Bloggers

"There is an unprecedented global interest in African writing. As a result, my readership is growing in leaps and bounds."

"I want African writers to sell millions of copies, make good money, and live off their work. This is how publishing industries are nurtured—when they are able to tap into the pulse of mass culture."

"I want African writers to find inspiration in what Africans want to read not what they should read or what will save them or educate them or edify them."

"The life of a professor is exciting. There is never a dull moment. When I’m not teaching, I’m doing research, writing an article, or managing the administrative responsibilities that come with running a class. I find teaching literature intellectually fulfilling."

"There is nothing as rewarding as being inspired by my students and their work, which happens on a daily basis."

"Social media and on-site interaction with readers can never be too much. It’s something that one has to keep building."

"I did not imagine it would become what it is today. I simply needed an outlet for my postgrad work. My first year as a doctoral student was one of the most intense, frustrating, but also the most beautiful moments in my life."

"It’s an honor really for someone to write something and decide to share it with our readers."

"Creativity is seeing opportunity where no one else did. It is finding magic in the humdrum of the everyday and the familiar."

"The excitement you read in my style is a genuine expression of a reader’s love. African literature is beautiful stuff. As a blogger, I enjoy thinking up innovative ways of getting my readers to put aside all the assumptions and expectations they might have of African writing and simply encounter it from a place of love."

"The reason African literature is sometimes preachy and heavy-handed is precisely because it has never really been inspired by the taste and desires of the African reader—by what the reader really wants. It’s been driven, instead, by the African writer and critic’s lust for literary significance."

"Give us the “digestible and quickly forgotten” stuff. I want more African writing with mass appeal. I want a Nollywood invasion of African literature. I want African writers to not take themselves too seriously for once and just write novels that Africans would find endlessly delightful and delicious."

"Blogging is all about the slant. How can you take a set of facts, rearrange them, and serve them up to readers in a way that’d make them think or react? Besides, I learned pretty quickly that you can’t please everyone"

"At the end of the day, Africans are the only ones who can really champion African literature. It is not enough to complain that the world misunderstands us and our work. We have to take the lead in showing the world what is awesome about African literature and how it should be read."

"As every blogger knows, the bread and butter of good sites is great content. If you write things that people love, they will come to the blog."

"I keep my rejection letters gracious and appreciative. When I accept a submission, I try to say a word or two about what I find compelling about the work. So I take submissions seriously. But they can be overwhelming, and I do fall behind."

"A whole new world of philosophical and literary texts were opened up to me. The more I immersed myself and delved deeper into these texts, I realized that I could not keep this utterly captivating universe of ideas to myself. It wasn’t enough to talk about these things in class with colleagues and Profs. I wanted more."

"...when Brittle Paper first started, it was a general interest literary and philosophical blog. It was not centered on African literature."

"There is, in fact, no place in the world that has managed to make prostitution safe for women, despite efforts to regulate the industry and even to form unions of sorts. Under legalised regimes, trafficking and an illegal industry thrive."

"The Canadian Human Rights Act protects women because as a society, we understand that women face discrimination based on their biological sex. But our ability to organize on behalf of women's liberation and to maintain women-only space is threatened by legislation that protects people based on "gender identity" and "gender expression." How can we argue for women's rights, based on the understanding that women are oppressed specifically due to their biological sex, if we simultaneously say that sex doesn't matter, but that "gender identity" and "gender expression" do?"

"What women experience as intimidating, many men read as harmless, not least in part because women are socialised to avoid conflict and respond politely, even when offended or uncomfortable."

"The truth is that, in all likelihood, most men – if not all men – have engaged in behaviour that was inappropriate, made a woman feel uncomfortable, or was even abusive. This is the lesson we should have learned from #MeToo: that the problem of male entitlement and misogynist attitudes towards women is a social one, not a personal one, and certainly not one that will be resolved by more men insisting they are feminists."

"Under current trans activist doctrine we're not allowed to exclude a man from a woman's space if he says that he's female and I find that quite dangerous and troubling."

"Over a year after a man then-named Jonathan Yaniv filed multiple complaints against British Columbia estheticians who declined to wax his balls, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ruled against the now-named 'Jessica.'"

"[M]ales who wish to identify as women will be offered additional protections under the law; but those born female will not benefit in the same way. Of course, trans-identified people should be protected from abuse and discrimination. But why not women too? Does the SNP think the minority of individuals who choose to identify as transgender are much more at risk than women and girls? Women suffer disproportionally as victims of rape, domestic abuse, FGM, child marriage, and femicide around the world, yet in Scotland this seems to count for little."

"Some of these [beauticians] were women working out of their homes and their names were published in the papers, but [Yaniv's] anonymity was protected."

"Canada has managed to cultivate a culture that is simultaneously self-hating and self-righteous. We have no pride in being Canadian. Yet we are confident we are better than everyone else."

"I have received countless violent threats on Twitter and I don’t think they’ve banned any of them. My tweets were not violent. I think someone at Twitter wanted to get rid of me — I was one of the most well-known women talking about this, and I wasn’t apologetic. It is scary a corporation [can] start determining what we’re allowed to talk about."

"A woman is a female. That's it. And if you are born male there is no way to become female. It's simply not biologically possible. [...] And beyond that, why would a male ever NEED to 'become female'? I mean, by all means, be yourself, dress how you like, express yourself as you wish, in ways that make you feel good and authentic. Push back against gender stereotypes. But why that would demand one is literally the opposite sex, I do not know. 'Woman' is not simply a set of stereotypes, an outfit, a feeling. There is nothing wrong with being male or being a male who rejects masculinity. But it is ridiculous to say that if you reject gender stereotypes you are literally no longer male."

"What has been revealed since, many times over, is that no one but Yaniv is, in these particular circumstances, guilty of harassment. Indeed, it is the women he attempted to extort money from, by abusing the tribunal system and human rights law, who have felt afraid, bullied, and preyed upon by a man claiming to be a woman."

"Women's rights exist because women are born female, not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear make-up. There is an understanding in law that women face oppression and discrimination because they are born female. I think we do need to protect everyone from being discriminated against, but we don't need to say that trans-identifying males are literally female to protect them from discrimination."

"I’ve learnt to ask myself every day, Are you happy today? And if the answer is no I make a change."

"I have learned over time that relationships require work. When you’re younger, you have a sense of love as being magical and so relationships happen in that particular space of magic, and it’s easy to feel that’s all one needs, but now I know that relationships require work, and constant work. The desire that is in the relationship also needs to be nurtured, and thought about, and reentered and reimagined."

"I spent years avoiding sex with guys because I didn’t want anyone to gossip about me. I wish I had realized sooner that no matter what I did guys would claim to have fucked me every which way under the sun."

"I feel most free when I am myself, stripped of all pretences, lounging naked on my bed, my boobies freely rolling to wherever they choose to land, my belly relaxed and soft, my thighs apart, my hands wherever they may choose to lie. With no one around me, I am my most free self."

"Today I feel like my best sex life is being lived in my imagination. I’m a lot more free in my mind than I am in my body. I dream and fantasise a lot but I don’t necessarily create the kind of experiences that would allow me to enjoy the feelings that I think about."

"Many women lose all the privileges of a free woman when they get married and what they gain is nothing compared to what they lose."

"We achieve freedom when we let go of the weight of societal expectations, and when we find our people – those who love us, care for us, and hold us up when we start slipping."

"All too often, the media pretends that feminism’s work is done. This week shows us what so many male politicians really think about consent, and sex, and the rights of a woman to withhold it, or attach conditions to it. There is a long way to go."

"Why do male politicians get this so wrong? Unfortunately, the answer is simple: because they believe what they are saying. Galloway, [[Todd Akin|[Todd] Akin]] and [[Craig Murray|[Craig] Murray]] represent the tip of an iceberg of resentment and base sexism."

"It is [[George Galloway|[George] Galloway]] that is bankrupt of meaning: rape is when a woman does not consent. Because she is, for example, asleep and unconscious. Sexual consent is not football; you can’t buy a season ticket."

"My #GhanaianDream is a Ghana where Ghanaians don't need to travel anywhere else to fulfill their greatest potential."

"be true to yourself and stay true to who you were when you started."

"Be very bold, confident, and go for whatever it is you want, because when you start out it may seem very daunting and it may feel small in this big world but that is not the case."

"It’s the easiest and quickest way for me to express myself and I try to do that as much as possible."

"I have felt absolutely devastated but the beauty of it is being able to pick one’s self up and get right back into the ring."

"I will go to vote and I will vote for Italia dei Valori. At a time when Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell'Utri come out into the open and, in order to have a majority in the Senate, do not hesitate to praise the silence of the boss Vittorio Mangano, I think it is necessary to give strength to those who clearly say no to the mafia. [...] I therefore invite everyone to think about what happened between 2001 and 2006 when our country took great steps towards the regime with the secret services spying on journalists and magistrates, with the purges and censorships in Rai , with the major international press ridiculing Italy and its executive every day. There is not a single reason to think that next time it will be different. Berlusconi, moreover, has been clear in recent weeks: he wants to reintroduce parliamentary immunity, ban telephone wiretapping, and put his hands on public television again and more thoroughly. I think avoiding all this is a precise duty of those who care about freedom."

"Meanwhile, Italy cannot afford the truth about Regeni. And after two months of lies it is more correct and less hypocritical to take note of it.""

"In the UK, it is not parliament that supervises the BBC, but it is the BBC that supervises the activities of parliamentarians and their collaborators."

"Gomez: But in the meantime we know how these things go: he will end up being acquitted."