So this is not history, it is a revelation; A revelation of love A revelation of hope A revelation of perseverance A revelation of bravery A revelation of knowledge

Kwa ũguo rũũrũ ti hithitũrĩ ni kĩguũrĩrio Kĩguũrĩrio kĩa wendo Kĩguũrĩrio kĩa mĩwhoko Kĩguũrĩrio kĩa ũmĩrĩru Kĩguũrĩrio kĩa ũkamba Kĩguũrĩrio kĩa ũmenio

After decades of producing fiction, plays, memoirs, and essays, earning thirteen honorary doctorates and a UCI Medal, distinguished professor of English and comparative literature and literary and social activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o returns to the printed page to bring us the epic of his own people, and he does so for his first time in a fully-fledged poetic prose verse publication.

The title The Perfect Nine refers to nine daughters, who in fact were ten in number—hence, the “perfect nine.” It retells an origin myth: that of the founding parents of the Gĩkũyũ people’s ten clans, their mother Mũmbi and father Gĩkũyũ; the ten clans are named for their ten daughters, each of whom was matriarch of a clan.

Introduction: “The landscape was beautiful”

The book takes the reader to Kenya, and is set around Kere-Nyaga, the Gĩkũyũ name for Mount Kenya, which means “that which possesses brightness, or mountain of brightness” (Kenyatta 1953 (1938), 234).  Kere-Nyaga is the second-highest mountain in Africa (after Kilimanjaro, Tanzania), and is regarded as one of the mountains of the moon, a mythical mountain, where people are enabled to “perform their magic and traditional ceremonies in undisturbed serenity, facing Mount Kenya” (Kenyatta 1953 (1938), xxi). Deferring to the original name of Mount Kenya allows us to understand the mountain’s connection with the Supreme Being, called Ngai or Mulungu, whom the Gĩkũyũ address in prayers and sacrifices as Mwene-Nyaga, which means “possessor of brightness” (“Owner of Ostrich Whiteness”, ibid., 19). As later explained by the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, “The mountain of brightness is believed by the Gĩkũyũ to be Ngai’s official resting-place, and in their prayers they turn towards Kere-Nyaga and, with their hands raised towards it, they offer their sacrifices, taking the mountain to be the holy earthly dwelling-place of Ngai.”[1] Kenyororokero na kehuroko kia Mwene-Nyaga—literally, “descending and resting- or dwelling-place of God” (Kenyatta, 1953 (1938) 234).

It is on the mountaintop of  Kere-Nyaga that God put the first man (Gĩkũyũ) and woman (Mũmbi), and “from where they surveyed the lands around” (wa Thiong’o 2020, ix). Of these lands, Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi arrived safely at a place called Mũkũrũwe-inĩ, remarkable for its landscape, which became their home and for which they chanted their gratitude to the Supreme Giver through a hymn interpolated into the epic—the first out of several that the epic features. The hymn is recited as follows:

Owner of Ostrich Whiteness, we praise you For this brightness around us, This soil, these rivers and numerous hills, And these animals of different kinds.(Prologue, 11)

Mwene Nyaga nĩ twakũgatha Nĩ ũthaka ũyũ wakenga ta kĩ, Tĩĩri ũyũ njũũĩ na irĩma nyingĩ O na nyamũ mithemba mĩingĩ (Matemo, 8)

This beautiful hymn is a hymn to God, to life, and to nature, which is appreciated in all its beauty and complexity. After Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi’s hymn, the narrator offers his own hymn of gratitude, imploring the Supreme Giver to bestow peace on his heart so that he may recount the tale of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi and their Perfect Nine: “exactly the way the wind whispered it to my soul / when once / I stood on a hill watching swallows flying in the air” (Prologue, 11).

Synopsis

Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi’s nine daughters have no brothers, and their father and mother have taught them to do everything by themselves: how to make weapons, defend themselves, build houses; they are well rounded (“theirs was the union of mind, heart and hands”), and beyond that, they are beautiful. Their powerful self-reliance and wholesome beauty, which are known all over the world, make the perfect nine daughters “seem to be the original feminists” (wa Thiong’o 2020, x).

Not introducing the daughters by name would be an egregious oversight in any critical analysis of Ngũgĩ’s epic. Names, as the author himself asserts, are the first points of identity—followed by one’s mother tongue, which is a carrier of cultural memory. Their names are Wanjirũ (the oldest), matriarch of the Anjirũ clan who “it is said once put a curse on a hyena”; Wambũi, matriarch of the Mbũi clan, “who once rode a zebra to war and led an army to victory”; Wanjikũ, matriarch of the Agacikũ clan, who loves work, cares for her own personal freedom, and knows all about healing herbs; Wangũi, matriarch of the Thiegeni clan, who has been singing since she was in her mother’s womb, and whose voice all the birds to gather to hear; Waithĩra, matriarch of the Thĩra clan, who is very diligent, attentive, and fair; Njeri, matriarch of the Cera clan, who “reasons in search of justice”; Mwĩthaga, matriarch of the Ethaga clan, which swears by her other name, Nymabura, “a name given for her rainmaking powers”; Wairimũ, matriarch of the Thigia clan, who adds decorations to the pots she makes and patterns to the things she invents; Wangarĩ, matriarch of the Ngarĩ clan, who has the courage and quickness of a leopard, with similarly bright eyes; and Warigia, matriarch of the Mũyũ clan, the tenth of the daughters, whose name means “the last”, with crippled legs and extremely good with arrows; who gave birth, unmarried, at her parents’ home.

When the equally beautiful girls all come of marrying age, their father Gĩkũyũ goes back to the mountaintop to ask God to provide suitable husbands. It is then that, on waking one morning, the family finds ninety-nine men who have travelled to their home in Mũkũrũwe-inĩ from all corners of the world: “it was the beauty of the fame of these nine that brought them there” (ibid., 51)—the silhouette of an existing  beauty that, day after day and night after night, would never abandon their mind.

The ninety-nine decide to fight among themselves, and the last nine suitors remaining will wed the daughters. Swords are drawn and rivals challenged among the ninety-nine, each of whom begins claiming that his own home region is superior to the others (57). The ninety-nine men’s plan is not well received by the family of Mũmbi and Gĩkũyũ, who do not want any blood to be spilled over their daughters because, as Gĩkũyũ adds, “war destroys lives whereas peace restores” them, and while “the warrior and the warrior bring home trophies of tears (Mũrũi na mũrũi mainũkagia kĩrĩro, 38) / the peacemaker and the peacemaker bring home trophies of laughter” (Wathayũ na thayũ mainũkagia mĩtheko. 38);  Mũmbi and Gĩkũyũ summon the ninety-nine—and others—to “embrace in friendship / to embrace the human within us / The human like the divine, has many names, but its / real name is Human” (61). Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi invite the men to build their own dwellings: “As soon as the sun appears in the morning, you begin. By the time the sun goes to sleep, you will have to put up ten huts. Nine men into each hut. And each of the huts will be named after one of the Perfect Nine” (69).

Soon a dispute has arisen among the daughters, who all find themselves with one particular man as their first choice. Mũmbi reproaches them recalling that “When the heart finds its target, the head will decide. Never fight over a man” (78). Consequently, several tests are given to each group of ten chaperoned by one of the nine daughters, like making clothes, climbing trees, starting a fire by drilling into hard stones or sticks, and throwing spears. The last day is a test of archery skills, during which Gĩkũyũ wants the men to show his daughters how good they are at shooting arrows straight into the eye of a tree. All the groups succeed equally, but once the shooting distance is increased, it is hardly possible to see the eye. Astoundingly, Warigia is the only one who manages to shoot one arrow after another, and each arrow hits the eye of the tree: “The men looked at each other, wondering how she could do this on crippled legs.”

Afterwards, Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi want the groups to embark on a journey to the mountain of the moon, to walk the path they had walked and drink the water they had drunk. The daughters and their respective groups are given a mission: to find Mwengeca, the king of human-eating ogres, who is said to have hair that grows in the very middle of his tongue. Gĩkũyũ tells them the following words: “I want you to wrestle him to the ground, capture his tongue, and pull out the hair. / The hair that cures all will restore full power to Warigia’s legs” (90).

The journey to the mountain of the moon sees the ninety-nine leaving home as “an immature lot,” and after a period spanning an untold number of weeks or seasons, those who have made their way back home are “a mature lot,” only nineteen in number (171). The ninety-nine have to face a plethora of challenges along the path to the mountain of the moon, from the minor irritation of mosquitos, red ants, and tsetse flies, to crocodiles and other humans, who pose the greatest danger of all with their machetes, spears, clubs, and arrows. Climbing the mountain and withstanding the cold is yet another challenge, but as the line reads, “There is no power stronger than the power of hope” (109).

The convoy’s first great achievement is when, determined to scale the mountain, they finally manage to arrive at the mountaintop, scoop up some of the white moon, and put it into their gourds, their fingers freezing as if bitten by the whiteness itself. While climbing down, they are described filling their gourds with holy water at the lakes, wonderfully mixing it with moon, and exclaiming “Victory, victory!”

There are six episodes dedicated solely to hostile encounters and fights with ogres of all species. The experiences they gain from those encounters and losses teach them a lesson, as they say on arriving home:

“And now we know that ogres don’t dwell in tales alone / And that, though different in types and colours, all are human-eaters. / Their challenges taught us that without continuous vigilance, we shall fall.” (172)

The first encounter is with a bodiless ogre with a magical tongue, who faces off against Wanjirũ and her own strong, arrogant, and defiant tongue (117). When his long, wide tongue wraps itself around the tree, Wanjirũ shouts “Now!” and arrows pin his tongue to the tree. The daughters pierce his eyes and pluck his magical hair, but do not hurt his body as they cannot see it. Itis Kĩhara who jumps on his magical tongue and pulls out the hair, prompting Mwengeca to “let out a blood-curdling scream” (118). “For Warigia!” Kĩhara shouts. The reader will discover only later (172–74) that pulling out the hair has restored the use of the beautiful legs of the last-born Warigia, who stayed home from the journey;

The encounter with the bodiless “Cure-All Ogre” Mwengeca is not the only duel that the groups face. In chapter 11, the reader witnesses another arduous duel, which on the one hand inspires sorrow for those who died—three men die when the ogre splits their heads against a tree—and on the other, admiration for one of the perfect nine, Wangarĩ, who, “trembling with rage and proud defiance” as the ogre of endless darkness is advancing toward her, causes the darkness to retreat ignominiously with her words, “I dare you to come near me, and I will clear you with the light of a leopard’s eyes” (126) while lighting a fire.

Chapter 12 opens with another mysterious encounter: a creature with three legs and three arms who breathes smoke and fire from his mouths and nose, incinerating all the plants around him. Mwĩthaga is asked as the price for letting them go, but instead, she suggests that her sisters climb a fig tree, a mythical tree in Gĩkũyũ culture, and, also assuming a position where the flames cannot reach her, Mwĩthaga starts mocking the creature by singing a rain song; she then chants further incantations to induce rain, and it starts raining. The epic describes the beautiful scene of “leaves amplifying the sound of rain.” Interestingly, the sound of the rain in the original Gĩkũyũ is rendered as cococococo, with the entire verse reading as follows: macoya thĩ magambage cococococo (87). This powerfully evocative sound combined with the rain itself makes the Ogre of Fire and Fury run away. Sadly, this duel also costs the group some losses: while the nine manage to run at a fair pace, some of the men are not able to run as swiftly, and die when the flames reach them. Their mourning reaches its apex in the line, “Our pain was deepened by our knowing that we could not stop to help them” (133).

Other ogres of the forest step on the feet of the nine daughters and their male troop during their journey, like the Ogre of Endless Tears, the Ogre of Floods, the Ogre That Shat Without Stopping, the Bloodthirsty Ogre and the Squint-Eyed Ogre—also known as the Ogre of the Big Bag, because it never fills up. The convoy also witnesses the transformation of one ogre into a vulture (wamahuru) and another into a large hyena (wamahiti), who begins following them.

One very symbolic chapter is chapter 16, titled “Ogres in White Masks,” which echoes Franz Fanon’s masterpiece Black Skin, White Masks. The convoy spots two attractive humans, a man and a woman, who resemble twins, with complexions the colour of chalk, chalk-white clothes, and long, straight, and soft-looking hair falling on their backs. Madness claims each of them as they begin to desire the duo’s chalk-hued beauty. Wanjikũ and Kĩhara are the only ones who stand firm, resist temptation, and prevent the others from becoming the slaves of “the ogres in chalky masks” (marimũ ma irembeko cia mũnyũ, 100). Wanjikũ’s words to her sisters contemplate and philosophize black beauty:

“Don’t despise the beads you are wearing for the ones worn by another. / Don’t give up the four in your hand for the eight in the hands of another. / Since when does chalk beauty beat black beauty? (Wamũnyũ aakĩririe Kairũ ũthaka rĩ?, 98) / How can we abandon the men with whom we have suffered / For somebody we don’t even know? / Chalk?  (Nĩ ũndũ wa mũnyũ mwerũ?, 99) / Have we forgotten the admonition from Mother Mũmbi? / Let our eyes return to those whose character has been proven by deeds.” (164–65)

The epic comes to an end with the blessings that Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi confer on each couple who bring the gourd and place it at their feet: “May this water wash away all impurities in the path of your life together” (177). Gĩkũyũ welcomes all the men, who are no longer strangers in the house. Every nine days, a marriage ceremony takes place: the first is that of Wanjirũ and Njirũ, while the last, the marriage of Warigia and Kĩhara, never takes place, eclipsed by a tragedy that takes Warigia’s husband-to-be.

Storytelling, language, and writing style

We encountered so many wonders that
Even now, as I recount these stories,
I feel I am talking about dreams, or
Nightmares that make one sweat on waking. (157)

The Perfect Nine’s original language of composition is Gĩkũyũ, a Bantu language spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi, Kenya. The Gĩkũyũ edition also includes digital pictures by Julius Maina. It is not the first work the writer has composed in his mother tongue[2]; he has been writing in Gikuyu since the 1970s. In fact, the turning point for Ngũgĩ came as he recounts it in several works (Decolonising the Mind and Birth of A Dream Weaver, “On Writing in Gĩkũyũ”) after he attended the Conference of African Writers of English Expression at Makerere University in 1962 where renown writers like Shaaban Robert –  writing in Swahili –  or Daniel O. Fagunwa – writing in Yoruba –  were not attending the conference of “African Writers” just because their works were not in English. Yet The Perfect Nine is Ngũgĩ’s first epic, whose original Gĩkũyũ title is Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 2018).

The fact that we call this work an “epic” both helps and hinders us in comprehending the book’s genre, its verbal style and conventions. Approaching The Perfect Nine as an epic, the reader will certainly discern a few characteristics of the genre, such as its being poetic, narrative, heroic, and legendary (see Johnson 1980). On the other hand, the term used in the Gĩkũyũ title, namely rũgano,  sheds light on its other stylistic characteristics. Rũgano is the closest genre to fiction, Ngũgĩ explains, but it could also suggest a historical narrative. “Kũgana rũgano—‘to tell a story’—can mean either of those, but specifically means retelling of well-known stories such as fables. The art is in the telling, not the fact of the story. As the writer says in his acknowledgments, the story of the origins of his own people’s culture is a narrative that has been told and retold, like many other mythical tales (the story of Adam and Eve, the Genesis creation myth, Greek cosmogonical accounts, the Mande creation myth). As he once said, “This is our own story. I am retelling it in my own way.”

Ngũgĩ has gracefully recast this myth in poetic prose verse for the first time, by creating something completely new. On one hand, he continues his tendency with allegorical writing – already started in Matigari in which characters stand for all the veterans –  but on the other hand, he goes more decidedly away from realism and tries to create an all-time narrative, a myth of origin. The author reframes it in humanist terms – beauty, unity, humanism and peace – and typically epic virtues, like courage and stamina. At the basis of his retelling, he has used the quest for beauty “as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family, and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture” (Notes on The Perfect Nine, x).

The motif of quest and beauty, aside from being praised in the epic’s prelude, where the author tells about the fame of the nine’s beauty which spread  and travelled widely to Ethiopia and Egypt by means of nine ostriches who, with nine trumpets, announce the nine’s birth (see chapter 4, “The Wind and the Ostrich”), becomes palpable also at the very end of The Perfect Nine, where Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi powerfully proclaim, “Don’t look for me in wicked deeds, […] in theft and robbery, […] in senseless violence, […] in meaningless wars; Look for me in the water, […] in the wind, […] in love, […] in unity […] among the helping, […] among the oppressed, […] among the seekers of justice, […] among those building the nation in the name of the human.” (226–27).

This quest and call to find the beauty and the beautiful ones, aside being praised from the beginning, when for instance at the opening of chapter three, the author recites: “Those who had eaten more salt in this world tried to broker peace: Lay down your swords, young men. The beautiful one will always be born. Reasoning with the heart is better than rioting with the sword. Win hearts with good deeds, not with golden swords.” (23), both stands in contrast to, and is reminiscent of, the lack of beauty and reasoning with the heart that the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah aimed to draw attention to in his The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1969), by which, rather than being surrounded with love, beauty, and justice, people were just overwhelmed by post-independence disillusionment at the devastating failures of political and social life.

In both authors, one can find a clear interest and profound interpretation of the phrase “The Beautiful One”. To Egyptologists, this epithet is a praise name for one of the most central figures in Ancient Egyptian culture, namely Osiris, who—as Ayi Kwei Armah notes in a preface to a new edition of The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born published by Per Ankh—represents “a sorrowful reminder of our human vulnerability to division, fragmentation and degeneration, and at the same time a symbol of our equally human capacity for unity, cooperative action, and creative regeneration.”[3]

Building on this quest for the beautiful one is Ngũgĩ’s own oratory and storytelling, which, as he says, draws from the wellspring of his own artistic imagination, and is an integral part of his creative expression. As attested elsewhere, the oral context of Gĩkũyũ literature and “its relevance to the building of our nation cannot be questioned”; “many people recognise that the development and the future of a nation depend on the ability of that nation to create a people firmly rooted in the best of its traditions. Such as people are proud of themselves as individuals and as a nation” (Mutahi & Kabira 1987, 1).

The stories of ogres (Ng’ano Cia Marimũ in Gĩkũyũ)—widespread among the Pokomo and Gĩkũyũ of Kenya and the Iraqw of Tanzania—as well as animal characters, like “brutes of prey” such as lions, leopards, and hyenas—are all familiar characters in oral literature, livening up storytelling evenings around the fireside without electricity during Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s own childhood at the house of his father’s eldest wife  in Kenya. The stories he listened to formed the cultural lens through which he could see and interpret man’s own struggles and victories in the real world.

As he narrates in his memoirs (see Dreams in a Time of War or Decolonising the Mind), during those evenings, “We children would re-tell stories the following day to other children who worked in the fields picking the pyrethrum flowers, tea-leaves or coffee beans of our European and African landlords. […] Our appreciation of the suggestive magical power of language was reinforced by the games we played with words through riddles, proverbs transpositions of syllables, or through nonsensical but musically arranged words. So we learnt the music of our language on top of the content” (Thiong’o 1986, 11).

Ngũgĩ’s alchemy of his own mother tongue, the music and magical power of his language, the “”sense of engagement”[4] that he finds when writing in Gĩkũyũ, can be exemplified in the epic, when the author has to translate the sound of the rain, expressed in Gĩkũyũ through the “nonsensical but musically arranged words” cococococo, untranslatable ideophone in the English rendition.

The writer’s care and sensitivity toward words and their melody are also discernible in other parts of the epic, with such verses as “the forests and the mountains echoed with the melodies and the words and the rhythms” (9).

The epic narrative is paused not only by several songs—to the Supreme Giver, the sun, the rain—but also by several wise sayings, like “One can never complain about that which one has freely chosen” (71), “Hurry hurry hardly gets things right” (116), or the powerful “Don’t burn your bridges” (209).

In their quest for beauty, the nine often serve as first-person narrators who, even when far from their parents on their daily adventures in the forest of the ogres, address Mũmbi and Gĩkũyũ in unison with the plural “you”: “from an early age you taught us to walk and run” (133); “As you always taught us, to every closure, there’s a disclosure” (139); “He was an ogre just like those under Mwengeca’s rule, or those you always told us about in our evenings of storytelling” (145).

One might wonder if and where there lies some political intent in his ardour to retell the myth of his own people, and we may dare to read between the lines a silent intent to decolonize the myth of the tribes and, by extension, the idea of beauty. The Perfect Nine reads also as a parable of humanism and tolerance, where through a political and social allegory, the writer is passing on the message to us. On the other hand, we can also consider political this great project to defy the novel and reconfiguring new narrative modes beyond it by exploring a poetic prose as its form, mythical characters as protagonists and a mythical landscape.

A desideratum for forthcoming editions of The Perfect Nine and other African-language books would be the publication of more bilingual editions (in Gĩkũyũ and Amharic, Arabic, Hebrew, Kiswahili, or Hindi)[5], in order to allow the republic of letters and translation to come ever closer to each other. May the epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi cross these bridges and travel beyond its homeland.

References

Ayi Kwei Armah. 1973 (1969). The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. London: Heinemann.

———. 1976. Wema Hawajazaliwa. Translation by Abdilatif Abdalla. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

Biersteker, Ann. 2000. “Gikuyu Literature: Development from Early Christian Writings to Ngũgĩ’s Later               Novels” in Abiola, F. Irene & Gikandi, Simon (eds.) The Cambridge History of African and       Caribbean Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 306–328.

Cantalupo, Charles. 1982. The World of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press

Thiongo, N. wa. 1985. “On Writing in Gikuyu.” Research in African Literatures 16.4: 151–56.

———. 1986. Decolonising the Mind. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

———. 2006. Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening. London: Harvill Secker.

———. 2010. Dreams in a Time of War. A Childhood Memoir. New York: Anchor Books.

Fanon, Franz. 1975.  Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Edition du Seuil.

Johnson, John W. 1980. “Yes, Virginia, There Is an Epic in Africa,” Research in African Literatures 11.3: 308–326.

Kabira, Wanjikũ Mũkabi & Mutahi, E. Karega. 1993. Gĩkũyũ Oral Literature. Nairobi: East African        Educational Publishers.

[1] Jomo Kenyatta’s work Facing Mount Kenya (1938) has been a source of inspiration for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s writing. (See Biersteker, A. 2004.)

[2] To name but a few: the play co-authored by Ngũgĩ wa Miriĩ, Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako rĩa Ngerekano (‘I will marry when I want’) (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1980) , the novel written while he was in prison Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ. (‘Devil on the Cross’) (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1980), Matigari ma Njirũũngi (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1986), and the heftiest novel in Gikuyu ever: Mũrogi wa Kagogo.

[3] The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, quoted in New African, August–September 2009.

[4] See the author’s own words and interview with Charles Cantalupo (The World of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1982).

[5] The translation from Gikuyu in Swahili will be prepared by Ndirangu Wachanga and edited by eminent Swahili poet Abdilatif Abdalla. It will be published by East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.

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