In May 2019, a final year student of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Chukwuemeka Akachi, died after drinking two bottles of insecticide. Mr Akachi, before the incident, had adopted a poem written by a Ghanaian poet, Jo Nketiah, and put it on his Facebook page as his suicide note. “Forgive me. In…

Among the many schadenfreude-themed reality TV shows popular in America in the late 2000s, beauty pageants, particularly those involving children with capped smiles and unhinged mothers, form their own genre. On shows like Toddlers and Tiaras, the entertainment factor came from the obviousness of the con played on the moms, who frequently spent more on…

In April, New York magazine’s Molly Young wrote that the ravages of the pandemic had fostered a taste for a milder kind of book. “Now is the time for books that go down like rice pudding,” she said. “Now is the time for sweet, easily digested, soul-swaddling tomes.” I have had the opposite impulse. During…