Best of Isele Anthology
Best of Isele Anthology is a wide-ranging anthology that gathers some of the most memorable work first published in Isele Magazine, bringing together short stories, essays, and poems that center African and diasporic lives. Each piece stands alone, yet recurring concerns—love, loss, justice, the body, and the idea of home—echo across the collection. Spanning late 20th and 21st century settings, the pieces move from a village in Akpulu haunted by pythons and forbidden love, to London and Lagos, Nairobi and Phoenix, Oklahoma and Vermont. Pieces are arranged to move across places and voices, creating a conversation between village myth and contemporary urban life, Africa and the diaspora, and intimate domestic scenes and public protest. Together, they trace how ordinary people—lovers, mothers, teachers, activists, migrants, queer characters, and children—live through grief, desire, injustice, and the search for home. Featuring a broad range of writers, emerging and established, from Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, the United States, and the wider African diaspora, Best of Isele Anthology possesses a range of voice and form rooted in specificity, emotional depth, and political and social insight.
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Each piece is like having an orange. Some are sweeter while some have a tang that makes your jaw clench. The writing I’ve read gave me a mix of these feelings but in the end, you went in for another bite.
All of the writers in this anthology are gifted with the ability to lead the readers through their stories in a way that transports them into the worlds of their characters or themselves.
A poignant anthology of varied works. Some cover topics that are controversial while others are not. All are thought provoking. It should be featured in English classes and courses everywhere.
I found most of the contributions excellent, across all the represented genres, making this, for me, an above-average collection. There is a wonderful diversity of voices and story, and everything in here, even the pieces I did not enjoy, is worth reading…Isele’s stated mission, according to their website, is to publish writers and artists who hold a mirror to … society, who challenge conventional expectations about ways of being, how to be, and who decides who should be. In this, this excellent compilation succeeds.
This is the kind of anthology you can read cover to cover in a couple of sittings, so well do the pieces flow into one another, each long enough to be satisfactory in their own right but short enough to leave you wanting more. Equally, you could savour the book over a couple of weeks letting each story, poem or essay marinate before moving on to the next.
This is a solid collection of stories from the African literary magazine Isele. While not all of the stories grabbed me, I was happy to see a number of pieces about Black joy and happiness and success--too often, a (white) audience only seeks trauma from Black authors. The mix of poetry and prose was well-balanced, and there's a lot here that can and should be taught in high school and college classrooms.
"This is a solid collection from the African literary magazine Isele. While not all the stories resonated with me, I appreciated the focus on Black joy and success—often overlooked in favor of trauma. The balance of poetry and prose is well done, and many pieces deserve to be taught in high school and college classrooms."
"This inaugural edition of Isele magazine showcases diverse African voices across genres. I loved every piece, especially a poem by Muyera Sokoo about the weight of responsibility and injustice—though I wish I knew its title. My favorite story features a woman accused of witchcraft who finds love. This collection includes everything from fiction to poetry and sci-fi, and it was thoroughly entertaining."