Those who love the English language will also love its throbbing formulations in my old friend Dohra Ahmad’s new anthology Rotten English. From Ian McMillan’s review in the London Times:
English can be broken, and pummelled and pulled and stretched and tickled and that’s part of the fun of it – but it can never be shattered.
This new anthology parades battalions of voices in celebration of, in the late Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa’s resonant phrase, “Rotten English”.
There are poems, stories, extracts and essays that confirm the sheer glorious multitude of sounds and shapes that English is and can be – from familiar names such as Linton Kwesi Johnson to writers I hadn’t come across before, such as Zora Neale Hurston, who began writing stories in Florida in the 1920s and whose piece Story in Harlem Slang is a joyful romp through an English that doesn’t seem to need an excuse to dance: “The girl drew abreast of them, reeling and rocking her hips. ‘I’d walk clear to Diddy-Wah-Diddy to get a chance to speak to a pretty lil’ ground-angel like that’ Jelly went on. ’Aw, man, you ain’t willing to go very far. Me, I’d go to Ginny-Gall, where they eat cow-rump, skin and all.”
Hurston provides a helpful glossary to finesse the detail: Diddy-Wah-Diddy, like Ginny Gall, is a suburb of hell. Ah yes, I’ve been there. They all speak RP.
There is a wider public dimension to all this, as James Baldwin notes: “It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger public or communal identity.”
An extract can be found here.