#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

Ada is a young Nigerian woman whose mother is having serious health problems. Because of money, they don’t go to the hospital soon enough, so her mother suffers. Because of money, they don’t get the care they need that could save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada will turn to a night of prostitution to try to raise enough money to save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada’s mother will die soon after hearing of her daughters sacrifice. Because of money, Ada, already ashamed of herself, will think her mother died disappointed in her as well.

Notable Passage: “And so there were silences, as if we no longer valued spoken words, as if spoken words were gaudy finishes on a delicate piece of art, unnecessary distractions from the masterpiece, whose substance was more meaningfully experienced if left unornamented.”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#115 The American Embassy- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#115 The American Embassy- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We are waiting in a line at the American Embassy. This line is for Visa applicants. The narrator is a woman, injured and distraught. She hurt herself jumping from her balcony to escape two armed government agents. They came to look for her husband , but not finding him ended up shooting her 4-year old son.

Now , she is waiting in this line to leave her home for good. Her husband is a pro-democracy journalist who feld a few weeks before. He writes for the New Nigeria, a progressive paper, who’s anti-government stance has caused his arrest many times.

“He fights repression with his pen, he gives a voice to the voiceless, he makes the world know.” A recent article about General Abacha’s history of abuse seems to have been the last straw, and the next arrest will likely be a permanent situation.

After burying her son, she is waiting on this line, but she doesn’t want to share her sons death with the American Embassy interviewer, afraid that when she does she will be called a liar. She is not ready to face that harsh rejection, she is not ready to leave the place where her son has died.

Notable Passage: “See how the people are pleading with the soldiers…Our people have become too used to pleading with soldiers.”

Rating: 8-8-8-9 Total= 33

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man…and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people.”

That opening paragraph of Ghosts, is a common theme of this collection. The older educated class of Nigeria battling old culture with new, African vs. the west, etc.  Both proud of living through war and corruption to better their families and lamenting the erosion of their heritage, even the narrator’s name, James Nwoye represents this dichotomy.

James is a retired professor, a widower, a father and a grandfather of children not born in Nigeria and losing their native tongue in just one generation. He runs into a man he thought long dead, and they share the tales of the past years.  Although not friends during the war years, they have too much in common to harbor bad feelings.

“He had forgotten [his wife’s] name and yet, somehow, he was capable of mourning her, or perhaps he was mourning a time immersed in possibilities.” Ikenna was “a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.”

In retirement, James holds onto connections of his past, and the old ways despite the manner in which he lived his life, educated, well-traveled, progressive: “We are the educated ones, taught to keep tightly rigid our boundaries of what is considered real.” The ghost of his wife visits him often.

Word of the day: Harmattan – A dry dusty easterly or north easterly wind on the west African Coast occurring from December to February

Notable Passage: “It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#41 A Private Experience- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

#41 A Private Experience- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Two Nigerian woman find themselves together in an abandoned storefront helping one another stay safe during a riot. These two woman are polar opposites in everything external; Chika studies medicine at the University, the other woman sells onions in the market. Chika loses her expensive Burburry bag while fleeing the mob, the other woman loses her cheap plastic necklace. Chika is an Igbo Christian, the other woman is a Hausa Muslim. When riots break out, these differences do not matter.

The unrest began when a Christian man ran over a Koran in the street. The Hausa woman seems to be used to these cultural uprisings, while Chika is overwhelmed.

“Riots like this are what she read about in newspapers. Riots like this were what happened to other people.”

Despite being in close confines and sharing very intimate personal moments, these woman remain somewhat distant and very detached, each retreating to a personal bubble. Thus the title. The scene with the woman worrying about her cracked nipple is a powerful metaphor for her inability to protect her children when they need her the most.

Notable Passage: “The room is stuffy and smells nothing like the streets outside, which smell like the kind of sky-colored smoke that wafts around during Christmas when people throw goat carcasses into fires to burn the hair off the skin.”

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30

#35 Imitation- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#35 Imitation- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Benim Mask: Ceremonial head mask made during the 16^th century around the time of Queen Idia in what is now Nigeria.  All known remaining masks were stolen by the British during the 18^th century and put in western museums.  In their original capacity they were used during bloody sacrificial ceremonies while burying Benim Kings.

Nkem is a young wife of a wealthy Nigerian.  She lives in an all white Philidelphia suburb with her two children, while her husband lives primarily in Lagos. The story begins with the imitation Benim masks she has hanging on her walls, masks that inspire her American neighbors to purchase similar fake artifacts. No-one seems to take into consideration the violence that those mask represent, Nkem only slightly aware at first. Everyone in this story is wearing some sort of mask.

As her new life takes shape, “America has grown on her, snaked its roots under her skin.” Once a proud wife of what she calls the Rich Nigerian Men Who Sent Their Wives To America club, she begins to see things in pairs, what was is real and what is imitation, imitation yams, imitation house, imitation mistress, imitation houseboy, imitation friends.  She is torn between two lives and two cultures.  All this is going through her mind as she battles with your run of mill long distance marriage issues.

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#23 Cell One- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#23 Cell One- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is my first encounter with the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, however I know of her talks on culture and gender.  The Cell comes from the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

This is a story about change, social class, generations and family.  We wee a college community on the Nsukka campus in Nigeria.  There is rash of professor’s sons robbing their neighbor’s houses.  Everyone is aware of the culprits but pride and embarrassment causes them to blame outside riff-raff.  These thieving boys are part of a new cult/gang phenomenon. 

“They are symptoms of a larger malaise.” We see corruption and resentment throughout the piece.  The University, the Cults, and the Police, they are all guilty.

When a brutal murder happens on campus, many in the known cult members are locked up including Nnamabia, the older brother of the narrator. The rest of the story takes place during family visits to the prison or The Cell.  Being of better means, Nnamabia is able to see his family and tell them of what happens inside.  He tells them of an old man who is imprisoned because the police can’t find his criminal son. Just like the old man is in jail for the sins of his son, Nnamabia is in jail for the leniency of his father. 

Nnamabia represents the younger generation in Nigeria, charming, brash, entitled, irreverent, and disrespectful.  His lighter skin is seen as a young virtue where his darker skinned site is scoffed at. In the end, he’s just an immature child, innocent and getting smacked down by the reality of a cruel world. 

Good story telling, easy style. I’m looking forward to the rest of these.

Notable Passage: “It would have been so easy for him, my charming brother, to make a sleek drama of his story, but he did not.”

Rating: 8-8-9-7 Total= 32