“In the stories we tell ourselves, we tell ourselves,” said Michael Martone rightly. We also read ourselves in the books we read, or at least in those books that we cherish. For this reason, one of my 2014 resolutions was to return to a favourite pastime, namely reading fiction. For some years my reading life has been dominated by non-fiction, which I’ve enjoyed, but reading novels can be a spiritual or at least a therapeutic act, opening valves of memory – lived and yet to be lived.
Below are short reviews of seven novels that I’ve recently re/read and which have indeed been both spiritual and therapeutic reads. There are others that I could have included, the choice is entirely unsystematic.
1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Even before reading Americanah, there were two things prone to make me love it. Firstly, that it is written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I am yet to read (or listen to or watch) anything of hers that I haven’t loved. Secondly, well, Americanah’s main protagonist, Ifemelu, is a Nigerian woman and blogger who writes about race, gender, “Nigerpolitanism” and stuff like that: you can bet your bottom dollar I was going to love this book. However, what bewitched me even more than meeting a fictional colleague, was the passionate, vivid and feminist (I’d say) love story between Ifemelu and her love, Obinzeh, transcending both time and geographical spaces. In fact, Ifemelu’s being such an opinionated blogger (wink) meant that I was unable to read the novel in the detached way I tend to read novels. Instead, I kept finding myself stopping to consider whether I related to her blogging experiences. Looking through my notes in the book I came across this highlight, “If they asked what she did, she would say vaguely, ‘I write a lifestyle blog,’ because saying ‘I write an anonymous blog called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black’ would make them uncomfortable.” I highlighted this sentence because it reminded me of how I used to say that I blog about women’s rights rather than feminism to not make people uncomfortable. Those were the kinds of “interruptions”, if welcome ones, that I experienced reading Americanah.
2. Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta – I read Everything Good Will Come first in 2008 and didn’t love it. Obviously, something was incredibly wrong with me at the time (and by that I mean that the book must have introduced truths that I wasn’t yet willing to shake hands with) because having recently reread it for my book club, this is one of my favourite novels ever. Atta’s protagonist, Enitan, is an unapologetically feminist and proudly Nigerian character. However, she is not ideological, she does not intend to be any of these things, she simply loves herself and questions the ways her society denies women self fulfilment. In fact at one point, having been “accused” of being a feminist, Enitan wonders: “Was I? If a woman sneezed in my country, someone would call her a feminist. I’d never looked up the word before, but was there one word to describe how I felt from one day to the next? And should there be?” If Ifemelu in Americanah shares my passion for blogging the African zeitgeist, Enitan is my soul sister. Her coming of age story in Nigeria, Lagos to be precise, often felt like reading my own thoughts. I followed her fictional world often through an all too familiar lens, equally heartbreaking as funny.
3. Sula by Toni Morrisson – Sticking to becoming a feminist, it was not until my early twenties that I started to think of myself as a feminist. To thank, or blame, depending on how you look at it, was a university professor (a white, male one, coincidentally) whose course, Gender Representations in Media, I was taking. His lectures on feminism left me eternally transformed. That sensation – a deep knowing that I was unlikely to ever settle agreeably into the gender roles that society encouraged – was one I’d felt years before when as a teenager I read Sula, only then I didn’t have the word ‘feminist’ readily available. Rereading it now has brought three insights: 1) That there is an essence at our core, our unique observation on humanity, that never changes. We simply (hopefully) become more aware of it with time. I say this because despite that it had been twenty years since I read Sula, much of it had stuck with me. Not just the story line and characters but their very memories, it felt almost like reading an old diary; 2) that to live life fully, especially as a woman, as I wrote in my last post, requires to not fear judgement. Sula’s fearlessness is coupled with her insight. But her life also serves as a warning, of what may happen when the heterosexual, patriarchal order is defied and a woman goes from sex object to sex subject, and; 3) that Toni Morrison is everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
4. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi – ahh, AHH, WOW. Here is a book with beautiful, jazzy sentences that jump at all your senses. Selasi is a wordsmith but don’t let her craftiness mask the other hat she wears, namely that of a teacher. The hidden, confused demands that people nevertheless reveal and rationalise in relationship are difficult to capture but Selasi’s lyrical sentences -however short, and they often are – manage to do just that. Through the lives of The Sai family (Kweku, Fola, Olu, Kehinde, Taiwo, and Sade) we explore relationships, even the ugliness, especially the ugliness actually, but yet their stories carefully reveal that love is efficacious at smoothing out even the most unforgivable memories. This is not an easy process for the Sais, and it isn’t for the reader either. I found myself needing to pause: to listen to the pauses. As one of the characters says, “Between the way things were and when everything changed, a moment within which one notices nothing, about which one remembers all. Which is the point.”
5. The Shadow of Imana by Veronique Tadjo – “Rwanda is inside me, in you, in all of us,” Tadjo writes in The Shadow of Imana, referring by “Rwanda” to the ghastly pogrom whose aftermath she writes about. This quote summarises aptly the delicate search for universal humanness that seems to anchor Tadjo’s story forward. Through recounting stories of people, “ordinary” human beings who are farmers, project managers, teachers and lawyers, but also simultaneously war victims or war criminals, her writing hatches onto something profoundly true, namely that we all are capable of more than we know, both good and bad. Nothing reveals this binding trait of humanness more than the way mundanity exists alongside the atrocity of war. To live, and be determined to live despite having the odds against you, is both a mark of struggle and of victory. The Shadow of Imana is not fiction – unfortunately I might add – but I’ve included it nevertheless as it’s a creative non-fiction or as Tadjo herself says (pdf) about her decision to go to Rwanda to write the book, “We felt it was important to reflect on what had really happened. So we accepted to go there, with the only condition being that we should respond as writers – not like the many journalists or historians who dealt with the genocide, but in our capacity as pure writers.”
6. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna – Let me start by confessing that I found The Memory of Love somewhat laborious to read. It was a slow, dream-like read, ushered not so much by the events and characters as by the language in it. However, the language is jerkingly lucid, and the novel is an odyssey of discovery of a country – Sierra Leone – in post-independence giddiness juxtaposed with post-war dystopia. The Memory of Love is, amongst other things, a story that arouses reflections on African independence, conflict and most of all the borders, both of nations as of love. I read it tempted to attempt to find similarities in all these terminologically diverse yet emotionally related spaces. What similarities exist between the fragmentation of our hearts as of our maps? However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that trying to place love in any theoretical frame can only result in imperfect conclusions. The ‘memory of love’ and the ‘politics of love’ might both be terrains of unity but they are not, necessarily, places or reconciliation.
7. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo – Admittedly, I’ve only just started reading We Need New Names. I am a promiscuous reader and We Need New Names is only one of the many books I’m now dating. I mean reading. So I have not got to the part of the book where the quote I want to end this blogpost with is located. However, it was posted on the pan-African Tumblr, Dynamic Africa, and coincidentally my mum who was reading the book said to me, “Mimmi!” (as she calls me) “you have to hear this,” and proceeded to read to me the following:
Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.
This first novel of Bulawayo’s has been a recipient of Nyong’oesque early career awards and honours and I have a feeling that I will reach the end of ‘New Names’, understanding precisely why this is.
OK, your turn. Have you read any of these books?
Shannon@Reading Has Purpose says
I’ve only read “The Bluest Eye” by Morrison and will read “Song of Solomon” by her next. “Americanah” is high on my priority list now. I read “Purple Hibiscus” and just finished “Half of a Yellow Sun”. I had been intimidated by the length of “Half of a Yellow Sun” but I wanted to finish it before seeing the movie, which was awesome! I soooo loved “The Memory of Love” by Forna. I started reading another of her books and couldn’t get far before losing interest. I will try again with a different novel. The book by Atta is the only one that I had not heard about. I will look into it.
MsAfropolitan says
You are in for a treat! I really enjoyed “Memory of Love” too, it just took me forever to read. I can warmly recommend “The devil that danced on water”, also by Forna. A terrific book. Thanks for the comment 🙂
Doreen says
I’ve read Americanah, Everything Good Will Come, and The Memory of Love. I didn’t like The Memory of Love at all. I really enjoyed Americanah (and almost everything else by Adichie), and I especially could relate to the main character, both discovering race in the States, as well as repatriating (although I didn’t grow up in my country at all, that makes for completely different experiences.) I liked Everything Good Will Come, but I do prefer Attah’s other novel Swallow.
I started reading Ghana Must Go, but couldn’t get into it. I’ll have to give it another go. Someone recommended We Need New Names to me, but these days if a book isn’t available in Kindle format, I won’t be reading it.
Shannon@Reading Has Purpose says
Doreen, I was surprised that you will only read books on Kindle! Everyone I’ve encountered enjoys the convenience of ebooks but still prefers paper. I just started reading my first ebook, ever, a couple of days ago. I can already see I will get used to it quickly. What made you decide that paper books were no longer the way to go?
Doreen says
Hi Shannon,
Of course I prefer paper! But I move around much too frequently to carry physical books everywhere (in the past 7 years, I’ve lived in China, Ghana, Senegal, and England)! Plus a lot of the books I would like to read aren’t available where I am, especially not in English.
MsAfropolitan says
Is “Swallow” her collection of short stories? I think I read it under the title “News From Home’. Great book. Let me know what you think if you do give ‘Ghana Must Go’ another chance. I’m also reading a lot on my kindle nowadays.
Doreen says
“Swallow” is another novel, from 2008.
Barbara says
So I have read all the books you have here and have loved them and their writers for similar reasons and more. Currently I am reading Chinelo Okparanta’s Happiness Like Water- a dizzying collection of short stories about women. The stories are told with an artistry and aplomb that is refreshing and simply orgasmic. Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer is heart breaking and beautiful as is On Black Sisters’ Street. Black women are telling some of the most powerful, transformative and critical stories of our time and they are doing it with such grace, courage, humor and great literary skill!
MsAfropolitan says
I completely agree. i find women’s stories generally are so much more interesting than men’s, and African heritage women have a particular griot-like way of narrating both historical and contemporary settings. Both books you mention are on my reading list. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Oropo. says
What non-fiction are you reading or would you suggest? I have read Boluwayo, Adichie and Attahs’ novels that you listed. I find them revealing. There are channels to cover the distance that exists between worlds. I am looking forward to reading Forna, Selesi and Morrison soon. I am rereading Unigwe’ Night Dancer at the moment.
MsAfropolitan says
Hi Oropo, “revealing”, of what? Nice to see another Unigwe book mentioned here and that you are rereading it means you must have really enjoyed it. As for non-fiction, do you have any particular theme in mind? If you’re interested in gender in African societies, I warmly recommend ‘Engendering African Social Sciences’ https://goo.gl/fp0t5P it’s an oldie but goodie.
stefanie says
I am currently writing my BA-thesis about Adichie’s Americanah and still love reading it! Thank you for your inspiring list of novels!
MsAfropolitan says
Thanks for your comment. A great book to write a thesis on!
Ebele says
Great list and very now – no one seems to read the ‘back catalogue’ anymore ….Bessie Head …Mariama Ba…Flora Nwapa….I loved Toni Morisson’s Song of Solomon
MsAfropolitan says
Hi Ebele, thanks, don’t worry, will do a post on the ‘back catalogue’ soon as many readers been asking 🙂 These just happened to be the books I’ve re/read recently.
Toksyk says
Very surprised to read you didn’t enjoy ‘Everything Good Must Come’ first time round! It is one of my favourite and the best in the list and I got to meet her at a reading in Lagos which only solidified the love and admiration I had for her!
Hated ‘Americanah’ and only finished it because in spite of my dislike of ‘Ifelemu’ Chimamanda does tell a good story. Also did not like ‘Ghana Must Go’ and found her writing style jarring at times. Yet to read ‘Sula’ and ‘In the shadow of Imana’.
‘The Memory of Love’ is another favourite of mine and again got to hear Aminatta Forna read her new book ‘The Handyman’ and talk about this book last year.
Great list overall!
mercy says
Hi,please how can I get this books in Nigeria?shadows of imana,queen poku,far from my father and battle field of love by Veronique Tadjo.I need it for my thesis,thanks
Anas says
#Hullo Ebele
I too always want see myself reading maraima baa works and that of chimamanda especially Americanah.
Ojiah says
Please, I’ve been trying to get two books and I really need them urgently… I’m begging please, I need them for my research work sir.
1.’Daughters who walk this path’ by Yejide Kilanko
2.’On black sisters street’ by Chika Unigwe
Thanks so much, I expect your reply soon boss.