Witoubou Newmai
Nagas need to acknowledge our writers
Good books “age with the readers,” they say. Besides the influence of the themes, the readers are also charmed by the places, cultures, practices and food habits of the characters in the books, often. That is why, for ages, the world has been all about who tells more and better stories.
Readers often will definitely have yearned for eating yam after reading Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.” No doubt, the novel is about the situation in the south-eastern part of Nigeria before the arrival of the colonialists and how the situation “had undergone such profound change” after the arrival of the Europeans in the late 19th century. In the narrative, he mentioned intermittently how the people of Umuofia enjoy yam eating and Achebe prominently stressed on the salience of the food in the life of his people.
The book is replete with instances like “Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from harvest to another was a very great man... Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king...The Feast of Yam was held every year before the harvest began, to honour earth goddess...The new year must begin with tasty, fresh yams...Yam foo foo was the chief food in the celebration...”.
For readers of "The Black Book," the ambience of Istanbul city intrigues them. Although the book is about a lawyer called Galip whose wife left him one day without informing him, the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk presented the readers, the intricacies of Istanbul city and the Turkish society. Every reader of 'The Black Book' will not be able to resist any opportunity, if given, to visit Istanbul.
At our own yard, books like Easterine Kire’s “Son of the Thundercloud" “will age with the readers.” According to the publisher of the book, Kire’s “combines storytelling with the magic and wisdom of Naga legends to produce an unforgettable, life-affirming fable.”
Those characters in the story---Pelevotso (Pele), Rhalietuo, Mesanuo, Siedze and Kethonuo----will not leave the readers’ minds that easily. Perhaps, one wishes to meet all of them, and also longs to visit the “abandoned village” and “The Village of Weavers,” even as one shares the grief of Mesanuo.
Now, the nub of the matter is: what can be considered more momentous situation than someone sitting in his room in Istanbul or in south-eastern part of Nigeria looking at us with longing through Kire’s internationally acclaimed books, as much as a reader in Nagaland does for Istanbul or Nigeria after reading Achebe or Pamuk’s works?
When will our society begin to discern the rightful place of Naga writers and acknowledge them.
