Bringing Powder Necklace Home

I just completed a 10-day tour in Ghana promoting Powder Necklace! It was a truly amazing experience. I was on radio, morning television, evening entertainment segments all leading up to the book launch at Silverbird Lifestyle Bookstore in Accra and for each event my mom & I gently discussed what I would wear.

For my first appearance on eTV's "Awake", I wore a Ghanaian print dress with flirty ruffle action on top. That got a nod of approval. But I got a partial side eye when I wore my cigarette pantsuit - also Ghanaian print - to appear on TV Africa's "Daybreak", but my mom let it go, as she did when I wore a Ghanaian print jumpsuit to a radio appearance and an impromptu television interview.

When I wore the woven batakari that once belonged to my Dad as a minidress, my mother was none too pleased. "In Ghana we don't wear it like that," she bemoaned, just as she has in the States when I've worn this same outfit. I probably should have listened to her and just worn something else because I got more than a few looks of confusion, surprise, even irritation in that get-up. My grandmother also gave my parents a talking to for letting me out of the house wearing it. Lol. Oh well, I wore it on the popular TGIF hosted by a tres cool cat who goes by his initials: KSM.

So come launch day at Silverbird I didn't want to show my mom the white buubuu I planned to wear. "In Ghana we don't wear buubuus for things like this," she reminded me when I showed up in the flowing white dress with embroidered collar. To appease her I took the pin out of my hair and let it fall in dolly curls to my shoulders even as I let my mom know a new Ghanaian was in the building.

That ended up being the refrain of this trip for me. In interview after interview I found myself defending/defensive about my Ghanaianness. I published the book in the States versus Ghana because I live in New York. Minus 1. I came to Ghana to launch my book even though I could have left the word to spread online. Plus 1. I attended secondary school in Ghana. Plus 1. I left for the States to go to college. Minus 1...

Wearing the batakari on TGIF KSM

Off camera, it was the same thing. When I tried to negotiate with a cab driver or a seller in the market - forget it. Even when I spoke the Twi or Ewe I could muster it was a mess. I was being charged the broni tax for not understanding that you don't wear a batakari as a dress for example.

That said, there were some things I didn't understand that worked in my favor. Apparently, at book launches in Ghana books are auctioned off. Nice! I was able to raise a good chunk of change for my alma mater Mfantsiman Girls' Secondary. My experience at Mfantsiman was utterly life-changing and in celebrationof its 50th Anniversary it felt great to be able to give back in some small way.

Speaking of Mfantsiman, returning to the school to commemorate its 50 years was a full circle moment for me in pretty much every sense of the word. First of all we stayed in the dorms and for two days I slept on a bunk and fetched water for my bath in the bathhouse. I almost left after day one as the, accommodations were a little too nostalgic for me. But once I reconnected with some old mates, I decided to get into it. Besides the dorms had vastly improved and we were staying in the newly built Yeboah House. An old dormmate remarked, "I'm so glad you wrote the book as none of the current students know what we went through."

Indeed 17 years later the school appears to be in MUCH better shape. There are two more dorms to alleviate the crowding and that well - the hideous well that we fought to fetch from in my day - has been broken down as there is no longer a need for it. Water tanks are all over the place - a few for each dorm. And water even flowed from the taps though water pressure is still an issue on some parts of campus.

The chapel is still the same size as it was when I was there, but they've added adjacent patio seating that seems to work okay for now. The dining hall is still the same size too so the girls eat in shifts. They've built sinks just outside the hall though so girls can wash their flatware and cutlery before heading off to classes or evening prep.

There's still room for improvement though. There are only 40 computers for nearly 2000 students and the computer room which was recently broken into is kept locked up. A student told me they only get in about once a week. How can these girls compete when they don't have regular computer access? Additionally, for all the renovations going on, many of the classrooms are in worse shape than they were when I was a student. As I walked the campus though I silently commended the unseen peeps who made sure those water tanks were put in place for the current students and realized that things don't just get better, we make them better. To that end, I'm committed to doing what I can to help make things better. I don't know how exactly yet, but I'll keep you posted.

On "Day Break" hosted by Esi Arhin

Anyway, my final event in Ghana was a reading that Binyavanga Wainaina helped hook-up for me with the Writers Project of Ghana, an awesome organization of Ghanaian artists that threw their arms open for me. I read a few snippets of the book on their radio show on Ghana's Citi FM, and read more at the Nubuke Foundationa really peaceful outdoor space where I'm told they have open mics and other art events in Accra. It was a highly interactive reading as the audience peppered me with tough and insightful questions. "Why'd you call it 'rural'?" "What did you expect to find in Ghana when you first came?" But not one person in the crowd asked me to prove my Ghanaianness.

Powder Necklace Pierced Amazon's Bestseller List!

For a hot minute, thanks to you, Powder Necklace was on Amazon's Top 100 Bestseller list!! Thanks to every single one of you who Facebooked it, bought it, tweeted it, reviewed it, and recommended it. Please help me keep the momentum going and tell your friends to put it on their summer reading and book club lists, pick it up as a gift, and otherwise support. I'm happy to call or Skype into book club meetings, answer any questions you have about the book/my writing & publishing process, or to sign copies of the book and mail it back to you. Let me know!

And thanks again!

Read Bernice L. McFadden's "Black Writers in a Ghetto of the Publishing Industry's Making"

A few quotes to chew on from Bernice L. McFadden's Washington Post op-ed "Black Writers in a Ghetto of the Publishing Industry's Making":

"the work of many African American authors... has been lumped into one heap known as 'African American literature.' This suggests that our literature is singular and anomalous, not universal. It is as if we American authors who happen to be of African descent are not a people but a genre much like mystery, romance or thriller."

"Walk through your local chain bookstore and you will not see sections tagged British Literature, White American Literature, Korean Literature, Pakistani Literature and so on."

"For various reasons, the average, struggling, non-morbid Negro is the best-kept secret in America."

Leave That 9-5 Up on the Shelf

...And just enjoy yourself!

It's been a CRAZY coupla weeks and I have so much to report! Come out to the Kente Cloth Festival party hosted by KenCar Fashion Magazine tonight and I'll fill you in on all the deets. If you can't make it out, they'll be streaming it live on the internet, so check it out and watch me do my very bad rendition of the adowa.

My sister-scribe, the genius Ayesha Harruna Attah will be in the house autographing her brilliant novel Harmattan Rain which was shortlisted for the prestigious Comonwealth Writers Prize so come support two authors and get your dance on too.

More to report after this weekend which includes:

1) doing a video shoot at Girls Write Now, the awesome org I volunteered with for four years where I had the pleasure of mentoring four sharp and insanely talented young women;
2) playing model and signing books for tomorrow afternoon's Beleza fundraiser for Manhattan's New Design High School
3) and cheering on Ghana's Black Stars in this afternoon's World Cup game!!!!

USA, you know I love you, but I'm rooting for the Black Stars today.

My Mother Just Set Up a Reading For Me!

My mother was at the Borders Express in Green Acres Mall yesterday afternoon and asked for a copy of Powder Necklace. When the manager led her to the book, Mommy proceeded to let her know she didn't like where it was placed in the bookstore; then she suggested I do a reading. Then my mom called me at work and put the manager on the phone with me to firm up the logistics!

I'll be reading on July 10th at 2pm. If you're in the Queens, NY/Valley Stream, Long Island area that day, come through!

Readings as Networking Events

So another thing about readings: they're awesome networking events. Where else can a writer meet and exchange info with authors she admires, meet these authors' friends (who are usually in the biz), meet the bookstore owner, share info about her own book, and wrangle an invitation for a post-reading dinner?

l to r: Kwame Alexander, Victoria Christopher Murray & AALBC.com's Troy Johnson

Readings as Performance Art

(l to r) authors Victoria Christopher Murray, Tinesha Davis & Kwame Alexander

I've been going to a ton of readings lately to support friends and also to study "reading performance" technique since as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm still trying to get the hang of this reading/interviewing thing. Last month I went to Isabel Allende's reading at Barnes & Noble and I definitely filed that in my "when I'm a rockstar" folder. Ms. Allende took the stage--after a Barnes & Noble rep gave the packed house a full preamble about what was and was not going to go down including no individual pics with the author and no personalized autographs, the room was just too packed for all of that--and read like a star, joking with the crowd about the presence of kids cramping her plans to read certain lovemaking scenes and fielding all manner of questions (there were a few crazies in the house) afterward with the deftness of a pro.

I went with my dear friend Daphne and her friend and when we went to get our books signed we were instructed to have the books open to the page she would sign so we could keep the long line moving. When we got to the table Ms. Allende's eyes lit up at us and she let us take pics of her signing. For the two seconds that we personally interacted with her, she made me feel like I knew her.

A few days later I went to my girl Kseniya's group reading. Kseniya is one-third of the writing group I was part of that helped me get Powder Necklace in shape and her writing is incredible. Reading her work made me want to read Pushkin and Dostoyevsky and all the other literature coming out of Russia/inspired by the tradition. In a darkly poetic bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ks read under a single spotlight to a room of filled seats. I stood on the sidelines wearing my camera like a backstage pass snapping away. In other words, it was very rockstar too, in an underground artist sort of way.

So I always subconsciously knew readings were about "performing" for the crowd in much the same way a musician or actor commands a room, manipulating the audience with body language, eye contact, inflection, and personalization, but last night I went to a reading at Hue-Man that inspired me in all the right ways to find my own reading performance style. I went to see my new writer friend Tinesha Davis read from her book Holler at the Moon. She read alongside Victoria Christopher Murray (who was doing an advance reading of her 14th book Sins of the Mother!) and poet Kwame Alexander who recited vulnerable and rhythmic pieces from his latest And then You Know and what was cool about what they did was when one finished, the other picked up, as if they were continuing where the other left off. Though their books seemed very different from each other as far as content, you got the sense that they were sharing different strands of this intricate story. It was exciting! And it made me want to buy all three books which I did.