Blessing Ugwu-John

🧵 Books I enjoyed reading in 2025! 📚

Nearly 60 years after the Nigerian Civil War, the BBC is set to release "Surviving Biafra," a documentary by Grammy-winning Nigerian director Meji Alabi. According to the BBC, the film features accounts from soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. Out June 1. 🎬

“Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.” - G. Doyle

There is no upside to these AI witch hunts. Bad writing is bad writing. Good writing is good writing. These tell tale signs everyone points to are well used, time tested tools of writing and story telling. Not X but Y? As I wrote in a piece I published here(link in next tweet), you can find dozens of examples in books by James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, The Bible, The Hadith. Mentioning things in groups of three? A standard tool in lots of very good writing. Em dashes? Just part of the language. And where does it all come from? From writing that we have put out in the world. From our novels and stories and essays. AI did not invent any of this. I have used all of these quite often over the last 15 years. Unless you want people to actively avoid everything that could be construed to be AI, I don't see the point of this. Especially writing in groups of threes which is a fundamental rhetorical and psychological principle used by human writers for centuries. Why? Rhythm, emphasis, persuasion. That is why the tricolon (listing words or phrases in threes) works. That is also why the three act structure (setup, confrontation, resolution) works. The problem is not in the use, but in moderation and this can happen in any piece of writing, not just AI. I read a lot of weird MFA writing where you can hardly distinguish one writer from another because they all write in that self-important navel gazing way that shows that they are more interested in impressing people (read: their professors and colleagues) with sentences than in telling stories. All of the fancy MFA stories that are about nothing, say nothing, except show that the writer attended a creative writing program, is that the great writing we are protecting? Stories that live and die in literary magazines and speak to no one? There are bigger, more important questions to answer in and with literature. There are stories to be told. Emotions and phenomena to explore. Depths to be reached. None of these will be done by AI. Will (or can) AI help actual professionals and serious thinkers do their job more efficiently? Only time will tell. And trust me by the time this madness is over, you will discover that many more people than you think (or at least many more than admit) are using AI for a wide range of tasks related to story telling, and exploring ideas. I also do not think that the writers who have writing teams and assistants and interns helping to produce their books are any better just because they use humans to produce the work we praise them for. Ideas and stories will live or die based on how well they speak to those who read them, not how they are made.

You’re standing on a planet with molten lava at its core. Trees are turning sunlight into air you can breathe. Your heart is beating without you asking it to. There’s a moon in the sky and bugs that glow. This whole thing is absurdly beautiful. Don’t forget to notice it.

We live on a planet where trees communicate, octopuses dream, elephants honor their dead, bees dance to find their way, crows remember, ants build, cats heal with their purring, and the forest, after the fire, blooms again.

COVER REVEAL When the man she built her life around is exposed as a fraud and disappears into international scandal, Nancy Usifo is left stripped of money, family, and identity. Overnight, she goes from a kept woman in Lagos luxury to a disgraced nobody;

As a writer and teacher, I will be sharing my (weekly/monthly) syllabus on substack. Please subscribe. CREATIVE WRITING SYLLABUS @ucheoma/note/p-196793312?utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@ucheoma/note/…

Seven seeds of ose ọjị rest in my palm Not merely as spice But as doors into life As sacred words handed down by those before us . One for life May the breath of life scatter over you every morning May your spirit not grow weary in troubled days May death pass your path and fail to find your face One for labor When you plant, may you harvest May the earth never drink your sweat in vain May whatever your hands touch prosper One for the journey May the roads bow gently before you May closed paths open at your arrival May your feet never wander into the house of sorrow One for the spoken word When you call, may you be answered When you seek, may help rise to meet you May your voice never disappear into emptiness One for darkness May evil eyes fail to see you May darkness never know where you sleep May the light of life surround you like a wall One for spirit and roots May the spirits of goodness go before you May your roots stand firm to the ground May you never move through the world forgetting who you are And the last one… May the human heart never dry up in this world May we remember again that we survive through one another May love never become something searched for only in darkness Alligator pepper does not only burn the tongue It also releases prayers into the air May this prayer travel with you. #IgboGlobalAmbasador #Igboamaka #Igbo #CultureEducation #Onyenkuziasusuigbo #Culturecuration #IgboPrayer #OseOji #IgboSpirituality #AfricanWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #CulturalPrayer #AfricanPhilosophy #SpokenWord #SacredWords #PrayerForHumanity #PoetryDaily #AfricanTradition #viralvideo

1. Dreams and Other Deceptions - Keletso Mopai 2. A Handful of Dust - Arinze Ifeakandu 3. Mrs. Sen's - Jhumpa Lahiri 4. Memoirs of a Namaaso - Jennifer Makumbi 5. In The Matter Btw Goto and Goto - Petina Gappah 6. In The City - Chimeka Garricks 7. Road To Yesterday - Temidayo A.

RELEASE EUNICE AMEH NOW! When a young lawyer goes missing, the pain is not distant to the Nigerian Bar Association, it is personal. We are more than a professional body; we are a community bound by shared sacrifice, shared dreams, and a collective duty to stand for one another. The disappearance of Miss Eunice Ameh, our dear colleague and a young Nigerian serving her country through the NYSC scheme, has therefore deeply shaken the entire legal community. Behind every missing person report is a family unable to sleep, friends clinging to hope, and colleagues praying for safe return. No young Nigerian who answered the call to national service should disappear without an immediate, coordinated, and determined response from our security agencies. We therefore call on the Inspector General of Police to urgently deploy all necessary tactical and intelligence resources toward securing Eunice’s safe release and ensuring that anyone connected to her disappearance is swiftly brought to justice. This is not a moment for routine assurances. Every passing hour matters, and every effort must count. We stand firmly with her family, friends, and colleagues in this painful time, and we urge anyone with useful information to cooperate with the authorities so that Eunice Ameh can safely return home. Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN President, Nigerian Bar Association

Ngozi Ezenwa-Ohaeto's 433-page encyclopedia of Igbo Names is titled, Afamefuna. As the book explains on page 33, 'Afamefuna (Afam)' is a male name that means 'May I not lose my name'. 'It is a prayer for a lasting linage which is often assured by having male children.' I have a habit of asking people - at a first meeting - the meaning and ancestry of their names. That habit has enriched my education greatly, although I have also suffered some blowback: a Somali lady once rebuked me, thinking that I was trying to identify her clan in order to pigeonhole and discriminate against her.🤷 Books like Afamefuna might reduce my rudeness some, though I find that my curiosity brings insight. Years ago, I asked my friend, Amulo, about his unique name. Turns out it was short for Amulonaiweagwusia (We're all smiles now, right? But I'm still angry with you). Turns out that at the birth of her firstborn son his mum had been irritated by the celebration of the same neighbours who had mocked her throughout her years of barrenness. So, she gave him a name that would rebuke those neighours every time they called him. By the way, 'Amulo' is not in the encyclopedia. Neither is that memorable name, Uwachommadu (The world needs a real person), about which I have written previously. But in the last two pages of the book the author lists some names whose meaning she is still seeking for future edition. Cultural preservation is always a communal project. I find that the ancestors packed a long more baggage into the names they gave their children. Modern couples are more likely to pick a name for how it sounds. I reckon corporate-sounding names will find more takers today. For the ancestors, names were often short stories and histories, entrancing nuggets for writers to sink their imaginations into. The schism in naming styles and religious beliefs between past and present generations of Igbo families means that large tranches of Igbo names have slipped and are slipping into oblivion. There are not likely to be many Ogbenyeanus (A pauper should not marry me) in Gen Zee and Gen Alpha. There is probably less variety in Igbo names today than at any time in history. This validates Prof. Ezenwa-Ohaeto's book. Afamefuna should make namings a more thoughtful exercise, with a lot more choices for new parents. I could say a lot more on the philosophy, sociology and gendering of names, or open up some of those short stories and histories concatenated into some deeper Igbo names but, no... don't get me started on names tonight!

I’m not sure what life will bring. I carry the optimism of a two-year-old tossed into the air by his father, yet descending with complete faith in the loving hands that will catch him.

the meanest thing you do to yourself is pretend you don’t want the things you want. shrink the desire before anyone can see it. call it unrealistic before someone else does. and then walk around with this low grade starvation you can’t name because you buried the appetite so deep even you forgot where you put it. wanting things is dangerous. I know. it opens you up to disappointment and to looking foolish and to reaching for something that might not reach back. want it anyway. the alternative is a life of pretending you’re full.

Is there honestly a more original and wonderfully cerebral Zim writer than Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu? This is so, so good!! So good!! lolwe.org/a-very-brief-h…

A Country of Particular Concern: The Fulani, Faith, and the Failure of the Nigerian State open.substack.com/pub/elnathanjo…

Demand justice for Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduagha! - Sign the Petition! chng.it/7D5wLfB9v7

« What’s keeping women from leadership and politics? » 👇🏼

I don’t like posting videos of me here but I have to do this. I talked about the differences between paperback and hardback books and why different books have different covers from what I have understood so far in the books industry. I hope you learn something 🤗❤️

@Hugo_Chiez Very well. I trust you are too

@blessingajohn Thank you, Blessing. How have you been?

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@nk4nuella Lately, the charade is no longer holding up. With their own hands, they are peeling off the layers for everyone to see the rot clearly.

@blessingajohn Yooo, this country is a proper ops! What we do here is "pretend" democracy, nothing more!

Everyone should be angry about the injustice done to Natasha. For the men making jokes, It could be anyone 2moro. Your wife, sister, mother, or daughter.