Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
Popular Cultural Memory in Chris Abani’s Graceland: Material
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| 2.6 Popular Cultural Memory in Chris Abani’s Graceland: Material Cultures of Memory Abani‟s Graceland provides an interesting account, of Lagosian urban life in the sands. The spatio-temporal narrative structure is similar to Adichie‟s Half of a Yellow Sun‟s alternation of time between the early and late sixties. Graceland‟s temporal structure shifts between the sands the present time of the protagonist Elvis in the Nigerian city of Lagos. Space-time chronotopes are used in the text as a strategy of migrating memories across rural and city landscapes. This is done in the context of daily activities and the influence of global popular culture on the teenage protagonist. The story constructs dystopian material conditions which are contrasted to a pervasive cultural utopia of an informal settlement called Maroko. The protagonist is an embodiment of the phenomenon of a culture of survival. He impersonates Elvis Presley to earn a living. His life is characterised by flights of imagination. The title of the text Graceland can be seen as a localisation of the Elvis Presley image as it flowered across the globe in the sands. Elvis‟s impersonation of his idol takes him to beaches to perform for tourists as he tries to eke out a living. Ina postcolonial Nigeria that is socioeconomically and politically fragmented by a series of military regimes, a rapid decline in standards of living is complicated by the demographics of rising urban conurbations, as the city becomes a magnet for informal settlements. Maroko, where Graceland is mainly set, is one such settlement of the postcolonial city of Lagos. Maroko actually existed up to the early s when it made the headlines after the military regime of the day embarked on a process of gentrification. It was destroyed. This aspect of Lagos history is dramatised in Graceland as we seethe residents of Maroko attempt to put up organised resistance to the destruction of their homes, leading to losses of lives, including Elvis‟s father Sunday Oke (263-272; 284-287). Described as the Lagos Novel (Dunton, 2008), Graceland‟s narrative portrays aspects of the history of Lagos in the sands. Apart from the history of Maroko and the gentrification process, there are certain material cultures of memory that place Graceland within the popular culture of this time. One such is the notion of Onitsha market literature, which Abani uses to portray urban cultural history – particularly the history of 107 literacy in Lagos. Hence the project of memory in Graceland involves material cultures of memory that portray the history of urban literacy. The phenomenon of Onitsha market literature can be examined within the larger framework of Abani‟s project of presenting popular cultural memory of this time as what informs the consciousness of the novel. Material cultures of memory influence the structure of the narrative. The recipes that precede each chapter form a structuring technique in the novel. They are residues and relics of memory from Elvis‟s late mother. As recipes of Nigerian cuisine, they can be read as the migration of material aspects of culture, through the text. The attention to certain aspects of Nigerian food culture and pharmacopeia, including the kola nut ritual can be read as a strategy of authentication, but also the process of archiving indigenous forms of knowledge. Hence the novel becomes definitive of the material culture of the archive – as a storehouse. In this way, the idea of narrative memory is informed by the debates on forms and processes of archiving that Hamilton et al. (2002) define as the alternative to orthodox record-keeping processes. The other level of memory that we extend from our arguments on Adichie‟s works is related to the everyday – in this case it is in relation to popular cultural memory. It is instructive to point out here that the state of economic dystopia that defines Maroko in Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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