A Review of Litany of a Foreign Wife by Sigeh Leonard Lenjo
In her début poetry collection Nnane Ntube successfully crafts themes of socio-political protest with esthetic wit to explore, satirize, and lampoon the economic, cultural, political and social statement that strangles governance in Cameroon. Litany of a foreign wife is both the societal boil (cultural turmoil) of an ill-governed society, and the psychological instability that has injured the mind of the deprived and marginalized citizenship. Her topics are equivocal of the stalemate in which her society finds itself. Yet the poet employs mock satire to disguise the guilty and water- down the gravity of this social barbarism. This satire against political ill governance is evident in “Dance now to Dance no More” and “Let Another Song”. The poet decries inertia, corruption, marginalization, violence, rape, incest, culminating in and culminated by war.
In the light of the pioneers of Cameroon literature in English, starting with Sanki Máimo, Mbella Sonne Dipoko, just to name this two, the poet/activist rallies her mental and artistic energy to fight against social injustice. Nnane is not a square peg in a square hole, for she bridges some of the conventions indebted to her literary ancestry, with postmodern concerns that go a long way to appeal for a global audience.
Her poetry is an emerging voice to reckon with. Through her poems the veil of injustice over the Cameroonian society is unveiled.
Sigeh Leonard Lenjo
