Facts and Fiction in West Africa – A Conversation with Uchenna... (2024)

by NWAGuru | Jun 21, 2024

Join the Undisciplined Podcast hosts, Dr. Caree Banton and Dr. Karynecia Conner for an interview with Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk, Uchenna Awoke for a discussion of his latest novel, “The Liquid Eye of a Moon”. This interview will be a live recording for the KUAF podcast, Undisciplined.

Uchenna Awoke lives and writes in Nsukka, Nigeria. His short stories have appeared in Transition, Elsewhere Lit, Trestle Ties, Oyster River Pages, The Evergreen Review, and other places. He received fellowships from MacDowell and the Vermont Studio Center in 2017 and 2019 respectively. He is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow and the Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk Residency Fellow, currently living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is also a 2019 Graywolf Africa Prize finalist. “The Liquid Eye of a Moon” is his debut novel.

About “The Liquid Eye of a Moon”:
A Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, Uchenna Awoke’s masterful debut breaks the silence about a hidden and dangerous contemporary caste system.

Fifteen-year-old Dimkpa dreams of the day his father will be made village head. He will return to school and maybe even go on to university; his mother will no longer have to break her back foraging wild food to sell at market; they will have the money to build a fine tomb for his aunt Okike; and his family’s status as ohu ma, the lowest Igbo caste, won’t matter anymore. But when his father is passed over for a younger man, breaking tradition, Dimkpa realizes that he must make his own fate.

Journeying from his small village in rural Nigeria, to Lagos, Awka, and home again, Dimkpa learns that no money is easy money, that superstition runs deep, that knowledge is power, and that sometimes it is better to live in the present than to always be chasing a future just out of reach.

“The Liquid Eye of a Moon” is by turns hilarious and poignant, capturing all the messiness of adolescence, and the difficulty of making your own way in a world that seeks to oppress you.

About Dr. Caree Banton:
Dr. Caree Banton is the Chair of the History Department, Associate Professor of African Diaspora History, and the former Director of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Banton earned a BPA in Public Administration and a BA in History from Grambling State University in 2005. She received an MA in Development Studies from the University of Ghana in July 2012 and completed her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University in June 2013. Much of her work focuses on teaching and learning with an emphasis on strong written and verbal communication skills, problem-solving around issues of diversity, justice, and equity, and cultivating empathetic listening abilities in adults. Her academic research focuses on movements toward freedom, particularly abolition, emancipation, and colonization through which she explores ideas of citizenship, nationhood, and race. Her work has been supported by the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, the Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the Lapidus Center Fellowship at the Schomburg Center, the Nancy Weiss Malkiel Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Dr. Banton is a member of the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy and has been named a Master Teacher in Fulbright College. Her book, “More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of the African Republic”, was published by Cambridge University Press in May 2019. Her forthcoming manuscript, “The Many Archives of the Black Republic: Liberian Loss, and Memory Across its Diaspora” is currently in progress.

About Dr. Karynecia Conner:
Dr. Karynecia (Kary-knee-see-yah) Elizabeth Conner is a teaching assistant professor of social studies at the University of Arkansas, jointly appointed to Curriculum and Instruction and African and African American Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Baylor University in August 2023, her M.Ed. from the University of Texas at Austin, and her B.A. in Political Science with an emphasis on policy analysis from the University of Houston in 2014. She has taught 6-12 youth social studies domestically and abroad. Her perspectives of history filter through her work as a teacher educator. Her research uses discourse and oral history methodologies to explore the intersection between school reform and third-space curriculum to inform her curriculum and teaching design. Karynecia’s work on the Undisciplined podcast aims to make space for everyone to discuss education.

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