Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
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| Yellow Sun, in which supplementary narratives area structuring device that seem to fragment the narrative space and time, but at the same time constructing the organic unity that strings together the two counterpoised periods of time – the early sixties and late sixties”. 71 More importantly is that material cultures within postcolonial migrant writing allow for the authors to engage, as Abani‟s does, with the sensory world of childhood – to foreground the smellscapes and soundscapes that define and influence the world of childhood. The memory of childhood is constructed by these aspects that define the materiality of life. Material aspects of life in Elvis‟s world are determined by the popular cultural consumption and the memory of Elvis Presley. Triggered by the squalid material conditions of slum life, popular cultural music, fashion, among others are pervasive in everyday life. Television and video, among other forms mediate material conditions, desires and memory. Brian Larkin (2008:2-3) extensively reflects on how these forms facilitate and direct transnational flows of cultural goods and modes of affect, desire, fantasy, and devotion while creating unique aural and perceptual environments, everyday urban arenas through which people move, work, and become bored, violent, amorous, or contemplative Scattered across the narrative of everyday life in Graceland is the regular mentioning of popular television programmes, videos and movies as well as the actors John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Hollywood classics like The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Wild ones, as well as popular Nigerian TV programmes like Bassey and Company produced by the late human rights activist Ken Saro Wiwa. These form a daily construction of desires, heroism and popular wisdom in the city‟s cultures of survival. This repertoire of texts defines the popular culture of this time while mapping out 71 Adichie, through metafictional narrative structure, constructs a narrative within a narrative through the project of one of the protagonists named Richard. This narrative is titled The world Was Silent when We Died This stylistic device is part of the subject of chapter three. 114 cultures of existence of the world of teenage childhood. Childhood worldviews are here defined by the evolution of these popular cultural memories, within the narratives spatio- temporal shifts from Afikpo to Lagos – from places of old Americanisms to new ones as Elvis evolves to fit into the popular cultural rhythm of Lagos. Alongside the forms that mediate mass cultures and memories are also textual landscapes of memory that allow us to plot literacy histories in the city of Lagos, as well as figure out an alternative terrain of the experiencing of space and time as depicted in the novel. Elvis the protagonist, an avid Elvis Presley impersonator and consumer of American popular video is also presented as reading Ralph Ellison‟s Invisible Man (5), Rilke‟s Letters to a Young Poet (7), the Koran (46) as well as Onitsha market literature (111- 113). There are in Graceland, planes of memory that present a hybrid literacy culture. Ina sense, Abani blurs popular and elite forms of literacy in his project of presenting a narrative that hails both canonical and popular works of art. Again it is important to note here that the 1970s-80s was one of increase in literacy levels and therefore literacy cultures in Nigeria because of what Karin Barber has called Popular Reactions to the Petro-Naira” (These literacy cultures therefore define the popular memories of this time. Ina reflection of these geographies of reading and book circulation, one of the fascinating images presented in Graceland is where Elvis visits Tejuosho market, where he comes across a cart selling secondhand books (111). The imagery here reflects the sociologies of literacy during this time, the textual landscapes of popular and elite memory as well as a redefined idea of the geographies of reading and circulation of books There was a set of dogeared Penguin Classics. Elvis pulled a Dickens out, A Tale of Two Cities, his favourite, and read the first line […] There were also novels by West African authors Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart; Mongo Beti‟s The Poor Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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