WELCOME TO OSHUN

For many years now I have been interested in African literature. For many years before that I was interested in books in general. My mother always tells everyone she saw me with a book on my beside table since she can remember. When I was a teenager and everyone was reading Harry Potter or the Twilight Saga -which, by chance, I had read before it became famous in Spain- I was immersing myself in the Earht's Children Saga by Jean M. Auel. So much time has passed since I lived Ayla's adventures as if they were my own, and I still consider these novels to be the best I have ever read. I write stupid texts and poetry since I can remember (I even published a book, although I do not like to call it "poetry" -too big a word for my mediocre writing). In my mind, I always knew I wanted to be a writer, or to teach literature at university (a dream yet to be fulfilled, but it's a work in progress). When the time came to choose my MA, after graduating in English Philology, I knew: it had to be English literature. I did not have a special liking for English writing -in fact, and some might want to kill me for this, Jane Austen bores me to death, but I had decided on English philology because I knew it could open me a world of possibilities. But then, it happened. We had a module called "postcolonialism" and we read Taiye Selasi, Michael Ondaatje, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others. And I knew. That was it. That was the path I wanted to follow. The books I wanted to explore. I wanted to tear up every sentence and build it again. I wanted to understand those worlds which seemed so far away, the guilt of being part of the "western world", the wonderful characters who fought for their freedom, for their identity, for all of those things which were taken away from them. For my MA thesis I chose to write about Aminata Forna, only because her novel The Memory of Love had captivated me so intensely I could not escape from her spell.

At the moment I am still reading and wondering, trying to find a topic for my phD that moves me as much as Forna's stories, but that is also wider. And in that search, I though, why not create a blog where I can reflect about the things I encounter on the way? It might actually help me decide on something to write about.

However, I do read other books that are totally unrealted to postcolonialism or African literature, of course, and I might write about them on this blog as well. Why not? I always felt literature is the most interconnected thing we have. Every author feeds from others. Readers feed from authors. And authors from readers.

Oh, and about the name... to be honest, I had no clue what to call this blog, but I remembered someone compared me once with Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of rivers and passion. And I want this blog to be a river, flowing towards the ocean of literature, and filled with the passion that impregnates my veins every time I read something worth sharing with the world.