MAYA, Joseph R Alila, author of “Birthright (a Luo Tragedy),” brings yet another narrative about the lives of ordinary people with human flaws, from which each of them can only run away, or ignore, at his or her own peril. Maya Boone faces a legal quandary over a death she has witnessed from her hideout on Eagle Street, Harmony, New York. First, she watches Raul, the troublesome husband from whom she is hiding, kill a bulldog. When Maya crosses Eagle Street to inquire whether the dog’s owner (Mike) is suing Raul, she instead falls in love with the heartbroken man, lures him to her bed, and even contemplates witnessing against Raul. The brief affair ends quickly because Mike becomes a victim to an enraged boyfriend’s arrow of passion. Wounded and helpless, Mike falls into the hands of a moonlighting evangelist named Booker who has a score to settle with him. There is no mercy for Mike, only a slow death, because Booker wishes to maintain his cover while moonlighting at Bar Delirium. With Mike dead, Maya’s distant past soon confronts her because, also witnessing the events leading to the murder on Eagle Street is Officer Jimmy Depuy—a child Maya abandoned at birth forty years before. Neither Raul nor Maya nor Officer Depuy knows about their shared bond. Then one Detective John unearths the blood knot linking Jimmy Depuy to the Rauls, and soon District Attorney Hess is advancing criminal motives against the trio. In MAYA, JR Alila weaves yet another intricate narrative that should appeal to those readers who seek to understand, in human character, matters beyond the mundane of daily life.

The American Polygamist

When Chief Chuki gets entangled in a business deal with rival Goldian Army Generals, he finds himself held hostage in a land in which he is revered. Yet even with his proximity to the wheels of power on both sides of the pond, he cannot shout for help because of the desire to keep his good name. Second, his Goldian wife has delivered a son and uses the unique circumstances of his captivity to demand part of his wealth in exchange for his freedom and her silence over his marital status.

Now, a desire for secrecy demands that Chuki engages the expertise of a fellow Iraqi War I Veteran and his high-tech buddies, who have created a lucrative business niche negotiating the release of Western hostages from the high-risk world of African warlords, terrorists, and sea pirates.

In THE AMERICAN POLYGAMIST (ISBN-13: 144992798-1) , J.R. Alila weaves a story with many twists and turns as family betrays family, honor is traded for wealth and an honorable man becomes a prisoner of his own secrets.

Enter Chuki’s American wife, Patty, who suspects that he has at least one African wife and child in Africa. Mrs. Patty Chuki is ready to revisit old Brooklyn-High-School romance with a Major Frank to get to the truth while in a Harvard reunion with her billionaire husband in the Masai Mara. But will Admiral Ndeki of Goldian Navy let Patty taste the forbidden fruit in peace in Nairobi?

COMING SOON at:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002QD5TDM

www.createspace.com/3413870

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY: FROM THE SUDAN TO AMERICAN POWER

In THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY: FROM THE SUDAN TO AMERICAN POWER–Joseph R. Alila presents a narrative about a spiritual journey of the Luo of eastern Africa to President Obama’s White House. In this historical fiction, Novelist and Poet Joseph R. Alila (THE MILAYI CURSE) vividly captures the perils of the Luo spiritual journey from Egypt to the White House—a journey that lasts 600 years. In the carefully crafted narrative that starts with one Ajwang’ Opodho in the old Sudan to one Hassan Opodho in Kenya to one President Hassan Ajwang’ in America, Alila visits the infamous LUO BEAD OF PASSION that caused the schism that scattered the Luo tribes throughout East and Central Africa.Reading Joseph R Alila’s THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY (https://www.createspace.com/3373494) one realizes that the timeless narrative is as much about a physical journey through time as it is a Spiritual passage of the Luo people. This novel, like most of JR Alila’s novels, offers the reader an opportunity to glean into the Luo mind and complex anthropological space that include such controversial practices as Polygamy and Widow Inheritance (Alila’s SUNSET ON POLYGAMY; WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART).

BOOK RELEASE

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (From the Sudan to American Power) By Joseph R. Alila.

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (A Novel) is now available for purchase from https://www.createspace.com/3373494 . Availability on www.amazon.com comes shortly.

Students of Luo Oral History, Luo Anthropology, Luo Religiosity, Luo Leadership and Hidden Prophecies, Luo wisdom, Current American politics with a little salt added for taste, and those attracted to Luo ways because of our current notoriety on the world stage (Haven't we father the guardian of the citadel of world power?), or if you just want to discover what makes the Luo tick, this is your Historical Novel (where facts, fantasies, fiction are mixed, cooked then served as tragedy, satire, comedy or paranormal events). I say welcome to all of you.

You are looking for romance? You won't be bored. You love tension? Tighten your seat-belt. You love heroes? They are here. You are a tough girl? Meet your friends here. You think you know about the "Luo Bead of Passion?" You ain't met it yet. Have you heard about "The Ajwang' Prophecy?" Definitely not. Have you read about "Sunrise from the West?" Most likely not. Have you heard of "The Ajwang' Mark of Leadership?" or Do you have it under a specific foot (be sure to be a Luo, must have a fifth of Luo blood)? I doubt that you have. Can you write a short essay about "The Great Schism" among the Luo clans that dispersed this great nation throughout East and Central Africa, from Sudan to Tanzania? Maybe not.

Grab your copy.

JR Alila

BOOK RELEASE: THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (From the Sudan to American Power) is now available for purchase from https://www.createspace.com/3373494 . Availability on www.amazon.com comes shortly. Students of Luo Oral History, Luo Anthropology, Luo Religiosity, Luo Leadership and Hidden Prophecies, Luo wisdom, Current American politics with a little salt added for taste, and those attracted to Luo ways because of our current notoriety on the world stage (Haven't we father the guardian of the citadel of world power?), or if you just want to discover what makes the Luo tick, this is your Historical Novel (where facts, fantasies, fiction are mixed, cooked then served as tragedy, satire, comedy or paranormal events). I say welcome to all of you.You are looking for romance? You won't be bored. You love tension? Tighten your seat-belt. You love heroes? They are here. You are a tough girl? Meet your friends here. You think you know about the "Luo Bead of Passion?" You ain't met it yet. Have you heard about "The Ajwang' Prophecy?" Definitely not. Have you read about "Sunrise from the West?" Most likely not. Have you heard of "The Ajwang' Mark of Leadership?" or Do you have it under a specific foot (be sure to be a Luo, must have a fifth of Luo blood)? I doubt that you have. Can you write a short essay about "The Great Schism" among the Luo clans that dispersed this great nation throughout East and Central Africa, from Sudan to Tanzania? Maybe not.Grab your copy

OF TWO WOMEN OF HOPE AMID REJECTION

I am Joseph R Alila, author of such novels as SUNSET ON POLYGAMY and THE MILAYI CURSE.
In my newest novel, WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART, I have employed a story about the trying times of two widows to lead my readers along an anthropological journey into some cultural aspects of marriage, kinship and inheritance among the Luo of Eastern Africa. WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART is an ansty cry of a strong-willed, unfortunate widow (Apiny) with the "spiritually-untouchable" tag hanging on her neck, who, together with her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) insist that they belong with the clan into which they married, even as their immediate in-laws consider the younger widow to be a living "a curse," who must go. In this choice, the women have taken the higher cultural moral road than their heartless in-laws. Moreover, the women are on the right side of Luo Customary Law, which states that women and their children belong with the clan, and not just the immediate family of their husbands.
In Awino accepting a distant brother-in-law’s hand in marriage so that her burdened daughter-in-law ( Apiny) can find a kitchen in which to sleep as the latter awaits the birth of her next husband, I tell my readers a story about undying faith, courage, patience and humility, on the part of the women, and charity, on the part of the widower (Misuru). That Awino agrees to give her daughter-in-law a tender son to marry is a steep moral hill she, Awino, has to overcome amid daily echoes of laughter and ridicule of both women by their contemporaries.
But my readers should remeber that this is eighteenth-century Luoland, in which due process in matters of birth, marriage, death has to be observed religiously, lest unsettled spirits run amock. Moreover, the Seer says that the future of a whole people is tied to the strength of arms of the yet-to-be-born children and grandchildren of the two widows.

"OUR LUO SUNRISE IN THE WEST (Old Prophecies and Our Improbable Journey)"

Fans of "SUNSET ON POLYGAMY," I'm digging in to polish my next novel, "OUR LUO SUNRISE IN THE WEST" or some title to that effect. If you wanna scoop me, you ghost writers out there, go right ahead, at the risk of fighting with my ancestors. Anyway, if you are not in the know, the Nilotic Tribe, The LUO, fathered the new man of the world, The Man of the Moment.
It is a tough project. I am grabbing every catchy phrase and idea that visit my dreams. Writing one line is taking me two days, on some cloggy days. You must be wondering why? when the history of the Luo is out there.
This is why: Novelists are not historians; they are not prophets, even as their works may foretell some events , as Novelist JR Alila in the closing chapter in THE WISE ONE OF RAMOGILAND. They are not bound by any truths. They have to try to relive the lives of some of the subjects of their imaginations and creations. Novelists try to dig into the hows and whys, even if these are unusual or untrue. For example, they have to imagine what their subjects could have done if faced with a hyena eating a Buffalo; or when forced to live in a cave of serpents like a Special Forces Soldier; or what a woman, ejected by her in-laws, would have done in the middle of nowhere in a vast wilderness in seventeenth-century Sudan. Novelists embellish their facts because they may have to (for example) describe the musical bowel movements of a glutton in the middle of a scarce meal, even if such the noises were absent! So don't take catchy "commercial" phrases from a scribe like me as sources of wisdom!
Anyway, I'm trying to put this historical event of our times, precipitated by the very grandson of Ramogi the Great, into prophetic and escatological context (you may use your GoogleSearch or Dictionary here), even though I am no prophet.
Don't misunderstand me: novelists purposes are never vain, even as their truths are embellished. The reader walks away with some new knowledge and some truth from amidst some half-truths. The Novelist has some agenda though, even as he may just be some innocent storyteller. You may read a story and come out with a plethora of literary devices used--- virgin metaphors, oxymorons---all products of the language, slang and culture he or she lives. But most novelists don't wake up and say, "I'll use so many metaphors in this action packed, boiler of a paragraph." The novelist, often, is just talking to you, on a street, at a diner, in bed without thinking about the literary classification of his or her work.
But this project is taking me long to complete because the characters such as Ramogi the Great were not mere men; their wives were not ordinary women; their decisions could have impeached a modern President; they walked under a special cloud; they fasted and prayed more often than you and I, because their burdens were weightier and their circumstances more dire than any modern president would ever face, even if these ancestors could have had responsibilities over less than 200 men!
But even if the final novel may end up being a mere product of my imagination, I want my readers to realise that we as MAN have travelled a difficult road, and are here today because of sacrifices made by those before us. Tread the land with reverence; fast and pray more often, think before you burn 50 gallons of gas chasing an illusive girlfriend or boyfriend; eat what you need and not what you want; donate when you can!

Happy New Year
Joseph R Alila
(Author: WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART)

READING IS LIFE

Hi ,
I am Novelist and Poet Joseph R. Alila. My wife asked me this morning to remember you, my readers, this X-mas. Happy Holidays, to you my visitors too! I wish your a literary 2008!
Reading reminds me that I am still alive! Being able to talk or sing reminds me that I am blessed with a tongue, and can verbally communicate. Being able to write is a sign that I am still functional.
I hope you add WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART (www.createspace.com/3341373 or www.amazon.com ) by Joseph R. Alila to your Must Read List. The book has a new cover, and a new formatting. Like its sister novels, SINS OF OUR HEARTS (www.createspace.com/3339874, www.amazon.com ), and THE MILAYI CURSE (Lulu (www.lulu.com/810018 ), this book talks to our humanity. They are relational novels, and are about us and our daily neighbors, and how we relate to them, and why we need to oil our relationships for our mutual benfit. The writings remind us that mutual silence and prejudice are a curse and a cancer to good neighborliness. Read. Talk one to another.
Have a good 2009.

Welcome.

JR Alila

KIDS ARE KIDS, RICH OR POOR

As the friendship between the little boys matured, Charles Milayi would start to exchange visits with Thomas Jamoko.
At first, Milayi’s mother protested when she learnt that the young Thomas Jamoko was coming to visit her home. She was a widow—a poor widow. She had one cooking pot and less than five earthen platters and bowls. Like their grandparents, the Milayis still used crocodile scales as spoons. Mrs. Milayi had exactly one bag of grain she hoped to last until the next harvest, which was three months away.
By contrast, the Jamokos could serve lunch to two hundred people and still be on their feet. They had hundreds of metal spoons and fancy chinaware. The Jamokos had so many cattle that, often, some cows were not milked. That is how rich the Jamokos were.
Food aside, for clothing, Consolata Milayi had one dress, and Charles Milayi only had the school uniform for his clothing. That is how poor the Milayis were.
"Milayi, you like bringing trouble on us. We have no oil with which to cook for your spoilt friend"
"Be fair Ma. Tom is just like me. He eats everything I eat," the little boy complained.
"Milayi, since when was this Tom Jamoko like you? He is a Jamoko. He only eats meat. And look at you. You don’t have a shirt on your back, and have no trousers on your buttocks. How can a Jamoko be eating what you eat?"
"But he is my friend, Mama," responded the boy in tears. For him, Tom was the dearest friend outside home.
The boy was right. They were real friends. The young Jamoko occasionally gave him an old set of school uniforms, pencils, and some new book to read. Milayi had sported the donated uniforms even though they were a size or two too small for him. Meanwhile, whenever Jamoko’s old uniforms suddenly would disappear, his mother would assume that her careless son had lost them in the playground.
"No, I do not want you to cry, Milayi. It is just that you have to know that a poor man does not walk in the same party as a rich man," Mrs. Milayi implored her son. "Charles, a poor man goes fishing for food, while a rich man goes fishing for fun. Haven’t you watched the Jamokos as they fish along the Kuja? They return part of their catch back to the water. And a rich man hunts the buffalo for its horns and skin, as poor folks struggle over its meat. The Jamokos behave like Father James, the White Priest, who fishes for fun."
"Mama, we are not poor," the boy responded in a very sure and measured tone, all to the total surprise of his mother.
"What, Charles? We are not poor? Yet we eat beans and arrowroots most of the year? Yet, you have no shirt with which to cover your back?" his mother had responded after a brief pause. She surely was surprised by the boy’s remark.
"Didn’t Father James say that poverty is only in a person’s mind, while wealth resides in one’s heart? You think we are poor. In my heart, I feel rich," the child had waxed amazingly wise, taking his mother aback in the process. She would for some long minute stir her bubbling pot of red-millet porridge in silence.
"Milayi, now, you want to cause trouble with your strange ideas. Father James never said a thing like that," she had declared hoping to silence the boy.
"But that is what the story of the Rich Young Ruler is all about. Mama, you were there when Father James read the story?" the Grade Four schoolboy had said, again sending his mother’s head spinning. The young boy had a rather strange perspective on life. Mrs. Milayi was convinced that modern schooling was turning her little boy into some kind of wise adult. "How can poverty—her obvious poverty—be wealth?" she wondered in silence.
"Now, go to the river and bathe. It is getting late. And don’t imagine that you are rich. Charles, you are poor. You are very poor. One of these days you will bring shame to this house by inviting the Minister’s Daughter for lunch," his mother had dismissed him, using bathing in the river as an excuse.
The boy of strange wisdom left for the river, with his dog named Tom, in pursuit.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Milayi wondered what she would cook for the rich man’s son. Inwardly, she was intrigued and touched by the wisdom coming out of her son’s mouth: poverty is only in a person’s mind, while wealth resides in one’s heart. These words of her young son appeared to have given her the courage to face the day. She instantly resolved to entertain the Jamoko boy.
Thomas Jamoko did come.
Mrs. Milayi treated the two boys the way little boys should be treated: "Boys eat potatoes and vegetables and cassava. That is what they dream about in their sleep. In their sleep, most boys never dream about some meaty dish. A boy wakes up with cooked cassava or potato in his hands," she had persuaded herself to believe. And she could have been more right than wrong. Most boys of those days loved sweet potatoes. Encouraged by these thoughts, she cooked potatoes as well as she could.
The two boys ate the sweet potatoes on the grass under a shady tree in front of her house. Then they enjoyed some ripe guava that nature provided in abundance. Potatoes and Guava, kind of an odd mixture, isn’t it? But if they became constipated on that day, Mrs. Milayi would have taken that as a sign of good feeding.
Mrs. Milayi was too ashamed to have allowed the "rich boy" into her meager abode that even lacked a three-legged stool.
Between rounds of sweet potatoes, the boys played some marksmanship game—shooting at domestic lizards and hedgerow birds with homemade bows and arrows.
Later that day, Thomas Jamoko returned to his home, truly believing that the outing had been a special adventure. Kids are kids, rich or poor.


SOURCE: THE MILAYI CURSE Lulu Books http://www.lulu.com/810018

Novel by Joseph R. Alila)

JR ALILA ON WRITING

All writing is Inspired. That is the simple belief that has kept me going as a writer of Fiction, Plays and Poetry. Whether it is a spiritual, political, philosophical, or an anthropological piece, I have always found inspirition in the uniqueness of peoples, their ideas, the places of their abode and the changing times they continually try to keep up with. And when I am stuck in my writing, there always is that "unseen force" nudging my thought while in a traffic jam, in the bathroom, or in my sleep.
Welcome!
Joseph R Alila

Thomas Joseph (TJ) Mboya: Anniversary

July 5th is the late TJ Mboya's 39th anniversary. That is the day he died (in 1969) at the hands of a gunman known as Nashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge. Students of history, and the recent upsurge in new revelations about his death are attached below for any of you, who occossionaly stray into my e-hut.
http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143989571&cid=4
http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143989575&cid=4

You may also sample these verses from "RATENG' AND BRIDE.* TJ was popularly called, Rateng', by his contemporaries, but he is not the RATENG' in my epic poem. For the young among us, you want to know that this native son of Rusinga Island---a seed of Ramogi Ajwang' (Ramogi ka Podho son of the great Ramogi)---was a GO-GETTER.
In this regard, TJ is remembered for the great Mboya Airlifts (educational) that saw the arrival of many sons of Kenya at the shores of the Americas, as the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was doing the same in the Soviet Block. Two sons of Ramogi, polarized by an ideaologically polarized world of the 1950s and 1960s, yet able to bring the kill home for their nation, Kenya! The Shield, the Spear, the Cock and the Axe (all four are requisite in starting a Luo home) in "Kenya's Court of Arms" are a testimony to Ramogi's footprints and Wisdom in Kenya's political journey.
Rateng TJ is my inspiration---only I can't do even a millionth of what he did!

Rateng',
This genie-of-a-woman
Has wooed and killed
Each and every one
of our brothers
She ever danced with:

AK Joremo—
the best legal mind
Of his generation—
Fell on her chest after a brief
but romantic affair—
AK fell to an irate, rival’s barb.

TJ JaRusinga,
Was then the best dancer
On the floor—a dancer
with a golden tongue,
A fast pair of feet
And a sharp mind;
TJ was a dancer with
An unmatchable speed
On his feet
On any dance floor—
TJ Fell to a jealous rival’s
Arrow of passion.

Rateng’,
TJ fell to a jealous rival’s
arrow of passion,
As he flirted, chatted
and danced to a slow Rumba
with the woman.

Rateng’,
TJ fell in broad daylight—
Like a common-street thief—
He fell, the bride’s
freshly-minted ring
Still in his pocket.

* Source: RATENG' AND BRIDE (a poem) pp 19&20)----NEW
Author: Joseph R. Alila
Published by CreateSpace
www.createspace.com/3346481

The Milayi Curse (By Joseph R. Alila)

In Joseph R. Alila's "Milayi Curse" (Lulu(http://www.lulu.com))%20centuries-old/centuries-old bigotry, prejudice, unresolved issues, spiritualility, myths of curses, and intraclan rivalry, meet the reality and power of frienship between two innocent boys, and the power of charity from one rich man to a boy from the other side of the clan divide, with Fr. James O'Kilghor as a witness and Keeper of Secrets. Mrs. Milayi's prejudice must be cleansed by her Priest in her self-made spiritual deathbed. She would live as a witness and agent of peace, understanding and intraclan healing in this spiritual drama.

Joseph R. Alila (Author)

The African Woman in Joseph Alila's Poetry

African woman is lionised in several poetic verses in Joseph R. Alila's "Thirteen Curses on Mother Africa," (ISBN 978-14303-1592-6), lulu( http://www.lulu.com)/ , and justifiably so:

The African woman is largely localized in her rural domain--often passed by time and rural-urban migration--yet she must feed, protect and mould the character of her son only to lose him to the corrupting influence of urban life. The African woman must continue to walk five miles to the spring for water; she must till the same piece of barren land of thirty years before; she must feed her orphaned grandchildren the way she fed her children, only with even fewer resources. The African woman must face the vagaries of endless wars, unpredictable weather, a cesspool of diseases, constant pangs of hunger and abject poverty--often alone--as her lazy husband is either dead, inebriated, lost to some urban center, or simply overwhelmed by his situation.

Joseph R. Alila

The Milayi Curse

In Joseph R. Alila's "Milayi Curse" (Lulu(http://www.lulu.com))%20centuries-old/centuries-old bigotry, prejudice, unresolved wrongs, spiritual curses, and intraclan rivalry meet the reality and power of frienship between two boys, and the power of charity from one rich man to a boy from the other side of clan divide, with Fr. James O'Kilgor as a witness and Keeper of Secrets. Mrs. Milayi's prejudice must be cleansed by her Priest in her self-made spiritual deathbed. She would live as a witness and agent of peace, understanding and intraclan healing in this spiritual drama.

Joseph R. Alila (Author)