Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

Sometimes immigrant stories, with many exceptions, can have a certain cliche quality to them. The central theme is often the same: the characters find themselves in the West for a variety of reasons. They struggle to adjust. They wistfully remember a homeland they cannot return to. They are in purgatory. They band together with other immigrants who are also in purgatory. Some find a way to triumph in their new circumstances. Many recreate the home they left behind and replicate the old patterns. Snore.  

"At last a non-cliche immigrant story!" 

Enter Imbolo Mbue's debut novel. At last a non-cliche immigrant story! Jende and  Neni from Limbe, Cameroon, are thrilled to be in New York. "A man can become somebody in America," Jende says proudly. Neni hums to herself everyday as she goes about her new life, her heart bursting with happiness at her new circumstances. No wistful memories of home for these two. Jende gets a better-paying job, Neni is top of her pharmacy class. She dreams of an affluent life in the suburbs. For a brief moment, it seems the American dream can come true for them too. The immigration authorities and the 2008 recession begin to conspire against them. Jende loses his job. Neni, feeling the dream slipping away, becomes desperate. Their relationship is put to the test. 

Tragedy stalks all the characters. None is spared. Yet Ms Mbue treats all her characters with dignity, even when they make mistakes, even the less savoury immigration lawyer, Bubacar. All the  non-American characters in the story are Cameroonian. Ms Mbue rightly chose to focus on a people she knows well and what a supportive, colourful cast they are. No immigrant purgatory here. The characterization of Jende is refreshing: a faithful, caring husband, who makes sometimes grievous mistakes, but who is always aware of his responsibility towards his family. There can never be too many balanced male portrayals.  

I initially empathized with Neni's desperation to stay in America. I understood her not wanting to go back to the place where she had known such stagnation. I hoped until the very end for a last-minute reprieve for her. My book club and I had a great time imagining what might have become of her after the end of the story. We concluded that her stay in America had made her too strong and too ambitious to return to being a dependant in Jende's shadow. She would surely find a way use what education she had to make the best of her circumstances.  The fact that Jende expected to have the final word on all things to do with the family bothered me. The old patterns remain after all.  

"Ms Mbue's gift is creating dialogue." 

Some authors are gifted creators of characters, others of compelling plots. Still others are masters of description. Ms Mbue's gift is creating dialogue. I found myself rereading conversations, reveling in their delicious wit and authenticity. Her love of the city of New York comes through strongly in Neni's wistful musings. 

I watch hopefully for Imbolo Mbue's next novel. 

Chuma Nwokolo launches How to Spell Naija in 100 Stories Vol 2

Today I remade the acquaintance of a writer whose work I have reviewed before on this blog, Tony Mochama. He was in conversation with Nigerian poet, novelist and lawyer Chuma Nwokolo, at the launch of Chuma's second volume of How to Spell Naija in 100 stories in Nairobi. The discussion was moderated by Khainga O'OKwemba, the radio host of The Books Cafe which airs on the English service of KBC, Kenya's national broadcaster. The launch was put together by the Rift Valley Institute at the British Institute in East Africa (BIEA).

Tony Mochama, left, Chuma Nwokolo, centre, Khainga O'Okwemba, right

Both writers read from their respective anthology of poems and short stories, each infusing their very different personalities into the works. Tony forthright and provocative, Chuma thoughtful and authentic, both challenging. They impressed with how prolific they are. Chuma has under his belt 10 books, among them Diaries of a Dead African and The Final Testament of a Minor God. Tony Mochama is a regular newspaper columnist, who writes under his pen name Smitta and the author of novella Princess Adhis and the Naija Coca Broda, reviewed below. He has published two anthologies, What If I'm a Literary Gangster and The Road to Eldoret. 

           

Chuma quipped about Kenya slowly becoming a province of Nigeria. I think he was only half joking, given the way Naija fashion, music, restaurants and now literature have slowly made themselves a fact of life in Nairobi. I'm not being flippant by referring to Nigeria as Naija, by the way. Chuma said in Nigeria, when one comes of age, it is normal for one to rename oneself with a name of one's own choosing. Nigeria has come of age and has chosen to rename itself Naija, on the streets at least, even if not on its coat of arms. 

Both commented on the social issues that inspired their work: the 2007-8 post election violence, the drug trade and sexual exploitaton of children at Kenya's Coast, the death of Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, corruption in all its forms. From the excerpts read, I intuit that for both writers, developing strong, authentic characters through whom to tell their stories is a gift they have in common.  

I am familiar with only one of each of these writers' works. I plan to read and review more of their work soon. 

 

We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

Noviolet Bulawayo and I

Darling and her friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Stina seem like a perfectly normal band of neighbourhood children, as they frolic about Paradise harvesting guavas from nearby posh Budapest suburb, playing made-up games and imitating the grown-ups. That is until you realize that Chipo is 11 years old and pregnant, having been raped by her grandfather, Bastard harbours vain, it seems, illusions of escaping Paradise to live abroad and Darling's father is slowly dying of AIDS in his bed at home. They live in Paradise, a fictional slum in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare in the difficult years of the mid-to late 90s, where the newly-poor "appeared single file, like ants...with the dust from their crushed houses clinging to their hair and skin and clothes", having been driven from their homes by the government's security forces. The adults vote for "change". When the election is stolen and the brutal dictator returns to power, they begin to consider their options. That is how Darling is sent to live with her Auntie Fostalina and her Uncle Kojo in the US. Uprooted, Darling forges a new identity for herself. She finds that the adults around her are struggling with displacement as much as she is. She finds that while she no longer has to steal guavas to fill her stomach, she now suffers from a hunger for her home that nothing in America can satisfy. When I met Noviolet Bulawayo briefly on 28 June 2014 at the Writers' Conversation hosted by Kwani at Nairobi's National Museum, she said through Darling's experience, she sought to explore the connection between identity and geographical location. Ms Bulawayo told me that she spent her first year in the US in silence, struggling with culture shock and displacement. 

Ms Bulawayo also said she enjoyed writing the first part of the novel while Darling was in Zimbabwe, but struggled with the second part when Darling leaves. Her sadness is illustrated in the melancholic, mournful Chapter 16 in which Ms Bulawayo decries the Zimbabwean immigrants' exchanging of their identity for a soulless existence in America. This one of the several occasions when Ms Bulawayo's voice comes through, barely concealed, interrupting the plot to provide background and to make a point. Darling's ever-humourous voice is replaced by the author's much more adult language that is completely inconsistent with anything Darling might say.  It shouldn't work, but yet it does, somehow. The passages in this chapter are of unforgettable beauty. I was drawn to them again and again.

We Need New Names is a coming-of-age novel and an interrogation of what is it is like to be made to constantly feel one's own otherness in a myriad small ways. 

Love is Power Or Something Like That by A Igoni Barrett

Photo: worldliteraturetoday.org

The short story genre is possibly the hardest to execute, in my view. Despite that, this collection is almost perfect. Almost. The stories are realistic and believable. An elderly woman who has devoted her life to looking after her children cannot get any of them to accompany her to hospital when it is her turn to be looked after. A young boy fears and hates his abusive, alcoholic mother and yet cannot let her go to bed hungry. A policeman and loving husband and father becomes a monster as soon as he puts on his uniform. Two cousins explore sexuality with each other. A father takes a bullet to protect his wife and daughter from armed gangsters. A young man with halitosis describes his experience on public transport. A young scammer assumes a false identity online and extorts money from an elderly white man. A Nigerian visiting Nairobi falls in love with an NGO worker and describes the city as "grotty and untamed". (I beg to differ.) I am intrigued by the central theme that is that nebulus nexus between love and power. As a collection, the stories depict a slice of life in gritty, urban Nigeria, describing experiences that are as uncomfortable as they are universal. I say the stories  are almost perfect because while they were suspenseful and easy to relate to, they end abruptly, just as they are gathering momentum. I cannot say whether this is due to the technical difficulty of bringing a short story to a satisfying end, or whether the writer just simply did not know what to do with the various threads of the stories he had woven. Whatever the case, Love is Power Or Something Like That  deserves an enthusiastic recommendation. 

The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu

Vumbi is a hairdresser extraordinaire, the highest paid stylist at Khumalo Hair and Beauty Treatment Salon, where no beauty treatments have ever been offered. She knows the secret to making a woman feel beautiful: just make her look like a white woman. Vumbi reigns supreme, "queen bee" of her "personal fiefdom", until hip, handsome, mysterious Dumi appears on the scene and replaces her as Mrs Khumalo's favourite employee and the darling of the customers. Cold war breaks out between the two when Dumi is promoted over Vumbi. However, through a series of events, Vumbi begins to realize that there is more to Dumi than his annoying charm. They become allies, until Vumbi discovers Dumi's devastating secret. And so unfolds a pacey, hilarious story about loss, protest, tolerance and the lack of it, and the rigours of life in the Zimbabwe of a few year ago. The author, Tendai Huchu, uses humour to delve into that subject that remains taboo in Africa and in Zimbabwe particularly, that of homosexuality. Through his characters, Huchu demands that his readers acknowledge that this divisive issue transcends social class and is not going away. Huchu displays a preoccupation in this novel with human inconsistency. For example, Vumbi is able to find empathy for Dumi and her estranged brother but is unspeakably harsh to her househelp with whom she shares a background and who looks after her child. Dumi's parents adopt her and lavish attention on her but banish Dumi, their own flesh and blood, without a second look. Huchu also seems concerned with the myriad ways one can move and up and down Africa's class system. A bittersweet story that invites readers to call their assumptions into question.

Invisible: Stories From Kenya's Queer Community by Kevin Mwachiro

On 5 February 2014 former BBC journalist Kevin Mwachiro launched Kenya's first-ever compilation of stories from the LGBTI community. I use that term even though Mwachiro, in the foreword, explicitly takes issue with it, describing it as an "NGO term". Some of the contributions are chronological accounts, some poems, some letters, but all describe each person's becoming aware of their "different" sexual orientation and what it was like to come out in a society that is still so intolerant of difference. These are stories of humbling courage. One in particular, "Letter to Mum and Dad", moved me to tears. At the launch I perceived what felt to me like a collective sigh of relief, a gratitude and a feeling that finally, the community has a voice in the public sphere and, with it, a new confidence. An important work. An essential read for anyone thirsty for an alternative perspective.

Prof Tom Odhiambo led the panel discussion

Mwachiro autographs copies of Invisible

Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi visits Nairobi

Chimamanda delivers a lecture at the
University of Nairobi

On 29 November 2013 all roads led to the University of Nairobi where Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was giving a lecture as part of the launch of her latest novel, Americanah. Chimamanda's novels have clearly captured the hearts of Kenyan readers, judging by the rock star reception she received. The lecture venue was packed when I arrived. My friend and I counted ourselves lucky to be able to sit on the floor as we looked at the people standing against the walls and outside the hall. The university's faculty jostled to welcome the late Chinua Achebe's literary protege. The queue for autographs at the end of the lecture was impressive. Students elbowed each other to take selfies with Chimamanda. The huge gathering at Marshall's warehouse in Nairobi's city centre later that evening for the official book launch easily rivaled the crowd at the annual Ten Cities concert that is held at the same venue. All the copies of Americanah on sale that evening sold out. Chimamanda fielded endless questions not just about Americanah, but also about her earlier works, Purple Hibiscus and Half of A Yellow Sun from enthusiasts, many of whom prefaced their questions and remarks with "I love your books!" There were questions about the plots of the novels, the characters, the subject matter of each novel, the movie adaptation of Half of A Yellow Sun. One student warmed everyone's heart when she told Chimananda that she had spent the very last of her money on one of her novels. Such enthusiasm signals to me that it is truly a new day for African fiction in Kenya. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Yvonne Owuor at their book
launch, hosted by Binyavanga Wainaina

Chimamanda's lecture was humorous and engaging. She said the university lecture hall reminded her very much of a hall at the Nsukka campus of the University of Nigeria, where she grew up, the daughter of two university professors. She traced her writing career, explained how she met Binyavanga Wainaina, founding editor of literary magazine Kwani?, on a writer's site and how they went on to become each other's literary mentors. She responded to questions graciously, even when one person questioned her motives for writing about the past instead of engaging with more pressing issues in the present (referring to the Biafra war featured in Half of A Yellow Sun). Visibly upset, she explained that she wrote about the Biafra war because the scars from that war are still visible in Nigeria. She said members of her own family were killed in the war and that her family continues to be affected by those deaths and the manner in which they came about. "What happened to Kainene?" someone called out, referring to a character in Half of a Yellow Sun. "I don't know," she responded, to the frustration of the audience. She explained that families in Nigeria tell stories of kin who travelled during the war to carry out trade or for some other reason and were never seen or heard from again and Kainene's disappearance was a portrayal of that. One brave person asked the question that everyone who has read Americanah wonders: is the story of Ifemelu autobiographical? "No," she responded simply, smiling enigmatically at her notes on the podium. She did offer, however in her remarks on Americanah that she wanted to break free of the portrayal of the African woman as asexual beings. In Ifemelu, Chimamanda set out to create a character who, among other things, owned her sexuality and expected to be satisfied sexually. 

I appreciated that Chimamanda addressed the theme of hair, so important in the plot of Americanah and so a propos given the black natural hair trend sweeping through Nairobi and the world, really. Every colour, size, texture and colour of afro was on display at the evening launch. Chimamanda spoke about her natural hair journey, about chemically straightening her hair for many years before deciding that she had enough and resolving to wear her hair "the way it grows from my scalp". She said one of the things she liked about Nairobi is that natural hair is as much an acceptable choice as relaxed hair, which, she said was definitely not the case in  Nigeria. I was charmed by Chimamanda's easy, fluent and personable manner, by her passion and her clever insights.  

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's debut novel, Dust was also launched on 29 November 2013 alongside Americanah. Ms Owuor, winner of the Caine Prize for her short story Weight of Whispers, deserves and will get a separate post on this blog, so stay tuned.

In The Footsteps of Mr Kurz by Michela Wrong

Michela Wrong has also written I Did Not Do It For You about Eritrea and It's Our Turn To Eat about the man who blew the whistle on corruption in Kenya, John Githongo. Below are some videos on those books.

I Do Not Come to You By Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

This is the novel that will answer all your questions about those Nigerian email scams that everyone has encountered at least once. The central character of the novel, Kingsley, sets off into the Nigerian job market, with high hopes that his degree in chemical engineering will land him a great job. When that does not happen and Kingsley's father becomes very ill, Kingsley is forced to turn to his barely-literate but insanely wealthy email scammer uncle, Cash Daddy, for money. Before long, Kingsley joins Cash Daddy's email scam operation and becomes extremely successful. His star begins to rise. He is finally able to look after his family and buy himself everything he has ever wanted or needed. Everything, except the respect of the woman he loves.
     The novel opens innocuously enough with a village scene, Chinua Achebe-style. The unsuspecting reader would never guess that (s)he is about to be sucked, along with Kingsley, into a world that is so outrageous that it must be real. Nwaubani keeps the plot moving with a mixture of hyperbole (mosquitoes "riding on horseback", clothes that cost "a lung and a kidney"), the details of the surreal scams and the much-flaunted wealth of the email scammers in the story. I will always carry the image of Cash Daddy yelling, "Your head is not correct!"
     An entertaining novel about greed, the fast lane, Third World pragmatism and the limits of what money can buy.         

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Picture: Google Images

Much has been written about this memoir of former child soldier Ishmael Beah, who survived Sierra Leone's bloody civil war. Rap music-loving Ishmael travels across the country with his brother and a band of friends, fleeing the war. They take refuge at a village protected by the Sierra Leone's regular army, where they soon realize that they are trapped, surrounded by rebel forces. They must join the fight against the rebels or be annihilated. So begins Ishmael's transition from a terrified child to a cold-blooded professional killer at the age of 12. What I found memorable about A Long Way Gone is that the reader gains a fresh understanding of the reality, the drive for survival, that makes it possible for children to become pawns in armed conflicts. Even the most hardened reader will appreciate that Ishmael's story reads like an action movie. It is difficult to imagine that the experiences related are those of a child. It is even more difficult to imagine that he survived those experiences, despite the odds, only to face stigmatization for being a former soldier. This is more than a riveting read, it is an education. To quote an excerpt from a Washington Post review, "Everyone in the world should read this book." 

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

Cassavarepublic.biz

Life is never the same for Baba Segi and his wives after he seeks medical advice to understand why his youngest, newest, university-educated wife, Bolanle, is unable to conceive. It is easy to dismiss this as another Naija-style cautionary tale about the horrors of polygamy. In fact, it is much more than that. It is a novel about hard choices, deceit, family intrigue and reconciliation. It is also about the resilience of family and what it really means to be a parent.  Lola Shoneyin has skillfully created five characters through whom the plot is revealed with not a little humour. The novel has all the elements I look for in a story: a cracking plot that crescendoes in the middle, a satisfying conclusion and plenty of character development.

Lola Shoneyin (second right) poses with two members of my 

book club Angie Rarieya (second left) 

and Kari Mutu (far right) and me (far left). This picture was
taken during the 2012 Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi,
Kenya where she spoke about "...Baba Segi's Wives". 

                                       

Princess Adhis and the Naija Coca Broda by Tony Mochama, aka Smitta

The gross stereotyping of all the characters in this tiniest of novels is Tony Mochama's light-hearted way of broaching very real subjects that lie right under the surface of life in Kenya: the drug trade, poverty, grand corruption, greed, violence, rape, exploitation. An unputdownable read that you'll want to tell all your Kenyan friends about because you know they will "get it". Gritty, pacey, hilarious.