Abani, Chris 1967-

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ABANI, Chris 1967-

(Christopher Abani)

∗ Indicates that a listing has been compiled from secondary sources believed to be reliable, but has not been personally verified for this edition by the author sketched.

PERSONAL: Born 1967 (one source says 1966), in Nigeria; emigrated, 1991; lived in London, c. 1992–99; immigrated to the United States, 1999. Education: Attended university in Nigeria, c. 1988–90; Birkbeck College, University of London, M.A.; University of Southern California, Ph.D. study.

ADDRESSES: Office—Antioch University Los Angeles, M.F.A. Creative Writing Program, 400 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, CA 90230. Agent—Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, PMB 515, 1155 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar, CA 92014. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and educator. Antioch University, Los Angeles, CA, instructor; University of California, Riverside, visiting assistant professor of creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS: Delta Fiction Award, Nigeria, 1983; Middleton fellowship, University of Southern California; Freedom-to-Write Award, PEN USA West, and Prince Claus Award for Literature and Culture (Netherlands), all 2001; Imbonge Yesizwe Poetry International Award (South Africa), 2002; literary fellowship, Lannan Foundation, and Hellman/Hammet Grant, Human Rights Watch, both 2003; Silver Medal, California Book Awards for Fiction, PEN Hemingway Prize, PEN New England, and finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, all 2005, all for GraceLand.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

(As Christopher Abani) Masters of the Board, Delta of Nigeria (Enugu, Anambra State, Nigeria), 1985.

Sirocco, Swan (Nigeria), 1987.

GraceLand, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2004.

POETRY

Kalakuta Republic, introduction by Kwame Dawes, Saqi Books (London, England), 2000.

Daphne's Lot, Red Hen Press (Los Angeles, CA), 2002.

Dog Woman, Red Hen Press (Los Angeles, CA), 2004.

Also author of the play Song of the Broken Flute and other plays performed in Nigeria, c. 1980s.

SIDELIGHTS: Chris Abani is part of a new generation of Nigerian writers who convey to an English-speaking audience the experience of having been born and raised in that troubled African nation. He began writing at a very young age and published his first novel, Masters of the Board, while still a teenager. The plot of the novel, a political thriller, came uncomfortably close to what actually occurred during a coup that was carried out in Nigeria not long after, and Abani was thrown in jail for six months on suspicion of having helped organize the attempted political overthrow. He continued to write after his release from jail but was imprisoned again, two years later, after the publication of his novel Sirocco. The author was released after a year of detention, but after another two years of writing, during which he composed several antigovernment plays that were performed on the street near government offices, Abani was once again imprisoned—and placed on death row. He was able to escape after eighteen months, thanks to bribes several of his friends paid to prison officials, and immediately went into exile.

Abani's poetry collection Kalakuta Republic takes its title from a wing of the infamous Kiri Kiri prison in Lagos, Nigeria, where Abani and other political prisoners were incarcerated and tortured. Poems in the collection describe, in graphic detail, horrors Abani witnessed there, particularly the various methods of torture used upon the inmates. Guards sodomized prisoners with rifle barrels, nailed them to tables by their genitals, and performed endless types of torture—in one case a fourteen-year-old boy was tortured until his death. In his review for the New Statesman Robert Winder stated, "It isn't pretty—how could it be … the steady parade of torment he describes … along with a sense of blank bewilderment in the face of such cruelty, is acutely drawn and held very tight." Tanure Ojaide, writing for World Literature Today, stated, "He portrays the experience in indelible lines that haunt the reader as well as himself." Ojaide added that Abani "succeeds in elevating art and humanity above the meanness and inhumanity of tyrannical leaders and their cohorts."

Abani's first novel after Sirocco was 2004's GraceLand, a book about a teenage boy named Elvis Oke. The book is set in 1983, and Elvis is trying to survive in the destitute town of Moroko, a slum on the outskirts of Lagos. His mother, Beatrice, died of cancer when Elvis was a young boy, but he still clings to her journal; old-fashioned Nigerian recipes and bits of herbalism from the journal serve as chapter dividers. In flashbacks the reader is given glimpses of Elvis's childhood in a rural Nigerian village and the devastating effect that his mother's death had upon his father, Sunday, who turns to alcohol to cope. By Elvis's adolescence his father has moved on sufficiently enough to have found solace in a girlfriend named Comfort—who is nothing of the sort to Elvis. Having dropped out of high school, he makes money performing as an Elvis Presley impersonator for Western tourists despite the fact he has few skills as a singer or dancer. According to John C. Hawley's review of the book for America, Elvis's "hopeless impersonation of his namesake for white tourists is painful to imagine," The story takes a turn when Elvis's friend Redemption convinces him there is more money to be made in crime. Despite his original moral qualms, Elvis finds himself being sucked into moneymaking ventures that grow more depraved as time passes. "GraceLand draws a searing picture of a country devouring its own children," Dinaw Mengestu commented in New Leader, and "what you learn about Nigeria will make you want to weep." A Kirkus Reviews contributor concurred that "Abani paints a compelling portrait of a society in frightening chaos." However, Charlie Dickinson, a reviewer for the Hackwriters Web site, focused on the positive side of Abani's tale. "Abani delivers what might be the ultimate tribute to the King, if the Elvis myth is really about a dirt-poor boy finally catching his dream and making good," he concluded.

Although Abani's writing is inextricably linked to his suffering as a citizen under the Nigerian military dictatorship, the author has stated, "The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about. I was a writer before I was in prison." In an interview with Southern California Poetix online interviewer Carlye Archibeque, the Abani continued, "The problem is we're looking for something that doesn't exist. We're looking for authenticity. There is no such thing as authenticity. There is either good art or bad art."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, August 2, 2004, John C. Hawley, "Oke's Odyssey," p. 26.

Black Issues Book Review, May-June, 2005, Michael Datcher, "West Coast Kinfolk: In Los Angeles, Chris Abani and Kamau Daaood Stand out as Strong Limbs on the Family Tree of Literature," p. 34.

Booklist, November 15, 2003, Bill Ott, review of GraceLand, p. 570.

Esquire, March, 2004, review of GraceLand, p. 54.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2003, review of GraceLand, p. 1281.

Library Journal, January, 2004, Edward B. St. John, review of GraceLand, p. 151.

Mother Jones, March-April, 2004, Michelle Chihara, review of GraceLand, p. 86.

New Leader, January-February, 2004, Dinaw Mengestu, "At the End of Lonely Street," p. 27.

New Statesman, May 21, 2001, Robert Winder, review of Kalakuta Republic, p. 52.

Publishers Weekly, November 17, 2003, review of GraceLand, p. 39.

World Literature Today, spring, 2001, Tanure Ojaide, review of Kalakuta Republic, p. 309.