Dr. Geraldine Sinyuy is a revered Cameroonian scholar, an accomplished writer and a prolific storyteller. Sinyuy has recently published a sizzling, blood ticking and immensely didactic collection of fairytales titled Music In the Wood and Other Folktales (Footprint Publishing, Malawi, 2020).
Her undertaking of this rare literary genre mesmerizes and as well boggles the mind of the modern reader. The telling of fairytales by Sinyuy rekindles the flames of our ancient wisdom, candles of our heritage and fires of our beautiful past. Fairytales play an integral role in retracing our African identity, morality and ancient wisdom. The collection Music In the Wood and Other Folktales seeks to remind modern Africa of its rich cultural/moral past and as it exhibits the beauty of African traditions, identity and literary dignity.
By writing this trendsetting gig of fairytales, Dr. Geraldine Sinyuy qualifies herself as an ambassadorial brand of African storytelling and cultural identity. She is our African story. Her beautiful and intriguing collection of stories is flighted on the digital walls of Amazon and other online bookshelves.
Dr. Sinyuy projects original and ancient Africa through raw folktales that are a concoction of fantasy, identity and beautiful language. The master storyteller depicts African indigenous knowledge through old tales once told by long gone story weavers. The great stories told by great-grandmothers of her land are manifesting in her as she now wields her pen to retell, revive and resurrect them through lyrical dexterity and literary prowess. From these wonderfully weaved stories, we mine civilization and barbarism of ancient communities. We also learn with gusto the moral fabrication together with the socialization and the politicization of the human past. These folktales are grandiose revelations that the ancient communities were highly learned, creative and educative; and that their books of wisdom, such as this one, still exist.
***
Cameroonian born Dr. Geraldine Sinyuy trained as an English Language and Literature in English Teacher in the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. She earned her PhD in Commonwealth Literature from the University in 2018. Dr. Sinyuy started writing poems in her teens and most of her poems and folktales were read and discussed on the North West Provincial Station of the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) Bamenda where she was often a guest writer for the programme Literary Workshop: A Programme for Creative Writing and Literary Criticism. She has received the following awards; Featured Storyteller on World Pulse Story Awards, May 2017; Prize of Excellence as Best Teacher of the Year in CETIC Bangoulap, Bangangte, 23 October, 2010; Winner of the British Council Essay Writing Competition, Yaoundé, 2007; Winner of Short Story Runner-Up Prize, Literary Workshop: CRTV Bamenda, 1998.Her publications include: “Stripped” FemAsia: Asian Women’s Journal; “Invisble Barriers: Food Taboos in V. S. Naipaul and Samuel Selvon.” Tabous: Représentations, Functions et Impacts; “Migration related malnutrition among war-instigated refugee children in the northern part of Cameroon.” South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition; “Cultural Translocation in Three Novels of V. S. Naipaul.” International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities. Vol. IV, Issue XII; “Journey without End: A Closer Look at V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction.” International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities. Vol. IV, Issue IV; “Which Other Way? Migration and Ways of Seeing in V. S. Naipaul.” Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities: Critical Essays.Some of her poems are featured on Time of the Poet Republic; Africa Writers Caravan; For Creative Girls Magazine; and Fired Up Magazine. Dr Sinyuy is an advocate for organic gardening and environmental care. She equally runs an online cookery group via WhatsApp where she teaches women how to cook good and healthy food for their families. She is also a lover of photography and spends her spare time taking photos. She is currently working on her collection of folktales and her first novel.
