C’est le mardi 8 Septembre 2020, un après-midi nuageux dans le quartier Matongé de Bruxelles que nous avons le plaisir de parler avec Celestina Jorge Vindes, propriétaire de Pépite Blues. Pépite Blues, qui se trouve à la rue Anoul 30, est une librairie et un espace culturel où les afro-littératures sont mises à l’honneur. Celestina Jorge Vindes nous accueille et nous répond généreusement et profondément quand on l’interroge sur cette librairie et espace culturel qui incarne beaucoup d’intentions.

 

Pourquoi cette librairie? Quelle est son importance et quelles sont ses origines ?

Ça remonte au fait d’aimer la littérature et que de ne pas retrouver des livres que l’on a envie de lire dans les autres librairies ; en tout cas pas autant qu’on en a envie et pas dans la lumière dans laquelle on a envie de les voir. C’est l’amour de la littérature. Mais aussi l’idée qu’il y avait des histoires et des vies qui n’étaient pas représentées dans notre espace public et avec la conviction profonde que c’est aussi une partie de nous. Ce n’est pas comme des histoires exotiques que j’avais envie de ramener ici. Ce sont nos histoires et nos vies que j’avais envie de mettre à côté des autres histoires et des autres vies ici. Je pense que c’est un besoin qui est ressenti par de plus en plus de monde. En tout cas, moi, j’ai créé l’espace dans lequel j’aurais aimé aller, voilà.

Il y a surement beaucoup qui ont ressenti ce manque mais qu’est-ce qui vous a poussé à prendre initiative et ouvrir la librairie ?

Je pense que beaucoup de gens ressentent cette absence dans l’espace public mais je crois que chacun le ressent selon sa sensibilité. Ma sensibilité c’était la littérature. Et je pense que la littérature est un moyen par lequel on se rencontre et on fait connaissance et donc lire ou écrire ce n’est pas seulement un rapport aux mots – évidemment plus les mots sont beaux mieux c’est – mais ce n’est pas juste des jolis mots. Ce sont des expériences, ce sont des imaginaires, c’est un rapport au monde. J’avais envie et besoin de partager les univers littéraires et pensées issus de l’Afrique et de ses diasporas. Il y a pour moi comme une  nécessité à cela. Ni un luxe, ni un privilège et encore moins quelque chose de superflu.

Et, cette librairie est pour qui ?

Là, c’est une bonne question et je suis heureuse que vous me la posiez parce qu’en un an et demi que personne ne me l’a jamais posé. Parfois moi je prends l’initiative de le dire, mais en fait, c’est pour tout le monde (rit). Pour tout le monde. Pour toute personne qui pense que les gens ne vivent pas dans un monde à part. Tous ceux qui pensent qu’on peut construire un monde ensemble et qu’il n’y a pas plusieurs mondes parallèles. Il peut y avoir des mondes parallèles, mais les conséquences de ces mondes parallèles seront quand-même collectives. Et à partir d’un moment, il faut qu’on ait des espaces où se rejoignent nos différents mondes. On y gagne tous, certains y gagnent à se connaître un peu plus eux-mêmes, à voir leur reflet dans le miroir. Et d’autres y gagnent à connaître un peu plus d’autres personnes et de découvrir que ce qu’ils pensaient ne pas être leur reflet dans le miroir, l’est aussi en fait. C’est une question d’identité. L’identité, moi j’aime bien ce mot parce que – et je crois qu’on oublie toujours – il y a deux parties dans ce mot : il y a le même et l’autre. Donc, c’est pour tout le monde.

Qui sont les clients ?

Concrètement c’est tout le monde. C’était le but et je suis heureuse. Il y a aussi beaucoup de jeunes – des jeunes des tous les horizons. C’est quelque chose qui me plait. Quand je disais que j’avais envie d’être dans un lieu comme ça, ce n’est pas seulement moi en tant que femme noire, c’est tout autant qu’en tant Belge et ainsi de suite.

Pouvez-vous nous parler de la philosophie derrière la sélection de votre catalogue ?

Il y a deux choses auxquelles je fais attention. La première est évidemment qu’il y ait de la diversité de genre : qu’il y ait des livres d’art, les livres enfants, des albums jeunesses, de sociologie, de philosophie, des romans etc.. L’autre critère : ce ne sont pas nécessairement des livres avec lesquels je vais être toujours d’accord. Ça c’est très important pour moi qu’il y ait aussi de la diversité d’avis. Mais, quand même pas quelque chose qui véhicule quelque chose de négatif comme des stéréotypes. Ça c’est quelque chose qui me fatigue. Si ce mot n’était pas aussi chargé aujourd’hui, j’aurai dit que la perspective décoloniale est très importante pour moi. Mais, ce mot est tellement chargé aujourd’hui qu’on ne sait pas ce que les gens mettent dedans. Pour moi, décoloniale c’est tout ce qui déconstruit les rapports de domination qui partent de l’époque coloniale. C’est vraiment cette idée de déconstruction qui m’intéresse, dans le sens où on fait partie d’un monde qu’on pensait donné, qu’on pensait évident et puis on est mené à questionner toutes ces évidences, tout ce que nous croyons. Mais, je n’ai pas besoin d’être d’accord avec tous. Mais, j’ai besoin quand même qu’il y ait une dimension de recherche et de la construction de quelque chose. Et déconstruire pour moi ce n’est pas détruire. C’est questionner pour reconstruire quelque chose d’autre, quelque chose de mieux, de souhaitable.

Que voulez-vous dire par le fait que le mot ‘décolonial’ est très chargé? Qu’est-ce que vous mettez dans ‘décoloniale’ ?

Le fait colonial est une manière de vivre dans ce monde avec une certaine domination – après que vous appeliez ça coloniale, ou que vous appeliez cela autrement – c’est ce type domination qu’il faut renverser. Je ne vois pas ce qu’il y a comme avantage de vivre dans un monde – pour qui que ce soit : pour les blancs et les non-blancs – je ne vois pas quel avantage il y aurait de vivre dans un monde colonial. Parce qu’il n’y a pas de sécurité pour personne dans ce monde-là. Il n’y a de paix pour personne dans ce monde-là. Donc, moi, je pense qu’on se méprend sur le terme ‘décolonial’ qui est de croire les peuples tenus pour subalternes veulent prendre le dessus ou se venger de l’histoire.  C’est le souhait de vivre en égaux, et surtout que leur humanité et leurs droits ne soient plus questionnés ou remis en cause. L’idée est donc de  justement proposer un monde avec plus de justice. Décoloniser les sociétés, les imaginaires, c’est pour mieux penser la justice sociale.

Est-ce que vous faites des collaborations ?

Ça dépends. Cela arrive que je travaille avec des organisations, des associations, quelques institutions. Ça dépend. Là, par exemple, j’ai réalisé un événement la semaine dernière avec Malcolm Ferdinand autour de son livre Une Écologie Décoloniale – excellent ce bouquin ! Un livre très très très très important, vraiment. Je l’ai organisé en collaboration avec Présence et Actions Culturelles. Donc, quand je pense que ce sont des institutions ou des organisations qui sont en convergence avec ce monde commun que j’essaie de construire, avec grand plaisir. Mais bon, au fil des ans, j’ai aussi décidé de choisir mes partenaires. Au début, en tout cas, j’avais un côté un peu naïf: me disant si quelqu’un travaille sur ces questions-là, c’est que forcément il y a aussi cet horizon de justice sociale. Mais en fait, ce n’était pas tout à fait le cas. Maintenant je prends un peu plus le temps de connaitre les institutions avec lesquelles je travaille.

Pouvez-vous nous parler du pourquoi vous avez consacré autant d’attention et d’espace pour la sélection jeunesse ?

Oui. C’est l’une des sections – alors, elles sont toutes importantes, toutes les sections me sont chères – mais le rayon jeunesse m’est particulièrement cher. Je vais vous donner un exemple. Une fois – donc, ça fait un petit moment que j’ouvre à midi, mais auparavant, j’ouvrais à 11 h. Une fois, j’arrive ici le matin, je suis arrivée à 9 h parce qu’il m’arrive de venir un peu plus tôt et puis j’ai trouvé une dame qui attendait-là alors que j’ouvre deux heures plus tard. Elle est entrée en trombe, elle m’a dit : “est-ce que vous avez une section enfants?” Elle voulait prendre plein de livres. Et donc, je lui ai demandé un petit peu, car j’aime bien discuter avec les gens et elle m’a dit qu’avec sa petite fille, elles avaient pris un livre à la bibliothèque et il y avait une noire dans ce livre. Et comme c’était la première fois, sa petite fille de deux ans a eu peur. Donc, ça dit un peu quelque chose, je pense que le fait de se voir, ou ne pas se voir dans l’espace public construit des imaginaires différemment. Qu’est ce qui peut bien se passer pour qu’elle ait peur ? Ça dit quand même quelque chose. On parlait tout à l’heure de visibilité : d’absence, de présence. Ça dit quelque chose quand même. Cette mère est super, elle emmène son enfant à la bibliothèque. Et pour une fois qu’elle voit un noir dans un livre, elle dit “Géniale! Je vais prendre”, sa petite fille a peur. Voilà, il y a ça. Et puis, je pense que le fait de se voir permet de se construire. On a besoin encore du semblable et du différent, même quand on construit son identité. Ça permet aussi de ne pas être étonné quand, un jour, si son médecin est noir, le petit garçon blanc ne va pas être aussi étonné parce qu’il l’a vu dans un livre. Ce serait normal. Beaucoup de personnes adultes doivent se déconstruire, mais les enfants doivent se construire. Et donc, ma section jeunesse, c’est pour accompagner, donner et mettre sa petite pierre à l’édifice dans la construction des enfants de notre société.

Donc, pour vous, les livres créent des mondes et des possibilités ?

Exactement. J’aime bien le mot ‘possibilités’. C’est très drôle parce que c’est un mot que j’aime beaucoup utiliser. C’est vraiment ça. C’est ouvrir. Ça ouvre le monde, en fait, ça l’élargit.

Comment observez-vous les gens utiliser l’espace de la librairie ?

J’aime bien l’idée de ‘maison’. Il y a deux choses : au début, pendant presque une année, j’ai déjà eu des personnes qui sont rentrées ici en pleurant. Des adultes. Ça me rendait aussi émue. C’était de se dire on avait un espace qu’aurais jamais cru avoir. Et du coup, ça me rendait si émue. Et puis aussi, la deuxième partie, c’est de voir combien de personnes, celles qui viennent de plus en plus ou celles qui ne viennent pas, m’appellent pendant le COVID. “Qu’est-ce qu’on doit faire ?” “Qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire ?” “Est-ce qu’on doit donner de l’argent ? Et on viendra chercher des livres après ? Histoire que la librairie tienne.” “Si tu as besoin d’aide, appelle.” C’est vraiment devenu une communauté de la librairie. C’est notre librairie. Et moi, j’ai envie que les gens se l’approprient. J’aime bien l’idée aussi que quand on vient ici, on ose poser des questions. J’ai déjà été dans des espaces où on est mal à l’aise de poser certaines questions. Ici, parfois, il y a des débats où il y a des gens qui ne sont pas d’accord, y en a qui sont d’accord et on le dit et on en discute. Et ça, c’est très important pour moi qu’on se sente suffisamment à l’aise et suffisamment bien, qu’il y ait cette idée de maison, communauté de la librairie et une communauté très diverse, pas une communauté homogène. J’aime le fait que les gens s’approprient l’espace. Je n’ai pas spécialement envie moi d’incarner cette librairie. J’ai envie que, justement, cette communauté l’incarne. Le fait de partager tout ça, c’est de partager une vision du monde, mais aussi des visions des gens qui nous ont précédés.

Comment avez-vous vécu le confinement et la fermeture des librairies dû à la pandémie du COVID-19 ?

J’ai essayé de stresser le moins possible. Honnêtement, plus que le matériel, c’est vraiment les personnes. Les personnes me disent : “Écoute, si tu as des problèmes, nous sommes là. On va venir renflouer les caisses et ensuite on viendra, on verra sur le long terme, on ira chercher les livres.” Rien que ça. Ou “comment tu vas?” ou “est-ce que tu as besoin de quelque chose pour la librairie ? Nous sommes là”. Rien que ça. C’est ce qui m’a permis de ne pas trop m’inquiéter. D’où le fait que je disais que c’est une communauté de la librairie. Et encore une fois, ça venait vraiment de tous les côtés. Ça m’a beaucoup touchée. C’était beau, un beau monde.

Quelles sont vos souhaits, votre vision pour le futur de l’espace ?

L’espace n’a pas encore son format définitif. Je voudrais une partie néerlandaise, et anglophone plus grande que celle que j’ai. Elle a commencé à grandir. Maintenant, il y en a suffisamment pour que je commence à les introduire sur les autres étagères. Donc, ça, c’est le souhait à court terme qui fait partie vraiment de la constitution de la librairie parce que l’idée aussi était celle-là : néerlandais, anglais, français. Je me suis dit on est quand même à Bruxelles, en Belgique et que finalement, le monde commun c’était aussi ça ? J’ai envie, évidemment, que tout le monde se sente le bienvenu. Et qu’il y ait aussi plus de livres en langues africaines – ça, c’est aussi quelque chose sur laquelle je travaille. Pour l’instant, on a une maison d’édition Belge qui travaille dans des langues congolaises. Ça, c’est super, mais je voudrais en avoir plus ; d’avoir toutes ces langues aussi, c’est quelque chose qui fait partie intégrante du projet. Et vraiment, continuer de recevoir des auteurs. Jusqu’à présent, il n’y a pas un seul auteur que je peux dire “Celui-là, c’était génial et l’autre un peu moins.” Tous, tous, tous m’ont emporté. C’était à chaque fois des tourbillons. C’était des gens entiers en termes d’engagement et d’idées. C’était à chaque fois très riche. J’ai hâte que ça continue. C’est vraiment quelque chose que j’ai envie de plus en plus de vivre – et pas seulement de le vivre, de le partager aussi. Du coup, voilà ça, ce sont les perspectives pour l’instant.

Merci pour la générosité !

Merci d’être venues !

Pépite Blues, rue Anoul 30, Ixelles (Bruxelles)

Adja Sy & Amber Frateur (diplômées en études africaines à l’université de Gand)

Ameera Patel’s Outside the Lines, situated in contemporary Johannesburg, South Africa is a raw depiction of the intermeshed nature of political and personal realities and the human connections, dreams, aspirations of choice and self-alienation that exist in their gaps and fissures. The author dexterously manages a seamless storytelling experience despite the ever-shifting narrative voices that flit between the consciousness of five characters from three different races, each having their own religious affiliations and emotional baggages that constitute their psychological interiority.

Cathleen Joseph is an embodiment of the typical, white teenage angst that one has come to identify with the iconic representation of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. This is delineated right in the beginning of the novel when Cathleen surveys a bar and the narrative voice nonchalantly remarks, “The girls in line are all dressed the same. They’re everything that’s wrong with the world. Identical and scratching away at their individuality to become one pus-filled blob.”

On the other hand, Cathleen’s nuanced character portrayal and her bone-chilling encounter with the world of crime, courtesy of her drug addiction, become a commentary on her father, Frank Joseph’s, inadequate parenting and the dysfunctional family dynamics that they find themselves in after the loss of Cathleen’s mother and their deteriorating financial circumstances.

Flora, the Zulu maid of the Josephs, is a finely etched character who finds herself straddling the choices she has made and the ones that have been denied to her owing to her race, class and gender. Her attraction to the newly recruited, mute painter Runyararo, often compels her to re-assess her disempowered status as the single mother of a teenage boy, while inhabiting a small room filled with Josephs’ castoffs in a deserted corner of their house.

Runyararo, who has recently arrived at Johannesburg from Zimbabwe to find work and send money to his family back home, is representative of immigrant marginalization. Occupying the lowest social rung renders him susceptible to exploitation in a society where the gap between the haves and the have nots is openly brazen.

Farhana, an Indian Muslim girl whose romantic involvement with Flora’s son Zilindile results in pre-marital pregnancy, struggles to mentally and emotionally liberate herself from the reins of patriarchal tutelage as she embarks on a future ridden with uncertainties.

Lies, subterfuge and a sheer stroke of bad luck, inextricably intertwine these five lives, leaving the characters to make sense of a reality that is slowly slipping out of  their hands, one moment at a time.

Representing inter-racial and cross-cultural relationships, this genre-agnostic novel is an amalgamation of dark comedy, domestic saga, and crime thriller. It deploys the lens of intersectionality to explore the vulnerability of each character as their everyday lives unwittingly become fraught with crime, leading to an emotional paralysis they are not equipped to handle. Apart from rare moments of reverie, a sense of tragic inevitability hovers over the universe of the novel.

All the characters seem to be caught in an uncomfortable zone characterized by indecisiveness and yearning for oblivion. Patel’s middle-aged characters – Frank Joseph, Flora, and Farhana’s mother, Mrs. Bhamjee – are single parents, and find themselves trapped between the clashing cultures and alternating perspectives created by changes in their financial states and geographical relocations.

The exigencies of living compel them to travel to unchartered domains in an era where there is a constant battle between cultural standardization and heterogenization. They are expected to carry the burden of this disharmony as they try to grapple with newly available opportunities, while the traditional hierarchies of class, gender and race lurk in the background and manifest themselves in insidious forms.

Their children, Cathleen, Zilindile and Farhana, are partly haunted by the choices of their parents and seem to be claustrophobically stuck in a never-ending cycle of repression, both as perpetrators and victims. For all their purgatorial experiences, there is a conspicuous lack of self-awareness and failure to confront the crisis at hand.

Given the predetermined nature of the novel’s universe and the pessimistic tenor of the narrative voices, it is not surprising that the novel ends as it begins, with the protagonists’ failure to probe deeper into the overwhelming chaos or their persistent and almost unconscious desire to latch onto the current state of affairs.

Patel refrains from maudlinism and the characters’ tragic trajectories are represented in a visceral manner without any attempt to poeticize or render their grief aesthetically appetizing for easy consumption. In fact, baser human instincts and cruder impulses are vividly portrayed in the storyline, which not only adds to the verisimilitude of the narrative, but makes it blatant that there will not be an easy, cathartic exit for readers after finishing the novel. These characters will live on and take a life of their own in readers’ minds.

Outside the Lines (2020), Pacifica, CA: Catalyst Press, 164 pages (Originally published by Modjaji Books in 2016)

Aneesha Puri (Jesus and Mary College, Chanakyapuri, Delhi University, India.)

(This review was originally published on The Mantle platform, September 2, 2020)

A good writer can always imagine stories about a place she has never been to. However, for certain stories to get to the heart of the matter, the writer must know her setting and characters enough to understand their motives, to sympathetically portray their impulses, and to accurately capture their “raison d’être”. When such writers explore characters, they do so with an uncommon depth of insight that reveals desires buried beneath the surface of day to day existence. In this connection, Chika Unigwe is a writer who is no stranger to the plights of Nigerians in Europe. In her much-acclaimed novel, On Black Sisters Street, she reveals the complex and pathetic tales of Nigerian women in Belgium as they struggle to make ends meet by commodifying their bodies as prostitutes. As if extending the scope of her narrative beyond the ordeal of women of pleasure, Better Never than Late presents Nigerians of different backgrounds in Europe and how many of them remain trapped in condescending situations that ridicule their initial dreams of finding a greener pasture in Europe. She also features some stories set in Nigeria, showing some of the conditions and mindsets that plague women in Africa. Fragile masculinity, unfulfilled feminine desires, and nostalgia for home are some of the motifs explored in the stories that make up this collection.

Better Never than Late tells stories of Nigerians in Belgium.
The collection of stories – some of which are not entirely related – appears blunt, unpretentious but equally compassionate in its treatment of the Nigerian immigrant conditions in Belgium. It tears the veil of the utopic conception of Europe by many aspiring Nigerians as a place of extreme wealth and prosperity; a kind of “sugar Candy Mountain” where dreams come true. By describing several instances of dashed illusions, unexpected nostalgia, and almost suffocating loneliness, Unigwe shows that life in Europe is not always a bed of roses. It also reveals that life is complex, refusing dualities like black and white, good and bad, wise and stupid, rich and poor. Rather, the stories in this collection show an unexpected mix of competences, virtues and negative traits. Like the reversed common saying that is the title of this collection, the stories invite us to re-examine our definition of good, bad and ugly. The strength of many stories is in the drawing of virtues from historically forbidden places, in their positions that seem to echo the thought that to never have done something sometimes – in practice- holds more virtue than to have attempted them late.

In the first story, “The Transfiguration of Rapu”, Unigwe presents the existential drama of Nigerian men in psychological torment over paper-wives and real wives while trying desperately to become permanent residents in Europe. “Paper wives” are usually Belgian or other European citizens that these men marry to secure European citizenship. These are usually meant to be temporary arrangements, with the real wives always in the pipeline. The paper wives are however often ignorant of their true positions until it becomes too late to change the situation. In this particular story, Unigwe shows how the complexity of bringing in a Nigerian wife while trying to find the best moment to break the heart of the Belgian wife often backfires. Rapu, who is the real wife, in this case, cannot live freely with her husband until he has divorced his Belgian paper- wife and paid off Shylock, who helped in bringing Rapu from Nigeria. Rapu must live with Shylock and wait patiently for her husband to find a perfect timing to divorce his paper wife. But what Unigwe does in this story is to show the complexity of these arrangements: paper wives do not easily let go and staying married to a woman strictly for papers is almost impossible. Staying under the same roof, having a baby together, going on trips together can breed unexpected emotions which Nigerian men do not always want to own up to. In this particular story we see Hilde, the paper wife, becoming more than an arrangement in Gwachi’s life. While Gwachi, Rapu’s husband criticizes Hilde’s European lifestyle among his Nigerian friends, he secretly enjoys doing things with Hilde. When he finally announces his impending divorce to Hilde, Rapu, his Nigerian wife also finds love in someone else and seems to have moved on. In this story Unigwe shows how the idea that some women are paper-wives does not always work. And a woman like Rapu cannot always be counted on to wait patiently until her husband pays off the debt of her travel or for him to divorce his paper wife. Rapu gets transfigured from being the shy, jealous, and confused woman who arrives in Belgium to wait for her husband to divorce his paper wife to an independent, fun-loving wife of another man.

The second story in the collection also explores the tension between the Belgian and the Nigerian conception of life. This tension is revealed by interracial marriage. Oge is married to Gunter and their relationship, though seemingly hitch-free at first, reveals the complexity of interracial relationships. While Oge, who is Nigerian, believes that a child needs to be born before he is given a name, Gunter names their son, Jordi, while he is yet to be born. When Jordi dies, Oge is shocked to learn that her son will be cremated. Comparing this to the Nigerian custom of burying the dead, she sees the funeral as cruelty to her dead son. Instead of crying, Gunter’s Belgian relatives smile, eat and exchange pleasantries. This infuriates Oge who cannot fully accept this aspect of the Belgian culture. Despite the love that Gunter and Oge share, their cultural difference stands between them like a gulf. Unable to recover from the grief of her son’s death, Oge becomes nostalgic for her home in Africa. She can face her reality, her husband and her future only after she has made a trip back to her hometown in Nigeria. This story emphasizes how home- represented by Nigeria – with all its attendant contradictions, remains a place of healing for characters who got psychologically wounded in Europe.

In some of the stories in this collection, certain characters are featured in two or more stories simultaneously. One such character is Prosperous. The apartment that she shares with her husband is a meeting point for Nigerians who come there to eat Nigerian food, share Nigerian jokes and generally remember home. It is here that we first encounter Gwachi and Rapu of the first story. In the third story, titled “Becoming Prosperous”, Unigwe plays with the implication of this character’s name and what it means to be prosperous in Belgium. This particular story illustrates the degree of condescending that Africans have to subject themselves to, to survive in Belgium. Not only does their new position as a Black in Europe alter their possibilities, but it also alters their ideas of love and relationship. Comparing her relationship with her husband back in Nigeria to their present relationship, Prosperous discovers that survival instinct has pushed their love life to the lowest point. Not only are they unable to use their Nigerian–earned qualifications in Belgium, but the language barrier also forces them to take jobs that are beneath them:

Prosperous laughs when she recounts—as she often does to her friends—the heady expectations of their early days. I thought they’d take one look at our degrees and offer us jobs on the spot. Company cars, a company house with a massive lawn, a butler and a chef. Agu never talks of those days. It is as if the weight of remembering is too much for him to bear, but Prosperous doesn’t want to forget. Remembering keeps her on her toes. (32)

Europe, in this story and many other stories in the collection, is thus seen as a place of disillusionment. However, Unigwe also shows that characters often have a choice. Prosperous realizes that she can reject the menial job she has as a cleaner by taking Flemish lessons. That paves the way for her to become a teacher. Rather than waiting helplessly for her situation to change, she rises to the occasion and begins to take Flemish lessons, on her way to becoming prosperous.

Rapu, like several women in the narratives, is presented as someone who realizes her errors of judgment, and then uses the information available to her to rise from both patriarchal oppression and diasporic and racial specific conflicts. These women seem to arrive at their moments of epiphany when they realize they have to take their destinies into their hands. Similarly, Ego, in the story titled “Cleared for Takeoff” realizes that life in Belgium would always put her in disadvantaged employment and decides to move to London against her husband’s wish. In the same vein, after being raped in a bus by a bunch of Belgian youths in the story titled “How to Survive a Heat Wave”, Anuli finds the courage to narrate her ordeal to Prosperous and Oge, her Nigerian friends, realizing that she must be able to face this part of her reality to make peace with her future:

Añuli opens her mouth and the words that could not come out before begin to spill out, spreading out in the room, mingling with her pool of tears, releasing the clamp in her chest, relieving her of that unholy trifecta. (105)

Life in Europe is far from a bed of roses! This is Unigwe’s recurrent thematic preoccupation in many of these stories. Like On Black Sister’s Street, which shows the dilemma and the disillusionment of African ladies forced into prostitution in Belgium, this collection shows several levels of indignity that life in Europe forces Africans into. This is despite the promised glamour. Ego’s husband, who after a major injury can no longer play football and has to work in a factory, gets to his moment of epiphany after divorcing his wife. His four-year-old daughter tells him something that brings him to his senses:

’When I grow up, I’m going to be a teacher, Papa,’ Bola told me as I walked her to school. ‘But first, I have to be white, right?’ (89)

As he analyzes his daughter’s assertion, he realizes that there are no great black role models in the town he lives in for his daughter to look up to, as everyone who does respectable jobs is white. At that moment, he realizes that his life is not something his child can aspire to. Determined to correct this negative impression, he decides to give up the custody of his daughter, concluding that the mother would be a better role model. Other characters in these stories also come to these moments when they realize the missing link in their thinking on either their stay in Europe or their relationships with people in Antwerp. For instance, in “Heart is where the home is”, the protagonist’s mother laments her loneliness in Belgium where she feels isolated:

‘This is what it must feel like to be dumb. To hear and not understand. To speak and not be understood.’ (123)

It is not only the inability to communicate with people that isolates this woman, but it is also equally her daughter’s lack of friends and her inability to bond with other Nigerians. This creates a sense of hopelessness in the mother who has to be booked on a flight back to Nigeria. This happens after her daughter finds her on the floor, weeping for no particular reason. This story particularly shows the height of psychological alienation and loneliness that some Africans feel in Europe and other African diasporas. One is then plagued by the question: if life is like this in Europe, why do Africans keep trying? Some of the stories in the collection give a backdrop of life in Nigeria and portray the injustice and psychological dilemma that make people decide to leave. Many of the characters have parents who look up to them as family messiahs that will save them from the harsh reality in Nigeria where backward mindsets continue to keep people in oppressive situations. They also have the same setting in Belgium. The common element in all the stories in this collection is the candid presentation of the plight of Nigerians, both at home and abroad, who all build their hopes on countries or societies that turn out to be oppressive structures that reduce them to shadows of who they are.

Overall, these stories are beautifully crafted, showing aspects of diasporic experience that threaten not only the female character but also the masculine ego and make people take offers that are beneath their self. Like On Black Sister’s Street, this collection continues to question the logic of departing Nigeria without a clear plan on how to succeed in Europe. Unigwe’s present narrative is a great follow up on the effects of being severed from one’s roots and the psychological implication of such severance. The language is eloquent and pithy, giving short episodes of characters in their most epiphanic moments. Unigwe also adopts the conversational style where characters are revealed through dialogue as well as through internal monologues. Nigerian pidgin, which is also a marker of Nigerian communities both at home and in the Diaspora, features in this narrative giving it a unique Nigerian flavor. White people are consistently referred to as ‘Oyibo’ in this text. Characters also throw in Igbo words in between English to get to the heart of the matter in their conversations. For instance, Godwin and Agu discuss in “Cunny Man Die, Cunny Man Bury Am” about Godwin’s newly found paper wife:

‘Love nwanti nti,’ Agu teased. ‘No wound me with your
love ooo!’

Godwin snorted and said in Igbo, ‘Nwoke ma-ife o naeme.’
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. (76)

This mix of English, Pidgin and Igbo reflects the hybrid nature of the Nigerian community in Belgium. Living within several types of consciousness, their language reflects their reality. In addition to Nigerian food and worldview, this language use is one major marker of the Nigerian identity in this collection. One story in particular is using a Nigerian pidgin expression in its title: “Cunny Man Die, Cunny Man Bury Am.” This title is significant in revealing that being cunny is not a trait that is peculiar to Nigerians. We see this as the fat paper wife overturns the table and beats Godwin in his game of deception. Godwin assumes that Tine, the fat Belgian girl is unaware of her position as a “paper wife.” However, while conversing with Prosperous, Tine reveals her awareness of Godwin’s intention:

‘I wanted a wedding. Ever since I was little. And I got my dream. I got him to spend a lot of money! ‘All those euros on a wedding, and one day when I get tired, when I stop liking him even a little… because I will one day…‘I will because my heart can only take so much, no?… When that day comes, I’ll tell him it’s over.’ She cleared her throat, shut her eyes and when she opened them, stars were dancing in them again. ‘When the time comes, whether he has his papers or not, I’ll tell him it’s over….‘I have a feeling that that day is soon. Very, very soon. There won’t be time for him to have those papers!’ (87-88)

This story questions the wisdom of male swindlers and challenges the opinion that white women fall foolishly in love. Apart from rebuffing the claim of white women’s stupidity, the story equally draws attention to the cunny nature of some white persons, especially women who are often portrayed as gullible in Nigerian circles. Unlike some of the women in the earlier novel, the women here are given more agency to make changes by confronting their pasts and facing their future with boldness. The writer seems to be saying, the harm has been done but where characters, especially women, chose to go from their epiphanic moments is solely their responsibility. Whether it is the error of assuming Ijeoma is a witch in the story entitled “Better Never than Late” or the assumption that Belgian women can be used and dumped after securing Belgian citizenship in the story entitled “Cunny Man Die, Cunny Man Bury Am”, characters must realize the limitations of their earlier assumptions and forge ahead in complex situations. Humorous and thoughtful, this collection is a brilliant addition to the corpus of narratives of the Nigerian diaspora. Like Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, it raises issues of Africaness and survival in the West, and how these complicate the female experience both for black and white women.

Unigwe, Chika (2019), Better Never than Late. Abuja/London: Cassava Republic, 144pp., ISBN 9781911115540

This book review was published in: Africa Book Link, Spring 2020

 

Ancient Egyptian Literature (2019), Miriam Lichtheim (Ed.), University of California Press, 872p., ISBN: 9780520305847

Who was the imagined readership of the pyramid and coffin texts? Did ancient Egyptians carve their autobiographies in the tombs for the living or the dead? What does their papyri poetry tell us about their society, can their sarcophagi stories compare to diary writing? What is missing in the writing that is useful to the ur-text debate?

Lichtheim’s magnificent work raises many questions and unearths 13 genres, with more to be spotted. Hopefully the University of California Press will market this work beyond the tested Egyptian history and literature courses for which the 1973 and subsequent editions were prescribed. This reprint, which combines the three ealier volumes, retains the 2005 forewords by Antonio Loprieno (Vol 1), Hans-W. Fischer-Elfert (Vol 2) and J. G. Manning (Vol 3).

Ancient Egyptian literature – mortuary literature from the pyramids and coffins – brings thoroughly modern concepts. California University is not short of literary theorists to package these with brand new textual insights in shouts on the cover and updated introductions. The Press could remarket the book for media and genre studies, African and English literature courses, overhaul it for general audiences.

Probably every lay person’s idea of Egyptian writing is hieroglyphics: animals and beetles, eyes and people. Less is known of Egyptian cursive writing on the tombs, coffins, stela, and papyri. Lichtheim worked with translations by various scholars of hieratic cursive writing from the First Dynasty to demotic in the later period.

Lichtheim’s preface, dated 1971, noted that ancient literatures have purpose, determination of which helps identify the age of the text – to commemorate, instruct, exhort, celebrate, and lament (p4). I’m sure she would enjoy a challenge if she were still alive since some of this literature appears to be for pure entertainment.

She looked at what she called ‘works of the imagination’ ranging from 3000 BC to AD 395 in the three combined volumes. All have in common inscriptions, instructions, spells, hymns and prayers, autobiography and fictional genres, written in prose, poetry and a mixture of both.

Volume 1 deals with the Old Kingdom (3000 BC – 2135), the transition to the Middle Kingdom (2135 – 2040 BC) and the Middle Kingdom (2040 – 1650). Here Lichtheim documented changes in inscriptions in the private Old Kingdom tombs. The dead arrived in their resting places with lists of foods, medicines and materials and of celebrations they wanted observed, like this example from Princess Ni-Sedjer-Kai:
‘May offerings be given her on the New Year’s feast, the Thoth feast, the First-of-the-Year feast, the wag-feast, the Sokar feast, the Great Flame feast, the Brazier feast
the Procession-of-Min feast, the monthly sadj-feast, the Beginning-of-the-Month feast, the Beginning-of-the-Half-Month feast, every feast, every day, to the royal daughter, the royal ornament, Ni-sedjer-kai.’ [Fifth Dynasty] (p48)

Alongside such a list, another list spelt out the deceased’s position in society, ancestry and worth. Shrewd poets – date of interventions uncertain – replaced these lists with the more fashionable and shorter Prayers for Offerings or simply Offerings.
Writers tweaked details of the dead’s ranks and titles and another tomb-text genre took off – the narcissistic autobiography. It stayed in vogue for the next two millennia. An example from Weni’s autobiography (indeed, hagiography since a ghost-writer from the Sixth Dynasty penned it) shows the mix of poetry and prose:

‘This army returned in safety,
It had ravaged the Sand-dwellers’ land.
This army returned in safety,
It had flattened the sand-dwellers’ land.
This army returned in safety,
It had sacked its strongholds.
This army returned in safety,
It had cut down its figs, its vines. [etc] (p53)
…His majesty praised me for it beyond anything. His majesty sent me to lead this army five times, to attack the land of the Sand-dwellers as often as they rebelled, with these troops. I acted so that his majesty praised me [for it beyond anything].’ (p53)

Loprieno, in his foreword, delightfully describes this literary style: ‘If prose is to poetry as walking is to dancing, the intermediate style may be compared to the formal parade step.’ (p41)

Middle Kingdom inscriptions and autobiographies are triumphalist. Ancient Egyptians would be snug in today’s celebrity culture and easily sell themselves on social media. Take Priest Horemkhauf’s Stela, circa 1650 BC: ‘I, an excellent dignitary on earth, shall be an excellent spirit (‘akh’) in the necropolis, since I have given bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and have nourished my brothers…’ (p172)

On to another genre from the Sixth Dynasty: The Pyramid Texts. Kings believed they would resurrect after they died, journey peacefully through the afterlife and then join the company of gods. The Pyramid texts contain glowing references to various nobles’ competencies and deeds. This leader is brave in battle. This mayor provided grain during famine. This king is a good negotiator. Of what relevance are these texts today? Well, such themes still run through modern African oral tradition and are carried forward by griots. In South Africa before a African leader begins a speech at a traditional gathering or parliament, a praise singer runs ahead of him boasting – in one of the country’s eleven languages – of the leader’s background, his ancestors and his bravery as perhaps, a freedom fighter in the struggle. Praise singers hail the current President Cyril Ramaphosa’s negotiating skills as a former trade unionist.

Another major literary genre (Old and Middle Kingdoms) comes from the Instructions in Wisdom, or simply Instructions, which Lichtheim called ‘Didactic literature’ – ‘how to’ poems of advice about living the best life, behaviour in marriage, rules of common decency, respect for elders and prayer. In these lines from Ptahhotep’s instruction to his son (late Sixth Dynasty), I have noted a similar tone to modern ‘advice’ poems like Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata (1927):
‘If you are a man who leads
Listen calmly to the speech of one who pleads
Don’t stop him from purging his body
Of that which he planned to tell
A man in distress wants to pour out his heart …’ (Verse 17, p103)

Like the Instruction to Merikare (late Eighteenth Dynasty) Lichtheim regarded this as Pseudepigrapha and the emergence of a new genre (p136). She considered pseudepigrapha ‘propagandistic works composed by priests disguised as royal inscriptions of much earlier times, the pur­pose of the disguise being to enhance their authority.’ (p691)

Much Middle Kingdom’s didactic literature was written, she said, on the theme of ‘national distress’. In an Instruction a king advises his son that the threat of assassination is ever-present; a man complains that his ba, (life force) wants to abandon him because the man is suicidal, and there is a fascinating prophesy, The Complaints of Khakheperre-Sonb, written between 1897 – 1878 BC.

‘Had I unknown phrases,
Sayings that are strange,
Novel, untried words,
Free of repetition;
Not transmitted sayings,
Spoken by the ancestors!
I wring out my body of what it holds,
In releasing all my words;
For what was said is repetition,
When what was said is said.
Ancestor’s words are nothing to boast of,
They are found by those who come after.’ (p189)

Lichtheim did not analyse this first stanza. Her interpretation began in later verses, wherein lay the theme of anarchy and dis­tress. Today’s African literature scholars might well read the first verse as indication that shamanic practices were in place in Ancient Egypt. Ancestors give advice or predictions to the living sometimes through strange languages while an individual is in trance state.

If as Aristotle taught there are a limited number of plots, then the fiction yielded in the coffin literature will delight story lovers. My observation is that The Eloquent Peasant is precursor to Scheherazade. The fast-talking peasant with the smooth lines keeps a high steward sufficiently entertained, in episodes, to avoid severe punishment.

In the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor a stranded man strikes up a conversation with a philosophical, rich and lonely snake on an island. The sailor makes extravagant promises in exchange for the snake’s help. The cynical snake advises him not to make promises and provides a boat and gifts. The sailor returns home, presents the gifts to his king and later muses: ‘Who would give water at dawn to a goose that will be slaughtered in the morning?’ (p264) I imagine this as the messages recaptured centuries later in both ‘quest’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ stories. Imagine Voyage and return meets The Frog Prince.

A Nineteenth Dynasty wit delivers satire on a graveyard papyrus. How unhappy are all tradesmen. Carpenters, jewellery-makers and fishermen are miserable. The only worthwhile profession is ‘a scribe’ who is his own boss. (p236).

Volume II, the New Kingdom (1550 – 1080)

Lichtheim in her 1974 introduction to the volume said the textual output in the New Kingdom was greater than that in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. She subdivided Egyptian poetry into ‘hymnic, lyric, didactic, and narrative.’ (p315).

She revealed the first example of a narrative epic poem in the canon and argued that the hymns in this era broke new ground stylistically. (p312)

By now the ancients had rewritten and edited coffin texts into chapters and we find them reworked and transformed into The Book of the Dead which now appears in verse in papyrus scrolls – spells and rituals to win eternal life, retain one’s head, ensure air and water, transform into a falcon and judgments from the gods.

Writers continue to sing their own praises in Twentieth Dynasty papyri explaining a school system teaching young boys to become professional scribes. (p497) A scribe’s ‘advice to an unwilling pupil’: ‘You are worse than the desert antelope that lives by running. It spends no day in plowing. Never at all does it tread on the threshing-floor. It lives on the oxen’s labor, without entering among them. But though I spend the day telling you “Write,” it seems like a plague to you. Writing is very pleasant!’ (p500) ‘Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek; your hand will be soft. You will not flicker like a flame … For there is not the bone of a man in you.’ (p501)

The New Kingdom yielded well-crafted love poems, for example:
‘The voice of the wild goose shrills,
It is caught by its bait;
My love of you pervades me,
I cannot loosen it.
I shall retrieve my nets,
But what do I tell my mother,
To whom I go daily,
Laden with bird catch?
I have spread no snares today,
I am caught in my love of you!’ (p523)

I would classify another genre as a Morality tale though Lichtheim simply calls it a tale. The two brothers does not end well for the woman who tries to seduce her husband’s younger brother, or for the brothers driven to evil actions. (p547)

Volume III, the later period (1080 BC – AD 395).

If this part of the review seems shorter than that of Volume I and II it is partly because the style of the texts in the first half of the section continue in exactly the tradition of Volumes I and II with autobiograhies, hymns and prayers.
For this reason it is not as exciting as the second part of the volume.

JG Manning states in his foreword to the 2006 edition (dated 2005, and reprinted here) that nearly all of the Demotic literary texts in the second half of Volume III was derived from one region of Egypt, the Fayyum, ‘because the villages and the cemeteries in which papyri have been found were abandoned in the later Roman period, or just afterward, thus leaving thousands of texts, documents as well as literature, undisturbed.’ (p583)

Lichtheim uncovered animal fables on papyri, suggesting that the lion and mouse’s encounter in the final episode of the The Lion in Search of Man recurred in a briefer form in the Aesop’s Fables. (p765)

Modern scholars will find that Egyptian texts in the later period are less insular than those appearing earlier. Adventurers visit the underworld, writers mention Nubians (east Africans) and Assyrians (then from Mesopotamia), compare Greek and Egyptian cultures in Greco-Roman Egypt, talk of Amazons (originally from Libya) and ‘the land of the women’.

The two remaining texts run at great length. The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, incorporating reams of humorous maxims and proverbs from the Ptolemaic period is 28 pages long (p768 – 796), and The Instruction of Papyrus Insinger containing proverbs from the Roman period is 38 pages (p797 – 835).

Umberto Eco, when he wrote about the ‘already said’ would have chuckled over these colourful maxims that began life in a coffin on Egyptian papyri: ‘the friend of an idiot is an idiot’; ‘A crocodile does not die of worry, it dies of hunger’ and ‘A cat that loves fruit hates him who eats it’.

Although the form of some of the coffin texts chosen for reproduction is sometimes repetitive, Lichtheim’s work is timeless and essential reading for students of African literature.

It raises many questions, is enjoyable and brings both a sense of intrigue and entertainment to a world that many might have thought closed to them – Egyptian mortuary literature.

Dr Muff Andersson
Independent academic and writer
MA, PhD University of the Witwatersrand
Author of Intertextuality, Violence and Memory in Yizo Yizo (2009), Brill University Press; Bite of the Banshee (2005), STE Publishers; Music in the Mix (1981), Raven Press

This book review is published in: Africa Book Link, Fall 2019