iDebate: Thandie Newton as Olanna in Half of A Yellow Sun

We were so excited to hear that Half of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was going to be made into a movie. The gist now is that Thandie Newton (who is African but not Nigerian) would be playing the lead role of Olanna. Some people have been saying that a Nollywood cast should be used rather than Hollywood big names. Is it more about local content or expertise or is it even a "business" decision? What do you think?

Screen Daily reports that producers Andrea Calderwood ("The Last King of Scotland," "Generation Kill") and Gail Egan ("Happy-Go-Lucky," "The Constant Gardener") have fully financed, thanks to help from both Nigerian private equity and the British Film Instute, their adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's bestselling novel "Half of a Yellow Sun." The novel, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007, is set during the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967-1970, when the south of Nigeria attempted to secede and form their own country, the Republic of Biafra, and tracks a revolutionary university professor, his lover, her sister, a British ex-pat, and their houseboy, who are cought up in the conflict across the 1960s. Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele, who's had a number of successes on the London stage, including his adaptation of seminal post-colonial novel "Things Fall Apart," is making his directorial debut with the project, and he's assembled quite an impressive cast, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dominic Cooper and Thandie Newton all locked into the film. The trade don't have a firm word on who each is playing, but our guess is that Ejiofor will play university professor Odenigbo, Newton his lover, Olanna, and Cooper will play Richard, a British ex-pat in Nigeria to study.

It's a pretty terrific cast, not least a rare lead role for Ejiofor, one of our favorite working actors, while the presence of Cooper hot off "The Devil's Double" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" will undoubtedly help the film internationally. Filming starts in March, before Ejiofor segues to Steve McQueen's "Twelve Years A Slave," so we're unlikely to see this before 2013, but it certainly seems to be a film to keep an eye on.

Source: Indiewire

iDebate: Are We Writing in Africa?

Emma Iduma asks in Mantle

"The question this piece primarily addresses is whether or not we are writing in Africa (especially writing in the English language). The answer is a simple, yet complicated yes. It is simple because, indeed, we are putting pen to paper, and fingers to keyboard. There is evidence of this on the Internet – the growing number of platforms, including online journals, Facebook groups and networking sites. Yet it is a complicated yes because intra-African literary institutions are few, and insufficient. For instance, Nigeria, with over 150 million people, has less than five standard book publishers, less than five print literary journals, no grant-giving body, and few prizes.If we are writing in Africa the necessary corollary is that we are being published in Africa, by Africans, and for Africans (I am only interested in "Africa" as a geographical space, as a physical and territorial delimitation). This is not exactly the case, in a lot of ways, with only very few exceptions.It does not cost little to write in Africa; aside the fact that obvious glamour is not guaranteed to the young writer, there is the absence of intra-African visibility. The concerns, then, I propose, must shift from singular considerations of what is being written to pluralized considerations of how what is being written will be read, understood and contextualized."

Is Africa writing what she wants to write, the way she wants to write it? If she uses Western media, does it affect anything? Does it change the sound of her voice or the slant of her words? Is there a way Africa can be written? Tell me...

iDebate

On April 11, James Morgan wrote a piece titled "Why did LOL infiltrate the language?" about how LOL has been added to the Oxford Dictionary.

"The internet slang term "LOL" (laughing out loud) has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, to the mild dismay of language purists. But where did the term originate? And is it really a threat to our lexicon?

"OMG! LOL's in the OED. LMAO!" If you find the above string of letters utterly unintelligible, you are clearly an internet "noob". Let me start again. Golly gosh! The popular initialism LOL (laughing out loud) has been inducted into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Blimey! What is going on?

The OED defines LOL as an interjection "used chiefly in electronic communications... to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement".

Language is living. It changes, and much of the changes creeps in on us. There are the 'language purists' I choose to call them, who think language is sacred and should not be stained by 'pulpy-words' picked from the garbage of the internet. Sad news. This garbage is part of our life, along with its language.

Why did LOL infiltrate the language? I think the question should be why not?