Henrietta Lacks lived only to the age of 31, and it’s the acute case of cervical cancer that killed her that also brought change to the world. During radiation treatment, doctors scraped her cancer cells for research. Those cells eventually became known as HeLa, and they are immortal. HeLa cells continue to duplicate to this day, and they’ve been used in everything from polio vaccines to gene mapping to AIDS research.

It’s a truly fascinating story from a science and medical background – how one group of cells can live more than 50 years after the woman they came from died.

But it’s the back-story that sets The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by journalist Rebecca Skloot, apart. Lacks and her family were unaware that her cells were harvested and used in medical research, and they only recently found out about her scientific importance. Her immediate family, currently based in Baltimore, never received any compensation for her cells—despite the fact that they were taken without permission and subsequently used by wealthy research companies.

As Skloot develops the story into a profile of Lacks and her family, we get an intimate profile of Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, as well as her sons and husband. Immortal Life reads like a murder mystery most of the time, even though we know who committed the crime.

Says her daughter Deborah:

“I always thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin’ about them takin’ her cells, now we don’t get a dime.”

It’s easy to praise The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: it’s engaging and well-written. But the importance of the book might be just as overlooked at Henrietta herself, who has been rarely praised as the person responsible for saving lives around the world. This book goes some way toward correcting that original injustice. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks shouldn’t be placed on the bookshelves of only those interested in medical research and history—the story weaves itself through various genres, and is related to politics, race relations, gender studies and health care. Skloot proves that Lacks is: “An unsung heroine of medicine.”

In the end, medical research is about people, and it’s people like Lacks and her family we should be reading about to understand our current health policy, what it means to the average Canadian, and what our health system could become. The media is often to blame for taking science reporting and leaving it at that—cells and researchers and technical terms. But it’s who that research is helping that should be the focus.

For today’s instalment of Verbatim, Marisa Iacobucci interviews Liz Worth about her new book, Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond. The original podcast is available to listen to here. (To ensure you never miss an episode, how about subscribing to the RSS feed or through iTunes?)

The book chronicles the punk scene  throughout the turbulent years from 1977 to 1981, in the words of the bands and tastemakers who made it happen. Through interviews with Teenage Head, The Viletones, The Diodes, The Curse, Forgotten Rebels, B-Girls, The Ugly, and more, the book is kind of like a VH1 Behind the Music special from hell, and a Who’s Who of a musical scene that’s often been overshadowed by its counterparts in bigger American cities. Marisa Iacobucci talked with Liz Worth recently about the process of writing the book, the mystery of Mike Nightmare and Ruby Tease, and her next project.

Q&A

Marisa Iacobucci: Toronto’s punk scene—why was it slient until this book?

Liz Worth: I always thought it was really interesting that the Toronto punk scene was so underdocumented in comparison to other punk scenes. We know so much about punk in New York, so much about punk in London and there’s also been a lot about punk in L.A., but nothing about Toronto even though the Toronto scene was huge, and there’s definitely a connection between Toronto and New York. And there were also people from Toronto who were going over to visit in London and that kind of thing as well. So people knew what was going on over there, and there are some bands in the book who I talked about, like the Viletones at one time had talked about planning on moving to London, so I don’t know. I mean, obviously all of these things were happening at the same time and I just don’t know why it was so underdocumented.

When punk was happening here, there was a lot of coverage in the mainstream media although it was often negative. People thought this was really shocking, they thought it was really stupid, they thought the music was awful, they hated the fashion, so a lot of the media coverage that the bands were getting and that the scene was getting was mocking, and the writers were kind of ridiculing what was going on. It was very strange and it was very critical. But at the same time, these mainstream papers are giving really big, prominent coverage to this too, which would never happen now. If there was a reporter that didn’t like something they just wouldn’t bother writing about it, when it came to the music scene or something. But again, at least they were writing something. So, we had that kind of documentation, but it was negative and didn’t really capture the actual history of anything. Although often they talked about some of the key players in the scene, Steven Leckie from the Viletones, for example, was always a favourite person to be interviewed by media. And there were some fanzines and there were some magazines like Shades Magazine that was happening at the time, and there were some others as well.

And so they were starting to document this, but that was it, there wasn’t a lot. And once the scene was over all of that coverage kind of stopped and things moved on and people started focusing elsewhere. And I can’t really say why there wasn’t a book or a documentary or something that came out on all this before Treat Me Like Dirt. I’ve had a lot of people say that they’d always hoped there would be one, but I don’t know. I think part of it might have to do with, you know, people didn’t realize how important it was because it is important to a lot of people who weren’t involved in he scene, and there are a lot of people outside Toronto and outside of southern Ontario who are really interested in the topic, but for some reason it just never got captured that way, and I don’t know, it’s hard to say.

Marisa Iacobucci: Were you in touch with any of the people who wrote for Shades?

Liz Worth: Yeah, George Higton and Sheila Wawanash were both people that I talked to when I was researching Treat Me Like Dirt and they were heavily involved.

Marisa Iacobucci: How did the musicians and artists you speak to, how did they take to your project? Were they very open and welcoming?

Liz Worth: Yeah, for the most part people were very interested in doing the interviews, they really liked the idea. There were some people, often they were people who were major players from the scene, who had been contacted in the past by people saying they were going to do books and for some reason those projects never got completed and they weren’t followed through. So some of them said, you know, “I’ve talked to other people before and nothing ever came of that”. But I didn’t seem to be going away, I kept coming back and asking people for more and more interviews, so I think over time that helped because people could see that I was really serious about this. But I think part of it is, you know, it’s really easy for people to talk to a woman in her twenties about it, and I kind of wonder if people took the interviews less seriously because of that. And sometimes I wonder, because people were fairly open with information and it was definitely what I was hoping for (I wanted to get really candid interviews) but I wonder if maybe some people thought, you know, that I was really young, I don’t know if gender ever had anything to do with it either, but I don’t know if maybe they didn’t take me as seriously as they would have if I was older, or a different person and that maybe the answers would have been different. I always think that might affect things because it’s really easy too, to write off a younger person and to think, you know, okay I’ll just do this and I’ll humour them and nothing’s going to happen. So I wonder about that, but for the most part people were definitely cooperative, which was great. Yeah, because you know that with the book We Got the Neutron Bomb, for example, which is about the L.A. Scene. That’s an oral hisory as well, and in the introduction to that book the authors are talking about how a lot of people didn’t cooperate with interviews. So that’s unfortunate, because then you’re always left with gaps when people don’t.

Marisa Iacobucci: But that didn’t happen at all …

Liz Worth: There were some people who weren’t interested in doing interviews, but there weren’t too many.

Marisa Iacobucci: Who was your first interview?

Liz Worth: My first interview was Paul Robinson from The Diodes, he was their lead singer and I found him on the internet, which is how we often find people now, and from there it just snowballed. I talked to Paul and told him about the project I was doing and then he gave me a list of people I should try to track down and I did. And then from those people they gave me other names of people I should track down, so it just kind of went on from there.

Marisa Iacobucci: Great, and at what point did you decide that this was going to be an oral history?

Liz Worth: It was probably within the first ten interviews when I first started this. I liked the idea of an oral history but it wasn’t in my original intention. I was thinking that I would write it as a narrative, but within the first ten interviews I could start to hear all the stories falling together really well, and since there wasn’t any other book on Toronto punk I really wanted to preserve those stories exactly as they were.

Marisa Iacobucci: I’m glad you did. Did you meet any resistence along the way?

Liz Worth: Yeah, there was resistence from a few people. Some people who I wanted to interview had to be won over. They didn’t trust people that easily due to certain experiences they’ve had within their career in the music industry, which is understandable. And I think when people read Treat Me Like Dirt they’ll be able to see why because there are a lot of stories about failures in this book and a lot of things went wrong for people in this book. So there was that, but I was lucky because eventually people did come around. But, yeah, there were a few people who I would have liked to talk to who weren’t interested. But I’m kind of hoping, though, that now that the book is out there and that people are talking about it, that maybe those people will come around anyway and I can still interview them and maybe work their stories into a future project that’s related somehow.

The other resistence within the book came from a lot of editors and publishers who thought the book was too focused on Toronto—even though probably about a third of it is about Hamilton. They thought it was too Toronto-centric and that that would alienate Canadian readers across the country, which I think it compeltely wrong and ridiculous.

Marisa Iacobucci: Absolutely. What would you say to those editors now?

Liz Worth: That the book is doing so well so far. I mean, it sold out of its first print run almost right after its release, which is amazing and not something the happens very often. So I feel vindicated because of that, and it’s gotten a lot of really great buzz and there’s really great word-of-mouth around it and it’s had a lot of positive feedback. So, I mean, I never agreed with those editors, I never wanted to compromise the story, I never wanted to broaden it to appeal to a wider audience because I don’t think it’s necessary, I think it can appeal to a wider audience anyway. You can read the book because you like these bands or you can read the book because you want to read a really great story. It works on both levels.

And when I was putting it together, I wasn’t writing this book for people in the scene and I wasn’t writing it for people in Toronto, although I did want to give Toronto its own punk history, I wanted people to know about that. But I was definitely thinking that this is something that people will read outside of the city and outside of Canada, so I was always keeping that in mind. It has to be just as accessible for someone in London, England, as it is for someone in Vancouver, or someone in New York, or someone right here.

Marisa Iacobucci: And have you had any kind of reaction from people outside of Toronto, outside of Canada, outside this country?

Liz Worth: Yeah, it’s interesting, my publisher Ralph Alfonso was recently on tour with one of his artists on his label, and when he was in Europe and talking about Toronto punk with them they would mention bands like Teenage Head and the Forgotten Rebels and they were excited and, you know, people know who the Viletones are, and people know who the Diodes are. And if you go into the States, there are a lot of people in America who are involved in music scenes in their own cities, there are people who aren’t involved in music scenes, who are just fans, who really like these bands too. And I knew that before I even started working on this, but it’s great now because those people are starting to get in touch because they are hearing about the book. And that’s great because this book was written for people like that, for people who wanted to know what happened to these bands the same way I wanted to know when I started working on this.

Marisa Iacobucci: Great. What story or stories stand out most for you?

Liz Worth: It’s really hard to narrow down the stories that stand out because there are so many. The stories around Simply Saucer and the Saucer House in Hamilton are really appealing to me because their singer, Edgar Breau, really talks about living the life of an artist. And when you read Treat Me Like Dirt you’ll read about him sleeping in the rehearsal spaces and that kind of thing, and I really admire that someone could be so dedicated to what they’re doing that they’re just going to live in the rehearsal space all the time.

There’s another story about Mike Nightmare who’s the singer of a band called The Ugly and his girlfriend Ruby Tease, and their stories. Although Mike is no longer alive and no one really knows what happened to Ruby (but she seems like she’s no longer alive either), those two stories kind of weave through the whole book, and that’s a really strong story for me. When I was working on it I was trying to find out what happened to Ruby because nobody knew and people would ask me if I had heard where she was, and so I was trying to find out and, kind of, all of the stories around what may or may not have happened to her got woven into the book because I was looking. That search kind of became part of the story of Treat Me Like Dirt too. So those are strong ones, and anything around the band The Viletones is also really strong. That band has a lot of really strong personalities and interesting characters, and their singer Steven Leckie is incredibly charismatic and very well-spoken but also very memorable.

Marisa Iacobucci: Is there anyone you wish you could have spoken to that you didn’t speak to?

Liz Worth: Yeah, I really wanted to talk to Nick Stipanitz from Teenage Head. I did invite him to do an interview, he wasn’t interested (which is okay) but I feel like it would have been good to have him in there just to get his perspective. And, yeah, Mike Nightmare would have been great to talk to as well. Ruby Tease would have been great to talk to. I’m sure there are others but those are the main ones I can think of right now.

Marisa Iacobucci: Maybe for book two? What has happened to you since this book has been published, what has happened for the musicians and artists since this book has been published, and what has happened for the scene in toronto since this book has been published?

Liz Worth: I don’t know if I can speak to the scene in Toronto in general, I mean, in terms of any scene that’s happening now, I don’t know because I don’t really hang out in any scene, you know, I never have. I’ve never been able to commit myself to just one place or one group of people, so I don’t know if the book has affected anything that’s happening now. I doubt that it would have affected anyone in a younger, newer band.

In terms of what’s happened to me with the book, I guess it’s weird because I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes kind of person, and writers don’t often get a lot of recognition. And, you know, people might recognize your name if they’ve read an article or something that you’ve written that they really like, but it’s a lot different now when people suddenly start to read articles about you, and your picture is attached to them, and so sometimes you might get recognized somewhere. You know, I’ve gotten recognized in a grocery store, in a lobby, in really casual moments, so that’s different and, I mean, it’s great. It’s different for me though because I’m not used to that and I’m often happy not being the centre of attention. I definitely appreciate it, though, and I definitely appreciate that people are really excited about this book.

Marisa Iacobucci: They are, and it’s on its second print run right?

Liz Worth: That’s right.

Marisa Iacobucci: Fantastic.

Liz Worth: With the people in the scene, who were interviewed in the book, I don’t know, one of them, it was someone from Hamilton, Bob Bryden, who was really helpful with the interviews he gave me. He was joking at the launch party in Hamilton that this book was going to make them all famous agian, and while that would be amazing, I don’t know if it will go that far. But I think it will definitely renew a lot of interest in these bands. And I think that people will read this book and they won’t necessarily know the music, but as they read it they’ll go and look for it. And so they might end up discovering a whole bunch of new bands that they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Marisa Iacobucci: How easy was it to get this book published? I know you started working on it in 2006, it was released this year, and now it’s in its second print run. It’s very successful. You make it look easy—was it easy?

Liz Worth: It was and it wasn’t. In a lot of ways this book was the easiest and hardest thing I’ve ever done altogether. When I started it I never doubted that it would be published. It’s weird, I don’t know if that sounds overconfident, but I just assumed that it would happen because why not? It was something that no one had done yet and I thought it was so important and so valid and these people’s stories are so interesting. So I was really surprised when I had a lot of editors and agents come back and say, “Oh, it’s too Toronto.” You know, some of them had originally expressed interest, but then they wanted the focus to be broader than it was. But even then I still never doubted that someone was going to say “yes.” It was really weird, it was like I just never questioned that this was going to happen.

And then, I was interviewing Ralph Alfonso because he was very instrumental in the Toronto scene and I did a series of interviews with him (I think I did four or five interviews with him altogether) and he was running a label called Bongo Beat, and during one of our interviews he said that if I see this project through he would be interested in putting it out. And so we kept in touch, and once the manuscript was done I sent it over to him and he was into it, so that’s how it come together. So it’s great because someone actually ended up approaching me about it, and it worked out really well because it was someone from the scene who has a connection to it. He was there, he really knows how important it is, and he understands it and appreciates it, so I feel like it ended up in the right person’s hands in the end. If it had ended up with someone else, I don’t know, it could have had a completely different outcome. So, I think it worked out well and in the end it was easy to get it published because, you know I didn’t have to shop it to Ralph. So, I don’t know, I guess it was easy.

Marisa Iacobucci: It’s definitely an inspiration. What are you working on next?

Liz Worth: Well, there’s going to be—I think I’m allowed to talk about this—there’s going to be another book on punk, but I think it’ll be on punk in Ontario, and that will be coming out through Bongo Beat. And then for my own personal project, I’m working on a rock and roll horror novel.

I haven’t been to a party before where they served pie, have you? But I guess that’s a silly question because of course you’d know the hosts, so you’ve probably— Anyway, it’s very good pie. It takes creative people to come up with a snack idea like that.

I said to Appollonia—that’s who I came with—“Would you have thought of giving out pie?” And she said, “Nope.” But of course Appollonia is not creative like you and me. Which she wouldn’t mind me saying, by the way. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Now me, I’ve got my chapbook. But put an equation in front of me and do you think I’d know how to solve it? Give me a break! I am a words person whereas Appollonia is a numbers person, which is a skill so many of us writers and publishers haven’t mastered. On the other hand, Appollonia is not a big reader. She has a subscription to Chatelaine, if that tells you anything. She also watches a lot of television. Let’s just say she has her shows.

By saying that, I am not saying Appollonia is a bad person. Far from it. She is kind, and holds a special place in her heart for society’s cast-offs. There are just some things she doesn’t understand—will never understand—because she is Appollonia, and she is a different person from you and me. A good person, certainly. But a different person. Let’s just say she is mainstream, and leave it at that. I mean, she’s one of my good friends, and I know her and she would not think the label “mainstream” was a negative thing.

Do you remember earlier, when “Panama” came on? She said to me, “Who sings this, again?” And I said, “It doesn’t matter, Appollonia—they’re playing it ironically.” But she started bopping her head to it anyway. That’s just the way she is. And she says the funniest things! What was it she said the other day—she’s no poet but she just comes out with the greatest turns of phrase. Oh, I remember. She was talking about her work—she works in an office, as in permanently—and she was explaining how she’d stood up to her boss about switching the complimentary coffee milk from two percent to one percent. Now, I’m sorry, but if you’re putting it in your coffee, you cannot tell the difference between one percent and two percent, it’s impossible. If you’re drinking the milk on its own, then maybe. But otherwise not in a million years. And these people were up in arms about it! So they had a meeting and Appollonia called for a vote for two percent, which she knew was the consensus, but none of her co-workers backed her up so it was just her against the boss. And do you know what she said to me at the end of her anecdote? She said, “They hung me out to frigging hang myself.” Isn’t that wonderful?

I asked her once for permission to write a poem about her work life. Because it is so unpoetic, there’s actually an irony at work there—ha!—that’s worth writing about. And Appollonia said to me, “Sure, what the hell. Immortalize me.” Isn’t that perfect? The things she comes out with.

Between you and me? Appollonia has lived a terrible life.

Her parents were gypsies, which is bad enough, but while at least most gypsies are known for their flair for performance, Appollonia’s gypsy parents were bookkeepers. And I’m not talking librarians, which would’ve been something, right? So, you know, they moved around a lot. Up until she started kindergarten, Appollonia was uprooted I can’t even tell you how many times. Over and over again, suffice it to say.

But she is not a complainer. Never has been. I met her in Grade 1, we were in the same class, and the other kids would throw blocks at her and she wouldn’t say boo. That’s what first intrigued me about her, actually. She also has that voice—you must know her voice, where it always sounds like she’s about to burst into tears, like “Huhhh, huhhh, huhhhn,” all the time, but she’s not, it’s just the way she sounds.

So we became friends. I’d make up the games and she’d just go along with whatever. And I would tell her stories on our walks home from school—I was a storyteller even then. Appollonia of course enjoyed being entertained. Our friendship grew and grew. Then we lost touch for about 20 years. She went her way and I went mine, and isn’t that the way it goes, though, so often. With friends.

I bet you can guess how we found each other again! The thing of it is, I only really got on there in the first place to promote my chapbook. You must do that with your press too, I’m sure. Anyway, do you know what Appollonia said, when she got in touch with me? She said, “This Internet thing is the wave of the future!” I know. Adorable.

The funny thing was, I didn’t remember her at first. Her name rang a bell, but it was such a long time ago. So I looked through her friends list to see if I recognized anyone, and of course I saw you, and so many of the other guests here, and I thought, What a small, small world we live in.

Soon after that we met up for lunch and got reacquainted. I took her to that place, what’s that place called. You know, the restaurant that’s loud, with the salad they make from things that fall out of trees? Anyway, that’s where we went. And it all came rushing back to us. Grade school. Playing. Our story-time walks. And I told Appollonia about my chapbook and she said—if you can believe it—“What’s a chapbook?” Oh dear. So I explained it to her, and she was thrilled for me and asked me could she buy it in the bookstores, and I said no, she could only buy it directly from me. Poor thing, she has no idea how it all works.

She doesn’t know anything about the “scene,” either, but I guess why would she? Just because she knows all these people through— How does she know all these people? She’s really kept that to herself. Although she’s never even heard of sp@cebar, which is amazing to me. To be that out of touch with what’s going on in the world. You put out his last flipbook, didn’t you? She said to me, “Well, what does he do?” And I said, “He engages with the absence of sound. He communicates his poetry through gestures and facial expressions.” And she said—now, you’ll get a real kick out of this—“Isn’t that what a mime clown does?” I said to her, “Appollonia, sp@cebar is not a mime clown. He is a soundless poet.” She really doesn’t have a clue. I mean, I’ve never seen one of his performances, but at least I know. You know?

Appollonia is an accountant now, and she’s married to a man named Bob who’s in one of the trades, I can’t remember which, and they’ve talked about children and they just bought a condo, but not a loft condo, it’s one of those postage-stamp cookie-cutter high-rise ones, which she is going to have a very hard time selling, but still, it’s property and you’ve got to believe that owning any property in the city is an achievement these days. I said that to her too, and she said, “Do you really think it’ll be hard to sell?” I said, “Appollonia, none of us has a crystal ball.” Well, maybe some of us do. Appollonia’s parents might! But anyway, I said she should be proud of her accomplishments.

And she’s going to be a mother someday! Which is the last thing I’d want to be, but who am I to judge? The second-last thing I’d want to be is a homeowner. The Appollonias of the world are welcome to it. I explained to her that renting is the way to go if you’re an artist, and I told her, “Appollonia, you are so lucky you’re not a creative person. You are so free!” And do you know what she said to me? She said, “Well yeah, it’s true, I guess I am pretty lucky that way. None of those pesky thought bubbles overhead to weigh down my empty noggin!” I’m telling you, she says things like that all the time! It’s hilarious. But of course also very sad.

The thing about me is, I think about other people. Other people are always at the forefront of my mind. And I worry about Appollonia, I really do. She’s a bit of a loner, so she’s not the best with crowds, which is why I said I’d come with her tonight and keep her company. Okay, I’ll come clean and admit that there are people at this party who I would like to meet, of course there’s that. But really I am here for Appollonia.

I wasn’t even going to come over here but Appollonia said I should. One of her favourite sayings is, “Why not go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is.” Priceless, I know. That’s what she said to me earlier, when I happened to mention that it might be nice to talk to you about my chapbook and about poetry in general. So here I am.

There are people who might say to me, “What are you doing with a person like Appollonia?” And I would say to those people, “Hold on, back up, please. Appollonia is my friend. Don’t tell me what she’s like—I know what she’s like. But she is my friend who I care for very deeply.” That’s what I would say.

You know, I’m so glad I met you, you’re so easy to talk with. And you’re enjoying the pie too, I see! Oh, I’m sorry. Strudel. And here I thought it was pie all this time. Now isn’t that funny, because I’m normally very observant. I can even show you right here in my chapbook, it has all these observations I make every day, transformed into verse. I’ve got this acrostic series on yearning, let me just find that page… You do? No, no, of course, I know how it goes. You’ve got people you need to—sure. It’s a party! I really should be getting back to Appollonia, anyway, she’s starting to look pretty lonely over there. You mean that’s where you were— Well, perfect, the three of us, then! Oh. Really? No, sure, I understand completely, I don’t mind at all. I was just on my way to the bathroom, anyway. Where is the bathroom, do you know? Of course you’d know. Could you please just point me in the right direction before you— You don’t know? Well, that’s fine. I’ll find my way there eventually.

Cover of "Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond"

In today’s edition of Listen to This, Marisa Iacobucci talks with Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond. The book chronicles the punk scene  throughout the turbulent years from 1977 to 1981, in the words of the bands and tastemakers who made it happen. Through interviews with Teenage Head, The Viletones, The Diodes, The Curse, Forgotten Rebels, B-Girls, The Ugly, and more, the book is kind of like a VH1 Behind the Music special from hell, and a Who’s Who of a musical scene that’s often been overshadowed by its counterparts in bigger American cities. There was clearly an appetite for the stories told here — the book has already entered its second printing and there are plans for a followup volume in the works.

In addition to her music writing, Liz Worth is an  experimental poet; her most recent book of poetry is Eleven Eleven, published by Trainwreck press.

Author Binyavanga Wainana in London. Photo by TMS Ruge (tmsruge.com).

When I attended the Caine Prize in London last week, I was excited to listen to the voices of some of Africa’s top authors. I felt caught up in the growing literature movement: writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina topping international headlines, developing a notable reputation within their countries and abroad.

However, interviewing Binyavanga Wainaina later that week put things into perspective. Wainana is a character: he swears like a sailor, wears colorful printed shirts, and tells me off for using a term like “African literature.” Turning conventional thought on its head, he opens all African writers to a new, more equal, level of international attention.

There is no term like “African literature,” he insists. Instead, one must look at writing by African authors on the same level as one scrutinizes Canadian, American, French or Spanish writers: it’s about the quality of writing, the story being told, not the political identity of each writer or the “Dark Continent” they emerge from.

“[African writers] have been ghettoized. They don’t exist in world literature as other books do because it’s African. We call it African literature, what the fuck is African literature? It’s like you have to be culturally dutiful. Like eating spinach,” says Wainaina.

While reading Kwani?, a Kenyan magazine that publishes primarily African authors, I have been struck by the unfamiliar but alluring construction of certain sentences, the subtlety of characters despite strong colors and adjectives, the pure descriptive power of a few well-chosen words. However, internationally, these writers are not noticed for their literary genius. Instead, they often remain revered for their politicized past, their belonging to “failed states,” to a “Dark Continent.”

Kwani? was Wainaina’s first attempt at reversing this ideology. As former editor and founder, he wanted to publish what excites the Kwani? team, wherever the writing may hve come from. He wanted to push the boundaries by bringing people outside their literary comfort zones. Kwani? is not about Pan-African or African literature, but about a new quality of writing.

“We wanted the aesthetic to present itself, the issues to be framed in their appropriate aesthetic, because fiction itself is a form of intelligence. I really dislike people trying to feel like they need to make the intelligence more political by saying it’s pan-African.”

In line with the continent’s ICT-revolution and the need to turn the current (Western) view of African literature on its head, Wainaina points to the mobile phone.

“Books in mobile phones. You have to realize that this digital phone is like the printing press. For the first time there is a actually a market. You can find a 100,000,000 people who live within Kenya and Nigeria on the same platform like Zain,” he explains, “You can write the most quirky, wacky thing ever and find your initial 30,000 people who will pay 100 shillings to read it.”

The networks that currently exist for publishing African authors exist only outside the continent itself, in the comfort of London or New York, places where people continue to perpetuate an “African literature” rooted in poverty and war.

However, by giving all Africans access to their own writing and publishing tools, the mobile phone offers the chance for people to make their own voices heard within their own communities, countries and continent. Perhaps, through this process, countries like Uganda and Kenya will be able to determine their own writers and stories, creating a literature no longer defined by the tastes of the West.

(Photo by TMS Ruge)

A panel at the British Library celebrating 10 years of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Left to right: Brian Chikwava, Binyavanga Wainaina, Chika Unigwe, moderator Aminatta Forna. Photo via the Caine Prize's Facebook page.

Last Saturday afternoon, I attended “Writing Africa: Making 10 years of the Caine Prize“ at the British Library in London. The prize, which awards around $16,000 to the best short story written by an African author, featured previous winners Chika Unigwe, Binyavanga Wainana and Brian Chikwava.

After the reading, a member of the audience asked whether this increasing access to African literature promoted through initiatives like the Caine Prize and publishing companies like Kwani Trust has also renewed young people’s interest in Africa literature. While there used to be a strong literary tradition in Africa, it was damaged by years of post-independence unrest in the 60’s and 70’s.

I recently visited a small Somali pastoral camp in North Eastern Province (NEP) in Kenya. Ebla, a ten-year-old girl, was telling the translator that she hoped to be a teacher. In her community, there were two role models: her parents, pastoralists, and the mwalimu, a pre-school teacher.

In other areas of the world, children are given access to hundreds of different role models. Children, teenagers and young adults interact with a variety of people, from poets to neurosurgeons, who inspire them with different ideas of how the world can be defined and the roles one can play.

However, in remote places, like in this pastoral community, there is limited opportunity for children to interact with people from different walks of life. And, while Twitter and other social/networked media movements do increasingly permit people to contribute their knowledge, it undoubtedly also furthers the big gap between the knowledge base between those with and those without Internet and cell-phone access.

In this sense, traditional literature is key in helping rural communities see themselves in a global context. This is particularly true in areas where lifestyles are threatened. In the northeast of Kenya, where drought is a recurring and worsening concern, the diversification of economic livelihoods is necessary and can be inspired by children developing new role models through this type of locally-inspired material.

Moreover, there might be an interest for making books like Harare North, Jambula Tree and Black Sisters’ Street accessible to youth in the Kireka slums or in Kenya’s mobile Somali communities. After the reading, I overhead a conversation between celebrated authors Michela Wrong and Binyavanga Wainana. Wrong was inquiring whether it was possible to publish the Kwani Trust’s volumes—a compilation of short stories, poetry and art by African artists—at a cheaper price, to ensure that more young people could access them.

This is an idea that must be supported. It is particularly important that African authors are given the opportunity to build their reputations and grounding within the populations they feature—particularly when they write about the ordinary: the woman who falls in love, the young boy who goes to school.

Sociology suggests that when someone is constantly told how they are, it eventually makes them who they are. By allowing young students to learn a sense of wonder in their world through voices bred by their communities will help reverse the victimized mindset bred by aid and the pornography of poverty.

During the conversation on Saturday, Binyavanga Wainana said: “If people are not patronized, they read!” Moving away from the gibberish of NGOs and the endless books on Africa, war and poverty, another way of supporting the marginalized around the world is to help give them a voice, whether through ICTs or through a more traditional means, literature.

I would encourage anyone interested in supporting this nascent movement to contact Billy Kahora, current editor of Kwani Trust at info at kwani dot org or through their website. Kwani Trust is also holding a short story competition with a winner’s prize of 100,000 Kenyan Shillings. Click here for details.

When the soldiers came in their armoured vehicle they gave the little Muslim boys candy bars. They gave pieces of candy bars to barking or tail-wagging dogs. When the soldiers drove away, some of the boys ran after them, ran and ran and ran until there was only one boy, run- ning, running. The next time the men came they taught the little boys to chant in English, “I love pork! I love pork!” Later, one of the soldiers grabbed a woolly black-and-white puppy. The puppy squealed in shock as the soldier hurled it in a great arc over a cliff. One of the grinning soldiers said, “Aw, that’s mean.” The local people hated the soldiers when they were kindly. They hated them when they were cruel. Mostly, they hated them when they were inconsistent.

Enjoy your meal

After I push the button to reheat a cup of coffee or a bowl of pasta, my microwave tells me: Enjoy your meal. But after I turn the dial to thaw something edible on Turbo Inverter Defrost, it does not tell me to enjoy my meal. I suppose the reasoning is that I may thaw some- thing, but that does not mean I am necessarily going to eat it. I may not eat what I cook or reheat either, but at least I have the microwave’s good wishes. So I say to you: Enjoy your meal.

Scald

Many years ago a farmwife lived with her husband, son and baby girl. One day, shifting pots on the stovetop for the men’s dinner, she tipped a saucepan of boiling water off the stove onto the baby crawling on the kitchen floor. She rushed to find a thick wool blanket to tightly wrap the baby. In those days, people believed that was the right thing to do. The baby died. After that day, the woman didn’t stop talking. She was as garrulous as her husband and son were silent. The rush of her speech held neither ideas nor opinions. She just talked and talked. When she would take a breath, the person she was talking to gratefully inserted a word. But her friend could get no further because the farm- wife would snatch it up and run with it, like a mad bird repairing a nest.

Bestseller

My brother advised me to write a bestseller. That seemed like a good idea. The books I’d written had never sold well so I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to write a bestseller. Writing a bestseller was hard work, but it went well. I nailed down a plot, glued in some characters, bolted some atmosphere and applied a touch of tone. It looked pretty good when I finished. To my surprise, it didn’t become a bestseller. I asked my brother, Why not? At first he questioned my workman- ship. Then he suggested I do something else.