There is something about the generality of African literature that seems to set them apart from the others. It is hard to tell what that is exactly. They're earthy, surgical and brutal, I'll say, and sentient in a way that threatens to drown you wholly in the writer's world. You know, Africans do things with a kind of crushing finesse, like the way we make our food- spicy, thick with variety and then, simple. Chris Abani, he's modest, so to refer to him as a legend in African literature, one has to make sure his or her mouth is cupped. But that's what he is.
Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist currently residing in the United States. His first novel, Masters of the Board published in 1985 when he was sixteen is a political thriller about the events surrounding a coup carried out by 'neo-Nazis' in Nigeria. The plot proved uncomfortably close to actual events as a coup was attempted in the country not long after the novel was published, and so at eighteen he was incarcerated for six months at the infamous Kiri Kiri Prison in Lagos. Other works of fiction by the man include: Sirocco, Graceland, Becoming Abigail, The Virgin of Flames, A Song for Night, A Secret History of Las Vegas. He's also published a good number of poetry collection: Kalakuta Republic, a chronicle of the writer's experiences in prison; Daphne's Lot; Dog Woman; Hands Washing Water; There are no Names for Red; Santificum, his most recent collection of poems, published in 2010.
About his works, Abani says '...they're about exploring what is human about us, an attempt to map...to question if it's even possible to be human, if redemption is at all possible, if transformation can happen'. Talking about his poetry, he said, they are a little difficult. They are too. I saw that, the first time I read one of his poems. But I kept visiting the work, the way you keep going back to a thing that tells about you and cleanses you like a song, and yet you do not grasp its full import, and you know that's only because you are not big enough for it, yet. In most of his works, you'll find this obsession with identity, language, exile, violence, love and eulogy.
... I have always envied the stigmata.
But it is the ordinary things, isn’t it?
The daily sigh of the world that defeated Eliot—
And even anger can die in this way.
Until there is nothing but ash on a dinner plate
next to dried gravy and a cold, gray piece of meat.
Like the photos of my dead father.
Skin blacker than worked leather, and wrinkled.
As though all the anger in him had burned out on his skin.
And small as a bony wet cat and I think, how could it all
become so pedestrian, as I step out into traffic.
The bus misses me, but I am tenacious,
there is another at 6:15.
There is a God, I chant, there is a God.
But it is just the apple pie à la mode talking.
I am getting wet, Larry, I am getting wet.
Hey, Rilke, I have finally figured out who your terrible angel is.
And his face is the morning and his laugh is the night.
But I shan’t tell on you.
What kind of poet rats out another?
In the Nigeria of my youth, women bleached their skin, leaching
all that was black except what was too stubborn to go,
whorling elbows and knuckles and knees,
and memories blotching faces—
Yellowish-blackish-greenish-blue—
Skin as bruise.
Holy be thy name, O Lady of the Mercury soap,
O Lord of the encroaching light.
Water and sand and the world.
From Sanctificum by Chris Abani (2010). Copper Canyon Press, Washington.
Chris Abani was born in 1967 to an English mother and a Igbo, Nigerian father. He holds a B.A in English and Literary Studies from Imo State University, Nigeria and a PH.d in creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. Among the many honours and awards he has won are: a PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, a Guggeinhem Fellow in Fiction (2009), the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. They are numerous. He is currently a board of Trustees Professor at Northwestern University.
References:
Wikipedia (8 May, 2016). Chris Abani. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChrisAbani.
Poetry Foundation (2016). Chris Abani. Www.poetryfoundation.org.
Blackbird (2007). Chris Abani, From Sanctificum.www.blackbird.vcu.edu.
There are no Names for Red by Chris Abani and Percival Everett. thebowedbookshelf.blogspot.nl
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