Urban Thought Collective

Hey UTC Family!

Welcome to my blog! I guess you can say this space is about any and everything, well, books.

My name is RaNeeka J. Claxton. I’m a bit of a bookworm, a writer by trade, a journalist and Master of Fine Arts student of creative writing by profession. When I get time in my crazy schedule, my love is to read novels by African authors. There’s something very simple, yet, endearing as heck about the smell of the bush and landscape, the taste of the food, the beauty (or lack thereof) of the people many African authors are able to evoke within their novels and settings – no matter in which part of my beloved continent the settings may land.

Most of us know works by renowned African authors Chinua Achebe, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Chimamanda Adichie and Buchi Emecheta, to name a few. But I’ve been exploring less known writers, such as “The Icarus Girl” by Helen Oyeyemi (who, might I add, published her first book at 18); and “Everything Good Will Come,” by Sefi Atta (who got her MFA at Antioch University right there in LA). These writers are phenomenal, to say the very least!

Let’s touch on Oyeyemi’s book just a little bit. She writes about a main character, Jessamy “Jess” Harrison –a little mulatto girl whose mother is Nigerian, and father is English. On a trip to Ibadan, Nigeria with her parents, the 8-year-old befriends a spirit named TillyTilly – who ends up being the spirit of her dead twin Fern.

In the Yoruba belief system, twins live in three worlds: the real world, spirit world and the Bush – a wilderness of the mind. That said, Jess had the innate ability to be the only one who can see TillyTilly.

The book was wild because I felt like I was in and out of Jess and TillyTilly’s heads as they journeyed together privately between the natural world and the “other” world. If you don’t like books about “otherness” and stuff like that, this one might not be the best read for you. But, Oyeyemi didn’t leave us hangin’. I gathered some other overall themes in the book that I’ll tell you about later, along with further talk about this book and others.

But for now, I want you all to know that I intend for this blog to be a conglomerate of sorts. That said, I invite you all to tell me your thoughts about our (yes, our) discussions. Let me know which books you’ve been meaning to pick up and read, but never got the chance.

Enlighten me with your run-ins or interactions with local authors – or those beyond. I want to know what kind of ideas are out there about published authors – be it black, brown, yellow or white. In other words, which parts of the written word would you like me to check out? I welcome your feedback!

Re-cap(ture)

Book: The Icarus Girl
Author: Helen Oyeyemi
Pages: 335
Publisher: Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Copyright: 2005
Themes: Life as a child mulatto; childlike spiritual realm; culture clashes between English and Africans/blacks and whites; Nigerian traditions and deities
Recommendation: I bought it and have no regretsJ

Peace until next time…

RaNeeka J. Claxton is a journalist and Master of Fine Arts student at University of California, Riverside, with a concentration in Fiction. A native Detroiter, she just began work on her first novel. Claxton is based in Palm Springs, and would love to hear from book fans at raneeka_claxton@yahoo.com.