Oga Ken writes that Chris Abani"could only be discredited over the long run with this. anyone could understand this; few would imagine westerns are so much dupes as to buy any kind of story; to imagine that there aren't people who might question this."
This is not what Oga Moses meant; certainly, he can defend his take. Absolutely, not every Westerner would believe Abani's narrative of marginality and Africanization of violence. Rather Oga Moses meant, not in a generalized way, that African writers are admired and appreciated like a newly born Chinese panda in New York zoo whenever they tell stories that add bolts of false validity to the Western mindset of sin, sun, and sex in Africa.
Even in everyday life, when an African has something to say with refreshing forcefulness that distills the jaundiced meta-narrative of immemorial Africa s/he can get the elbows-out treatment from her/his Western audience, call them Liberals or Conservatives. I have seen this in my field of research and scholarship and in actuality bruised by that approach. In my roadside conversations with Westerners, "most" of them have been surprised by the fact that not all African children walked barefooted on empty stomachs to primary schools under trees . I am sure that Africans on this listserve have had similar experiences that mirror mine.
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 10:39 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - PEN Ten with Chris Abani
i think this is much more bizarre than you are putting it. of course, i don't know abani, i know only his works, and saw the horrible facebook video of his speech. it is too bizarre to mean simply pandering to western appetites. he exposes himself to enormous ridicule and disparagement in doing this; and i want to imagine that his speeches are indicative of a greater disturbance. but i don't know him; i don't know anyone who knows him. i don't know his public persona beyond that speech he gave about penises nailed to board. in the previous thread people on the list made a pretty valiant effort to uncover the circumstances around his imprisonment, and nothing emerged to validate his extravagant claims.
he could only be discredited over the long run with this.
anyone could understand this; few would imagine westerns are so much dupes as to buy any kind of story; to imagine that there aren't people who might question this.
lastly, appealing to people's pity doesn't mean, to me, appealing to sentiments of liberals, as though humanitarian types are more gullible than hardnosed conservatives. their assessment of responsibility differs from that of conservatives, or their willing to act for others is more generous. but i doubt that creates a necessary naivete or willingness to rationalize the discourses of those seeking to prey on their emotions. i can imagine an audience that had heard his speech, and then saw any part of the threads that exposed here on this list would be outraged.
i continue to read and teach his books, but the biography of the author is not going to be evoked, as i would for a saro-wiwa. i have to wonder if he is totally all there.
ken
Thanks for sharing, Funmi. Abani is such a snippy, witty thinker and writer that it's a shame that he felt the need to build a false biographical premise, a false originary resume if you will, in order to get noticed. It speaks as much to his insecurities and amoral ambition as it does to the Western appetite for certain kinds of stories about and from Africa--an appetite that compels African writers seeking recognition in the West to reinvent and embellish their lives in Africa to satiate the palates of do-good Western liberals and right wing racists alike. The former is motivated by a naive humanitarian impulse, the latter by a belief that Africa is the arena of all evil and that no horror story coming out of Africa is implausible.--On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 8:40 PM, Funmi Tofowomo Okelola <cafeafricana1@aol.com> wrote:http://www.pen.org/interview/pen-ten-chris-abani--PEN Ten with Chris Abani
- By: PEN America
- PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 7, 2014
- See more at: http://www.pen.org/interview/pen-ten-chris-abani#sthash.g9bM69AU.QPTdhOfk.dpufThe PEN Ten is PEN America's biweekly interview series curated by Lauren Cerand. This week Lauren talks to poet and novelist Chris Abani, author of the novels Graceland, Song for Night, and the highly anticipated The Secret History of Las Vegas. Abani is also a recipient of the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, and the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award.
When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?I was lucky enough to figure out that I wanted to be a writer when I was very young. I was ten when I published my first story and sixteen when my first novel was published. So it seems that much of my life, from my adolescence up to now, has been lived as a writer. It is understandably hard for me therefore to separate Chris Abani the person from the writer. Not in the sense of the public personae of the writer, that's an easy separation to make, but in the private sense of it, in the sense that I sometimes struggle to differentiate between living my life and witnessing myself living my life.
Whose work would you steal without attribution or consequence?
There are so many! God, that is a hard one. I'm always in awe of good writing, even that done by my students. But I think Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez would be three that come to mind immediately.
Where is your favorite place to write?
I would say, in my living room, on the couch, watching TV as I work. I like my creature comforts—certain coffee made a certain way, access to snacks and to the very spicy Nigerian food I make. I need to be listening to music or watching a movie or TV. It stimulates me and gives me something to work off, a need to go deep.
Have you ever been arrested? Care to discuss?
Yes I have been arrested but it's a complicated narrative not suited for short answers. But I will also admit to shoplifting chocolate once when I was eight. I got caught. Shame.
Obsessions and influences—what are yours?
I have been pretty much obsessed with humans and spiritual quests since I was a child. That's what the kind of involved Catholicism I lived, as a young person will instill in you. Over time that has evolved into a deep need to understand the entirety of human potential, and the deep urge that gives us language and what it is exactly that we mean for it to articulate about us. I would say that early comic books, Russian novels, movies and most of all, James Baldwin, were influences and in fact remain so.
What's the most daring thing you've ever put into words?
Will you marry me?
What is the responsibility of the writer?
Writers and storytellers as a whole are curators of our common humanity. This is difficult because we curate not just the good, but also the bad, the totality that makes us beautiful. That and surrendering your ego to the story so it finds its way in spite of your limitations.
While the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion, do you believe writers have a collective purpose?
It is actually contemporary writers that led to the falling out of fashion of the public intellectual. I have many theories about why this is, mainly that we became afraid of the burden of this responsibility. But we do serve a collective purpose; we are the ones who have been charged with the discourse of our common humanity, our shared fragility as beings of reason.
What book would you send to the leader of a government that imprisons writers?
Wole Soyinka's The Man Died.
Where is the line between observation and surveillance?
Well we are all observant beings. Much of how we learn is by observing others. Observations intent is usually mimesis or at its worst, understanding. Surveillance is always driven by a more sinister purpose. Therefore there is an abyss between them. Governments or even institutions can never observe because that kind of collective desire is always weighted with nefarious agend
aFunmi Tofowomo Okelola
-The Art of Living and Impermanence
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