Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction

117 decentres the idea of archive, inline with what Hamilton et al. (2002) posit as the role of literature as a different record-keeping process and therefore as part of what refigures archival processing. In another sense, as examined before, the book itself gains significance, in view of Stewart‟s (1984) idea of the simultaneity of print as well as the crucial aspect of circulation that proffers it a commodity status, as we witness with the representation of the book market in the scenes from Graceland above. Hence Graceland as a text becomes a repository and an archive of popular cultural memories. As the narrative progresses, the spatio-temporal pattern continues to alternate between
Afikpo and Lagos. Afikpo gradually gains the role of a significant place of memories that are in dialogue with the present in Lagos. The trauma memory of Elvis‟s sexual abuse and the constant violence meted out on him by his father, the nostalgic memory of his mother found in the journal around his neck influence the present daily life. When we meet Elvis at first, his hatred for his father and the antagonistic relationship they have is gradually put to perspective and historicised through the movement of space and time alternately between Afikpo and Lagos. The image of a dysfunctional family that we are presented with, through the antagonistic micro-relationship of Elvis and his father is unraveled through the regular intrusion of memories from Elvis‟s early childhood. Hence the temporal map of the present in Lagos is redefined by the memory of Afikpo, a recurrent memory-place that defines relations in the present. Indeed, Elvis‟s problematic gender disposition can be explained through the trauma memory of physical and sexual abuse during the formative years of his childhood. Elvis becomes an embodiment, like
Ugwu in Half of a Yellow Sun of a composite memory of trauma, nostalgia and popular culture. The dimensions of the abuse and the nostalgia of his mothers influence which provides him the inspiration to embody, through simulation the image of Elvis Presley, are definitive of a composite idea of memory in Graceland. These dimensions of memory are embodied and their anxieties performed during the impersonation activities. Yet again for Elvis, trauma is part of the everyday process of living and perhaps the impersonation activities provide a sense of expiation (similar to Ugwu‟s writing, healing and freedom from the burden of his traumatic and nostalgic memories. It is interesting as well that in
Graceland Abani, like Adichie‟s Half of a Yellow Sun, provides supplementary narratives

118 through the structural and meta-fictional devices mentioned earlier. Part of the trauma memory invoked in Elvis experiences in Afikpo is that of the embodied memory of
Biafra, through the character Innocent, a relation of Elvis, who fought as a child soldier during the Biafran war. Innocents account is explored through an entry into his stream of consciousness and the trigger of memories of the war. This particular scene is like a flashback, in which the reader is taken into the war front as a secondary witness to the atrocities committed by children of war (209-214). It takes the shape and form of a story within a story, in the narrative of Graceland and indeed part of the legacy of traumatic memory in post- independent Nigeria. Within the temporal structure of the novel, this story within a story is a tangential aspect of memory and experience that informs the anxiety of post-military Nigerian dispensation at this point in time. Like Adichie‟s Half of a Yellow Sun, it is a statement towards a heritage of traumatic, individual and collective memory. Again it is important to highlight here that this aspect of memory in Graceland is intertextually reflected in Chris Abani‟s novella Song for Night (2007) which is the tale of a child soldier called My Luck, who is in the process of trying to locate his lost platoon. Indeed Innocents account rings with the familiarity of My Lucks plight in Song for Night. Memory in Graceland is organised at anaesthetic level, around the literary chronotopes of space and time, with a shift between the city and the countryside. However, the overriding popular cultural aspect of memory which defines the everyday life of the protagonist, allows us to glean through nostalgia, material cultures of memory on the part of Abani as aspects that define the world of a dispersed childhood of the protagonist Elvis
Oke. As the idea of popular culture pervades Graceland, it defines the structures of memory in the text, connecting cultural aspects of memory and identity as the space-time chronotopes shift from the countryside to the city and back. Teenage identity, as with Elvis Oke, is therefore constructed around this pervasiveness of popular cultural memory as it is used to construct material cultures as textual strategies, deal with trauma memory and enter into a debate on an alternative archive provided by the experimental time of childhood. Indeed, Elvis‟s sense of identity is constructed around a pastiche of cultural

119 experiences – the proliferation of a medley of images and soundscapes that pervade the everyday of slum life. The movies, television and radio are aspects that mediate cultural tastes and experience, but also provide landscapes of desire, imagination and flight from penurious material conditions. In this sense then, culture takes on material dimensions, as the symbolic capital that provides dreams and hopes for better existence. Hence, the normative historical accounts of Nigeria in the sands are problematised by a different process of experiencing time and space. The horizons of Elvis‟s worlds are marked by a culture of survival and desire for flight. Elvis‟s networks of friends are indicative of a metaphysical plane of experience, with names like Redemption, De King of De Beggars, Comfort and Blessing reflecting on the desires of freedom, flight and hope. These individuals engage in alternative and informal networks of the economy for survival one of Elvis acquaintances Okon sells blood to get money to buy food (74-76), while Elvis and redemption get involved in drug and human trafficking for the colonel
(230-238). Therefore, Abani portrays the sands slum life in Maroko, as a representation of popular cultural memory, material cultures of memory (through textual strategies) and trauma memory in the discourse of an everyday world of teenage childhood. Hence like
Adichie‟s Half of a yellow Sun, there is a composite idea of memory that draws from trauma, nostalgia and popular culture. The world of Elvis‟s childhood in Graceland allows fora complex discourse on experimental and alternative forms of identity fostered by the cultural options provided in music, movies, videos and fashion. While the everyday life is made difficult by destitute material conditions, it is culturally rich because of the multiple options available to experiment, within the cityscape, while incorporating the significant aspects of a memory of the past to hanker for freedom, project utopian desires and allow imagination to fly.

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