98th birthday of Cyprian Ekwensi

(Born 26 September 1921, Minna, Nigeria)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

PHARMACIST and one of Africa’s most prolific writers with particular interest in the exploration of urban life and its immense challenges – may have inaugurated the Onicha (Biafra Oshimili Delta) market literary genre with his 1948*-published Ikolo the Wrestler and other Igbo Tales and When Love Whispers (see Emmanuel Obiechina, An African Popular Literature, 1973: 3), subsequently publishing over 20 novels (including People of the City [1954], The Drummer Boy [1960], Jagua Nana [1961], Burning Grass [1961], Beautiful Feathers [1963], Iska [1966], Jagua Nana’s Daughter [*1986]), innumerable short stories (including several adapted for radio and television), and children’s books

(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Search for the new land” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 1964])

*({Thanks to Professor Ernest Emenyonu for kindly citing the correct dates of the publication of these three titles in his communication with me, Wednesday 25 September 2019 [HE-E].})

 *****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011) and, more recently, The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

105th birthday of James Cameron

(Born 25 February 1914, La Crosse, Wisconsin, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

INDEFATIGABLE lynching-survivor in Marion, Indiana, US (7 August 1930), and author of A Time of Terror (1982) which recounts this catastrophe, engineer, educator, founder of Milwaukee’s African American holocaust museum dedicated to the history of African Americans from the epoch of enslavement to quest for freedom

(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Search for the new land” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 1964])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

93rd birthday of Amilcar Cabral

(Born 12 September 1924, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau)

Agricultural engineer, outstanding theorist and philosopher of the national liberation resistance (see, particularly, Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, 1970 and Cabral, Return to the Source, 1973) and founder of  Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e CaboVerde, African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, that frees Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in 1974 from 500 years of the Portuguese conquest, occupation and immiseration

(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Search for the new land” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 1964])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe