 | |
| Author | Noo Saro-Wiwa |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rod Hunt [1] |
| Genre | Travel writing |
| Set in | Nigeria |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| ISBN | 978-1847083319 |
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria is a 2012 non-fiction memoir and travelogue by Noo Saro-Wiwa. In it Saro-Wiwa travels across Nigeria, re-discovering the country of her birth. The book has been compared to those of many other diasporic writers.
The journey is made in the shadow of the death of her father Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental activist who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. [2] [3] One of the places that Saro-Wiwa visits is the books eponymous Trans Wonderland - an amusement park created as a Nigerian counter to Disney World. [4] Beyond the poignant frivolity of the amusement park, Saro-Wiwa visits Nigeria's major cities - Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Maiduguri, Port Harcourt. She also describes trips to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Sukur, [5] as well as visiting the National Museum, the restored shrine in Osogbo, [6] and the Slave Relic Museum in Badagry. [7] The book also focuses on everyday details, such as riding okadas. [8] It is also critical of the oil industry. [9]
Parallels have been drawn between Looking for Transwonderland and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Travellers by Helon Habila, [10] as well as The Atlantic Sound by Caryl Phillips, [11] as well as All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes by Maya Angelou, The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna and Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay. [12]
Saro-Wiwa has also described how they are in a vanguard of European writers publishing travelogues on African countries; however other African writers have used the form, including Pẹlu Awofẹsọ. [13] Her approach has also been characterised as a "diasporic travel-writer", whose views are formed by the liminality of their experience as a Nigerian who grew up in England. [14] The book has also been characterised as a work of Afropolitanism. [7]
In 2012, the work was featured as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. The same year it was featured by the Financial Times as one of their travel books of the year. [15] In 2017, the book featured on New York Public Library's list "365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women's Day All Year2. [16]
Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian writer, teacher, television producer, and environmental activist. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.
Port Harcourt is the capital and largest city of Rivers State in Nigeria. It is the fifth most populous city in Nigeria after Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Benin. It lies along the Bonny River and is located in the oil rich Niger Delta region. As of 2023, Port Harcourt's urban population is approximately 3,480,000. The population of the metropolitan area of Port Harcourt is almost twice its urban area population with a 2015 United Nations estimate of 2,344,000. In 1950, the population of Port Harcourt was 59,752. Port Harcourt has grown by 150,844 since 2015, which represents a 4.99% annual change.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian novelist, short-story writer and activist. Regarded as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature, she is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013). Her other works include the book essays We Should All Be Feminists (2014); Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017); a memoir, Notes on Grief (2021); and a children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf (2023).
Kenule "Ken" Bornale Tsaro-Wiwa, also known as Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr, although he himself chose to use the name Ken Wiwa, was a Nigerian journalist and author. The eldest son of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, he worked as an adviser to three Nigerian presidents.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
Caryl Phillips is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels, Phillips is often described as a Black Atlantic writer, since much of his fictional output is defined by its interest in, and searching exploration of, the experiences of peoples of the African diaspora in England, the Caribbean and the United States. As well as writing, Phillips has worked as an academic at numerous institutions including Amherst College, Barnard College, and Yale University, where he has held the position of Professor of English since 2005.
Sukur or Sukur Cultural Landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located on a hill above the village of Sukur in the Adamawa State of Nigeria. It is situated in the Mandara Mountains, close to the border with Cameroon. Its UNESCO inscription is based on the cultural heritage, material culture, and the naturally-terraced fields. Sukur is Africa's first cultural landscape to receive World Heritage List inscription.
Jude Dibia is a Nigerian novelist. In 2007, he won the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Prose for his novel Unbridled.
An okada is a motorcycle taxi commonly used in Nigeria and other African countries.
Zina Saro-Wiwa is a Brooklyn-based video artist and filmmaker. She makes video installations, documentaries, music videos and experimental films.
The Nigerian National Museum is a national museum of Nigeria, located in the city of Lagos. The museum has a notable collection of Nigerian art, including pieces of statuary, carvings also archaeological and ethnographic exhibits. Of note is a terracotta human head known as the Jemaa Head, part of the Nok culture. The piece is named after Jema'a, the village where it was discovered. The museum is located at Onikan, Lagos Island, Lagos State. The museum is administered by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments.
Taiye Selasi is an American writer and photographer. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, she describes herself as a "local" of Accra, Berlin, New York and Rome. In 2005, Selasi published "Bye-Bye, Babar ", her seminal text on Afropolitans. Her novel, Ghana Must Go, was published by Penguin in 2013.
Afropolitan is a term constructed from the name Africa and the ancient Greek word πολίτης ('politis'), meaning 'citizen'. It is an attempt at redefining African phenomena by, on the one hand, placing emphasis on ordinary citizens' experiences in Africa and, on the other hand, reconceptualizing the African Diaspora's relationship with the African continent. Afropolitanism is used and defined in various ways. The novelist Taiye Selasi and the political theorist Achille Mbembe are immediately associated with the coinage of the term and its fundamental theorization.
Basi and Company is a Nigerian sitcom which ran from 1986 to 1990 on NTA, and was later syndicated across Africa. Written and produced by Ken Saro-Wiwa and filmed in Enugu, the show derived inspiration from African folklore and lampooned widespread corruption in oil-rich Nigeria while highlighting its consequences. To date, it remains one of Africa's most watched comedy programmes, with an estimated thirty million viewers during its peak.
Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May 14, 2013, by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Atlantic Sound is a 2000 travel book by Caryl Phillips. It was published in the UK by Faber and Faber and in the US by Knopf. In the words of the Publishers Weekly review: "Journeys, as forces of spiritual and cultural transformation, bind this trio of nonfiction narratives, which explores the legacy of slavery in each of the three major points of the transatlantic slave trade."
Noo Saro-Wiwa is a British-Nigerian author, noted for her travel writing. She is the daughter of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Trans Wonderland is an amusement and theme park in Ibadan, Nigeria.
The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest is a 2002 book by Aminatta Forna about her childhood and an investigation into the execution of her father, Mohamed Forna. It was serialised as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and was runner-up for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize.
Pelu Awofeso is a Nigerian journalist, travel and culture writer, based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a winner of the CNN/Multichoice African Journalists Awards in the Tourism Category. He is often described as "Nigerian foremost travel writer." He is also a published author.
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