Tolu Daniel

What the Tongue Remembers On Food, Homesickness, and the Labors of Making Ourselves Whole

I wrote about the hunger that follows you—when food becomes a language you fear forgetting. A thread on exile, imperfect egusi, and the meals that refuse to be translated. "What the Tongue Remembers" open.substack.com/pub/fromthei...

The Silence We Made On the roaring silence that has engulfed the African Literary Ecosystem

"African literature is a long argument between the living and the dead," wrote Gikandi. But what happens when the living fall silent? My latest essay traces: how digital platforms reproduce censorship. why critique now lives in encrypted DMs among others. open.substack.com/pub/fromthei...

THE NECESSARY VIOLENCE OF ADEDAYO AGARAU On the Ethics of Elegy in "The Years of Blood"

Wrote about The Years of Blood, Adedayo Agarau’s new collection that turns violence into language not of spectacle, but of witness. A review about grief, complicity, and what it means to document what should never be forgotten. It is up on Substack now. open.substack.com/pub/fromthei...

On the Slipperiness of Words Far From Home On Language Lost, Found and Misnamed

New essay: on what happens to words when you leave home. On exile, emigration, and the ache of trying to name what displacement feels like.

open.substack.com/pub/fromthei...

For anyone interested. This is my newsletter, where I will be sharing my thoughts on a variety of things, books, events, culture and everything in between. If you are curious, give us a subscription, it is free.

Essays, Unfinished On writing into uncertainty, memory’s fragments, and the quiet faith of beginning anyway.

"The page is always blank before it isn't. That moment of beginning — pure potential, terrifying freedom — is where every essay is born, though few admit how little they know at the start." Essays, Unfinished
open.substack.com/pub/fromthei...

Setting up a weekly dispatch on substack from now till the first year anniversary of my soon to be published collection of essays. It will feature a lot of my thoughts on craft, pop culture and politics.

"The leaves forgot how to be green."

"Understanding Nigerian identity requires exploring the culture’s interaction with both documented and ephemeral media. Both Nigeria’s pre-colonial and post-colonial histories are steeped in rich oral traditions, complemented by written and broadcast narratives."

rpublc.com/april-may-20...

Thinking Erasure in African Literature - Olongo Africa Download as PDFThere is a peculiar fate in literature: some books die and some books are killed, not because they weren’t read or weren’t loved, but because they were regarded as unbearable. And some ...

"There is a peculiar fate in literature: some books die and some books are killed, not because they weren’t read or weren’t loved, but because they were regarded as unbearable. And some simply refuse to vanish. They exist as whispers, as rumors in footnotes, as echoes in the margins of other..."

"...give me all the love in the world
to waste."

"...the cardiogram you sent me,
is likewise the city, my love."

Lauris Velps

Why should my survival be dependent on the survival of my oppressors? – Fred Moten.

Namwali Serpell: "Race Off" An essay by Namwali Serpell: "The immediacy, transience, and opportunism of race transformation encourages a self-congratulatory, self-fulfilling return…

"To change your race either becomes a kind of thought experiment, geared to make you empathize with another race or to punish you for being bigoted, or it becomes a brief, giddy act of exoticism or slumming, a way to transcend race and class divisions immediately but impermanently."

The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent.

"Rather than aiming for the unique, which might pierce our haze of distraction, art has succumbed to marketable generalities: stock music on Spotify, soporific streams of Netflix content."

www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...

every year i feel like i discover the one Ballard that defines the rest of the year. didn't find one last year but i have found the one for this year for sure. 2023 was Laufey's Second Best, this year will be Rachel Chinouriri's Even with Cat Burns.

of the many people i interviewed while writing this essay, Sam's voice and face felt the most prominent to me. the way he would always remind me that "we are here to stay." and yet it was he who left first. his passing will be the most defining thing for me this year i imagine.

i had the pleasure of reading from one of the most important things i have written in recent years during the issue 75 launch of @haydensferryreview.bsky.social yesterday. was both fun and emotional as I read the text. if you can, please grab yourself a copy. the essay is titled Exodus.

the last things he said to me was of a kind of resignation to the new order of things. a resignation that was both like and unlike him. i didnt know what to do with it. so i told him to keep the faith. i hope he finds rest on the other side.

since moving to the US, i have only met few people whose very essence affected me as Sam did. it wasn't accidental that i memorialized him in this essay. it was the kind of aura he exuded.

my friend Sam is now lost to memory. i have been in shock since the news was transmitted to me last night.

On the Sunny Side of the Street - Tolu Daniel | Lolwe An essay by Tolu Daniel

"While lost in my reverie, I heard a very loud knock. It was Sam. Sam knocks on the door the same way he is built, all muscles and no chill. He is a big, muscled man with an unrepentant love for booze and women."

lolwe.org/on-the-sunny...

during this period, such works would have already been reviewed, categorized and cannonized in western imagination to the extent that what the average african reader is working with, is a second hand sense of what exists in the book.

the reason is because you cannot expect people to read things that are not available. everytime a new book by an African writer becomes available in the market, it takes roughly about 6 months for it to reach the average African reader.

i still remember the days when some so-called critics of African Literature made the claim that the real issue is that Africans dont read but time as shown those people to be charlatans and nonsense peddlers. I along with many others have constantly resisted that notion and will continue to.

everytime it comes up, its the same people sharing their opinions about why they think the issue persist, they skirt around the obvious problems without offering any decisive solutions. those who try among them though, eventually give up after a few years of trying.

every few years an essay like this shows up and usually it garners a bit of outrage. not anymore. because there is already a notion of resignation about the issue.

Africa has no shortage of celebrated writers – so why is it so hard for African readers to get hold of their books? Across the continent books can be expensive and libraries scarce. But growing numbers of tech innovators and independent publishers are working to make African literature available and affordable

"Africa has no shortage of celebrated writers – so why is it so hard for African readers to get hold of their books?"

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

in any case, i have appointed myself as that guy, who will tell the purists of colonial language, the nationalist scumbag to stop being idiots. to accept that we are all creating new ways of being, all adapting to this world with its new and old issues and i hope it doesn't exhaust my professors 😂

as such language remains formless and in a continued state of evolution. the language we encounter in works that are regarded as transnational for instance retain in them a certain kind of reimagination, that is at once already lost and at the same time new.