Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
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| Graceland‟s narrative structure alternates the present and the past, giving the reader regular flashbacks into Elvis‟s life in the rural village of Afikpo, when his mother was still alive, while building up his artistic growth through an alternation of the chronotopes of narrative space and time. Significantly, the past is Elvis‟s unconscious repressed in it are taboo subjects like the raping of his cousin Efua by his Uncle Joseph (64) and a graphic description of an incident where he was sexually molested and raped by Uncle Joseph (197-198). It is not surprising then that Elvis‟s masculinity is troubled from its early traumatic moments. Elvis‟s attitude towards his father is therefore bitter and defiant, for he feels his father is complicit with his plight, something that can be argued as an overcorrection on Elvis‟s part. The image and figure of the father informs his critique of masculinity. He protracts his anger at being raped and sexually molested to his father, leading to a bitter distrust, a feeling of entrapment and longing to get out of a closeted space Elvis stood by the open window. Outside heavy rain. He jammed the wooden shutter open with an old radio battery, against the wind. The storm drowned the tinny sound of the portable radio on the table. He felt claustrophobic, fingers gripping the iron of the rusty metal protector. It was cool on his lips, chin and forehead as he pressed his face against it. (1) Despite this initial feeling of claustrophobia, which anticipates Elvis‟s critical attitude to gender as we will see later, there is also an inherent feeling of self-loss and invisibility in the big city of Lagos, something that Chris Dunton (2008) says is characteristic of the entropy and energy of Lagos city as a narrative space. A position of marginality allows the protagonist to disappear into the elaborate city canvas, whilst allowing him to be creatively experimental as we see of the other characters Elvis interacts with, including Redemption, the King of Beggars, Okon among others 141 Chielozona (2005) refers to Cosmopolitan Solidarity as the condition of the protagonists as they negotiate transculturality” within the chaotic nature of Lagos. This negotiation, enhanced by the sense of 221 Chris Abani creates an intricate cityscape, which becomes Elvis‟s canvas as he tries to paint the story of his current life. The scenes in Lagos alternate with the countryside scenes of Afikpo, which are portraits of memory that unravel Elvis‟s familial history. Lagos as we see in the first chapter of the book is portrayed with the shrinking of economic potential for Elvis, who resorts to a survivalist self-employment through the impersonation of Elvis Presley. The memory of Afikpo therefore represents a nostalgic and maternal sensibility for Elvis Beatrice laughed and set the plastic disc on the record player. The needle scratched the edge a few times as though undecided, then launched into the throaty call of Elvis Presley. Beatrice grabbed Elvis and began to dance with him. Her illness made her movements slow, although it was not hard to see they were once fluid and smooth. (42) Elvis‟s encounter with multicultural worlds therefore begins at this early age, and the memory of Afikpo depicts a troubled relationship between Elvis and his father. It reflects byway of juxtaposing, a masculine texture of the present cityscape that leaves Elvis in a marginal position as he attempts to hack his way out of the liana of Lagos underbelly while eking out a living. Indeed, he paints the caricatured image of a frantic sex worker as he attempts to attract attention with a poor impersonation of Elvis Presley It build sic up slowly, one leg sort of snapping at the knee, then the pelvic thrust, the arm dangling at his side becoming animated, forefinger and thumb snapping out the time. With a stumble, because the wet sand, until he adjusted to it, sucked at his feet, he launched into the rest of his routine. (12) marginality, invisibility and hollowness is not only what characterises and makes visible vernacular cosmopolitanism but also essential to the poetics of invisibility (Bhabha, 1994:85). 222 Black, the protagonist in Abani‟s other novel The Virgin of Flames, is in a similar position to Elvis. Living in the shabby East Los Angeles inner city, his painting career cannot sustain his daily needs. Because he cannot pay models, he impersonates them by painting himself Since he was broke he couldn‟t afford to hire any models, which is why he was sitting in front of the mirror trying on face paint. He intended to dress up as her and use himself as a model, painting a more detailed cartoon from his reflection. (5) Black dresses as a woman, while engaged in a project of painting a caricature of the Virgin of Guadalupe We never get to see whether Black earns his keep through the painting most instructive however, is that through it is his obsession with simulacrum in much the same way as Elvis does in his impersonation of Elvis Presley. In both their histories is a hatred of the father figure, a distrust of the memory represented by him and, in the case of Black, a troublingly absentee father as he recalls a recurrent dream, My mother and I are always drowning in that living room, but my father has his back turned to us, looking out of the window. No words are ever spoken. Just him looking out the sic window (247). Elvis‟s impersonation of Elvis Presley as an attempt to eke out a living portrays him as a marginal figure and reveals his masculinity as troubled and repressed. This is especially clear in the face of the colonels brutality. 142 The colonel represents hegemonic masculinity.” 143 During the repression and torture, the colonels men attempt to physically emasculate the victims, reflecting what we see happening to Elvis (295). Elvis and his father, deracinated from Afikpo to Lagos, are helpless in the face of the brutal masculinities of the military regime. Father and sons plight dissolve into each other even as the father tries to assert his superiority in the familial space. What is left of his Elvis is caught and tortured by state representatives over civil unrest and the colonel symbolic hereof the State Repressive Apparatus, superintends this torture. 143 This is a term that Muchemwa & Muponde (2007) use to refer to the ultra-patriarchal, “superphallicism” characteristic of the states patriarchal economy. 223 authority is merely biological, for he, like Elvis is facing larger symbolic ultra-masculine orders represented by the military regime through the character of the colonel in the text, whose physical absence is ironically his pervasive presence. The colonel, a high-ranking official in the military government is notoriously rumoured for his overseeing of hideous forms of torture, as Elvis later experiences. Through the construct of gender, Elvis‟s father tries to maintain traditional authority and legitimacy over his son. But Elvis problematises this through his impersonation activities which involve using feminine beauty products. In these activities is the sons newfound way to negotiate a culture of survival as well as to reflect a historical experience, when the idea and experience of fatherhood represented violence, incest and rape – things that psychologically impacted on Elvis‟s understanding of fatherhood and gender. Moreover, it is the porous boundaries of the cultural landscape of postcolonial Nigeria that allow for Elvis, through simulation, to problematise the performance of gender, byway of impersonation. Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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