Frodo: “I’m all right.”
Sam: “No, no you’re not all right. You’re exhausted…It’s that thing around your neck.”
The invitation to attend avant-garde Nigerian publishing house Farafina’s monthly Book Review, called for 2008 MacArthur “genius” Grant Fellow Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck brought wafting to mind a snatch of cinematic conversation from “Lord of the Rings.”
The dialogue is from the last in the trilogy—“The Return of the King”—a work most ominous from ladlefuls of interminable intrigue, something within the clutch of the writer of Thing. The potluck parallel is pertinent: a Review participant would assert that, from his reading, though “highly literary, Chimamanda seems to write with film in mind as well.”
The terse and weary exchange came at a make-or-mar juncture for humanity, at least in the vision of the book writer J.R.R. Tolkien; for his Frodo, pop culture icon, the “thing around your neck” is the Ring of Power.
For Chimamanda (readers and subjects will have only to the first name of the rising literary queen), the audience of December 4, 2010 at Terra Kulture, on Victoria Island, Lagos (in partnership), would say ‘Ring of Power’ is a symbol of how well-rounded the award-winning nouveau niche storyteller—easily the most accomplished Nigerian female writer—succeeded at making her first short story collection, published in 2009.
It came after two roaring book successes, a winning colourful streak that started with the coming-of-age Purple Hibiscus (2003) and carried on with the vicariously cathartic Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).
The present 12-piece collection (all previously published apiece) is an array of stories spun from strong human feelings and foibles, taking on sundry demons, from religious extremism to immigrant headaches, haunted history and pungent familial relationships seething with sibling shenanigans.
They come imbued with the power to engross; but does each story really ring true as a powerful enough statement on how the New African Life is lived, at home and in the Diaspora?
That was the task set for the conclave of bookworms. And came they did, prepared to “carry it for a while” (to echo Frodo’s Sam), regardless of their own exhaustion from having waltzed through Lagos’ legendary traffic. Or perhaps they were showing up to relieve fatigue from the tedium of clichés cluttering their lives, to communally dip into a book by a writer universally attested to be refreshing.
The lead reviewer was ready with his verdict on why that story (and indeed every other in the collection) had to be written: “As a society, we tend to live in denial.” In keeping with the straightforward mission of Farafina, his is a clarion call on all to step up the ante of “telling our own stories”—but first to ourselves, to see come true Hispanic American literary theorist Barry L. Lopez’s prediction: “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.”Farafina was founded on the vision of bringing the writer of the day (and her kind) to the attention of her native Africa.
Proceedings were moderated by budding literary activist Wana Udobang of Inspiration FM. She would apologise for the weak-strong character of the collection; the writing, she explained, was both pre- and post-Purple Hibiscus, the author’s debut.
The free-of-charge (locals say ‘F.O.C’) event, “organised to boost Nigeria’s reading culture” was, as always was open to all book lovers. For those yet to get a copy of the book before the review, Farafina put up its blurb on their blog and website.
Spicing up the interlude of the day, Dolapo Martin, with stage name D-Tune, came with a string of ballads doled out to his own accompaniment on acoustic guitar; the crooner enjoyed singing as much as his audience relished every strain and turn of lyrics that told the story of sheltered and frustrated love and a father’s unwillingness to let go and let boy.
The gathering returned to grapple, among others, with the searching question: who does Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie write for? Especially given the short story that lent its title to the collection, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” set in Connecticut, in the land of the author’s sojourn and rise to power.
There was also the question of whether Nigerian, nay African, Diaspora stories were not being “churned out” to pander to Western demands for them. (The lead reviewer of the day has ‘been there’ and, says he, won’t be deterred from “writing up my own, too, for consumption by all!”)
Perhaps the touchiest issue of the day was “whether Chimamanda can be accused of ‘agenda writing’,” a question stirred up by a story in the collection, “The Shivering,” set on the campus of Princeton University, which seemed to demand that the writer bend over backwards to make the protagonist extremely likeable.
Someone wondered if it’s “all a bid to sell his kind to us”—later revealed to be homosexual—“to tell the world we have also ‘arrived’ as a tolerant people, able to handle red-hot buttons with a grin!”
The Farafina Book Review takes a break in January, to resume February 2011; book for the day will be brought to the attention of fans and patrons in the blogosphere, as well as announced in traditional media for the benefit of the general public, well in advance.
Impressively well-attended, the gathering yielded a fistful of insights, despite (perhaps because of) its feistiness. Adjourned, it will reconvene; hopefully bigger, around the promise of—that which rings true and powerful—a story.
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