Review: ID: New Short Fiction From Africa selected by Short Story Day Africa

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Keywords: Africa, short fiction, short stories

This short story anthology is the result of the 2017 Short Story Day Africa (SSDA) competition. It is an outstanding collection of stories and a delight to see how the authors interpreted the assigned theme, ID. Consider these two letters, ID: they can be interpreted as an abbreviation for "identification" or, as editor Helen Moffett writes in the introduction, the 'psychoanalytic construct of the "Id" – that deep structure that houses our unconscious desires...'. As with previous SSDA collections (see below), one of the appeals for me is the richness of having so many different voices, differences in word choices and syntax, experiencing the cultures and just the day-to-day existance so different from what I know. All of the stories are a pleasure to read even those where I was left thinking "wait, what?". They all give you something to think about and perhaps a new perspective n life.

The winner of the competition Nigerian author Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor. In his story, All Our Lives, he explores the many faces of young people coming to Nigerian cities looking for identity, belonging, love, a better life.

Joint runner-up is Agazit Abate's The Piano Player who gives us a moving glimpse at the life of an African piano player in a hotel in Addis Ababa. Blending into the background and barely noticed by the hotel guests, she sees and hears snippets of the lives of people whom she is background rather than a reason to be there.

The other runner-up is South African author Michael Yee. In God Skin she writes of a woman trapped in the family Chinese restaurant, alienated from her in-laws and brutish husband, denied the love she can see but not touch, forbidden by society, leading to a violent expression of her frustrations.


In addition to the authors, congratulations to everyone involved in producing the collection. It is quite an accomplishment to be able to select 21 stories from hundreds of entries stories much less to select clear winners.

Some words about the origins of this collection. ID is the product of the Short Story Day Africa (SSDA) competition which was founded in 2011 by Rachael Zadok. The competition is open to any African citizen, a person who is part of the African diaspora, and permanent residents in an African nation. For those who haven't thought about Africa very much, the continent is really big and consists of 54 recognized sovereign states (Wikipedia), from the countries on the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. With that span, you will be exposed to a mind-boggling range of cultures and voices and interpretations.

Each competition has a different theme. Here are the four to date:
Feast, Famine & Potluck (2013)
Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa (2014)
Water: New Short Fiction From Africa (2015)
Migrations: New Short Fiction From Africa (2017)
ID: New Short Fiction from Africa (2018)
Hotel Africa (the upcoming competition)

SSDA is a non-profit doing good work to provide a multidimensional view of Africa and to give emerging writers a place to express themselves. I encourage everyone to purchase the short story collections at a minimum. The SSDA website can be found here, Short Story Day Africa.