Natasha Gordon. Bessie Head. Rwanda Representation and Reality

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2018

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As her award-winning debut play, Nine Night, comes to London's West End, Natasha Gordon tells Anne about the grieving ritual that binds in the Jamaican diaspora. Nine Night at Trafalgar Studios, London, until February 23rd

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Bessie Head's first novel, two of her titles, When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) and Maru (1971), have just been republished. Head's influence and creativity are discussed by journalist Audrey Brown and literary scholar Louisa Uchum Egbunike.

Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick's serial on the Rwandan Genocide and the fraught and fractured nature of justice, is one of the dramas of the year. Zoe Norridge explores the drama's reception within Rwandan cultural politics and Phil Clark discusses his research on the impact of the International Criminal Court on African politics. . Audrey Brown is a South African journalist, curator and cultural commentator based in London Louisa Uchum Egbunike, specialist in African literature, School of Arts and Social Sciences of City, University of London and New Generation Thinker Phil Clark, School of Oriental and African Studies; his book Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on African Politics is out now. Zoe Norridge, Kings College London, teaches Comparative literature. Her current research focuses on cultural responses to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Zoe is also Chair of the Ishami Foundation. She is a New Generation Thinker

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
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0:36.8	Hello, I'm Anne McHalevoy, and this is BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas podcast, bringing together leading artists, writers and thinkers, in discussions which try to answer a range of questions, from should we keep pets to what does it mean to belong, or what can Nietzsche teach us? So stay with us for one of those
0:56.7	conversations coming up right after this short message. I'm composer Michael Barclay, and I just
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1:07.2	Passions. Every week, a different guest chooses the classical music they're passionate about.
1:12.7	People like Alan Bennett, Jan Ravens, Grayson Perry. And what I love about it is how much people
1:18.1	reveal of themselves when they're talking about and listening to the music which moves them.
1:23.9	Just search for private passions in BBC Sounds. Download the free app now.
1:30.3	What does stories we tell about others tell us about ourselves?
1:34.4	Hugo Blick's BBC 2 drama, Black Earth Rising, has been acclaimed as an attempt to tell the complex and tragic story of Rwanda, before, during and after the 1994 genocide.
1:47.0	We'll explore some of the many issues the series raises, with two scholars of Rwandan
1:51.6	politics and culture. The novelist Bessie Head was born in South Africa, but her books
1:57.0	were written in and mostly about life in Botswana. Journalist Audrey Brown and literary scholar
2:03.0	Louisa Ebenike discuss heads life and legacy. And we begin today with Nine Night, an award-winning
2:10.0	play by a new playwright Natasha Gordon, which, after a successful run at the National, now opens
2:16.1	in London's West End, with Natasha in one of the lead roles.
2:20.7	It's a drama about grief, about family, cultural memory, custom and overcoming loss.
2:27.7	Nine-night makes you laugh as well as cry, and it certainly reminded me of the aftermath of family deaths,
2:34.1	and that mixture of grief, sibling rivalry,
	...

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