A Nigerian Short Story Heard On The Radio

I heard the Nigerian writer Teju Cole's short story, "Modern Girls," read on public radio's Selected Shorts via New York's WNYC on September 13, 2015. It is set in a school for girls in Nigeria during the early 1970s, around the time of the Biafran war. The quality of Cole's writing is so good that I want to read the story myself  as well as his other work, both fiction and nonfiction.

Nobelist Wole Soyinka's Prostate Cancer Cure?

The banner headline on the front page of the African Sun Times (December 1-7, 2014) announced: "Soyinka: How I Survived Prostate Cancer." Wanting to know how Nigerian playwright/poet/essayist Wole Soyinka achieved this medical miracle, I immediately went to the story, which reported on remarks he made  at a press conference in his hometown of Abeokuta, Nigeria.

According to the article, Soyinka, a 1986 Nobel laureate in literature, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December of 2013. (Soyinka a few paragraphs later stated it was in November.) He claimed he was cured in October of 2014. But the article neglected to give specifics about Soyinka's treatment other than to quote the 80-year-old luminary as saying "There are many ways of managing cancer; even diet. I have had to drink a lot of water and as many of you know, water and I are not really friends."

He went on to state that "It [prostate cancer] is not a death sentence and it is curable. I have undergone the treatment."

If Soyinka, a brilliant and articulate man, went to the trouble of giving a press conference about his prostate cancer cure, he must have given the attendees more information about his treatment options than was reported in the article. The African Sun Times, published in East Orange, New Jersey, has unfortunately done its readers a disservice by publishing what can only be called shoddy and incomplete journalism.

Fela's Musical Journey From Nigeria to America

The first time I heard the late Nigerian musician Fela was on WBAI, Pacifica Radio's New York FM station, in the 80s. The music reminded me a lot of James Brown's music, which I believe was an influence on Fela. I was so moved by what I heard that I taped the music off the radio and played it back often.
Seattle writer Rick VanderKnyff's theroot.com article, "The Strange Love Affair Between America and the Afrobeat Superstar" discusses Fela's slow ascendancy from an unknown to a revered celebrity on the American music scene, culminating in a hit Broadway musical, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones.