A few weeks ago, at Jazzhole, I bought a copy of Jamaica Kincaid's Talk Stories--a collection of her original writing for the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town," composed from 1978 to 1983 when she first came to the United States from Antigua. It was the only copy for sale, weatherbeaten with a tag inside from the now defunct Glendora Books that used to be at the now defunct Falomo Shopping Centre in Ikoyi.
I'm only moderately familiar with Jamaica Kincaid's work. In our first year of film school, when we were given the task of adapting a short story, I chose her prose poem Girl--in which a mother educates her young daughter about the proper bearing of a lady.
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions.The film I came up with, How to Make Afang Soup, is about a girl who learns to make soup from her mother and eventually succeeds her as the woman of the house. (If you do get a chance to watch it on YouTube, please notice the comments from people complaining that it is not a recipe for making the soup. My favorite, spelled as is: the video is good but the tittle does'nt reflect it. i clicked on your video because i wanted the recipe but do you thimk that i'm satysfied after watching it. answer yourself iquo essien.)
It is a class project, of course, but something that always reminds me of how my mother taught me to make so many things in that same big red pot. It's been twelve years now since she died and still I can't believe she's gone. But I ...
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