Nigerian Third - Generation Writers

1. Nigerian Third- Generation Writers Joyce Chen and Kate Liu, Fall, 2009

2. Outline • A. Igbo Culture • Family • Marriage • mother • Traditional belief • Mask • Chi • New Yam festival • Superstition • Twins • Osu • B. Nigerian third- generation in the modern cities • Diaspora & Urban experience • National identity vs. Cultural identity Joyce

3. Outline C. War Games I. Introd. • Cheche — the Nigerian version of Midnight’s Children • Ethnic rivalry in the North • History seen from a child’s perspective • Cheche’s experience of the war • Cheche’s experience of folk tradition D. “The Grief of Strangers” • race and gender in a global city • Diaspora and Family • trauma Next week

4. Igbo culture: Family • Marriage • Polygamy • Bride-price • Importance of being a mother • Storytelling, songs, and myths • Nneka—Mother is supreme (TFA 133) Joyce Nneka (singer) http://www.wretch.cc/blog/shadowboxer/32741358 “Africans” (YouTube from To and Fro)

5. Residence Pattern of an Igbo Family

6. Igbo culture: Traditional belief • Mask • New Yam Festival • Chi • “when a man says yes his chi says yes also.” (TFA 27) • “man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi.” (TFA 131) Joyce Zaouli(Gouro Dance Mask) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP9LeBXKZnU

7. Igbo culture: superstition • Twins killing • The twins were abandoned to a death by exposure immediately after they were born. The women gave birth to twins are usually abominated . (TFA 151) • Osu (outcast) • They are living sacrifice to the deities of the Igbo. They live in a special section of the village and are forbidden to marry a free person or cut their hair. They are to be buried in the Evil Forest when they die. (TFA 156) Joyce

8. Nigerian third generation: Diaspora & Urban experience Young writers’ works are • Less “authentically” Nigerian, but with more global cultures? • Less political but more personal? • “Nigerian” writers in global cities? • e.g. Adichie’s short stories-- deal with Nigerian immigrants’ experience of hardship in the United States and England. Joyce

9. Nigerian third generation: National identity vs. Cultural identity • “[All] third-world texts are necessarily . . . allegorical, and in a very specific way they are to be read as what I will call national allegories.’’ (Fredric Jameson, 69) • The roles of “dibia” – in Half of a Yellow Sun • Cheche’s “localization” in War Games Joyce

10. War Games A Child’s Experience of War-Time Conflicts

11. Dulue Mbachu (1961~) • Writer and Journalist (articles written by him) • set up The New Gong publishing house to publish the African Writers Series • "After a war is fought, the victors immediately write their history. But it takes a while for the victims to find their voice and tell their own side story.” (source)

12. War Games: Chaps 1 – 4 • City Life: Happy childhood (mixed with miracle, dance, sweets and an episode of being bullied) • Village Amafor: Going to Amafor, getting to know Grandfather • Amafor  Umuahia: Cheche’s experience of the war • Amafor: Cheche’s getting to know Amafor and its rituals

13. War Games: The first 4 Chaps and the Novel • Is the presentation of the village life distracting from the novel’s real focus? • 1/3 of the novel: Che Che’s playing with friends, revels in various ceremonies. “less interesting than the rest of the book. In fact, since the book is so clearly about the Biafran War, they are annoying. (HAWLEY 19)

14. War Games: The first 4 Chaps and the rest of the Novel • The war in the context of the conflicts • between traditional and modern/colonial cultures (in terms of religions, northern Igbo people and Shaw-Shaw people), • Between Hausa and Igbo people, -- Aren’t the rituals (Catholic or traditional) all games, of one kind or another? • The experience of survival (“eat as much as you can”) and being a “rebel” or non-conformist.

15. Questions • How do you relate to Cheche’s stories (about childhood, the Biafra war and the Igbo rituals)? Do you find anything similar in your own life or culture? • What do you think about the narrator, his mixture of an adult and child perspectives? • How is Igbo’s folk tradition represented first through the Grandfather, and then the rituals?

16. The Happy Childhood in the City • Cheche -- the center of the extended family’s and the tenants’ attention (3) • Experience: • miracle of singing and dancing vs. being bullied (6-7) • education – experience of racism, using Hausa songs on Shaw-Shaw people (10) • market and Papa’s shop • dance

17. The Happy Childhood in the City • His understanding as a child: • Mother/Father: attached to the mother (2), see grandfather as twice as big • the world as “a bumpy place” (4) • Genealogy // identity – born 3 months after the birth of the nation “only those younger than a country can belong to it” (10)  chap 3 (p. 34) • Names – wants to use father’s name as his surname. • A cloud watcher (13); Papa’s shop, diasppointing • Later understanding • the role of money in the priests’ blessing. (5)

18. History Seen from a Child’s Perspective • pp. 16-17 (chap 2): lack of comprehension– • parties –different from the birthday parties. • why were Igbos singled out as the common enemy. “a meeting somewhere?” • pp. 28 – 29 (chap 3): sorrow and indignation over deaths-- Gowon vs. Ojukwu (Johnson T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi - Nigerian general); pogrom and programme • pp. 33-34 (chap 3): – nationalism (later: egg-rusher payment 171) • The boy– witnessingor hearing about deaths: a pregnant woman 17;30

19. Chapter 2: Cheche’s surprise at seeing Grandpa • Shaw-Shaw house and the Grandpa of the Shaw-Shaw p. 23-24 • Odukwe Compound –obu for men and boys, ohwo for the wives. • Obu house (source)

20. Cheche vs. Shaw-Shaw people • P. 10 exaggerates their nakedness and poverty • pp. 19-20 thinks their houses too small •  Igbo farmers also naked!!! p. 22; • (later understanding) p. 23 Shaw-Shaw people made fun of because they used leaves instead of clothes to cover their nakedness. But ...

21. Cheche vs. Grandfather • A mask depicting a dibia (healer) (source) 1) In conflict with their Catholic belief (e.g. the chicken 25) 2) Grandpa vs. the radio – 27 3) (chap 4) p. 41 –with magic power –descending from the sky, passing as a pregnant woman

22. The War Experience of the war – • Sympathizes with Mama’s fears (pp. 18-) Worries over Papa, the neighbors’ secret pleasure • Tales of the survivors – brutal killings, rescue or betrayal of the neighbors (30); • e.g. Papa’s being rescued by Paradang (who was not particularly friendly) and betrayed by a friendly tenant. • The adults’ excitement over the nationalist war • Air raids – Mama’s responses (36-37)

23. Chap 4: Embracing Amafor • Cheche –ready to accept Amafor (Grandpa, and the environment); • becoming a village boy, • not wearing slippers or a shirt. p. 42 • fighting bigger girls at their weaker spots p. 43

24. Ritual (1): Cleansing • pp. 43-45 • vindicated if the villagers’ response is “lyaa” or “Ooooh!”; condemned if they are silent. • e.g. Esoniru (poisoning people, including his wife); Ekwegbe (killing young boys) • What do you think about this cleansing ritual? Why do the people die after being condemned in public? • The rule of the Majority – may not be justified

25. Ritual (2): Masked Spirit (Egwugwu) Joyce

26. Ritual (2): Masked Spirit in the Ogwugwu festival • (Ogwugwu--ogwugwu is the strongest deity in Nigeria. The deity is more than 300 years old. sited in the eastern part of Nigeria.) • Masked spirits – as sprinters 短跑者, as dancers, inflicting diseases on others (46) • Feast, race (taunting the spirits and escaping their whipping) and dance of the spirits

27. Ritual (2): Masked Spirit in the Ogwugwu festival • Echi-Eteka –tomorrow is too far (51) • The song “Respect yourself… Medicine man/ Stop divinating for me/ The one you’re divinating for/ Understands the mysteries better than you do…. Meaning? A rite of passage for the boys  later he becomes one of the altar boys.

28. Biafra war and its related conflicts From War GamestoHalf of a Yellow Sunto“The Grief of Strangers” A child’s experience (cityvillage) adults’ experiences (traumatized; village  city) Immigrants experiencing social degradation and even trauma (in a Western city)

29. "The Grief of Strangers " (2004) President George W. Bush (address to a joint session of Congress on 20 September 2001): We have seen the state of our union in the endurance of rescuers working past exhaustion. We've seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers in English. Hebrew and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own. Can it be shared?

30. "The Grief of Strangers" • Central story: Ikeadi, Chinechelum’s boyfriend, gets shot by three policemen outside his apartment, which gets him paralyzed. • Two Chinechelum’s: the cold and cynical one, and the one who tries to be “normal.” • Q: Does she get over her trauma? Or in what way she does it partially? • Like “Her Mother,” this is another mother-daughter story in which the mother tries to hook up the daughter with a man. This one, however, is told from the daughter’s perspective and the daughter is more traumatized than the one in “Her Mother”. . . .

31. Gender and Race Relations; Immigrants with a Traumatic Past • Diaspora’s Family Relations: How does Chinechelum relate to her relatives and friends (including her mother, Amara, Neville Lipton and Odin)? • Trauma: • Why does she cry over some strangers’ stories? What do they have in common? • Why does she tell Ikeadi’s story not to Odin, but to Neville? • What do you think about the ending? Why does she feel freed? Why does she see herself as a woman who “long[s] for spontaneity, for realness, for a connection that was unchoreographed, such as meeting strangers in a Starbucks cafe” (81).

32. The Mothers and their Children • The mother: 'When you get to London, biko, try and talk normally to Odin.' • Chinechelum: speechless • Aunty Ngolika: 'But you can easily relocate, it shouldn't be a problem.' • Chinechelum: wanted to ask why but didn’t • Amara – tolerant of Johnny’s disobedience; sees a man she’d never look at in N (London is a “leveler”) (69).

33. Gender & Race Relations Still unequaland stereotyping • Amara – against West Indian women (“These West Indian women are taking our men and our men are stupid enough to follow them.”) • Odin – N. men can sleep around but their women can’t (74) • Chinechilum – called “a dusk beauty” at the Traveller's Club.

34. Chinechelum: Traumatized • Cold and numb: • She feels numbness for 9 years, while her family’s anger gets “diluted’ (71) • With Amara-- “'You look like a bad fake of some sort of doll.'” • Not completely self-enclosed • Remembers her and Amara’s life in Nigeria • The mother’s letter

35. Chinechelum: Traumatized • Cries over ‘strangers’ grief • The family about to be separated (68) • The Pakistani woman and the little boy: their grief “so lacquered by activities and muffins and arguments” (73).

36. Chinechelum: Facing the Past in the Present • In front of Neville – why? • Neville – “Africans aren't [so touchy on the issues of race], unless of course they've lived in America.' ” • Chinechelum • Starts to talk about Ikeadi to a most undeserving man. • feels exhilarated. A sense of release—that she can face it.

37. Why not with Odin? • Tries to sound “normal” with Odin • “You’re not too bad yourself’ (74) • distanced: when O holds her hands … she feels that there’s “something generic about the scene; it could have been any other woman with him, any other educated Nigerian woman, resident abroad, thirty years and above, looking for a man. It didn't have to be her. ” • Can relate to the grief of strangers, but no longer cries. • Appreciates the spontaneous connections made with strangers.

38. Reference • http://www.igboguide.org/index.php?l=chapter9 • G. I. Jones Photographic Archive of Southeastern Nigerian Art and Culture. <http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/jmccall/jones/> • Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print. • Adesanmi, Pius and Chris Dunton. “Introduction— Everything Good is Raining: Provisional Notes on the Nigerian Novel of the Third Generation.” Research in African Literatures 39.2 (2008): vii-xii. Print. • ---. “Nigeria’s Third Generation Writing: Historiography and Preliminary Theoretical Considerations.” English in Africa 32.1(2005): 7-19. Print. • Hawley, John C. “Biafra as Heritage and Symbol: Adichie, Mbachu, and Iweala.” Research in african literatures, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer 2008): 15-26. • Jameson, Frederic. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (Fall 1986): 65-88. Print.

39. Next Week • Nadine Gordimer "Amnesty" • The week after next: two stories by Njabulo S. Ndebele • Dropping Nadine Gordimer  "Six Feet of the Country"