Nigerian-Americans Celebrate Dual Heritage with Family Photos

(By Tolu Oye as told to Claudia Owusu and Kanyinsola Oye) - The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage

Photographs have always been a way for my family to hold on to our past—no matter how far we moved, or how complicated the idea of “home” became for us. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I keenly remember my mother dragging me and my siblings every year to the JCPenney Portraits studio for our family picture. What made the ritual so uncomfortable was that we were not dressed like other Midwestern families at the mall. My mother had us all in matching golden-brown-and-beige traditional ankara, an African wax-print fabric with vibrant patterns.

Nollywood Comes to Town

Nollywood once again recently took center stage on an international platform to further the socio-cultural discourse it frames and represents within the African and African Diaspora discursive arena.

Holding at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, the event, hosted by the USC Center for Public Diplomacy (CPD) at the Annenberg School, was the February 28 CPD 2014 Annual Conference titled "A New Era in Cultural Diplomacy: Rising Soft Power in Emerging Markets."

Panelists at the Conference

The conference, according to the organizers, aimed to explore the cultural diplomacy efforts pursued by a number of countries with emerging economies. Its idea was to enrich a global understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing institutions of cultural diplomacy in contemporary times.

During its early afternoon "Dialogue Through Films" session,  the President of Eko International Film Festival, Hope Obinna Opara, joined representatives of the Mexican, Turkish, and Polish film festivals in Los Angeles, to discuss the place of film festivals in global cultural diplomacy.

NollyCulture Launched

Welcome to the NollyCulture blog, the discourse arena for everything Nollywood, everything Africa. NollyCulture explores the critical socio-cultural questions at the intersection of media, religion, and culture, with particular emphasis on contemporary Africa (continental and Diaspora) as framed and portrayed by Nollywood--the Nigerian film industry.

In little over its twenty-years existence, Nollywood has become Africa's most dominant and transnationally accessible expression of popular culture, telling African stories, with African voices, to African (and growing global) audiences.

Africans are said to be notoriously religious; and religion plays complex roles within cultures. NollyCulture therefore concerns itself primarily with how Nollywood articulates, frames and portrays Africa and the Diaspora through the creative tension within and between religion and culture.

Sometimes it's subtle and at other times brazen in its representations, raising for itself admirers and critics in equal measures. But Nollywood never shies away from its message: religious and socio-cultural normative forms underpin the framing of the discourse, the language, and the representation of gender, class, and power in Africa.

Let's talk Nollywood then--its movies, narratives, and stakeholders (actors, producers, marketers, audiences, etc.). Let's discuss Africa--its peoples, cultures, and societies. Bring your passion for Nollywood and for Africa. Have your say. Express your opinions. Show some love. Agree. Disagree. But don't hate on anybody.