 Cookaa [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Today: Miles Klee, author of the novel Ivyland and culture writer at Rolling Stone; and Yemisi Aribisala, writer, editor, essayist, painter, and author of Longthroat Memoirs.
Issue No. 238I (Really) Love L.A.
Miles Klee The Nigerian dining table that disappeared into thin air.
Yemisi Aribisala
I (Really) Love L.A.For years now, whenever my partner Mads and I drive back into the city after a few days traveling elsewhere, we roll down the windows and blast Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” Neither of us is from here. Mads grew up on the west coast, in California’s Central Valley and then Oregon; I am one of the curiously numerous transplants from New Jersey. Once, at a party we threw here in L.A., I realized that I was standing in a circle of six or seven friends exclusively from New Jersey. Not that I pick my friends this way. Maybe we just understand the sprawl. Though I do like people from New Jersey. But back to Newman. A native of the city, coming off a long hiatus after his sixth album, he recorded “I Love L.A.” in 1983 as a sarcastic love letter to his native city, conjuring its self-importance with a cheerful snarl and “a big nasty redhead at my side.” It works as a homecoming song, of course, because it takes the form of an aimless drive all over town, marked by the euphoric recognition of the city’s most unremarkable roads: “Sixth Street! We love it, we love it!” I used to think it was the infectiousness of the tune that made it irresistible. These days I believe that Newman’s biting irony loops back around to a kind of sincerity, meaning you can have your tacos and eat them too: “Looks like another perfect day” is the blasé comment of an observer both numb to the endless sun and secretly grateful to be warmed by it. As a writer I admire told me when I moved here from New York nine years ago, “It will make you a little dumber, and that will make you happier.”  Another perfect day. We did not play “I Love L.A.” when we returned to the city after two nights away from the falling ash and threat of encroaching wildfires. We had been lucky, but we could not begin to joke about the arrogance of Los Angeles, or partake of the mindless joyride, knowing the dimensions of this disaster, what people we love had lost, how institutions had failed and predatory capital would soon find ways to monetize that misery. We were also returning to the center of an awful thing that had captured everyone’s attention, and turned them into experts on ecology, wind, water systems, helicopters, voting patterns, and municipal governance. It is strange to hear so much uninformed shrieking, this pathetic grappling for grand theory and narrative, when you have only the bleary task of survival. It was impossible to sustain any interest in outsiders being wrong—before the crisis was over, too, as we continued to check on each other, monitor the map, share mutual aid requests, and collect items to donate. The social media commentary just bled together, a portrait of L.A. as bastion of sin subjected to biblical punishment. Yet in this time of terror and grief, I find myself loving my adopted home in the manner of Newman’s song, i.e., loving what I shouldn’t. I love that there are L.A. drivers who assume they’re allowed to proceed straight or left on a red light, as long as they come to a complete stop and check oncoming traffic first. I love that I have to cut up the spiky fronds that drop from the old California fan palm tree in our front yard, because they are too large and tough to break by hand. I love that I was in the McDonalds on Hollywood Boulevard once and my friend Victoria (from New Jersey) asked the cashier why the menu screens overhead were shattered, and this employee explained that someone had, with devastating accuracy, kicked a soccer ball into them. I love that, thanks to billboards, I am semi-conscious of every last movie and TV show that has come out in the last three months, or will premiere in the next three, or has the financial backing to mount an awards campaign. (I love even more when billboards announce “the final season” of a series I could almost swear has never aired.) I love that I can hardly walk anywhere—to a coffee shop or a thrift store or public park—without interrupting some kind of influencer photography shoot. Sometimes I entertain the idea that I will be asked to stop and pose as a bystander, which I am. I love our corny sayings, the mantras that become funnier and truer the more we repeat them. Whenever a burst of rain breaks a spell of drought: “We needed this.” Well, we did! I love, as Mads put it to me at dinner the other night, that this city asks a deep personal investment of those who uproot their lives to come here, as there is no obvious center, no organizing principle, and all you can do is feel your way around, find your community, protect and preserve those almost secret places essential to your sense of balance. Weeks after we migrated from the west side to the east side, as in Newman’s lyrics—though before the commencement of these “Santa Ana winds blowing hot from the north”—I said that I wanted to put up the hummingbird feeder. I still haven’t done it: the hummingbirds show up anyway.
Flaming Hydra Pub DayJídé Salawu, editor of Olongo Africa, gave us a Flaming Hydra post yesterday, and today, with Nigerian poet and essayist Rasaq Malik, has published a poetry anthology, African Urban Echoes.  For more than two decades, poetry anthologies in African literature have navigated the shared world of African identity or living in the continent of Africa without capturing comprehensively the lifeworld of African cities. African Urban Echoes is a gathering of poets, including notable Canadian poets such as Jumoke Verissimo, Uchechukwu Umezurike, James Yeku and the Griffin Poetry Prize winner, Tolu Oloruntoba, that seek to contribute to the echoes of resistance, hope, and anxieties all produced simultaneously by African urban centers in their polyvalences and unique characters. Poets from different African countries evoke detailed portraits of lives as cities and cities as lives. They compel us to see both the defined and undefined beauties of African cities through sublime experiences captured in disparate forms and network of images in this anthology. They immerse their readers in marginal realities of urban citizenship and turn them to witnesses of both familiar and unfamiliar landscapes from Lagos, Lome, Johannesburg to Tunis, and of places that are inevitably part of their stories as pilgrims, as travelers settling and leaving. Order now at Bookshop.org!
The Nigerian Dining Table that Disappeared Into Thin AirOne of the most enduring myths on the Nigerian Femme Fatale; mammy-water, winch or husband-snatcher has to do with the cooking of fish stew. It is a simple recipe; one serving Capsicum peppers (tatase) with two servings of tomatoes, one or two small purple onions and a few chili peppers, depending on the eater's tolerance for heat. Myth of fish cuisine and sexual attraction by Yemisi Ogbe, 234Next, 10 February 2009
The table was really a metaphorical gathering around my weekly blogs on food and culture for the Nigerian newspaper 234Next, published from 2009 to 2011. These were no ordinary diners holding forth; my guests came in all shades of wickedly witty, disdainful, and plain abusive, declaring inextinguishable love in the same breath as reviling me for refusing to cook with stock cubes. They were fugitives, fanatics, high-powered civil servants, and second-generation cocoa farmers, disenchanted diasporans, taking no prisoners in their criticisms, and masquerading behind screen names like Truck Pusher, Moon-Walker, Adonisgold, Tata, Hearsay, Jerry Rawlings etc. They spewed the contents of their minds and the bile from their bellies freely, without restraint or fear of recognition. Before 2009, food writing had been culturally insignificant—all but non-existent—in Nigerian media. Such a table as ours had never existed, because 234Next did all kinds of things and spoke on all kinds of matters as no Nigerian newspaper had ever done before. There had been recipe sections in some newspapers, but food as a lens through which to see and think about culture had not been deemed newsworthy; no one had thought such cultural criticism worth serving to Nigerians before 234Next set the table. It was later rumored that 234Next folded in 2011 because of the same nonconformity that had glorified it from the start. More specifically, the political criticism contained in its pages had chaffed the moneybags that funded the paper that folded the paper. After the paper was shuttered, access to the table was at an end. Dele Olojede, the Pulitzer prizewinning publisher of 234Next, pulled the newspaper and all its archives offline with no warning. The paper’s demise caused shock and heartbreak for the brilliant, eager writers and artists who had contributed for years, never imagining that their collected reportage, art, musings, and political defiance would evaporate without a trace. To this day there is no Nigerian newspaper like it. (Fortunately, I recently found that much of the original 234Next is preserved on the Wayback Machine.) As for myself back then, I had an unexplainable niggling feeling that I would lose access to my published articles on the newspaper’s website. I was blogging for free and guarded every incidental profit with every muscle spasm. There was no Longthroat Memoirs book in sight and I had a chronic case of imposter syndrome. To my mind I was being paid in the recipes, insults, stories, and interactions in the comments to my posts every Thursday. I couldn’t really describe in cogent terms why one day I sat down and printed all my blogs and comments on reams of printer paper, it looked like I had lost my mind. This lapse of sanity is why I have a complete personal record of the voices that spoke back to me from the “Food Matters” comments page, conversations that are beyond priceless.
Some of the first comments to my blogs advised that I should “please” give up writing tout de suite: Posted by no-one on Dec 31 2009
I think you should quit writing…you are not really good at it, this is your second write up I will be reading and I don’t get you as a writer…so please stop in the name of love.
Posted by Jerry Rawlings on Dec 31 2009 [obviously a fan of the real Jerry Rawlings who was president of Ghana]
@noone. Am with you on this. This article made me feel constipated.
Posted by SD on Oct 29 2009
Hellooo! Is this story meant to teach us some kind of lesson? Well, I didn’t learn anything from it yet I have a deep sense of humour. Please let’s write meaningful stories that make sense and add value to lives. Must you write?…
Posted by Olumide on Dec 31 2009
Writing about food is irritatingly elitist’ You won’t see a better line than this in any of today’s blogs on 234Next…Of course she is irritatingly elitist…but leave her art out of the hating.
It was a good question: Must I write? I really didn’t feel I must, but I had agreed to and therefore well… I must, yes. I was incredibly thin-skinned as a new blogger and lingered far too long over these relatively mild jabs in the antediluvian internet days, when people were still fencing with buttoned foils—long before the arrival of the vicious trolls, fake news, and information manipulation that are now the everyday reality of social media. It was after I stopped panicking about being exposed as a pretender who wrote better than I cooked that I fell in love with the comments section. I was clearly out of my league according to these self-appointed judges, a “Yariba upstart” trying to pass herself off as a true O’L’ÓWÓ SÍBÍ (one whose hands have turned into cooking spoons because of virtuosity in cooking). The word olowosibi is indeed Yoruba, but the crowned ‘olowosibis’ are Calabar women from South-East Nigeria. From the Gulf of Guinea to the Niger-Nigeria border, these women are acknowledged as the best cooks in Nigeria. Their men also are renowned cooks. The first order of business, then, for one of the most acerbic and notorious commenters at the dining table was my rechristening. Posted by Truck Pusher on Aug 05 2010
What you need now is a Calabar name. You have completely and utterly turned native. I do not see you returning home again, ever…readers…please suggest a name for Yemisi...
Posted by Imix on Aug 05 2010
It is obvious that Yemisi shall now be known and referred to as EKAMMA
I thought it would pass, this outburst over my inappropriate Yorubaness, with respect to not making the grade as a sensualist worth her salt. It did not pass. Some of the commentators/diners stopped using my name and called me Ekamma, meaning mother’s mother in the Efik language. Not grandmother mind, but reincarnated mother, in line with the Nigerian spiritual belief that your parents can come again as your children. Or beloved departeds, sisters, aunties, children can return showing clear signs they had been around before. The name presupposed an obsession with food, bearing the character of the portly elderly woman who has been cooking for at least five decades—specifically from the Calabar, Cross River area. It was clear as day I wasn’t one of those, so I had to be someone’s reincarnated mother’s mother, kind of mystically accredited. So rechristening me, a Yoruba woman, with such a name was a roundabout compliment. To give an idea, I once discovered a delicately concealed folktale at my ex-in-laws’ about how Yoruba women situated pit latrines on the thresholds of their homes. Had it been proposed to the Calabar women who knew me or were related to me by marriage that I had prematurely earned an Efik name via food writing, they would have spat and rolled their eyes in disgust. No way! Would have been the response. Was food writing like a glass of cold water being continuously refreshed? Dialogue birthing new ideas, new approaches to the same dishes, keeping food and culture as expressed through food, vibrant and animated and sexy, even keeping it alive? Does the whole of culture in fact depend on agriculture, on food and eating? I knew it didn’t feel intrinsically appropriate or culturally proper for the average Nigerian to go into lengthy disquisitions on the textures, smells, colours, sensations of food. This national self consciousness outlived my time at the paper. Metaphors involving food were rife in the Nigerian lingua franca but they were even more idiomatic than living language. You might say in common parlance, anywhere in Nigeria, that a glass of water is so criminally cold it could go to jail—jail being a good thing, because Northern Nigerian heat can go above 90 degrees Fahrenheit—but to wax lyrical on colours and textures and how the okra soup makes you “feel”? I suppose you could in a kind of tongue in cheek manner, but you just never collapsed into sentimentality. Posted by akunbe on Nov 12 2009
…have you tried drinking gari with your fingers and not spilling water? It is the most artistic way of eating ever!
Posted by Al Hakiu on Sep 30 2010
Yemisi, much as I commend your effort here to introduce fine dining concepts (couture cuisine) concepts to we holloi-polloi, I daresay you are barking up the wrong tree. Give your ancestors some credit…
Posted by Tata on Oct 08 2009
Geez…HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO THROW IN THE WORD onomato[poetic] IN A DISCUSSION OVER ORDINARY DODO?
I wasn’t spared when I stepped on the diners’ toes. The two instances that come to mind concerned Maggi, the ubiquitous Nigerian stock cube produced by Nestle Nigeria, which I do not cook with, and crayfish, which I declared too fishy. I have now repented and love dried crayfish by the way. Stock cubes remain a no-no. Posted by Truck Pusher on Jan 20 2011
The issue to the best of my knowledge and recollection was whether one should use crayfish as a condiment in ogbono. I would focus ONLY on this and this alone. The writer submitted that crayfish has a stinky fishy smell and does not subscribe to it as a condiment in ogbono soup. Just for the record, ogbono is not ewedu![tribalistic jab right there for those who understand the undercurrents] I posited that crayfish does not have a fishy smell and urged the writer to try and buy crayfish directly from the producers- the lightly tanned variety and not stored in raffia bags for a long time…as for jollof rice, chicken soup or broth, my marital status and the number of active wives who keep me and what I do to keep them entertained…the referral to these separate issues are just a distraction from the main issue…
Sometimes things got a little weird; one suspected these commentators knew each other and were talking over one’s head. Posted by Omo Alhaja on Jun 03 2010
Talk of the devil: Yemisi, I was in Calabar last week and sampled this same wonderful delicacy at Aunty Thelma’s Le Chateau Hotel. Only thing is that you forgot it was called ‘Royal Fisherman Stew’. Efik Chic, you can’t be that chic because it is obvious that you are a staunch believer in the tried and (t)rusted Missionary Position. Please read the article again- Yemisi said ‘Aunty Thelma’s version of fisherman’s stew starts…’ Stick to Missionary position if you want. Me, I love Aunty Thelma’s royal fisherman’s stew forever with nfi, nkonko and whatever else she puts in it.
Posted by Akhenova on Jun 10 2010
You’ve done it again- made me scurrying all over Brixton and Harlesden looking for those ingredients including ogiri. Yemisi, can I grind the dried-roasted egusi in an electric blender as I’m dispossessed of the pestle and mortar (by ex-wife)? Gosh I’m homesick.
Posted by Omo Alhaja on Jun 10 2010
‘Results are a beautiful…deeper complexity to the flavours, the slight bitterness is mellowed, it is nuttier with a lot more aroma’ For a moment I thought you were writing about a great vintage wine…not ordinary quinoa grain. (What’s quinoa?) Akhenova, just wondering, did the ex pound you first before leaving with the mortar and pestle?
Posted by Truck Pusher on Jun 10 2010
Akhenova…don’t mind Omo Alhaja, he is a sadist…yes you can. Low current but move from the frying pot while still popping. Do you need another wife? We can arrange someone from here with a 6 year warranty.
Posted by Akhenova on Jun 10 2010
@Omo Alhaja, No she did worse- by leaving me exposed to a life of fish n chips, KFC, sandwiches etc…During my vegetarian days, I ate quinoa…which I guess is out of your pay grade ha ha ha. @Truck Pusher, Yes thanks, but more like a lifetime warranty.
My commenters were almost all men with a sparse sprinkling of women. And did the men jump in with two feet! One didn’t want to bring up stereotypes about men and their bellies but it felt like a forgone conclusion. Sometimes their retorts to the articles burned. The women were gentler. Almost to a fault. Which brings to mind my most memorable response. It was to Gbelekokomiyo, on love charms inserted into food by women. The commenter said so softly, her words could have shattered your bones—Love charms inserted into food weren’t meant to hurt men, they were only meant to make them more…amiable. She downright broke the table. I never imagined in a million years there would be an owning up to the practice right there in the comments. Truck Pusher, my most voluble commenter, was a good problem. He did not hold back the punches and I learned to enjoy the hard banter. One of my last offerings was an ode to his harsh comments, which was misunderstood by some anonymous editor at the newspaper who tried to extinguish what he mistook for a fire. It was only sparks. Nothing more. Posted by Kongo on Jan 20 2011
Yemisi, make you no mind them o. It is now Yemisi v Truck Pusher. Score 2-1
Posted by emeka on Jan 20 2011
Hmmm... Tasty.
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