Vitabu Books

The Sierra Leonean Writers Series first published J. Sorie Conteh’s I n Search of Sons in 2007. The 200-page novel beautifully crafts the past in fictional Talia as the story weaves around life in a rural town during the railway era. Sierra Leone’s rail operated from the 1890s to the mid-1970s. Conteh’s gripping tale is probably set at the latter end, when air buses had become a more preferred mode of international travel than the work-horse ocean liners of the 1950s and 60s. The story begins with a fleeting introduction to Kunaafoh, the now adult daughter of Giita, the novel’s tragic heroine. Although Kunaafoh appears to be the narrator of the ordeal her dead mother went through, she is inexplicably placed in the background while the reader is carried along in her river of memories. Along the way, Conteh provides fascinating insight into traditional Mende life as he courses through compounds, villages, forests, and rivers to spotlight a marriage buffeted by a complex mix

Freetown’s first-ever poetry open mic drew poets, novelists, dramatists, singers, and faithful fans on Tuesday, March 21, World Poetry Day.  Joan Kennessie, a small business owner and women’s rights activist, and Mustapha Kermul Fofanah, a college student majoring in Peace studies, hosted the event with a little help from their friends in the Sierra Leonean Writers Series community, and, O'Casey's, an old Irish bar on Lumley Beach Rd.  Below are excerpts from their post-event discussion on WhatsApp, with a comment from Mohamed Sheriff of PEN Sierra Leone.  Joan Kenessie : We planned all this in two weeks and got over 100 people. From the response they appreciated (the poetry) mixed with music and drama. Imagine if we had time to practice and organize what that would have been like! Lucie, the manager at O’Casey’s, invited her friends and family to the show and this morning she called to tell me she had calls from friends telling her they enjoyed the session and we sh

Since January, Vitabu Reads has reviewed a number of study abroad books. They include two best sellers in the Sierra Leonean Writers Series: Abdul B. Kamara’s Unknown Destination and Osman Alimamy Sankoh’s Hybrid Eyes: An African in Europe . Both books had reflections of the authors on culture, identity, and experiences of their time abroad before returning to Africa.   In Winston Forde’s Air Force Cadet , the author takes a different route.   On his blog, Forde says he first started writing while based at Royal Air Force (RAF) Khormaksar from 1965 to 1967.   RAF Khormaksar is a former Royal Air Force station in Aden, Yemen.  Whilst many of Forde's peers were going for traditional careers like Law, Medicine, and Engineering, he went for what he called a “most unusual choice of life after school.” W hen we meet Air Force Cadet ’s main character, Ola, he is about to end his schooldays at the Prince of Wales. Prince of Wales is a secondary school in Freetown, Sierr

It’s been 16 years since “The Child of War And Other Poems” was published among a host of poetry reflecting on Sierra Leone’s war. Fighting began on March 23, 1991 and ended in 2002. It’s also been 16 years since I last read Sheikh Umarr Kamarah’s 36-page kids book. My first reading of “The Child of War And Other Poems” was tinged by a sense of disappointment. Apart from the cover, with an image of a young man holding a green flag in front of an M1 Abrams battle tank, in what appears to be a cornfield surrounded by a forest of tall trees, there are no other drawings. The kids’ book is devoted more to text than illustrations. When I finally revisited Kamarah’s poetry for the 2017 Vitabu Reads series, I find the slender book covers a wide canvas with big stories behind the backdrops of text.   Right up front, Kamarah conjures up the stirring image of an iconic landmark in his poem, Freetown Cotton Tree. “Towering x feet of Agelessness Bending under the weight of history

For someone who has arguably done more to showcase workplace discrimination than anyone in recent Sierra Leonean history, Umu Kultumie Tejan-Jalloh is quite an unknown advocate.   Currently a distributor for the Sierra Leone Bottling Company, a partner of The Coca-Cola Company, she runs a small business that uses pushcarts to sell soft drinks and soda pop. She does her own bookkeeping and employs six full-time staff. It all sounds like a far cry from corporate strategizing in boardrooms early in her career, but she’s apparently living her dream of lifting others higher, working for social justice, and the economic empowerment of women. Tejan-Jalloh’s book, T elling It As It Was: The Career of a Sierra Leonean Woman in Public Service,  which was published late last year by Sierra Leonean Writers Series (SLWS), brings to graphic life her experience of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination during her civil service career. By the summer of

Since Vitabu last spoke to Yema Lucilda Hunter, Sierra Leone's first female novelist, in March 2013, she has published  Redemption Song, A Novel , which Vitabu reviewed last week. In a  Facebook chat, Hunter said once she had decided how she wanted to tell the story, she started writing with rewrites spread over about two years. Hunter doesn't plan a sequel to Redemption Song . "I did do a kind of prequel, which was Joy Came in the Morning , whose heroine, Cobola Ennison was the Martins' neighbor in George Town," she explained. The Martins and Cobola Ennison are central characters in Hunter's Redemption Song . Currently, she's working on a long, short story, which she plans to keep secret; because she's not sure if she'll ever finish it. For now, she is editing old folk tales that were collected by Gladys Casely-Hayford, a legendary poet, musician, dramatist, painter, and story-teller. Here is a short excerpt from one of the stories,

This review is a wrap-up of three books published by  Sierra Leonean Writers Series  and features "the variety of experiences women (and girls) underwent" in Sierra Leone's civil war. Sierra Leone's war began on March 23, 1991, when the Revolutionary United Front, with support from the forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia, invaded Sierra Leone. The war lasted more than eleven years. The women and girls we meet in Redemption Song, Yema Lucilda Hunter's fictional account of Sierra Leone's war, and Youthful Yearnings, the first novel by Jedidah Johnson, a medical student at the College of Medicine, University of Sierra Leone, reflect the attitudes, ideas, and the social paradigms that shape Sierra Leonean women. Dilemma of Freedom: A Diary from Behind Rebel Lines in Sierra Leone's Civil War, chronicles the real-life experiences of Bailah Leigh, a specialist obstetrician and gynecologist with a focus on maternal and child healthca