Writers and Their Videos

I love the Internet. You can find practically anything on it – including videos and films of authors being interviewed or documented or addressing a room full of graduating students. These are some of my favorites:

Reflection: Genocide in Nigeria by Ken Saro-Wiwa

Writing this book has been one of the most painful experiences of my life. Ordinarily, writing a book is torture, a chore. But when, on every page, following upon every word, every letter, a tragedy leaps up before the eyes of a writer, he or she cannot derive that pleasure, that fulfillment in which the creative process often terminates.

Ken Saro-Wiwa

The Synopsis

Ken Saro-Wiwa, champion of the Ogoni people’s fight for autonomy, demands attention from the international community in his book Genocide in Nigeria. He claims that ‘Shell/BP’ and ‘Chevron’ have committed crimes on the lands of the Ogoni, which he bases on racism. Likewise, he claims that the (former) Federal Military Government of Nigeria committed atrocities on the Ogoni, which he bases on ethnocentrism. Reprinted letters back and forth between the Ogoni, the oil companies, local governments and the Federal Military Government are provided as evidence to help argue about the negligence of the Ogoni’s suffering.

Is Non-fiction Vital to You as a Creative Writer?

Textbooks = *yawn

I know for myself that reading hasn’t always been a picnic in school or college. There were always books that didn’t appeal to me but I had to read and study if I wanted the grades that I aimed for… I’m thinking here of titles like ‘Understanding Statistics’ or ‘Advanced Physics’ (I had a science track). Don’t misunderstand me though, I loved learning and acquiring new knowledge, and I still do. But such books were boring, the explanations difficult and dry, the layout and format horrendous, and don’t even get me started on the price tags!

In school, I had to depend ultimately on lectures and reading books that I thought were worthy enough to impart the necessary knowledge. I recall in high school tossing aside the curriculum textbooks for Advanced Physics and Economics and consulting instead the relevant chapters from ‘The Feynman Lectures on Physics’ and ‘Positive Economics’, since these books “explained” their text in a way that I could digest the information.