ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Literature category.

With Odafe Atógun and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

On Sunday, May 14, 2017, I hosted a book chat with two debut authors Odafe Atógun and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀. It was organised by Ouida Books, the Nigerian publisher of their two novels Taduno’s Song and Stay With Me respectively. They also share a publisher in the UK and in the US.

Atogún is a full-time writer who was born in Lokoja and studied Journalism in Lagos while Adébáyọ̀, though born in Lagos, has lived in Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and Iléṣà where her novel was set. I have enjoyed reading the two books, which deal with love against the background of a social upheaval. They have a number of other similarities and many differences. For a start, Atógun’s book mixes elements of fantasy and magical realism with into the plot while Adébáyọ̀’s book goes the route of traditional plot, though with a twist on the narrative style and direction in time.

This is not a review of the novels. That will come later. But I enjoyed talking to both authors who are also smart and lovable human beings. I look forward to sharing more thoughts on the books in coming days. The event was held at Patabah Bookstore on Adéníran Ògúnsànyà street, Súrùlérè, with a full house of attendees.

184 Poets Vie for the Nigerian Literature Prize

Today in Ikeja, the entries for this year’s NLNG Nigerian Literature Prize were delivered to the judges at an open ceremony. They contained entries by one hundred and eighty-four (184) Nigerian poets vying for the Literature Prize and five (5) literary critics vying for the Prize for Literary Criticism. The two categories are worth $100,000 and N1 million respectively.

“The hand-over of the entries to the Advisory Board, chaired by Professor Emeritus Ayọ̀ Bánjọ, signifies the beginning of the judging process which culminates in the announcement of the winner in October 2017,” reads the press release put out after the event.

Handing over the entries, Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke and Professor Ayọ̀ Bánjọ. Photo: SabiNews

Handing over the entries, NLNG’s General Manager, External Relations, Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, said the prize has inspired some 1,630 books of which 533, representing 32%, were submitted in the Poetry category since the inception of the prize in 2004.

It continues:

“The number of entries for the 2017 edition exceeded the 2016 numbers, showing a six percent rise in the number of entries received…. The entries… will be examined on their merits of excellence in language, creativity and book quality.”

The panel of judges for this year’s awards is led by Professor Ernest Emenyonu who is a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint. He was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Calabar between 1988 and 1990, and Provost (Chief Executive) Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, between 1992 and 1996. He has taught in several Nigerian and American universities.

Other judges are Dr. Razinat Mohammed and Tádé Ìpàdéọlá. Dr. Mohammed is an Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Maiduguri. She teaches African Literature with specialization in Feminist Literary Criticism and Theoretical Approaches. She is an accomplished writer as well. Tádé Ìpàdéọlá won the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2013 in the Poetry category with his third volume of poetry, The Sahara Testament. A poet and a lawyer, Ìpàdéọlá has won several awards and is a resource person for the Rockefeller Foundation around Africa on building resilience.

Members of the Advisory Board for the Literature Prize, besides Professor Bánjọ, two-time Vice-Chancellor of Nigeria’s premier university, University of Ibadan, are Prof. Jerry Agada, former Minister of State for Education, former President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, and Professor Emeritus Ben Elugbe, former President of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and president of the West-African Linguistic Society (2004-2013).

“The Nigeria Prize for Literature has since 2005 rewarded eminent writers such as Gabriel Okara (co-winner, 2005, poetry), Professor Ezenwa Ohaeto (co-winner, 2005, poetry); Ahmed Yerima (2006, drama) for his classic, Hard Ground; Mabel Sẹ́gun (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) for her collection of short plays Reader’s Theatre; Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) with her book, My Cousin Sammy; Kaine Agary (2008, prose); Esiaba Irobi (2010, drama) who clinched the prize posthumously with his book Cemetery Road; Adélékè Adéyẹmí (2011, children’s literature) with his book The Missing Clock; Chika Unigwe (2012 – prose), with her novel, On Black Sister’s Street; Tádé Ìpàdéọlá (2013; Poetry) with his collection of poems, Sahara Testaments and Sam Ukala (2014; Drama) with Iredi War,” the press release concluded.

The Nigerian for Literature is Africa’s biggest prize with a cash reward of $100,000, which rotates yearly amongst four literary categories of prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature.

“Like Listening To An Aunt” | Sefi Atta’s Tribute to Buchi Emecheta

The first time I met Buchi Emecheta in person was in 2005, just after my debut novel Everything Good Will Come was published. I had contacted her through an old college mate, Kadija George, to ask for an endorsement, which she very kindly agreed to give. To paraphrase her endorsement, she wrote that reading my novel was like listening to an old friend talk about Lagos.

That was the same year she was awarded an OBE for her contribution to literature, and Kadija organised a celebratory dinner at a Caribbean restaurant in North London, to which I was invited. At the restaurant, she signed a copy of her book Head Above Water for me, with a message: “To Sefi, good luck with your publication, love from Auntie Buchi”. I read an excerpt from the book at today’s memorial event, not just because it’s autographed, but because it’s a testimony of what it means to be a writing mother, and because it’s good storytelling: entertaining and informative, guileless and revealing, intimate, and rendered in the meandering fashion of Igbo oral history, which, by the way, bears some resemblance to that of the American South, where I’m based most of the year.

Anyway, that evening at the restaurant, I found Buchi Emecheta pensive. I imagined she was aware of her achievements and was proud of them: all the novels, plays and children’s books she’d written, the family she had raised, and the obstacles she’d had to overcome. People often mention the burning of her first manuscript, but the daily grind of being a mother to young children, while getting a university degree and writing, was hard enough.

I know this. I have one child, a daughter, much beloved, but I didn’t think I would be capable of giving her the attention she deserved if I had more. I was thirty-three when I started writing full time and she was three. I was working on Everything Good Will Come and had more stories to tell. I wanted to go back to school to get a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. My husband, Gbóyèga Ransome-Kútì, a doctor, got a job in Mississippi, of all places, and we had just moved there. Before the move, I had worked as a Chartered Accountant and Certified Public Accountant. Following the move, I was not legally allowed to work in the United States until I had found an employer to sponsor my work visa. I was in two minds about living in Mississippi but Gbóyèga quite liked his job. He was supportive of my writing, to the extent that he would cook while I wrote, and thankfully, on the issue of children, we were both on the same page.

Buchi Emecheta often said she saw her books as children. I don’t look at mine that way. My daughter is my child, and my books are my work, though the time I spent writing them did take away from time I could have spent with her. She is graduating from college this year, after a four-year degree. At twenty-two, she is the same age Buchi Emecheta was when she had five children and was studying sociology at London University, and writing. So, to me, Buchi Emecheta was a child bride, child mother and child divorcee, who would later become a renowned writer published in journals such as Granta and the New Statesman, with television scripts produced by the BBC and Granada. And even though one of my first interviews in Nigeria, as a published writer, was titled “Sefi Atta following in the footsteps of Buchi Emecheta”, or something to that effect, my path has been quite different from hers. However, like most Nigerian women writers, we’ve had similar preoccupations with girlhood, womanhood and motherhood, with marriage and religion. For some of us, I would add the death of relatives and the state of being African overseas.

When Buchi Emecheta writes about missing her late father, so I have missed mine. When she writes about her children walking around in wet nappies, I admit, I was sometimes too busy writing to notice my daughter’s diapers needed to be changed. When she writes about racist or xenophobic employers and colleagues in London, I remember my experiences as an accountant in London and New York. She recounts details of difficult relationships with editors and agents; I can recall one or two. She takes a swipe at Enoch Powell; I immediately think of Trump.

What I find most interesting about her works are the paradoxes – of forging ahead from one generation to the next, yet returning to old positions; of her ability to be naïve and insightful at the same time. And judging from her autobiography, what sets her apart from most Nigerian women writers of her time, and mine, is that she was incredibly resourceful, industrious and tenacious. For a self-described small woman, Buchi Emecheta had enormous strength. She could also be stubborn. In Head Above Water, she tells us how she constantly defied people who tried to patronise or diminish her, and how she was reluctant to be labelled by anyone, feminists included. In a book titled In Their Own Voices, a collection of interviews with African women writers, edited by Adeola James, she expressed her frustration about feminists she encountered in the West, who took centre stage at conferences and overlooked her views.

Twelve years ago, when I met her, feminism was a lot more unpopular than it is now, and although I proudly called myself a feminist back then, whenever I was asked, I was reluctant to be labelled a feminist writer because my stories weren’t always in line with feminist narratives. Besides, if you’ve experienced conflicts solely because you’re a girl or a woman, and you write about them, that doesn’t mean you’re a feminist. It just means you’re female.

I was forty-one when I met Buchi Emecheta. I’m fifty-three now. These days, feminism is more mainstream, and commodified, and celebrity-driven. In fact, if you’re an actress announcing your next film, or a singer releasing your latest album, it helps to declare that you’re a feminist, even if you might face some backlash.

I must confess that although I still call myself a feminist whenever I’m asked, I’ve never seriously studied feminist thought. I’ve read about notable feminists like Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer. I’ve read bell hooks’ works because they appeal to me and speak to my experience in America. I’ve also read academic books on Nigerian and African women writers, but that’s about it. Now, I have met, online and in person, Nigerian academics who have written about feminism, such as Mọlará Ògúndípẹ̀-Leslie, Amina Mama and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyèyẹmí, but I am yet to read their works, or any scholarly works that address the penkelemesis – the peculiar messes – that Nigerian women find themselves in. I think it is necessary to educate yourself on feminist ideas, and to live up to feminist ideals, if you call yourself a feminist; otherwise, it’s rather like saying you’re a born-again Christian. Every other Christian in Nigeria is born-again. They’re usually versed in the Bible, I’ll give them that – though I might quarrel with their interpretations of it and question whether they live up to Christian ideals. I mention Christianity not to be perverse. It was a foreign imposition we now readily embrace, so maybe there’s hope for feminism.

Like Buchi Emecheta, I don’t want to be labelled by any word that excludes my experiences, and, to be honest, I no longer think it’s necessary to call a woman a feminist simply because she has common sense and uses it. When you expect and demand equality and fairness, that’s all you’re doing: using your common sense.

But I digress. The point is, Buchi Emecheta’s works were my introduction to Nigerian feminist ideas. I understood her ambivalence about Western feminism and welcomed her calls for unity amongst women. In Head Above Water, she expressed her disappointment at women who resented her whenever she made progress. To piggyback off bell hooks’ term, in a tribalistic capitalist patriarchal culture like ours, women who claim to be pro-women are not always pro women they regard as competition. It’s the same between men, except they don’t profess to be pro-men. They just are.

Buchi Emecheta didn’t seem to regard other Nigerian women writers as threats to her success. Flora Nwapa, in In Their Own Voices, referred to her as a friend. On a separate note, she didn’t appear to be prejudiced against Nigerians of other ethnic groups, either. Her works suggest she honoured Igbo culture without idealising it, and opposed tribalism even after she faced it. She apparently responded to racism the same way, which I don’t understand. It takes a lot of grace to resist retaliating to prejudice. I’m still working on it.

For me, reading Buchi Emecheta is like listening to an aunt, a busy aunt who makes time to tell you her story. You almost hear her saying, “This happened and then this happened. Wait, wait. I haven’t finished. Don’t cry for me. Don’t get angry yet. Listen to what I have to say and learn from it.” You take your cue from her on how to react. There were sections in Head Above Water where I was sad for her, but she lightened them with humour. There were other sections in which I was angry on her behalf, but she didn’t allow my anger to last. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the book that my emotions overwhelmed me. But, according to her, that was how she coped with hers. She didn’t have time to dwell on them.

In fact, Buchi Emecheta is – and I use the word “is” deliberately: I often talk about deceased writers as if they’re still alive – she is the aunt in your family who stands out. The one who has done something to offend the sensibility of others, and when you find out what it is, you wonder what the fuss is about because she was just being herself, or speaking her mind. She’s really not a troublemaker. She might even be shy and insecure, as Buchi Emecheta says she was. But if you cross her path and she’s fed up with playing nice . . .

You observe her in action. You occasionally worry about her. Then, one day, she’s no longer around and you realise what she meant to you. The options she gave you. But it’s too late to tell her how much you admired her.

Last year, I emailed Kadija to ask if she could put me in contact with Buchi Emecheta again. I wanted to use a quote from her novel The Joys of Motherhood in one of my own, Made in Nigeria. My novel has a section in which a Nigerian professor teaches Joys, and Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy, to Mississippi college students, as I had done. Kadija got in touch with Buchi Emecheta’s son, Sylvester Onwordi. I had no idea whether she herself was approached, but I was given the permission I needed.

Afterwards, I have to admit that, for a moment, I hoped she would be around when the novel was published. I was afraid she might not be. I hadn’t seen her since we met at the restaurant. I reach out to writers I admire for professional reasons. I’m not one to cosy up to them. I prefer to respect their privacy and space. I’d heard she had some health challenges, but I didn’t want to pry.

Then in January this year, Kadija sent me the email saying she had died, and I was sad, partly because we no longer had an opportunity to celebrate her in person. It was our responsibility to do so and our loss that we didn’t. When we fail to honour our literary heroines, or stop honouring them, we lose as a group. As Nigerian mothers would say to children who don’t listen, “You are not doing anyone but yourself.”

Buchi Emecheta’s work is done and will continue to resonate. She has plenty of admirers in readers and writers who choose to walk their own paths. Her biography demonstrates that the most powerful thing a woman writer can do, regardless of what is going on, is to keep speaking her mind and producing work for as long as she possibly can.

She did just that, and in doing so, exposed the tribe, unashamedly, to strangers, which probably displeased some of our literary heroes, who at the time were more concerned with attacking imperialism, colonialism, military regimes and corrupt governments. She may also have offended the strangers themselves, by putting them in their place face to face and revealing what she thought about them in her books. But you don’t get the impression that her intention was to offend. Instead you get the impression she was merely trying to take control of her own story, the narrative of her life, and write her way out of her lot. However, if traditional Igbo beliefs on fate are correct, perhaps all she could do was give it her best attempt and leave it up to younger writers to carry on her legacy.

I am one of them. At the age of thirty-three, with a three-year-old child and two professional qualifications in accountancy, I found myself in Mississippi, without a job, and wrote my way out. I didn’t know Buchi Emecheta well personally. I learnt about her through her works. I appreciate the example she set by being prolific, her individuality and honesty. Perhaps I’ve got the wrong idea about her, and I still don’t know if she was aware I’d asked to use a quote from her novel, but of my final statement I have no doubt. I am glad I wrote about her novel in mine.

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An abridged version of this write-up was read at the Tribute to Buchi Emecheta which held at Terra Kulture on Saturday, March 25, 2017
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SEFI ATTA was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964 and currently divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England, a Certified Public Accountant in the United States, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She is the author of Everything Good Will Come, Swallow, News from Home, A Bit of Difference and Sefi Atta: Selected Plays. Atta has received several literary awards, including the 2006 Wọlé Ṣóyínká Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

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A Book for the Tasting

By Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

Book: Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex, and the Nigerian Taste Buds

Publisher: Cassava Republic Press

Publication Date: October 31, 2016

Pages: 357

The Great Nigerian Food Memoir

“Nigerian food is the most endearing, enduring, topic in the world, especially since we have gone so long without talking about it.” – Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà

The allure of Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà’s debut book of nonfiction, titled Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex, and the Nigerian Taste Buds, is, surprisingly, not the food, nor the promised “sex” in the title.Published by Cassava Republic Press, this book of essays comes with a more satisfying delight of well-crafted sentences, stories, and attention to detail, style, and ambition. An unapologetically Nigerian book of such brilliance, scope, and purpose has been needed for such a long time that it is hard to believe, going through its pages, that it has indeed arrived. The author it was who wrote a food column, for a few years, in the now defunct Nigerian paper 234Next as “Yẹ́misí Ogbe”. For those familiar with the understated brilliance of her style and approach, this all makes sense, and is timely.

Longthroat begins with an introduction fourteen and a half pages long, which coyly attempts to manage expectations of what is to come, through caveats about the author’s unlikely role as the bearer of the country’s food biographer, among other “confessions”. This part could, arguably, serve as a review of the book, except that it takes too much away from what follows. So, it whets the appetite of the new reader instead, and sets the table. In that introductory treatise, we are gently eased into the kitchen of the author’s mind where both the idea and the steps of implementation of this culinary journey take place first before they meet the page. I would return to the introduction again and again.

The first chapter is a review of the reputation of Nigerian food (and names) in the imagination of the foreigner. The first culprit here is Michael Barry, a half-Welsh, half Indian man whose “Nigerian River Province soup”, listed in his 1996 book Exotic Book the Crafty Way as an authentic Nigerian food, left the author scratching her head trying to identify its parts. She gave up eventually disappointed with both the writer’s imagination and the accessibility of Nigerian food to the outsider. Our ẹ̀bà, it turns out, was what was being described as “cassava bread” in Michael Barry’s book. A disappointing find! We never find out what the “River Province soup” is because it doesn’t exist. It is, also, the creation of a foreigner as an idea of what a random Nigerian food looks or behaves like. Yẹ́misí did not hold back: “I would hate for Michael Barry to get away with… suggesting that our food can be simplified and reformulated into something else, something it is not.” Her idea of the Nigerian soup as a person, more than just a passing item on a plate, takes off from here. It “may seem aloof at first,” Yẹ́misí writes, “but once given its due, it will immediately make itself friendly at the very least.”

The book proceeds smoothly along these lines, paving way to other encounters, hilarious personal stories, told through the keyhole of a writer obsessed with the dimension of food in everything, from sex to dreams. The chapters move in different ways. In one, which came early in the book, the author describes a typical Ìbàdàn boy in a marketplace arguing with his mother about eating àmàlà (or ọkà, as she put it), to illustrate the mischief of adults, and the eternal devotion of Ìbàdàn indigenes to their carbohydrate meal made from “desiccated yam ground into a dense white flour, and then made into a grey mound using boiling water”. In another narrative in the same chapter (listen to audio excerpt here), a ram goes for a ride on a motorbike and ends up on jollof rice: quite a common scenario in many Nigerian cities during festive seasons. The description lures in the oblivious reader with gentle words until the macabre nature of that ill-fated ride becomes suddenly obvious. To the Nigerian already familiar with it, the passage plays out like dark humour gently hovering above the conscience of the meat-eater. Another chapter which further elevates the book into canon of essential Nigerian literature is the story of the author’s father-in-law and his travails in the Nigerian Civil War; how the pursuit of the next meal drove the conversation of survival. It was, aptly titled, Dead Man’s Helmet.

Reading the book, deceptively called a “memoir” (it is, to be clear, but the character of the book both defies and enriches the genre) takes the reader back decades into a happy place where food and observations of food carried some reward of discovery. Here, I speak for myself. What is the difference between irú wooro and irú pẹ̀tẹ̀, for instance? What are they anyway? Why did they smell so much and why did my grandmother like them so? Why are they wrapped so tightly in those small leaves? Why are the ones my grandfather’s youngest wife bring from the farm better than the ones we bought in the neighbourhood? How come I sometimes saw them in food (as in okro) but not in some (ewédú)? How is irú different from ògìrì? How does Dadawa, the cubed variant that debuted in the 90s, improve on what was a local condiment that supposedly added character to our local meals?

Sometimes a chapter is a journey into a forgotten part of one’s culinary past left unappreciated through the passage of time. One word or a sentence here stirs it up, smell, aroma and all, into new awakening. At other times, it is the wonder of a shared experience which in one’s memory had previously amounted to nothing more than a mundane occurrence, but which in literature transmutes now into a notable cultural event, properly highlighted and intensified through the writer’s power of observation and documentation. This is where the work shines out the most: elevating the most common experiences—what defines Nigerian culture: our cooking and eating habits, among ourselves and on the world stage—through beautiful sentences that delight and titillate.

Who remembers, for instance, breaking open ẹ̀gúsí shells with their fingers, usually while seated with mothers or grandmothers to whom that kind of chore is a perfectly productive use of afternoon time? In a world now defined by “finesse”—a type of accepted snobbery against deliberateness, patience, commonality—that image of simpler times spent sitting with grandparents and helping out with cooking over several hours, along with stories, songs, and admonition, brings the reader as close to emotional time travel as one can get. Yẹ́misí calls this particular food preparation act: “hand-shelling” ẹ̀gúsí. We who are familiar know that she meant “hand de-shelling” or “de-husking” if we’re being technical, but one could see why the former appeals more. In Yorùbá, we say “wọ́n ń ṣẹ́ ẹ̀gúsí”. That act of “ṣẹ́-ing” the ẹ̀gúsi, breaking the shell in half and removing the content, is what gets the white pointed seeds out to where it can be useful. But that attempted homage to the phonetics of ṣẹ́-ing the seed, instead of the mechanically-sounding “de-shelling”, warms my linguist heart (though that English translation wasn’t the only relevant pull to the vivid sense of nostalgia that the chapter beautifully evokes).

Of Sex, Subtlety, and More

“What I ate last night is as significant and as tangible as my dreams. My dreams are as tangible as what I’m eating. Neither of them can safely be taken for granted. Life seen through the prism of food has more colours, not fewer.” – YA

The “sex” in the subtitle of Longthroat Memoirs does not materialize in the way readers conditioned to the treatment of the subject in Nigerian writing might expect it. But it does materialize in different other ways, sometimes gentle, and sometimes hot and vivid, usually around food and cultural attitudes. I, for instance, will not be able to look at a the velvety black covering of the African snail the same way again. Through word association and the writer’s imagination of their role in our sexual myths, vividly and mischievously imagined in the chapter called The Snail Tree, a Nigerian foodie’s insistence on a snail diet will now always task the mind in the direction of more intimate parts. The treatment of sex here however, as one would realize, is deliberate. Check out, for instance, this sentence from the second paragraph from that same chapter:

“There are places in a woman that a penis will never reach.”

The sentence that follows this gives too much away so I will not quote that here. But the chapter itself, one of the most directly polemic in the book, tackles the author’s discomfort with the ubiquitous fascination with sex in contemporary literature. Here, she opines directly on the Nigerian/African writing and literary culture in a way that is fresh and unflinching, using food as a contact point. Chimamanda Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina make appearances and not in a flattering way. The chapter also explores the way in which food can be used to sublimate other human impulses. But because of the understated way in which sex appears and disappears throughout the work, I expect some mild reader rebellion. Pointing out the irony of using “sex” to sell a book in which the use of sex as a selling point in modern writing is so directly challenged will be too good to pass up.

In a yet unpublished interview with me, Yẹ́misí clarifies her purpose:

“Our manifestations of sexuality seem mostly dysfunctional. In writing, in the media, it is mostly titillation and misunderstandings. Are there some things that the application of words disfigures? Obscures? We all seem to be grasping at straws in private lives bragging about our involvement on public platforms. So if we are going to be real and honest, “liberality” should be prima facie the admission of incompetence and fumblings and disastrous encounters. The chapter was me saying, look I’m not going to pretend I’m good at this, that I apprenticed with Cirque du soleil. If I’m going to be truthful and free in my writing about sex, I’ll have to talk about my confusion and incompetence. Everyone else can write titillation if they want.

I wanted to point out obvious and not so obvious parallels between appetites… I wanted to offer the perspective of seeing something better by not looking directly at it.”

That chapter alone, The Snail Tree, capable of winning any prize for nonfiction anywhere, makes the whole book worth reading.

But the book does (and packs) much more. It challenges assumptions (Will a Maiguard in Lagos prefer carefully made white soup or his Agege bread and fried eggs, if given a chance?), attacks hubris (Yorùbá people, with your pride of “sophistication”, come to Calabar and experience food cooked with some imagination and creativity), and examines contradictions (How are Yorùbá the oily-food-eaters—ndi ofe mmanu—when Easterners add oil to their garri at every instance? And how are Igbos the eaters of solid-as-stone food—aj’òkuta má mun’mi—when their invention of garry-with-oil has rescued ẹ̀bà from the tyranny of turgidity?). Longthroat Memoirs successfully situates itself in a prominent space for not just the sensual narratives around food but of cultural attitudes, defining the country and its people in our own taste and words. A cookbook, a narrative of one culinary pilgrim’s journey through Nigeria’s cultural environments (from Ìbàdàn to Calabar), an exposition on prejudices and pretensions of some of our cooking myths, a personal and historical diary, all at once, Longthroat Memoirsmanages to fulfill more than gastronomic desires.

How to Cook a Sentence

“Writing about food in the way I do involves noting the influence of food on life and life on food, and attempting to weave an accurate cultural landscape.” – YA

Something that Aríbisálà has, and exhibits in abundance in this work, is patience. (That, along with the discipline to remember the names of all the food items she encountered while living in Calabar, and the diligence to verify the English—and sometimes Botanical—names of the local vegetables and fruits we are used to under different local names.) Reading any book is a race against time and the writers intentions. But the style in Longthroat Memoirs is deliberately contemplative of each individual reference, attentive to the moment enough to satiate an impatient reader and possessive of the right depth to reward a patient one. We know now that the book came about from a number of essays written first for a weekly newspaper column. But in setting each word to the page, the writer has deployed a rare skill that draws the reader in with an inviting aroma and keeps them satisfied after each course. In Peppered Snails, Aríbisálà introduces new Nigerian concepts (“toaster”, “yíláta”, etc) to the unfamiliar reader and spent considerable time weaving these into a tale about the cooking or endurance of hot peppered snail, all without taking the focus off the important direction of the narration. The style reminds of the best offerings of greats like Sóyínká in a work like Aké or Ìbàdàn, the Penkelemes Years, for instance. This is no idle comparison.

How does Yẹ́misí do it? How does one person deftly convey a vivid sense of smell and presence through words? We have read countless fiction and nonfiction by African writers, but not many of them have handled the treatment of food or any intimate contact with this much dexterity. I have an idea, but it is an inadequate one. Growing up in South-Western Nigeria isn’t enough motivation to care about its food, nor is having been transposed—through marriage—out of that environment into a contrasting one in the South-South a sufficient excuse either. There are many coincidences along the way, one of which is discovering, a while ago, that her health, as well as her children’s, was being affected by what they were consuming. She wrote about how she found out, in her trademark style of patient literary exploration of ordinary facts, combining personal history with a collective journey around food, in the piece for Medium in 2015 titled Mother Hunger.

Though that piece, along with many others of hers scattered around the web, are not included in this collection, they offer some clues as to the motivation for her craft, but not the germination of her skill. The writer’s obligation to memory and her diligent recollection seems to have been wrought through plodding hard work of deliberate crafting over many years.

Eventually reaching the end of such a book feels satisfying as equally as it feels deeply dissatisfying: it is not a book that should be read from cover to cover in one stretch. Each chapter, like slivers of mọinmọin under the leaves after a wrap is finished, should be returned to for extra flavours and spice. It is a shame that the book is not universally available on Kindle. Those equally likely to enjoy the literary delight of its letters juggling the taste buds of memory are Nigerians abroad or people everywhere with interest in Nigerian food culture. This book is for them. And for non-Nigerians, I suspect that its successful grounding of Nigerian recipes, ideas, misconceptions, myths, and stories through a personal lens will also be a brilliant introduction to both our cuisine and a different kind of nonfiction narrative. Listen to Yẹ́misí describe Lagos through the eyes of a drive to Yaba:

“Lagos knows how to primp and sashay on bridges, new skyscrapers, tall swanky things. It has $1,200-a-night hotel rooms; overestimated real estate on anxious hairlines of land arbitrarily reclaimed from the sea; fragile, sand-filled peninsulas anchored on the Grace of God…”

***

What are the knocks? A few. Olúbàdàn, the king of Ìbàdàn, was once referred to as Aláàfin of Ìbàdàn – an unintended slight that would have caused a warring of tribes in a different time. There’s also the perennial issue in Nigerian literature of having Yorùbá names/words written without appropriate diacritics. This should change in 2017, please!

In the chapter called Peppered Snails, the description of “toasting” on the campus of University of Ifẹ̀ spoke about taking a girl to “a new buka” to eat dodgy Chinese food instead of “an old buka” to eat pounded yam and soup. Those who have lived on that campus would know that the passage referred, instead, to New Buka and Old Buka respectively. These are not generic eating places, but known brands and locations.

So, What is This Book?

“(Nigerian Soup) is a multifaceted cultural treasure trove full of intriguing stories. It might not be gastronomically illustrious, but it is energetic and good-hearted. It belongs to one of the most fascinating personalities in the world: the Nigerian.” – YA

Is it a cultural resource, an encyclopedia of relevant memories, a cookbook, a dialogue with nostalgia, a thorough work in the documentation of the Nigerian food and cultural experience, a hard-wrought piece of literary exploration? All would be right and all would be insufficient. Yẹ́misí has, simply put, written a Nigerian book of stunning brilliance. Until now, when I am asked to provide a book from which to appreciate and understand Nigerian culture, I have usually had very few to mention. Peter Enahoro’s How to be a Nigerian comes quickly to mind, as does Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. But the latter is fiction and political while the former is mostly cultural and humorous. Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà’s book is both and more.

Memoirs are fun usually because we know that they tell us something interesting about an author, a situation they were in, or a certain time or a subject. When terribly done, they are too self-assured, too boastful and thus inauthentic, unsatisfying and unrepresentative of expected situations. Others are doomed by self-censorship to be of any real value for the genre, or by too much focus on the self to offer us more. But, depending on our initial expectation, it is usually easy to be satisfied with a personal account, which is by definition subjective. Being stimulated, engaged, or elevated by such work is another thing. That requires a different experience found in very rare instances in the hands of a skilled writer. Longthroat Memoirs falls into the latter category: a book that carries the weight of so much cultural and literary burden, and manages to discharge it with grace and style.

_____________

This essay was first published on Village Factor on January 21, 2017

Excerpts from Noah Town by Leke Adesanya

If you ever come to Noah Town, you’ll probably arrive by coach. The long buses come off interstate trunk roads from far and near, from smaller towns and villages were dreams of making it in the big city still has its allure. The buses pour out streams of young men and women hourly at almost a clockwork rate. They come with their dreams and aspirations, their bags and little savings. They are drawn to a metropolis where the street lights never go off and there is money to be made with beautiful bodies, willing hands or daring minds. I know them. I was once like them.

Your coach should come to a stop at the terminal on Main Street, just at the beginning of the two mile stretch of long dual rows of hardware stores, fashion stores and business offices. As you disembark , in the mornings, you might hear the dull drone of street sweeper trucks vacuuming the road. A soft feminine voice will welcome you to Noah Town over the terminal’s public address system , advising you to mind your luggage.

Touts may accost you, offering to help you get a cheaper hotel or unlicensed taxi , some with the intent to unburden you of your few valuables. You would be better off strolling to the Visitor Centre to book a cab or walk a bit farther down the road to catch a local bus ride. Or maybe someone, perhaps a relative or friend has arranged to pick you up.

Whatever are your options on arrival, you wouldn’t help but notice two old grey storey buildings situated almost opposite each other. Their Brazilian architecture with mock Roman marble columns add a air of gravitas that make them stand out amid melange of functional matchbox shaped buildings. They are the two big banks of Noah Town.

Scores of men with crew cuts in blue or black suits march in confident strides in and out of the two grand old buildings. On the right, if you are coming from the Terminus, next to the divisional police office is the local branch of National Bank. And on the left, behind a fibre glass fountain cast of an elephant pumping water out of its trunk, is the local land bank owned by former loan shark now turned legit financier, Mr Barido Freeman. Everybody calls him Barry.

He is reputed to be very influential. I have had occasion to meet him myself, informally of course, and I found him intimidating. He owns a significant portion of the businesses and real estate in Noah Town. Sixty years old and not looking a day younger, Barry is big boned and tall, slightly balding but still working that regal look. What was left of his receding hairline, he grew into big white halo with brown dusts.

When you are told by your guide that he started out as an immigrant with nothing on him but a knapsack slung across his shoulder, you would probably be impressed too by what he has made of himself. You would think, if he can, maybe you can. He is the stuff of which legends are made.

Barry manages to keep his family out of the tabloids. Although he has never married , he had a love child, twenty years old Norah whose mother has been out of the picture since like forever. Norah, I have heard, was worth her weight in trouble and then some. Twice expelled from expensive boarding schools abroad where Barry had hidden her, she eventually dropped out, called it quits and came back home.

Barry got her an office in the family business and engaged Cuba, an ex-cop as her bodyguard, mainly to keep her out of trouble. Cuba used to be an ambitious police officer on the rise till one day he shot a teenage kid playing with a toy gun and the top brass threw him under the bus. Taking care of Norah was a better paying job however and he intended to keep it forever. A shrewd guy, he kept Norah out of trouble mainly by making sure Barry never heard of it.

A major challenge for Cuba on job was handling Nora’s long list of hangers-on, most of whom were willing to get whatever Nora requests of them even if it were illegal. Prominent in that clique was Vera, her BFF and confidant. Vera used to be a bartender at a night club on Boardwalk, Noah Town’s entertainment district, where she met Norah and the two hit it off.

Like any street hustler, Vera knew she had found a winning lottery ticket with Norah. How did I get involved with this clique? Stay with me, I was going to explain.

Vera and I once dated, very briefly. Vera also happens to have a twin brother called Jude. Jude and I, we go way back to the time we were still hungry backpackers just come off a bus on Main Street. That was a life time ago, of course.

Jude and I are now business partners, we run a little taxi operation that is thriving very well, thank you very much. Nothing fancy, just a dozen old cars in great working condition and a long list of repeat loyal patrons.

We started out as two unlicensed cab drivers willing to work all night in what was then the notorious Boardwalk. Later we formed a partnership, got licensed and started adding more cars and drivers. We evolved into an effective relationship; he handles the drivers’ scheduling and getting of corporate customers while I take care of the back office and car maintenance issues.

Once two guys have had a big fight and then gotten over it, they tend to bond well. That was what happened to Jude and I. I could implicitly trust him to have my back, at least until the events I am narrating to you now started.

One ordinary Tuesday, Jude dropped by at lunch to inform me that we have an inquiry from a prospective investor. Barry – yeah, that Barry – wanted to buy out our little operation. Could I look at our books and come up with a working valuation, just in case this turned out to be a real deal?

Sure, I replied. I acted all cool about it though I was very, very excited. I mean if the price is right, like five times annual revenues, surely why not? But then he clarified. What he really wanted to know was, at what price was I willing to cash out. They wanted to buy me out and let Jude run the operation.

By the way, by then, he was hanging out a lot with Norah . And I was worried about her Daddy. Barry was like the king of Noah Town and rumour had it, he might or might not have had mob ties. If you don’t cooperate with his type, there was the unspoken threat that he might not be pleased. This was scary to me. I don’t want to end up drowning in the Noah Lagoon like some overconfident yokel who dared above his match. And since I love the feel of fresh cash stacks in my palm like the next guy, I felt I had better play along.

I doubled my calculated asking price, asked for not half but all of five times annual revenues. We shook hands over that and he said I should give him some time to iron it out with his principal, Barry. I started to look at Jude funny from then on. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I started to daydream of the day I’ll get to seat with Jude, Norah & co. , and firm up the terms of sale. I knew what I would do with the money when it hits my account. I would take a long holiday first, to somewhere far from Noah Town. I have earned it. I’ll go somewhere where it is cold in summer. Maybe I could learn to ski in middle age, who knows?

Those were my thoughts until a Saturday, some days later, when I picked up a copy of the local evening tabloid and read the headline, “Barry’s Girl Kidnapped”. I had a premonition that, after that event, things wouldn’t turn out exactly as planned.

____

Blurb

It was meant to be a safe job. They fake a kidnap of the millionaire’s daughter, collect the ransom and share it with her. But then things started to go wrong. As the body count continues to rise, Tony finds himself in the cross-hairs of a deadly gang as he tries to save his best friend’s widow.

Links

Available on Okada Books :

http://www.okadabooks.com/book/about/noah_town/12419

Available on Kindle ;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MG4KELQ

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