, surreal ride in which the writer shows a keen understanding of both cultures and takes a playful dig at the notion of cultural exchange.
Stories Fly cannot fail to change the mindset of anyone not previously exposed to these writers.