34 Comments

I would like to have dinner with Nelson Mandela. This because he not only is my hero, he also is a good story teller. I would specifically want to know where he got his resilience from and how he sees the future for a united Africa.

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The elephant in the room "the future for a united Africa." That is an answer I would love to hear too especially with all that is happening at the moment. I am particularly saddened by the foreign debt that seems to be crippling and ensnaring the continent.

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Please allow me to take two. NoViolet Bulawayo and Jackson Biko. I think I'd have a night full of laughter. Would also be refreshing to tap into their intelligence.

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Interesting choices. Sometimes one is conflicted when given these kind of choices and picking the two is in order. I am hoping that one of this fine day, we will post questions to all these authors here.

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I would like to have dinner with Zukiswa Wanner. I love the way she weaves her stories, goes different places and explores the human experience with a twist. I would ask 'how do decide what to write about next?'

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She has a way with words and ideas.

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Dinner for me would be with Biko Jackson. I would love to behold him with my eyes, this man who has a way with words, who can weave a short story intricately so that it sounds like a whole novel. I would like to know if he is what he writes

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Hopefully we can organise to collect questions that readers would like to ask him and get him to answer them. I am sure there are many who follow his writing closely like you.

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o remains to be that one inspiring writer for me. He brings out so many aspects in art work whether its in a novel, a play, short story or an essay. The question I would still ask him is how can artistic writing still influence social-economic and political change in 21st century knowing readers are turning so much into digital work and not books?

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He is a legend that still stirs up heated discussion in his articles and papers/presentations.

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It would be a toss between Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie for their various impacts on me and my passion for African languages, views on life and open feminism and the African culture.

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I see the conflict in the choices. That would be a great conversation. What are your thoughts on Ngugi's push to write in our languages? And your thoughts on African languages?

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Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.

Has your insistence to write in Kikuyu had any lasting impact?

What?

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There are actually many people still asking that question even on this platform. I hope that we can put this question to him one of this fine days.

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What are your thoughts on writing in our languages?

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I think it is a choice between the language one writes in best and the language their target audience understands best.

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Ben Okri. What particular real experiences triggered his creative crafting of the "The Famished Road" surreal world!?

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A legend. Interesting question too. I hope that we will put this question to him one day.

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Ken Saro Wiwa. Africa Kills her Sun still reverberates through my mind years since I first read it. What was going through his mind when he penned that piece?

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He was a great mind, no wonder the butcher of Abuja had him killed.

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It would be Chimamanda. I would like to know how she manages to write in an easy way and push and push and push the reader to their limits. Also, I would like to know how she manages to write about some things that happened before her time, more like Shakespeare who wrote about places he had never been to.

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These are interesting questions Lucas. Will try to use our network to see if we can put some of these questions to her.

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Taban Lo Liyong; Would like to get a better feel behind his thought process when he was writing such material as Lexicographicide.

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He of the literary barreness.

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George Orwell..How he forecasted where we are today as a country

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Interesting Kiffe-Kibe. What about an African author too?

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Mbella Sonne Dipoko [Cameroonian poet]

He influenced my passion for poetry through his anthology BLACK AND WHITE IN LOVE.

I am always fascinated by his narrative in that story, so I would ask him, is it based on personal experience?

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Fascinating. But what is your own experience as a poet, how close are the pieces you put out informed by personal experience?

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Next question: why do you like that food?

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Masiga, you didn't say which author you would go out with for dinner

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Ngugi wa Thiongo

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How do your literary works in the present ongoing scenarios or context?

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P.M Kareithi “Kaburi bila Msalaba” I would have liked to get to Know first hand about the personal life experiences that shaped his ideas. How his sojourn to Kent state University during the height of the civil rights push affected him. I would have liked to get to know him in adult hood. He passed away when I was only 6. Always in our hearts Dad.

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