Africa, aaduna, Alifa…interconnections

While there are still numbers of African American folk who routinely travel to African countries in the 21^st century, awhile back during the 20^th century Black consciousness era, there was a deluge of Black Americans who sought to discover ancestral roots and find long lost family in West African countries (and this was long before Ancestry.com and the public’s consciousness of mitochondrial DNA and its importance to generationally related mothers, genomes, double-helix structures, and other biological mysteries still misunderstood by the general public.)

Without a doubt, our deep gratitude and props go to Alex Haley, Mohammad Ali and Joe Frazier, as well as the legions of Black Africans and American scholars of color, along with esteemed white scholars who redefined and re-purposed African “history” within the genesis of Black Studies’ departments at colleges and universities.)  It was a burgeoning period of Black awareness and discovery that epitomized the struggles to define one’s own cultural identity and embrace the contributions Africans made to worldwide knowledge as they were displaced throughout the “new” world.       

Nigeria played a significant role in the ancestry and history of Africans who eventually became Black Americans during pivotal historical periods of heartache, subjugation, resistance, and achievement.

In contemporary times, Nigerian poets and writers have distinguished their homeland with notable and exemplary creative contributions to the Canon of literature that has had a world-wide impact.

Wole Soyinka, Sefi Atta, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, are a few.

There are other new and emerging voices that warrant our attention and read. 

Inalegwu Omapada Alifa is such a voice.

Inalegwu Omapada  Alifa, photo provided

aaduna will present his poetic creativity in the next issue.

“Season of plagues,” “Pestle and mortar,” and “Waiting Under the rock!” will grace the contents of the forthcoming aaduna issue.

We rather you wait to read his work in its entirety so we will not offer you any teasers. However…  

Once you read his work, you will help determine his place in contemporary Nigerian poetry, as well as the evolving global poetic tradition.

Alifa.

A name to remember!

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aaduna - an online adventure with words and images - a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.

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