"The Winds of Harmattan" by Nnedi Okorafor

First appeared in Nalo Hopkinson's Mojo: Conjure Stories. Reprinted by David Farland.

Nalo Hopkinson's anthology was about personal magic, using it to alter fate, which she described as "tricky, powerful, and often dangerous." Nnedi Okorafor's offering repays careful reading. It's trickier than its simple appearance.

Asuquo, the protagonist, is an alluring young woman, but she has the undesirable "seven glistening locks of dada hair" which made her a child of Mami Wata, the water deity who would come to collect and thought to be barren. Worse, she can fly. Her husband ties her down to keep her from flying away. She will become a legend, but even that will be rewritten.

What's wonderful here is the challenge it presents. It seems a typical feminist tale, but there are things that it accepts, rejects, or doesn't question, that should leave everyone uncomfortable, no matter what the perspective, which is exactly what Asuquo represents within her village--something that cannot be tamed or forced into a box. Any particular reading will have to ignore some details in order to make a case for forwarding a particular agenda. It has all sorts of barbs that makes it "tricky, powerful, and often dangerous."

Cultural Ephemera: The 1960s Generational Divide in Art Linkletter's "We Love You, Call Collect"

I'm repurposing the use of a term ("ephemera" meaning printed matter not intended to exist for long--which seems to be the most popular use according Google searches) by going back to the word's primary use in order to get at a phenomenon that intrigues me--and possibly others, which is "something of no lasting significance" (according to Merriam-Webster).

When I combine the term with "cultural," I refer to those things that momentarily struck a culture's zeitgeist, for whatever reason. The reason is usually the fascinating part. Why did it strike the culture's fancy?

Here's an example. Art Linkletter (Wikipedia) was a talk show host on a variety of radio and TV programs. You sometimes hear people still using Linkletter as the butt of a joke--as if the meaning of the joke should be clear--although its use is rather dated if not obscure to most of society now.

Art's daughter, Diane, [video clip of Diane in a commercial with her father] jumped to her death in 1969, out of a six-story window [further info on her death]. Art said it was due to an LSD flashback although people like Bobby Darin blamed Art's parenting (his song "Baby May") as Art became staunchly opposed to drug culture and figures like Timothy Leary who said LSD was safe. John Waters did a short film about Diane featuring his famed drag queen, Divine [It's early John Waters--the dialogue jumbled]. David Foster Wallace refers to it in his novel, The Pale Kings.

Art released the following spoken word audio, "We Love You, Call Collect," which peaked at #42 on Billboard Top 100 and won that year's Grammy Award:

Supposedly, there's a rebuttal from the daughter ("Dear Mom and Dad") though I couldn't locate that.

The power of this ephemera is not how it delivers its art, which is nigh nil except for its moving last line, but how it captures the generational divide of its time. One can extrapolate both perspectives.

Note that even in Linkletter's excoriation of Leary, he also praises Leary, which makes Leary smile (see video linked above). Whatever else one may have against Linkletter, he was talented at engaging people, even in anger.