ELLEN BANDA-AAKU (Zambia)

By I. M Soqaga

An award winning female African writer Ellen Banda-Aaku is one of the preeminent female literary figures who continue to produce resounding literature in Africa.  Her writing prowess is engrossing - transporting literary aficionados to the realms of ecstatic excitement.  Candidly, her enormous contribution in literature is explicitly riveting.

It is gratifying to see a writer especially a woman African writer demonstrating her literary prowess with such colossal zeal.  Despite the fact that she began her literary journey late at 30s in her life, however what is generally amazing is how she managed to blossom rapidly in literature.  In a noteworthy interview she expounded that “I saw a call for submissions for writers for children so I put something together and submitted.  It was my first writing and it got published by Macmillan publishers as a winner of the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa.”

In Ellen, Africa can see a noble favour as she was not tentatively being allured by procuring literary Prizes, but instead she realised her potential knack and aspirations, hence she is proliferating as an excellent writer.  If one will ponder her academic rung which is equally impressive, one will flimsily ponder as to why Ellen could not be overweening probably to indulge in hedonistic lifestyle and enjoy her academic achievement like many academic do.  Nevertheless, the opposite is that Ellen Banda is the versatile female African writer who is imbued with ardent love for literature.   

This of course it must be a huge-imperative lesson to many people of Africa and the world.  In particular Africa cannot anticipate a situation where literature is totally absent.  The question which Africans must always be concern about especially about literature is how books and writers must be produced.  Africa need writers who will make sure that its people are absolutely attached to the artistically pulchritude of literature.  It cannot make any practical sense for any writer emanating from any nation in the world to write outside the confine of his/her country.  Obvious, Ellen Banda deserved credible recognition by the sterling work she is doing in particular in diffusing literature in Africa through workshops that buttresses creative writing.

To emphasise, many African writers who produced quintessential literature generated their works in African context.  As the concentration here is based on female African writer (Ellen Banda), Africa and the world need to be essentially informed that writers of the calibre of Miriam Tlali, Bessie Head, Zulu Sofola, BuchiEmechete, Ama Ata Aidoo, Grace Ogot, Mariama Ba etc writes for Africa and the world.  Therefore, it is not harrowing but rather exciting to see another brilliant generation of female African writers continue to write considerable for Africa and the world.  I speak about Chimamanda NgoziAdichie, Noviolet Bulawayo, Aminatta Forna etc.

Moreover, lot can be mentioned and expounded about African female literary wordsmith.  To recall Tsitsi Dangarembga has been splendid in producing appealing literature.  In his essay titled “Two great Zimbabwean female writers” Peter Moroe a literary critic who has published several articles on black African literature wrote with an outstanding glee about two female Zimbabwean African writers “Tsitsi Dangerembga and Yvonne Vera.  His essay is array systematically as he based his concentration on each writer respectively.  Moroe informed the world that apart from Tsitsi literary achievement such as being involved in drama and publishing a play called “She Does Not Weep.”  It was however her superb novel, Nervous Conditions that made her world famous; winning her the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989.  The book was the first (English novel) ever written by a black Zimbabwean women.

On Vera, Moroe highlighted that “It is thus no surprise that Vera’s works continue to be studied and celebrated in literary circles world wide.  It is generally agreed that she never shied away from writing about so-called “taboo” subjects.  She had a strict writing regimen which she adhered to, and in all senses of the word she could be called a “professional writer.”

Significantly, since from the onset, Africa has been gifted with the number of extraordinary female writers and Ellen Banda constitute pivotal part of those veritable writers who over the years writes bydisplaying great erudition in their works.  Born in UK but her fame and literary works flourish in Africa, she is a very conversant African women writer who travelled and studies in many African countries.  Essentially, she is the writer of children books, short story writer and novelist-very fond to children and she has garnered prestigious awards including the accolade for her magnum opus novel “Patchwork”.

Published works of Ellen Banda-Aaku

Novels

·         Patchwork, Penguin Publishers, South Africa, 2011. ISBN 978-0-14-352753-4

·         Madam 1st Lady, 2016.

Short stories

·         "Sozi’s Box" (winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition). Published in Cousin’s Across the Seas, Phoenix Education, Australia. ISBN 978-1-921085-73-4

·         "Lost", in Jambula Tree and other stories, The Caine Prize for African Writing, 8th Annual Collection, Jacana Press, South Africa. ISBN 978-1-904456-73-5

·         "Made of Mukwa", in The Bed Book of Short Stories, Modjaji Press, South Africa. ISBN 978-1-920397-31-9

·         "Ngomwa", in African Women Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices, Wisconsin Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-299-23664-9

Books for children

·         Wandi’s Little Voice, Macmillan Educational Publishers, UK, 2004. ISBN 978-1-4050-6040-0

·         Yours Faithfully Yogi, East African Educational Publishers, Kenya, 2008. ISBN 978-9966-25-556-3

·         Twelve Months, Oxford University Press, Kenya, 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-573609-0

·         Lula & Lebo, Head and Shoulders, Puo Publishing, South Africa. ISBN 978-0-9814386-7-2

·         E is for e-waste, Worldreader, online publication.

·         Sula and Ja, FarafinaTuuti (Kachifo Limited) and Worldreader.