Our Children Are Coming: The New Face Of Nigerian Literature —Henry Chukwuemeka Onyema

They are mostly aged twenty to fifty. Often well educated, a good number of them live outside Nigeria where leading lights among them are celebrated. But the majority of them reside in Nigeria. They are knowledgeable about online technologies in their profession. Most face overwhelming odds in their quest for success. Welcome to the world of the contemporary Nigerian writer.

The new generation of Nigerian writers was forged in adversity. The military governments of the 1980s and 1990s were no friends of writers. Notable poet, General Mamman Vatsa, was executed by the Ibrahim Babangida regime for allegedly being the mastermind of a coup plot. Other writers were jailed. Government policies discouraged publishers. Writers, who could, fled Nigeria.

But the perils of dictatorship nurtured writers who won the hearts of readers globally just like their anti-colonialism soaked predecessors in the 1960s. A journalist, Helon Habila, won the 2001 Caine Prize in African literature with a self-published collection of short stories. Since then the new flowers of Nigerian literature have blossomed. In barely ten years writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Tolu Ogunlesi, Ogaga Ifowodo, Eghosa Imausen, Uche Peter Umez, Uwem Akpan and Toni Kan dazzled like a million stars.

Against the background of challenges such as a dearth of publishing opportunities, a pervasive anti-intellectual culture among the elite, illiteracy and poverty the question arises: what propels these writers? What makes their tales popular with both Nigerians and non-Nigerians? Frank Bures, an American writer on Nigerian arts attributes it to an ‘anger of unfulfilment’ shared by both writer and reader. In his words: ‘that anger is something we know well, the feeling that something promised us but never received. And that anger, that grasping is a major force driving the new arts movement in Nigeria .’ The new Nigerian writers are telling the tales of their time. Though fully aware of colonialism’s impact on their society they have gone beyond it. Most root their works in the globalised world they are in but with a uniquely Nigerian flavour.They take on diverse, controversial and even ‘taboo’ subjects.eg. Homosexuality. Chika Unigwe’s short listed entry for the 2004 Caine prize titled ‘The Secret’ is just one excellent example of how the globalised Nigerian writer deals with the subject of the Nigerian personality in an alien culture.

What endears the new Nigerian writer to his people is his or her accessibility. Many Nigerians admire veteran writer Wole Soyinka for his dogged anti-establishment posture, but only a few, even writers, have penetrated his works except for his accessible comedies ‘The Trials of Brother Jero’ and ‘The Lion and the Jewel’. In contrast Sefi Atta’s first novel ‘Everything Good Will Come’ struck a chord with both highbrow intellectuals and the average reader. The new generation does not lack obscurantists but generally they write for the people.

But leading Nigerian critics write their works as debauched and sub-standard. The doyen of Nigerian literary criticism, Professor Charles Nnolim, has scathing words for the new Nigerian writers. In his essay ‘New Nigerian Writing: Between Kitchen and Debauchery’, he describes them as ‘the fleshy school of writers’ whose major satisfaction is to produce ‘main characters … in dire pursuit of the flesh, writers for whom the excitements and satisfactions of the body are far more important than the sanctity of the novel; for whom the pleasure of the flesh are of more moment than the essence of the spirit…’ Naturally the new generation do not take such punches mildly especially when they come from a man as well-respected professionally as Professor Nnolim. But they strive on relentlessly.

Questions also arise over the consistency and thoroughness of the new generation’s craft. But when one considers that these writers mostly self-publish and lack the good support systems their predecessors got from big Western publishers like Heinemann, Macmillan and Longman, they should not be crucified. With the pressures they face, especially the home-based writers, they must be given due respect.

But doubts exist among Nigerian literary critics over the ‘Nigerianness’ of their works, given that most of the best among the new writers live and work abroad. Those who have not left are dismissed as mediocre by the critics. But home-based Toni Kan disagrees. In his words “It is not as if we don’t have good writers here, but unless you get that validation from the West, nobody is going to see you as important.” He may have a point; as an unknown writer Habila was denied a literary prize in Nigeria because the judges did not know him.

Things are changing. Mouth-watering indigenous prizes have been instituted in Nigeria . High-profile indigenous publishing companies like Kachifo, publishers of Farafina books, have opened shop and are giving the new writers a much-needed opportunity. In 2005 Kachifo convinced Nigerian companies to fly Sefi Atta across West Africa for promotional readings of her first novel, an action hitherto unknown in the Nigerian book industry. This gives credence to Toni Kan’s assertion that “things are happening. This is our time now.”

•Onyema is a Lgos-based writer and historian. Email: [email protected]