Hope is a Nigerian citizen in ‘Of This Our Country’

Written by Oluwaseun Famoofo

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustrated by Grace Kaluba

I still remember the days my parents and their friends would sit in the living room, ardently discussing the politics of the land. I used to be scared someone would knock on their doors and arrest them for even daring to speak. Freedom of speech in Nigeria is an illusion, and so is the right to vote. To be a patriot or to not be, I have spent my life asking myself this question. But I ache for this country, a country where a lot of citizens keep saying their daily “what-ifs.”: what if we were never colonized, what if the amalgamation did not happen, what if we all united? Reading “Of this our Country” reminded me of “There was a country,” by Chinua Achebe – the Nigeria he grew up in is so different from that which has been handed to us, the new generation of Nigerians.

Nigeria is a land filled with contrasts: inter-tribal hate and inter-tribal marriages; a wide income gap between the lower class, the middle class, and the rich; startling differences between the experiences of the citizens in the diaspora who come to Nigeria occasionally and the citizens who live and breathe the country. In “Of this our Country”, the most captivating sentence I read was “If you want to know a country, read its writers,” a quote by Aminatta Forna. The storytelling of the book shines a light on the hidden crevices, it points out the abnormalities and peculiarities of Nigeria I have come to regard as “normal.” A selection of first-person experiences where Nigerians highlight the authors’ strong ties to their ancestry. Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bolu Babalola, Abi Daré, and Ayobami Adébayo are a few of the authors present in the collection. Finding both well-known and lesser-known Nigerian authors is easy within the book. I found compelling how at ease the authors were describing the places they called home; some of the authors are skillfully able to persuade their audience of their love for Nigeria.

The story by Chimamanda Adichie provides a hysterical and horrific view of life in Lagos. One’s response to their stories, which serve as a powerful representation of the author’s other works, should be able to inform if one will be interested in other books by these authors. Despite the fact that throughout the book many of Nigeria’s negative characteristics, which may discourage those who have never been there from traveling there, are highlighted, I believe readers will enjoy the descriptions that highlight the country’s timeless features and some may even feel an affinity for it as a result of reading the book.

The personal short stories by twenty-four writers from different parts of the country contained in “Of this our Country” is an accurate representation of the country. A symphony of colors and languages, of cultures and traditions, of religion and politics. It can make people awfully happy in a moment and the next second the smile is wiped off their face. In Nigeria, one never particularly knows what the day has for them, or even the next hour, they just hope for the best. Hope, they say, is a Nigerian citizen.

The book shows the nation that formed in the year 1960, which is still heavily scarred by colonialism and looting, civil war, and corruption, but which still stands tall regardless. Nigeria moves day by day through the sheer will of its people. The currency for surviving in Nigeria is the dream – everyone has it. It burns like a fever in people’s eyes when they see what they can accomplish. One might say this is also the factor that drives greed: the bottomless pit of want our leaders keep shoving the collective resources of the people into, and that person would be right. The complexity the country displays on a daily basis is intertwined with so many beliefs. Nigerians are a proud group of people, and it has led to generations of people who have a hard time admitting their mistakes. That the way they are leading this country is wrong or the hate for fellow Nigerians is baseless. They will not admit that we need better leaders, empathetic leaders, and that we have been wrong but with measured steps and goals, Nigerians can begin the long and tumultuous journey to start healing the land.

The writers’ time in cities like Lagos, Abeokuta, Enugu, Jos, and many more has been a transformative experience and inspired them to produce an enlightening book. Any foreigner who previously believed Nigeria had nothing noteworthy or interesting to offer would have their opinion altered after reading these testimonies. The authors are not all native Nigerians, though; some of them were raised abroad and have just recently chosen Nigeria as their permanent home. Every single piece in the collection is astounding, but those by Helon Habila, Lola Shoneyin, Yomi Adegoke, Okey Ndibe, and Abubakar Ibrahim will stand out as particularly unforgettable.

Works cited

“If you want to know a country, read its writers.” – Aminatta Forna, ‘Survival instincts’, Guardian, April 24, 2009.

Of This Our Country. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Borough Press, 2021.

Oluwaseun Famoofo is a passionate narrator. A lover of comedy shows and wine, you will mostly see her glued to her laptop revealing one story or the other. Creating her novels and building their characters gives her the utmost satisfaction. Her works have shown in media such as Peace Insight, Black Ballad, Adventures from the bedroom of African women, Yellow seeds magazine, Noisy streets magazine, Resonate, Shado magazine and HypeQ Magazine.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART FIVE: SUPERMAN

Written by Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

Before I delve into this part of the Utopian Curriculum series, I must offer some thanks. First and foremost, to the incredible team at Project Myopia for their patience and compassion for me as an individual. The past several years have been difficult for so many of us and it is encouraging to see a publication actually embody the ethos of care and utopianism that we collectively agreed to explore when this series was first pitched. It is rare and makes all the difference. Second, specifically to Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevodo for your feedback and nurturing editing. It has been a real joy being asked to delve deeper into my thoughts in a way that was constructive and empowering. Third, to Iara Silva for your incredible artwork. Arresting visual media is a wonderful way to express complex thoughts – all the more relevant for this particular essay given the graphic nature of the source material.

And finally, to you dear reader, for sticking with this endeavour. It feels serendipitous offering my gratitude halfway through this curriculum, especially as so much has changed since it was first pitched. Part of this change is the actual source material itself. When I first included Superman as an example of utopia, it was a more generic take on the character and his history. But Superman has evolved since then and it is the specific take on his latest iteration – an openly queer child of a refugee with intentionally inclusive politics – that I will be exploring here.

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The otherness of South Asian Art in British academia

Apoorva Singh

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Chila Kumari Burman was a member of the British Black Arts movement in the 1980s and one of the first South Asian women to make political art in the UK (Buck, 2020). Her work was most recently exhibited by Tate Britain in 2020, where her piece remembering a brave new world, filled with imagery of iconic Hindu deities and South Asian aesthetics, was the gallery’s winter commission. South Asian feminist perspectives on post-colonial Britain are centred in Burman’s work, which spans multiple media, from printmaking and painting, to installation and film. In my exploration of Chila Kumari Burman, I started to wonder: How do we read and understand her artwork? Is it post-colonial, South Asian, feminist or British? How should we define the artwork’s aesthetic and cultural underpinnings?

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART FOUR: VOGUING

PART FOUR: VOGUING

By Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

As I continue to write this Utopian Curriculum series, it feels important to address questions raised from previous essays. In online conversations and email exchanges around parts two (Black Panther) and three (Sultana’s Dream), a particular point raised was whether something can be truly utopian if it is only positive and ideal for a specific demographic. It is apt, then, to dedicate part four to the art form of voguing.

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The Visionary Films of Med Hondo

Illustration and article by François Giraud

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Although he worked at the margins of the film industry for half a century, pioneer French-Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo (1936-2019) is not an obscure artist. As recently as 2020, the German publisher Archive Books compiled almost fifty years of interviews with Med Hondo, which shows the interest that his transnational and anticolonial cinema continues to elicit, decades after many of his films were released. In 1970, his first long feature film Soleil Ô—which powerfully denounces racism in French society and the exploitation and discrimination of African emigrants in Paris—received exposure at Cannes Festival and was awarded a Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Festival. Some of his later films, such as Sarraounia (1986) and Black Light (Lumière noire, 1994), have been studied in academic journals specialising in African and postcolonial studies.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART TWO: BLACK PANTHER

**PART TWO: BLACK PANTHER (2018)**

Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

Welcome back to the Utopian Curriculum series with Project Myopia! In this post, I will look at the first case study on the curriculum, the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther. Directed by Ryan Coogler, it has received a renewed level of attention and love since the tragic passing of actor Chadwick Boseman.

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‘IN ORDER TO LIVE’ BY Yeonmi Park: VOICE FOR A SILENT NATION

Giulia Colato

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustration by Maia Walcott

“You have to tell the world that North Korea is like one big prison camp . . . If you don’t speak up for them, Yeonmi-ya, who will?” (Park 264). After her mother said these words, Yeonmi Park decided to put aside her insecurities, her fear and the shame she felt and to write about her life.

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The Gypsy Goddess

Vaishali Bhargava

Edited by Muireann Crowley

Artwork by Kelechi Hafstad: Kelechi Anna Photography

“Remember, dear reader, I write from a land where people wrap up newborn babies in clumsy rags and deck the dead in incredible finery.” (Kandasamy 24)

Literature encompasses several paths of inspiration for me and I tread one of them in the Indian author, Meena Kandasamy’s debut novel The Gypsy Goddess (2014). This is a whimsical fictional narrative based on the bloody massacre of 1968 in the Kilvenmani village, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India. Without striving hard for authenticity she inspires me to write dramatically in the right parts while holding reader’s attention. Her pen isn’t afraid of unveiling that which decorum usually hides and carries “the tales of their cunts and their cuntress and their cuntentants . . .” (Kandasamy 67) for she is on a fearless mission.

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Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun

Evianne Darcy

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Artwork by Kelechi Hafstad: Kelechi Anna Photography

The timeless, multilayered Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun tells the story of a now-recovered “invalid” (Lu 21), who had previously fallen ill to a “persecution complex” (21), through which he became convinced that everyone around him was a cannibal, be it his brother, neighbour, or the children of the village in which he resides. In his delusional frenzy, the “invalid” believes he is serving time for trampling on “Records of the Past” (22), and that the local village children are being taught to “Eat people!” (24) He even suspects that the words of an antiquated book and the neighbour’s dog – descended from wolves – are conspiring to eat him too. Eventually, instead of being eaten, our madman cowers under the “weight of four thousand years of cannibalism bearing down upon” (31) him.

In an ending which parallels Macbeth, Lu Xun’s madman surrenders to the all-consuming cannibalistic heritage of bygone feudalism, which usurps his village. He realises that he has gone so far into his mania – spurred by his vandalism of documents pertaining to his country’s history – that returning would be pointless. Despite his fleeting uprising, which was dismissed as insanity, he will never be truly human. As a child, he ate his little sister: the reader discovers that the madman himself is a cannibal.

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Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo

Sophie Hanson

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Art by Ottelien Huckin

https://www.ottelienhuckin.co.uk

Although existing feminist curricula reflect female marginalisation and its representation in literature for adults, there is significantly less feminist study of children’s literature. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the books we read as children form our understanding of the world and it is therefore important to include children’s literature in feminist critique. As a girl who always loved to read, children’s books failed to give me insight into the reality of inequality I would face as a woman, or of the potential I had in spite of it. In fact, it wasn’t until my late teens I came across a children’s book that provided this: that book was Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo (2016).

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