Memories of the 2017 World Festival, Rochester

On April 29, as planned, the World Festival took place in Rochester, Minnesota. This was the culmination of weeks of planning by the Rochester International Association (RIA). I had featured the festival announcement on this blog.

My daughter Zawadi and I attended it, representing Tanzania and Africonexion: Cultural Consultants. We arrived at the festival venue at 9:45am, with enough time to set up our table and hang the Tanzanian flag on the wall. On the table we displayed my publications, including books such as Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences and Matengo Folktales.

Around 10:00am, festival visitors started arriving. We talked with those who came to our table about my work as a writer and cultural consultant. Several people recognized me from last year's festival, and I was humbled that they did.

After about thirty minutes, the flag ceremony started. This is part of the festival. It involves a procession of people from various countries carrying their national flags which they RIA owns. The RIA board had for the first time, acquired the Tanzanian flag, which I proudly carried in the procession.

For the rest of the day, we continued talking with people who visited our table and we handed out free xerox copies of my little article, "Chickens in the Bus," as well as information about Africonexion: Cultural Consultants.  We also took turns to walk around the exhibition areas, looking at various  displays and taking photos.

I passed by the table seen in the photo on the left. It was the Nigerian table and they cheerfully posed for this photo. Among the most memorable experiences were conversations my daughter and I had with a professor of Winona State University. As soon as she saw us, she remarked that she had bought my book last year. She said that she would like to bring her students to the festival in the future with an assignment: to interview people from four different countries in order to learn about global cultural diversity. I thought that was a brilliant idea.

Another memorable experince for us was talking with a lady who, after looking at my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences. began telling of about her experiences in Japan. As an American, she said, she had made cultural blunders in communicating with the Japanese. We enjoyed the conversation, since her experiences resembled mine in the USA. It was rewarding to encounter someone who shared her personal stories so freely and with an arresting sense of humour.


Moving around, I visited a table where I saw a woman wearing hijab. When I approached the table, I realized I had seen this woman last year. On her table I saw Islamic books such as Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'an, John L. Esposito's Who Speaks for Islam, and Wisdom for Life & The Afterlife: A Selection of Prophet Mohammad's Sayings, all of which I have in my collection.

I introduced myself, saying that I teach at St. Olaf College and one of my courses is "Muslim Women Writers," which I created to help counter prevailing ignorance about and misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims, especially Muslim women.

She, on her part, told me that she hosts the Faith Talk Show, and we agreed that it would be a good idea for me to appear on the show at some point in the future. Returning from the festival, I checked online and saw much information about this lady and her show, such this article. I am thinking it might be a good idea to invite her to speak in my Muslim Women Writer's class.

Throughout the festival there were performances by dance and musical groups from various countries. It was humbling to watch these performers as they generously shared their talents and traditions with all of us.

In addition to cultural items for sale, ranging from clothes and artifacts, to jewelry, and works of art, there were also foods from several countries.

The more I attend these festivals, the more I appreciate their value. As I watch the people attending the festival, volunteers, and vendors, and observe their countless conversations, I know that these festivals are a great way of connecting people. I am mindful of the fact that the people who attend the festival communicate with others around the world through email, social media, and so on, spreading the story of the festival around the world. I am doing that right now, with this blog post.

This was another very successful World Festival, a testament to enduring commitment of the RIA to bring people together.

Nawal el Saadawi and "The Fall of the Imam"

This week, in my course on Muslim Women Writers, we have been discussing Nawal el Saadawi's The Fall of the Imam. Reading this engaging novel, which moves freely between dream and reality, memory and fantasy, and is peppered with irony, sarcasm, and sharp wit, we see its underlying continuous indictment of oppression and injustices perpetrated in the name of religion.

In order to gain a sense of the issues that are central in Nawal el Saadawi's life and work, and to witness the spirit of her activism as a champion of women's rights, we watched this video

The Spring Semester Has Started

The spring semester started on February 8 here at St. Olaf College. I am teaching three courses: First Year Writing, Folklore, and Muslim Women Writers. I have taught First Year Writing many times and Folklore a number of times, but will be teaching Muslim Women Writers for the first time.

Teaching a course again and again does not diminish its freshness. It is always a different experience, even if we are discussing the same texts. My Muslim Women Writers course is going to be even more of a novelty, as I have noted, and I wish to say a word about it.

I will be teaching the following texts:

1. Aboulela, Leila. Minaret. Grove. 
2. Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Scribner.
3. Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Waveland Press, Inc.
4. el Saadawi, Nawal. The Fall of the Imam. Telegram Books.
5. Hossein, Rokeya S. Sultana's Dream. Feminist Press.
6. Mattu, Ayesha. & Nura Maznavi. Love, InshAllah. Soft Skull Press.
7. Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. Random.

Of all these works, I have only read Minaret, So Long a Letter, and The Fall of the Imam. In preparing for the course, I have been reading other works, particularly Amina Wadud's Qur'an and Woman and Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke.

I have already talked to the class about Islam, dwelling on Muhammad, The Qur'an, the hadiths and the five pillars. I will be saying more based on the readings, the first of which will be Sultana's Dream.

I Am Teaching Leila Aboulela's "Minaret" Again

This week, in my African Literature summer course, I am teaching Leila Aboulela's Minaret. We started the course with Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa, went on to Athol Fugard's Valley Song, then Mia Couto's The Tuner of Silences, then Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

I am teaching Minaret for the second time, having first taught it in the spring. As I did then, I have started with an introduction to Islam, because Minaret deals with the lives of Muslims. I also feel privileged to talk about Islam in view of the widespread ignorance of it in American society. Having been born and raised in Tanzania, about half of whose people are Muslim and about half Christian, living in relative harmony, I enjoy sharing with students my experience of Islam and Muslims.

This time around, having talked about the origins and the five pillars of Islam, and about the Qur'an and the hadiths, I have started focusing on the novel, intending to go through it at a measured pace, in order to explore it as well as possible.

With its opening words, "Bism Allahi, Ar-rahman, Ar-raheem," Minaret inducts the reader into the world of Islam. In class today, I dwelt on this phrase, which means "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful," and explained its significance in Islam and in the daily lives of Muslims. I went on to explain other references to Islam featured in the first several pages of the novel. I have no doubt that my students will both enjoy and learn much from this novel.

On my part, especially today, I have been thinking about other works of fiction I have taught, written by African Muslim women. These are Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, Alifa Rifaat's Distant View of a Minaret, Nawal el Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero and The Fall of the Imam. I am dreaming of someday creating a course on writings by Muslim women. As Muslims say, Insha Allah, God willing.

A Note on Leila Aboulela's "Minaret"

One of the works we read in my Post-colonial Literature course this Spring was Leila Aboulela's Minaret. I planned to focus on two areas of the Post-colonial world: Africa and South Asia. We started with Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings, read  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and then Minaret, before venturing into South Asia.
 

Minaret explores the lives of Sudanese Muslims in Sudan--especially Khartoum--and in England. It unfolds initially at the University of Khartoum, where we encounter Najwa, the main character. We see how she relates to the community around her, especially fellow students, whose adherence to Islamic principles--such as praying five times a day--she observes with a certain aloofness.

Mostly middle or upper class, the characters in Minaret are a diverse community in terms of their political beliefs and their degrees of attachment to Islam. Cosmopolitan in outlook, they embrace, or easily coexist with, foreign, especially Western, influences. They communicate with friends and relatives abroad, and are able to travel abroad themselves.

Following a coup in Sudan, and the execution of her father by the new regime, Najwa finds herself in exile in England, together with her brother. Though she had not been particularly religious back in Khartoum, after arriving in England and experiencing alienation and other social problems, she embraces Islam, finding meaning and comfort in being a pious Muslim woman. Leila Aboulela presents this transformation in a seamless, persuasive manner.

Minaret offers a refreshing image of Islamic Sudan, a place which many associate with a rigid, conservative society. In contrast to conventional negative stereotypes, Minaret humanizes the Muslims, showing them as people like any other. My students and I liked this novel, and I plan to teach it again this summer.

Teaching "Twilight in Delhi"

My South Asian Literature class in now comfortably underway, in its fourth week. We started with Mulk Anand's Untouchable, which I have taught many times. We then studied Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi, which I had not read before.

Reading Twilight in Delhi in the wake of Untouchable has been a valuable experience, a broadening of horizons. While Untouchable relates the experience of Indian Hindus, Twilight in Delhi deals with Indian Muslims.

Never having read a novel about the world of Indian Muslims, I found Twilight in Delhi refreshing. Fortunately, I know something about Islam, especially coming from Tanzania, a country where about half of the population is Muslim and about half Christian.

I spent considerable time explaining Islamic principles to my students, as a way of establishing the groundwork for discussing Twilight in Delhi. I described the five pillars of Islam and showed three videos: this one, which presents the Islamic call to prayer; this recitation of the Quran; and a small boy's recitation of Surah Yasin.

Twilight in Delhi deals with such themes as patriotism, love, and marriage. It portrays family life, wedding customs, healing and burial practices. From its very beginning, Twilight in Delhi exudes nostalgia for the Delhi of the past, whose grandeur and magnificence fell apart as a result of British rule.

This novel presents the fate of Delhi as a metaphor for the human condition. In ways reminiscent of existentialist writings, characters in Twilight in Delhi contemplate and talk about the meaning of life and the transience of human achievements. This reminds me of Al-Inkishafi, the classic Swahili poem, which reflects on the demise of the old famous Swahili cities, making us wonder about the meaning of life itself.

A Mosque Near Ground Zero

I have been here in my country, Tanzania, for the last two months. In the last few days, I have been following the controversy raging in the USA around the idea of building a mosque near Ground Zero, New York.

As a Tanzanian, I am saddened by the ignorance and Islamophobia that I see among many Americans. Here in Tanzania, we have mosques, churches and other places of worship everywhere. We know they have a right to be there. At the University of Dar es Salaam, for example, the mosque and the church are only a few yards apart, and everyone is comfortable with that situation.

As a Christian, I am used to hearing the muadhin calling Moslems to prayer, from every mosque, before sunrise and at different times during the day. These broadcasts are so much part of my life here in Tanzania that I miss them when I am in the USA, where I teach. The ignorance and prejudice I have mentioned exists also in so-called Islamic countries, and it would quickly rear its head if someone tried to build a church there.

I listened to President Barack Obama's speech in support of the idea of the mosque near Ground Zero, and I felt happy to hear the US Government defending a basic human right.