Saturday 27 January 2018

Guest Post, Adura Ojo, winner of the December Challenge, The End is the Beginning.

Hello friends!

Welcome to a new year of WEP! It's wonderful to be back and to anticipate writing to prompts every two months. Check the list in the sidebar, or go to our CHALLENGES 2018 page if you haven't already checked what we have in store for you.

Come February, we sign up for In Too Deep, which should get your creative juices flowing. However, before we launch our first challenge of the year, we hear from our winner of the December challenge, The End is the Beginning, poet Adura Ojo.

If you haven't read Adura's winning poem, you can read it HERE.


WEP CHALLENGE FOR DECEMBER ............THE END IS THE BEGINNINGS

Adura has been traveling and is still on the road, but managed to get her guest post done at the eleventh hour.

Thanks for participating in WEP again, Adura, now it's over to you!

The End is the Beginning: Why Cinderella Needs a new Song


Cinderella with her glass slipper
Image source

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story - Chimamanda Adichie

Narratives exist for a reason. Stories are said to be as old as time, itself. For as long as we have existed as humans, we’ve been telling stories shaping our own realities. Sometimes these narratives run like a factual script in our lives, almost like an existential script that cannot be altered. Cinderella is one of those classic tales. A girl meets the man of her dreams and lives happily ever after. And why shouldn’t she? Love endures in just about every human experience that we can think of - be it happiness, pain, joy, sadness, war and death. Therein is the mystery of love as one of the most complex of emotions to grace the terrain of humanity. With the incredible endurance of love comes the danger of the single story. Cinderella became that single story.

Over centuries the existence of love between two people irrespective of class, gender or status became one of a single story of love between a man and a woman as exemplified in Cinderella. In a TED talk in 2009, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie highlighted the danger of a single story. The danger of a single story is that it ignores, and in fact, denies the existence of other realities.

Many girls and indeed boys grow up believing that they will find love with someone of the opposite gender. The story of Cinderella as heart-warming as it is, inherits the danger of a single story. We want to see boys and girls embrace their individual realities. It is time for Cinderella to find love with a princess in part two of our human love story.


Thank you Adura. You've given us food for thought with your guest post. I've always loved the Cinderella story, and have lost count of the number of versions I've read. Yours was certainly different and challenge the traditional story in a unique way.

More about Adura: 


You can check out her book of poetry by emailing Lafia Publishing: lafiapublishing@gmail.com

Check out her beautiful blog HERE.

Adura Ojo is a British-Nigerian poet and writer. She is Pomosexual and embraces the anti-discriminatory principle of non-categorization. Her poems have appeared in Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, AcumenDrylandSentinel Literary QuarterlyThe New York Times and The Poetic Pinup Revue. A 2017 Pushcart prize nominee, Adura’s poems document what her diary once kept in a secret place. Her collection, Life is a Woman Breaking Eggs, was published in April 2017 by Lafia. 





So on February 1st, only 4 days to go Australian time, our new challenge will go live. Will it be you writing next month's guest post?

WEP CHALLENGE FOR FEBURARY....IN TOO DEEP



 Denise, for the team -- Yolanda, Olga and Nilanjana!

31 comments:

  1. Hi Denise - I'll be there i.e. next one. So interesting to hear Adura's thoughts ... and I look forward to reading part 2, as well as the TED talk by Chimamanda ... both will be really interesting. Therefore I will be back ...

    Thanks to you all for the WEP team efforts - cheers Hilary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Hilary! Wow, this year is flying by. Can't wait to see what you come up with for February. I'm with you in finding Adura's post interesting.

      Cheers, Denise.

      Delete
    2. Thanks Hilary, Denise.
      Looking forward to having you back, Hilary.

      Delete
  2. Interesting to have other perspectives and there need to be stories told that reflect differences. I learn a lot about other cultures and different people by reading their stories.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So do I, Deborah. Our stories tell us about us.

      Delete
  3. I am a fan of Chimamanda Adiechie. And of Life is a Woman Breaking Eggs. Adura's perspectives are enriching.

    The year is indeed flying past. That must be a good sign, right ? :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Adura's poetry in Life is a Woman opened my eyes.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, Nila. Good to hear your thoughts on LIAW.
      Time flies when we're having fun:)

      Delete
    3. So good to hear this, Denise. Thank you. I'll send the second ed (2017) to you soon. It is a meatier collection with new material added to the previous collection. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the second ed (compared to the first).

      Delete
    4. Thanks Adura. That would be lovely!

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  4. Interesting point of view. I also find the Cinderella story somewhat limiting. Not because it's a standard boy-meets-girl scenario, but because so many considerations - psychological as well as social - have fallen through the cracks in the telling.

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  5. We need to look further than the obvious sometimes, even if it makes some people uncomfortable. An open mind can still learn and grow, a closed mind cannot. A thoughtful post, Adura, and thanks for giving us another viewpoint for an old tale.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's kind of sad that people can't be bothered to look beyond the surface anymore. The world's intolerance for difference is making the human condition a lot worse.

      Thanks for reading, D.G. Hudson.

      Delete
  6. It truly is limiting and has become a trope by the ton. Plus you make kids believe that they need $100,000 weddings and crap with it too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha ha there is that too, Pat.
      Blow $100,000 in a day and spend a lifetime to pay it off!

      Delete
  7. Definitely time for new tropes in writing. I enjoyed your post Adura. And your Cinderella spin. That was clever.

    Have agood week.

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  8. Maybe that's why poetry is such a favorite, open interpretation. Diversity in writers makes for diversity in reading. Creativity, learning, sharing, it's happening - and unless book burning comes back into style...
    Great post, Adura! Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. Love, love, love the new design! Congratulations, Nila, Denise, and Olga. You gals really came through! BEAUTIFUL!

      Delete
    2. Book burning lol. Yolanda! The richness in Diversity and what we learn from sharing is so important. Cheers, Yolanda.
      I love the new look too!

      Delete
    3. Ho Ho You had to say it, Yolanda!

      Delete
  9. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Cinderella and its limitation. I read the Cinderella Complex by Colette Dowling some years ago and although I didn't agree with all of her thoughts, some of the things she said made a lot of sense. But I have to admit that I've never seen the Cinderella story as limiting.

    Also, I tried to purchase your book of poetry Life Is A Woman Breaking Eggs on Amazon Germany as a kindle download. Does your publisher has planned to offer it on Amazon as an E-Version? At the moment, the cover is posted but Amazon says it is currently not available. I'd appreciate an answer.

    Shalom aleichem,
    Pat Garcia

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Pat
      Thanks for asking about my book. LIAW is not on amazon because the artwork is complex and Amazon was not forthcoming in getting it through. Also, some of the poems have shapes that did not transfer well on kindle so it could not be an option. Copies of the book are available from lafiapublishers@gmail.com

      Please Send an email and it can be posted to you wherever you are. Thanks so much.

      Delete
  10. Hello WEP Ladies,

    I love your new design too and the design for the first theme is fantastic.
    Shalom aleichem,
    Pat G

    ReplyDelete
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