n the next few months it is my intention to serialize my manuscript on nigeriaworld.com. Nothing stops me from publishing same in novel form if that catches my fancy tomorrow. But for today I am doing the right thing if only to bring freshness to a medium that gave expression to some of the best writers of my days. I still insist there’s need to carve out a slot for creative writing as a way of expanding our audience. But I also have other reasons.
By opting to serialize this work I aim to escape censorship. Only those who have attempted to publish lately understand my anger. To get published by Western publishers, the post-African Writers Series, AWS, writer is expected to commit cultural suicide by privileging alien values without which his work is rejected. He kowtows to liberals who preach cultural diversity while practicing solidity. You are told what to write and the moment you fall into this trap then nothing good or original will come out of you.
This anomy also manifests for the student attempting African literature as a discipline. Of the good old society struggling with corruption and unemployment a professor who has nothing in common with Africa or African aspirations would not hear of it. You begin to hear hair raising assumptions spurned as theories about your society. Theories popularized only because they exclude you as African while casting aspiration on everything you hold dear.
Your African literature is reduced to study in feminism, social minorities (not your Niger Delta ethnic minorities but homosexuals as minority group) and anything goes. You are served Messianic texts denouncing African patriarchy for standing in the way of the black woman from “controlling her body and sexuality,” but texts bearing traits of arm chair researchers because the writers are very ignorant of the black woman they claim to liberate.
Do white and Indian women who dominate African literature today share anything in common with the African woman? The answer is a capital NO. As a matter of fact my own personal observation indicts these two for maltreating the black woman who scrubs for them. But reading latter days’ narration you’d almost think that the black woman is discontentedly married to a brute. I have taken time to correct that.
What passes for African literature today is nothing African just as authentic African literature will never find a favoured place before existing publishing houses. The end result is a literature capable of killing all zeal in you, a tasteless piece of writing and a fallacy whose recipe is lifted directly from chopping slab of the notorious Non-governmental Organisation, NGO. There can be no art, truth, creativity or satisfaction when Western publishers dictate to African writers.
African literature is dying; partly as a result of the dearth of indigenous publishing houses and partly for its unAfrican content. Telling our own story ourselves is another way of saying we have been misrepresented. And as we can never answer a name that is not our own self-given, it becomes our historic burden to come up with works that truly define us. I reject Nadine Gordimer’s definition of African literature as literature written by Africans and those who shared their experience with them. For me African literature is a literature of Black Experience. This Experience was never shared as no race agreed to enter the terrifying hold of the merchant ship with us, none. Only Africans can truly give voice to their ghastly Experience and I am not in a hurry to surrender this all important duty.
When I set out to write “River Juju,” I decided to overcome the problem of unAfrican content by pumping back local content into my novel. Though disgraceful that I write in English rather than Igbo, my deliberate attempt to bastardize the English language as a way of undermining its racist undertone becomes an exercise in self-redemption. In this regard I agree totally with Chinua Achebe that Africans could write in English on the understanding that they use it to do unheard of things. When it pleases me I switch to pidgin which the Queen of England does not understand. Unemployment, truncated education, quarrelsome neighbours and poverty found ample space in the book. I dutifully profiled African romance as we know it down town.
As for the dearth of friendly indigenous publishing houses, our number one problem, I simply transcended it by shifting attention to the internet to be heard. What have I to lose? Rather than inertia I have taken my chance with fate, believing I have scripted a Third World literature that seems to retort back to the publisher, “What do you mean by politically correct language?”
My story line is simple and uncomplicated. If in the course of reading it you pick up echoes from your past, the better. A Nigerian reading it in Yenagoa or Bukuru is reminded of the ‘80s when the last thing you heard going to bed was Bongos Ikwue. You stirred at dawn only to eject last night’s tape for Honey Boy. Whether you live in Bonn or Atlanta my literature will take you back to the point where your conscious life first began. Lost in these haunting memories your tranquility is shattered by the black homosexual who turns up demanding his human rights. Then you began to see some hope in Sharia as a Christian.
Setting
“River Juju” is a novel shaped by the Black Experience in all its nuances and contradictions. Set in the backwaters and waterfronts of the Niger Delta, it brings the reader face to face with denizens who, having lost out in this world, blindly take to religion not to lose again in Paradise. I intentionally privileged religion because black people are very religious. This trait also contains the seed of their destruction as same religion is used to justify physical and psychological violence against them.
Characterisation
The characters are a hotch-potch of natives from different cultures. The Igbo protagonist Dandy lives in an Ijaw’s Face-Me-I-Face-You yard. His pregnant teenage lover, Rekiya, is Yoruba Muslim. Mr. Effiong the electrician, Eugene the chemist man and Uwalaka the clearing and forwarding agent are all underdogs. Brother Reuben Noah is an outcast who ruminates on his Bible in undisturbed solitude when he’s not busy in his furniture workshop. Living in close proximity does not produce the desired unity but mutual bickering. This experimentation comes handy in understanding why the modern African state is a rumpus of oddity.
Diction
My characterization conditions my diction, which is di-glossia. Standard English negotiates with pidgin to capture the soul of these rustics. In the slums people do not speak as if they are in a serious job interview. They speak pidgin while displaying mannerism very consistent with African communalism. Spontaneous love follows acts of kindness while perceived ill is roundly condemned with the language it deserves. This brings realism to the work.
Audience
In an epoch of cultural diversity there can be no universalism. “River Juju” talks to black people.
Themes
A recurrent theme in the work is the moral question of what constitutes a crime. The pervading crusade/jihad against drunkenness, fornication, demons and blasphemy is red herring. Standing between blacks and their God cannot be these petty sins. The real evils are poverty, illiteracy, Sino/Arab expansionism, multinational terrorism, contaminated environmental and an oppressive state hand in glove with religion.
The novel rejects turning the other cheek in a global village where every villager is armed. Non-violence as preached by the mighty and practiced by the meek comes under focus. Brother Reuben Noah who subscribes to suffering in silence only encourages more violence against his person as he is seen weak.
It makes no difference whether you believe in democracy or not. The ultimate tragedy of the black man today is this monologue of Master Morality that condemns him to non-violence, homosexuality, privatisation and nothingness. At the same time he is in immediate danger from the opposing Arab-Consciousness decreeing Sharia, Islamic militancy and territorial expansionism. In this pincher freedom is impossible without struggle.
Blurb
While Dandy fights off the pregnant Rekiya and her family, old Brother Reuben Noah burrows himself fifteen feet underground convinced America would invade the Niger Delta and kill off everyone for the Black Gold. Death comes quite alright but not from the expected quarters.
Can the black person be assertive today without colliding with democracy and Islam? In this novel are characters on the banks of the mythical River Juju. This river claims you if you swim fast across it and still claims you for swimming slowly. Inescapable tragedy is what makes this work an eye opener to the perils of cultural diversity.
Length
“River Juju” is a prose narrative of 60,287 words contained in 181 double space typed pages.
Status
Manuscript is completed.
Author’s Biography