_{Photo by Antenna on Unsplash.}

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Yesterday, we had our second episode of the book show and it was an interesting show I must say so. I had come up with the idea to talk about the romance sub genre in literature but somehow the discussion evolved into a debate on romance as seen in African literature vis-a-vis romance as seen in western literature.

It would seem that African men are not romantic as can be deduced from the statements of @djoi and @esttyb. Both ladies claim that African men in general, Nigerian men to be precise have no romantic bone in their body as a result such romantic writings are rare and uncommon. @esttyb said all Nigerian men are concerned about are money, gifts, status, while @djoi claimed that the Nigerian idea of romance is sex, ‘plain sex’ she called it.

Is this true? Well I tried to take a position by referring to certain books; Triumph of The Water Lily(1996) by Stella Ifenyiwa Osammor, which I consider a beautiful romance. I also made reference to the Thrills and Booms series that was popular several years ago. Do not mistake it with Mills and Boon series that was also popular several years ago. While the former was a Nigerian publication, the other was western.

@djoi referred to Time Changes Yesterday (1982) by Nyengi Koin, another interesting book that looks at romance. @esttyb talked about The Concubine (1966) by Elechi Amadi being the closest thing to romance she could remember.

It would seem from the indication of my audience that Nigerian men do not have a romantic bone in them, or perhaps romance is a western thing which we have gradually assimilated into our culture as we have done other things. Is this true?

Did African men not woo the African woman with words, with kindly, gentlemanly gestures, with tender songs under moonlit trees, before the coming of the colonists to foster western culture on the African continent?

Are there no literature that documents the emotional tangle of the romance between a man and a woman in Africa, or in Nigeria to be precise before the advent of African literary tradition fostered by the colonists?

I have therefore endeavoured to seek for pre-colonial literature that expresses romance. That whisper of what romance meant to the African mind before the adulteration of our psyche by western ideologies. Did I find any book or books that could defend the African man? Well we will see, won’t we?

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The African male is considered to be egotistical, proud, gender discriminatory, a true symbol of the patriarchal powers that rule the world. It is believed that African men do not know how to express love to their lovers and as a result the idea that Africa has no romance. But then again, what is this romance? What is the meaning of this word that we are throwing all over the place? I began to think.

The network was poor during the show so there were times when I was talking and no one heard me and there were times when the audience tried to speak but nothing came through. In the 50th minute into the show, my data finished. I could not go online. I had a night data plan but it was not going to help anyhow and there was no way I could get airtime on my phone by that time as my gate is locked quite early over here.

I therefore created an assignment of sorts for those who were on the show as well as anyone interested in the discussion. The assignment is this; I will provide six books for our perusal. Three will be by African authors and the other three by western authors. All six will try to present romance as best as is possible.

Your duty, if you will accept the challenge is to write a book review on any two books; one from the African tradition and the other from the western tradition. All the books will be taken from the pre-colonial era. They would be either in prose, poetry or drama. I will endeavour to make them small volumes for easy reading.

The book review shall be a comparison of the two books using romance as your thematic preoccupation. Basically, identify the aspects of romance you can find in the two books and compare them with each other.

I want to believe that in the process of the assignment, we will find out if truly Africa is devoid of romance, if romance is a western import and if so, what are the consequences of being this new romantic African man?

The tags to be used include, but not limited to, books, bookreview, altruistic-steem, steemingnaija. The steemingnaija tag is meant for me to easily find your post and check it out. I will be curating with my alt account @steemingnaija which I created for this purpose. So give it your best shot.

In another post, I will drop the books to be used as well as a well stated guideline for the assignment. It is not a do or die affair, just have fun with it and learn some new things as we move along.

In other news, our next episode will be holding next week Wednesday by 8pm GMT+1 on the Altruistic discord server, in the Noble Voice channel while texting will be on the Noble Voice text. I hope to see you there and this time we will be talking about African Feminism in Literature.

Do have a splendid day, stay steeming, loving, giving and believing. See you next week.

Peace,

@warpedpoetic writing for Altruistic Community.

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