Apocalypse, Now--and the Importance of Naming

I just finished Abani's "Graceland", the first book in my project. Without spoiling the ending, I will say I was surprised with the amount of graphic violence at the conclusion of the novel. Not that the novel has so far been bereft of violence--in fact, this is an underlying theme of the entire book. From the brutality of the army and its corrupt henchmen to the violence of molestation and rape, this novel spans a lot of physical and mental anguish. But the end of the novel is filled with sheer physical terror, and the way Abani describes it makes the pain Elvis and other characters suffer palpable and extremely realistic.

In fact, the end of the novel could truly be described as an Apocalypse of sorts. The corrupt government of Lagos decides to bulldoze poor communities such as the one inhabited by Elvis and his father, and the townspeople decide to fight back, so there is the violence that occurs with this. Then Elvis and his friend Redemption fail in their mission to deliver human organs cross-country as part of their work for the Colonel, a misguided "mob boss" of sorts who has high ranks in the local government. Because they abandon the mission once they realize they will be implicated in the kidnapping and murder of young children for their organs, the Colonel plots to capture and kill them, so they must go into hiding. However Elvis is captured by the Colonel's men and is beaten and tortured until he is just shy of death, only to survive and find his father dead and his town in shambles. All of this physical violence seems to burst forth upon the otherwise more slow-moving and calm narrative in order to jar the readers to attention--and in order to effect a choice that Elvis must make. The Apocalyptic conclusion leaves little room for Elvis to survive in Nigeria. He is a young man torn by the rich tradition of his Igbo heritgae in Nigeria and the democratic and capitalistic promises of life in the United States. His Aunt Felicia has already escaped to start a new life for herself. His father Sunday is not so lucky, and dies at the hands of the bulldozer. Which path will Elvis take? I will leave you to find out.

Another fascinating underlying theme of the novel is its religious parallels and references, which can be seen in the names bestowed upon the main characters. Elivs has the name of an American singer known as "the King", often accused of "stealing" the dance moves of African performers before him and claiming them as his own. This may not be religious in nature, but it is still foreboding of the main character's nature. Elvis has a friend named Redemption, and in the end this is what he helps provide for Elvis. Another main character is the King of the Beggars, often referred to only as the King. This character has obvious allusions to Christ, especially as he is deified in the end of the novel. This is written about the King: "He was spoken of with a deeply profound reverence, and the appendage 'Blessings be upon his name', usually reserved for prophets in Islam, was being used whenver his name was invoked. A group of Rastafarians even claimed he was the Emperor Selassie, Christ himself, the Lion of Judah, returned to lead them home." At the end of the novel Elvis meets a young girl named Blessing who turns out to be a caretaker for him, and a source of love--a definite blessing as her name invokes. At one point Sunday, Elvis' father, fervently talks about the importance of the name. He says, "Do you know we have a lot of deformed children begging? Because their parents know dey have no future. So at birth, before de child knows pain, dey deform it because it increases its earning power as a beggar. Do you see de love? All dey have to give de child is its deformity. All I have to give you is my name, Elvis Oke. And when I die, it will continue to help you build something for your children. Dat's why I don't want you to be a dancer. It will spoil your name." I find this diatribe on love and naming fascinating with its unique perspective. Can violence be perpetrated out of love? Can a name truly affect the outcome of one's life? This quote leaves me wondering.

There are many issues in this novel that I did not really even begin to touch on. There's the explicit sexuality, often dealing with incest and molestation. There is the huge theme of father-son relationships. There is the author's recurring inlcusion of encyclopedic information about herbs, plants, and recipes to play off of the events of the plot. There's the transformation of characters into mythical creatures and ghosts as a means of showcasing the traditional religion and heritage of the Igbo peoples in contrast to the "new" Chrsitianity and capitalism brought over from the West. I hope some of you will go out and read this novel. It will take you to a war-torn Nigeria, a land many of us know little about. It will show you a whole different lifestyle, and yet one that so many can relate to. As I said, there is so much to be discovered and pondered in this novel.

I will leave you with another of my favorite quotes from "Graceland":

"For the Igbo, tradition is fluid, growing. It is an event, like the sunset, or rain, chanigng with every occurrence. So too, the kola ritual has changed. Christian prayers have been added, and Jesus has replaced Obasi as the central deity. But its fluid aspects resist the empiricism that is the Western way, where life is supposed to be a system of codes, like the combinationsof human DNA or the Fibonacci patterns in nature. The Igbo are not reducible to a system of codes, and of meaning; this culture is always reaching for a pure lyric moment."

I like the idea of fluidity beyong conformity to a code, a sort of ineffable nature and way of life that pretty much characterizes this entire novel.

Next up, I am still reading books by Chris Abani--this time, "Becoming Abigail", a more recent work about a young girl sold into slavery in London from Nigeria, and about her escape and way of life. I will keep you posted on this novella. Until next time--

Illogical Logic

So I am now about halfway through Abani's "Graceland" and I am really enjoying it. There is a lot in this book that deals with issues of US imperialism, and the imposition of Eurocentric culture in Nigeria, which I touched on earlier. But something else has been striking me as fascinating, and that is the "illogical logic" used by many of the townspeople in Abani's book. I know this is a confusing term, and a strange paradox. What I mean by "illogical logic" is that there seems to be a running theme of characters justifying actions and behaviors with a sort of skewed logic, yet they are able to make sense of the logic so that it suits them.

Let me give an example. Earlier on in the novel Elvis is on the bus when a car in front of him hits a person. Instead of stopping, however, the bus just rolls over the body. Apparently there are many of these bodies strewn about as pedestrians travel across the town of Lagos by dodging cars and trying to traverse the busy roads, often to their own fatality. Elvis turns to the man next to him and has the following conversation:

Elvis: Why can't we cross with the brdiges? Why do we gamble with our lives?"
Man: My friend, life in Lagos is a gamble, crossing or no crossing.
...
Elvis: If you cross the road without using the overhead bridges, you increase the chances of being hit with a car. Simple logic, really.
Man: So what is your point, my friend? We all have to die sometimes, you know. If it is your time, it is your time. You can be in your bed and die. If it is not your time, you can't die even if you cross de busiest road. After all, you can fall from de bridge into de road, and die. Now isn't dat double foolishness?

With this conversation, perhaps you or I might tend to agree with Elvis' viewpoint of logic. Cross at the bridge, and you have less chances of getting hurt. But the man from Lagos insists on a logic based more on a concept of fate and fatalism than we often embrace in Western cultures. At first it seemed to me like a resignation of sorts. Was this man saying people should resgin themselves to almost certain death? That there is no point in taking care of one's safety? That one should just "give in"? But looking at it from another angle, I can see that to ghim, this is a logical way of thinking. When it is your time, it is your time. And if it is your time, even if you take the "safe" bridge, you will fall to your death. This varies greatly from what we are taught in American culture, which teaches us to "defend personal freedom", and basically to look out for yourself above all else. To me it is a culture centered on the "cult of the individual", whereas here the man is setting faith in a larger picture, where each man is just one part of a greater fate-based scheme. I find this "illogical logic" very interesting, and can also see the truth in what the man is telling Elvis.

Later on, Elivs befriends a man who calls himself the King of the Beggars. Elvis seems to help out many who are less fortunate than him, and they all promise him that they will meet again. The King of Beggars ends up coming into some money, and repaying Elvis for his kind deedof providing him with food one day. One day the King of the Beggars warns Elvis that the cigarettes he is smoking will kill him. However a few minutes later he asks for a cigarette.

Elvis: I thought you didn't smoke.
King: Why? Because I say it is bad? I tink de money you give me is bad, but I take it. You see, Elvis, life is funny thing. Now give me de cigarette.

Again, there is a sort of "illogical logic" here, a paradox where someone says one thing and does another thing contrary to what they have said. Despite that this may not make sense, I can relate to this feeling of claiming to believe one thing but acting in a contrary way. Through such "logic", Abani makes us feel for his characters, and makes their world relatable despite the fact that we may live worlds away, and may never have experienced the Lagos of Elvis' world.

This concept of "illogical logic" reminds me of when I was used to teach in South Central Los Angeles. I taught in a very economically poor area, and yet many of my students would come to school dressed in designer clothing or with the latest cell phones or other technology. Yet their parents often did not have enough money to properly feed them or house them. One may think that such use of money is crazy or completely illogical, yet if you put yourself in their place, you may see it from a different view. In a place where you do not have money and the idea of long term saving seems completely irrelevant, what are you going to spend money on? The culture of now. You live in the present. Maybe you never think you will have a house, or a fancy car. But you can buy the "little things" now. You can have a status symbol. And as strange as that may seem to some, it is another type of "illogical logic" that I can somewhat relate to.

On another note, there are a lot of colloquial sayings in the book that the characters throw back and forth between themselves. A few of my favorites:
Be careful. When a car hits a dog, its puppy is never far behind.
It is better we are all blind, because in de land of de blind, de one-eyed man is mad.
Only a dead man tells everything, only a fool asks.

And I will leave you with one of my favorite conversations between Elvis and his powerful yet dangerous friend Redemption.
Redemption: Dis is why I like Lagos.
Elivs: Why?
Redemption: Because though dey hate us, de rich still have to look at us. Try as dey might, we don't go away.

Until next time...

Whiteface, and the Veil--Impositions or Adaptations?

So far I am truly enjoying "Graceland" by Chris Abani. The plot jumps back and forth in time between 1983 in the slumtown of Lagos and the late 1970s in Afikpo, a wealthier region of Nigeria. Back in Afikpo Elvis, the main character, still had his mom, who hadn't yet died of breast cancer, and his grandmother, who he both feared and loved dearly. His father drank, but still managed life as a functional drunk, even holding a job as superintendent of the school district. However after his mother dies, his family is unable to cope, and his father's drinking becomes out of control. He loses elections for office and moves himself and Elvis to Lagos, where the young boy must adjust to life in the slums. It is there that he decides he wants to dance for tourists to make money, dressing up as Elvis, and dancing.

I never realized when I started the book how it could have so many similarities to the nonfiction book I just finished, "Reading Lolita in Tehran". After all, Nafisi's book takes place in Iran, and Abani's book all the way in Nigeria. However both places are suffering from wars that revolve largely around religion. In Iran, Khomeini establishes Islamic rule, much to the exclusion of other religious minorities and secular constituents, and in Nigeria battles rage between Christians and Muslims. Of course wars have long been religion-based, from the Crusades all the way up until present day, so this similarity does not come as shocking to me.

What did surprise me, however, was the obsession with the West that occurs with the characters in both books. In "Reading Lolita in Tehran", Nafisi discusses this strange phenomenom at length. Her students seem to either blindly reject the West and its "imperialist" and "decadent" culture, or to fantasize about it without considering its shortcomings. Nafisi ponders that both oversimplicfications can be dangerous. At one point, her students put Fitzgerald's "Gatsby" on trial. The prosecutor, a Mr. Nyazi, states, "Our revolution is opposed to the materialism preached by Dr. Fitzgerald. We do not need Western materialisms , or American goods. If anything, we could use their technical know-how, but we MUST reject their morals." Even here there is an ambivalence, a nod to the West's technical know-how, but a rejection of its morals. This trial went on for some time in one of Nafisi's college classes, and this fact alone shows how the youth struggled with this existence, this notion, of the 'Other"-the West. They listened to Michael Jackson, they read Jane Austen--but here they were, in the Islamic Republic, in a very different environment. They could either deify or reject this "Other"-what other choices did they have? They could dream of living this "American lifestyle", or they could spit on it. This either/or mentality seems prevalent in Nafisi's Tehran. You are either Muslim, or secular. You are either pro-Revolution , or anti-change. You either wear the veil, or you are a whore. These are the choices--but when you look deeper, there are choices in-between the exteremes. You can wear the veil, but wear it askew. You can wear red nail polish under your gloves. You can find fault with Gatsby, but also symphasize with him. You can love Iran, and feel that you belong there, but you can also choose to leave--to Canada, like the young Iranian woman Mitra and her husband, to America, like Nafisi and her husband--to the West. Or you can admire the West and still admire Iran--and stay there, like Nafisi's friend "the magician". This either/or is much more complex under the surface of propoganda speak.

In Abani's "Graceland", the locals also obsess over the West. They drink Coca-Cola, they read Entertainment magazine, and they dream of leaving to America. Abani writes, "Elvis mused over his mixed feelings. His fascination with movies and elvis Presley aside, he wasn't really sure he liked America. Now that the people he cared about were going there, he felt more ambivalent than ever." His friend Redemption deifies all things Western, and divulges his plans to go there with an American visa he has obtained. Yet Elvis occupies this middle ground, this in-between the either/or. He grumbles about Lagos, remarking about how crazy it is that so many people die by crossing the streets at the wrong section, and that the government leaves the bodies to rot because the family cannot afford the fine the government charges to pick up the body. Yet Nigeria is his home, the land of the Kola nut, the land of his mother, and his grandmother.

I am also interested in the idea of external imposition, or adaptation. In Nafisi's 'Reading Lolita in Tehran", there is much debate about wearing the veil and the chador. Some women feel that it is their choice to wear it, and they want to wear it out of respect and propriety. But some, like Nafisi, despise the veil, regarding it as an imposition of the Islamic Republic, and one that renders women "Invisilbe" and "irrelvant". In any case one only has to look at the drawings in the graphic novel "Persepolis" (one of my favorites) to see the striking effect of what it looks like when all women wear the veil and chador, so the only part that can be seen is their eyes.

In Abani's "Graceland", a central part of the novel is that Elvis dresses up as the white singer and dancer, even putting talcum powder on his face as a form of whiteface. Early in the novel, Abani writes about Elvis' encounter with a woman at a bustop. He writes, "She paused in front of him, taking in his clothes and wig and talcum powder running in sweaty rivulets down his face. 'Who do dis to you?' she asked. But before he could answer, she turned and walked away laughing." Indeed Elvis has done this to himself--or has he? Like the veil, perhaps some can view this cotume as an external imposition. Yes, Elvis is not required to wear this mask as women are required to wear the veil in the Islamic Republic, but does he really have a choice? How else is he going to make money? Is this an imposition, or an adaptation?

These ideas of the mask, of costume, of personal freedom, of choice--they may seem black and white, but really these issues are extremely complex under the surface. What masks and costumes do we wear here, in the United States, a democratic country? What is our choice, and what isn't?

In any case, I am only a quarter of the way through "Graceland", but these issues were running through my mind. I'll update when I have something to say. Until then--

Recession Reading: Famished for Fiction

I just finished the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran", a memoir about reading, teaching, and relating to "forbidden" fiction in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1970s and 1980s. In the book, author Azar Nafisi writes, "I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possiblity of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts, and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue betweenthe public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desired, hated, feared?"

Nafisi's memoir revolves around reading fiction within the realm of a repressive regime during a very specific time and place in history. However her words about the necessity of imagination and fiction to make us "whole" span a boundless time/space continuum. People have needed fiction as a means of survival and growth throughout history, and this does not change today. Here in the United States we are living during a recession, a time of political and economic uncertainty. Unemployment is at 7.6 percent, a high of sixteen years. People are scared. But we still have fiction. We still have that other imaginary world. And like others before and after us, we need to turn to this private world as both a means of self-evaluation and reflection, and as a means of escape.

I have always loved to read and write, especially fiction. I graduated with a degree in Literature and Writing, and continue to read whenever I can. However whenever I come to the end of one book, I almost always have trouble selecting a new one. Should I read one of the classics I never read? A new up-and-coming author? A novel of the avant-garde? So, I have decided to end that problem. I have decided to read all of the fiction books in the fiction section of a local bookstore in Los Angeles, in alphabetical order of the author's last name--hence, The AlphaBook Project.

Since I graduated I have been missing the frequent discussion of books that I used to have with classmates and professors. I am not sure if anybody will read this blog, but I have decided to post about the books I am reading. Hopefully people will join in with comments and thoughts, and discussion will ensue. In the very least, I will get a chance to "think out loud" about many other imaginative worlds that I'm excited to encounter. I'm not sure how often I'll post, or what I'll post about. I'm not giving myself any guidelines other than the main goal of the project because I want this to be enjoyable. I may not have money, I may be in debt, I may have a lot of uncertainty in life right now. But as Azar Nafisi affirms, I always have my other "world", this imaginary space that I can indulge in. And, like many others today, I am famished for fiction.

First up: "Graceland" by Chris Abani. After reading the back of the book, I learned that the author, Abani, is from Nigeria, and he published his first novel there at the age of sixteen. Since he suffered a lot of persecution for it, however, he went into exile in England and the United States, and now lives in Los Angeles. The book is about Elvis, a poor teenage boy in Lagos, Nigeria in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who makes money by impersonating Elvis in hopes of getting out of the ghetto. Sounds interesting. I'll keep you posted.