ALTRUISTIC BOOK SHOW ROMANCE CHALLENGE

Last week, excited after an interesting show on the Altruistic server, I decided to give those present and any other book lover curious enough to meander into the discussion we had evolved from the topic of romance genre in literature, an assignment of sorts. My aim was for whoever wanted to participate, to write a post in which he or she would compare the African perspective on romance versus the western perspective.

_{Photo by Justin Aikin on Unsplash.}

This contention came as a result of the ladies on the show that evening claiming that Nigerian men African men are not romantic thus the dearth of the romance genre in Africa. I was pained because I am quite romantic. I rolled a man on tics some days back. He was being rude to a lady. Lol. Well I wanted them to do a search and find out proof that indeed Nigerian men African men are romantic or not.

Well I am yet to drop the prescribed books for the assignment and tomorrow we have another show which would probably make the assignment null and void. What does that say of me as a show host? That’s bad behavior right? I have not started this show thingy properly, it would seem. Well what do I know about hosting shows? Everything is new on steemit, everything. I am still discovering talents I didn’t know I had.

One of the reasons for the delay in dropping this post, though I do not place the blame for the delay on it, is the fact that there are almost no Nigerian or African authored e-books in the romance genre. I have searched ladies and gentlemen and my eyes are blurry. Does this mean that there are no romance novels of Nigerian or African authorship? Indeed they are. There are lovely books by Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, and so on and so forth but I cannot get them online. I am stumped and I would love greatly for my confusion to be erased.

As to western literature, I had selected Untamed by Danielle Steele as well as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. These two books are of different generations in the western tradition and I want to believe that they would serve in the portrayal of romance as seen from the eyes of the western part of the world. On africa’s part of this discourse, I managed to discover an old poem from ancient Egypt. The poem is untitled but I loved the contents and I think it serves the purpose of this assignment.

I would therefore like to apologise to those who had shown any interest in this assignment of mine for the delay and my inability to come through with the number of texts as I thought I would have been able to get. Ma bi nu (don't be angry)

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To the assignment itself, amended as a result of circumstances beyond my control, these are the rules.

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• Examine the theme of romance as exemplified in the selected texts below with the intention to show that romance is either a foreign thought to Africans in general and Nigerians in particular or that romance is indeed part of the human makeup whether African or otherwise.

• The texts to be used are Pride and Prejudice, Untamed and an Egyptian poem. If for any reason you have access to a much more appropriate text for this assignment, feel free to use it.

• You will get the texts by going to the library channel in this server, Naija Steem Radio, a pet project of mine.

• Make use of the tags; altruistic-steem, steemingnaija, bookreview books and one other of your choice. @seyiodus had promised to curate posts using the altruistic community tag and I will also curate posts using the @steemingnaija tag which is my alt account created for matters like this.

Besides this, there are no other rules besides read, write and have fun.

Tomorrow is another lovely Wednesday and we will be having another book show by 8pm GMT+1. This time we will be talking about feminism in African literature.

Note: The audience pick the topics of discourse, so if you want to talk about a particular book or literature related topic, then come and be a part of the show tomorrow on the altruistic community server.

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@warpedpoetic writing for altruistic community.

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