Tag: nigeria

SECOND CLASS CITIZEN by Buchi Emecheta

Here is a semi-autobiographical novel about what it means to really be ‘self-made.’ The main character is born to a low income family in Nigeria, and with zero help (and some resistance) from them manages to get herself a scholarship to high school. This opens the door to university, which she can only attend if married (long story).

She graduates, gets a great job, and her husband moves to London to study. She follows him, with two of their children, and finds him overwhelmed in this new context. He struggles without his extended family, and with the racism, and deals with it by beating her. She gets another great job, while he ‘studies.’ He refuses to allow her to use birth control, despite them having no money, because according to him he can stop pregnancy with his mind. She ends up with five children by 23, and is still the only one with a job.

She eventually writes a novel, encouraged by her colleagues at the library. It’s the 60s, so its all in exercise books, and her husband BURNS IT. This is the moment where she breaks and leaves him. Two weeks later he hunts her down and nearly kills her.

This probably sounds pretty bleak, like it’s a story of domestic violence. But weirdly, this is not at all how it reads. I can only describe it as joyful? It is carried on so much by her energy and her optimism and her love of her children. It’s kind of a classic immigrant story about building your own life, and knowing you are beating the odds. Perspective truly is everything.

GHOSTROOTS by Pemi Aguda

Here is speculative horror fiction from Nigeria.  Unfortunately, it’s short stories, which I always struggle to get into.  However they were skilful stories.  I liked, for example, the description of a woman   “who is stroking her blond wig as if it were a living thing, a pet that needs comfort”

I also really enjoyed the way she evoked contemporary Nigeria, very dense and real.  This I thought was an interesting part, about a girl whose parents will not tell her anything about her grandparents:

“But what do Nigerian parents tell their children about their own parents?  Especially the Pentecostal Christians? Nothing.  If you took a poll of your friends, three out of five would be similarly ignorant of these histories of parents who moved from somewhere to Lagos, left behind religions and curses and distant cousins and grimy pasts”

That first generation who moves to town, who goes from nine kids to two, in any country, is an interesting one.

Nigeria is generally kind of an extreme place, and it makes for a fun setting for speculative fiction. One charter fears she is the reincarnation of her evil grandmother, and she asks her “coworkers if they believe in reincarnation.  Five of them believe. Two of them claim to have corroborative stories.” One of them feels she is a reincarnation – of Beyonce.

BURMA BOY by Biyi Bandele

This is a comic novel that is described in reviews as ‘vivid’ and ‘horrifying,’ and it certainly is. It tells the story of Nigerian soldiers fighting in Burma in WWII. There is a lot of joy in it, and especially in the dialogue, which bounces along with the kind of fun I recognize from my Abuja days. Try this, when one man finds he has been assigned as muleteer rather than a soldier:

“‘Mules?’ Ali gasped as if he’d been stung by a driver ant. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the son of Dawa the king of well-diggers whose blessed nose could sniff out water in Sokoto while he’s standing in Saminaka. I’m the son of Hauwa whose mother was Talatu whose mother was Fatimatu queen of the moist kulikuli cake, the memory of whose kulikuli still makes old men water at the mouth till this day. Our people say that distance is an illness; only travel can cure it. Do you think that Ali Banana, son of Dawa, great-grandson of Fatima has crossed the great sea and travelled this far, rifle strapped to his shoulder, to look after mules?'”

It is a very accomplished book, but I could not finish it. It was just too sad. People’s heads explode mid-sentence, people are left to die on death marches, you get the idea. I am hesitant about if you should ever die in any war, even a just war, even a war for your own country. I am not sure there is ever victory in death. And certainly, these Nigerians dying in Asia, for a European war: I just couldn’t handle it.