MY AMERICAN BOOK READING TOUR; ECHOES OF AN ANGRY DIASPORA BY WALE OKEDIRAN
New York, US. February 13, 2013. A very cold morning. I am sitting amidst the clutter of my books and luggage at the arrival hall of JFK airport at the start of my 10-day, 5 Cities Book Reading Tour of the United States of America, courtesy of Arik Air International.
My tour was in two phases. The first leg took me to Fort Lauderdale and Tallahassee both in Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Pennsylvania in Philadelphia with a stop- over in New York at the Headquarters of the Arik Air International.
Six months later in September of the same year, I embarked on the second leg of the tour which took me to six major US cities on both sides of the North American Continent. Dubbed 'The Coast to Coast US Book Reading Tour' the tour which featured engagements with a rich mix of academic and public US communities took me to Atlanta, Georgia, Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, New York and Los Angeles, California.
My audience was a warm and enthusiastic crowd of academics, business people, civil servants, book lovers, writers, and friends. I also had encounters with scholars and students at some of the schools where I read. These included; the North Campus of Broward College in Coconut Creek, Florida, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Boston, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Providence College, Rhode Island.
I had gone to America to read from my then new book, a political thriller; Tenants Of The House which was later adapted into a movie with a 2-year run on NETFLIX global. All I wanted to do was read, interact with my audience and help to market the book. However, I must have either underestimated the power of my narrative or that of my audience which was largely made up of Africans in the diaspora.
Even though I was warmly received everywhere I went to read and my book received praises for its audacious and incisive dissection of the ‘African problem’, the whole tour was a stimulus for scathing remarks about the ‘homeland’.
Although New York had already recovered from a devastating and horrendous adverse weather which had left the city comatose for some days and even caused a two -day delay in my tour, it was still very cold at 6am when my Sky Blue flight took off for Fort Lauderdale, Florida that day. It was a large aircraft which was filled to the brim by what I was made to understand, people escaping the cold of New York for the warmth of Florida. It was a smooth and enjoyable 3-hour flight made more interesting by the generous and free in-flight refreshments.
On arrival in Florida, I was met at the Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood Airport by Joane Meikel, an amiable young lady from the Students’ Affairs Department of Broward College, Coconut Creek where I was scheduled to give my first reading.
The trip from Fort Lauderdale to Coconut Creek took about 30 minutes and afforded me the opportunity to see more of the beauty of Broward County. The warm and breezy climate was a far departure from the cold New York. And in addition to the beautiful tree lined streets, Florida was exactly as it was described, a haven for tourists.
Fighting back jet lag, I delved into ‘Tenants Of The House’ (TOTH) to an enthusiastic and mixed audience of students, scholars, friends and writers. Since I had sent advance copies of the book ahead of the readings, it was easy for the audience especially students to follow my presentation.
The questions and contributions that followed said as much. ‘How long did it take you to write the book?’ ‘What was the reaction of your colleagues in the Nigerian Parliament when the book was released?’ ‘Who is Lizzy in the book?’ ‘Has democracy improved the standard of living for Nigerians?’ In addition, were many other questions on the state of democracy and governance in Africa.
Some of the more elderly members of the audience apparently overwhelmed by the seemingly intractable socio-economic and security issues in the continent, especially Nigeria, wondered if all was well with the continent. A virulent commentator at one point even wondered if we didn’t make a mistake by asking for independence.
Another disturbing remark came from an elderly Professor who vowed never to go back to his country again. According to him; “The scars of my last encounter with armed robbers in my country are a sad reminder of the place I used to call home’’.
In my quest to see a little of America, I opted to go by road to my next destination, Tallahassee, the capital of the state of Florida. Located at the northern tip of the finger-like shaped state next to the border of Georgia State, Tallahassee is 736 km away from Fort Lauderdale with a driving time of 7 hours 3 minutes by the Greyhound Bus.
As if on cue, many of the questions and interventions raised at Fort Lauderdale also came up in Tallahassee. ‘Why did you write TOTH?’ ‘How much of TOTH is your own personal story?’ ‘Can corruption be tamed in Africa?’ ‘Have things improved in Nigeria since you wrote your books?’ ‘What is the government doing about the ‘Boko Haram’ problem?’
Without appearing to be a government mouth piece, I did my best to reassure the audience that all hope was not lost and that with more efforts by all and sundry, Nigeria could still become the country of our dreams. Judging from the bemused expressions on the faces of most of my audience, I wasn’t sure if my reassuring words cut any with them.
My Atlanta reading took place at FAD Restaurant, a Nigerian restaurant located at 3565 Austell Road, SW Marietta where the proprietor, whom I had met on a previous trip to Atlanta, did all he could do to make the event a success.
Expectedly, after my reading, questions and contributions dwelled mostly on the political situation in Africa. As usual, African politicians were accused of being the cause of the problem. The animated discussion that followed the reading was even more strident than the one in Tallahassee with the majority of the Atlanta audience declaring Africa a lost cause.
Although this position was not unexpected, still it was surprising coming from the Atlanta group that was relatively younger than the Tallahassee one whom I thought, should have been more hopeful. Matters were not helped by some shocking experiences of some members of the audience who had visited home previously.
At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, my experience was the same. As in the other readings, majority of the audience was very passionate about the socio-political situations in Africa and Nigeria. A particularly truculent middle aged man was vehement in his belief that the country should be split along ethnic and religious lines.
“The earlier we all agree that Nigeria is not working, the better for all of us,” he thundered. He was joined in this tirade by some other participants and before long, the hitherto quiet and academic setting became a passionate scene reminiscent of a village square meeting; everybody wanted to talk.
It became very difficult for the MC for the evening’s event to bring proceedings to an end at the 9.00pm time limit given by the university authorities. At one point, the MC’s father a Philadelphia based physician jumped up and said, “I am sorry, as your Dad, I will like to talk and you have to allow me.” As the audience erupted into a hearty laughter, he followed up with a very animated speech about Africa and ‘her problems’. Thankfully, he also proffered some solutions.
Diaspora rage has been defined as a very complex and deep anger and frustration felt by people who are part of a diaspora—people who live outside of their ancestral homeland. Conflicting expectations, historical trauma, diasporic rage generally responds to these things by refusing to stay silent about injustice, reclaiming identity and culture, critiquing both “host” and ancestral countries’ institutions, etc.
According to an authority on the matter; ‘’Diaspora rage is an emotional and political response to cultural erasure, feeling disconnected from your roots, and the strange, inescapable understanding of being viewed as ‘other’ or not quite native in your current country and foreign, not completely accepted, in your country of origin. It also includes the weight of representing multiple different communities while feeling ultimately voiceless in both spaces. The systematic oppression that tails diasporic population across countries’’
Much as this kind of anger is understandable and sometimes justified, it is believed that many diasporans often overreact.
In an article in an edition of African Nation, Baffour Ankomah, a UK based Ghanaian journalist had this to say; ‘’ Being in diaspora – can make you mad! It even builds in you a disturbing level of superciliousness that makes you thump your nose at almost everything you see especially when you go back home.
Everything suddenly becomes “not-your-level”, even though you may be living in some decrepit flat back in London or Berlin or New York.’’
According to Baffour ‘’What is the point I am trying to make. I was in Israel in 1986 and saw the huge contribution of the Jewish Diaspora to nation building. Israel is Israel today because of the Jewish diaspora. Though they are nationals of their adopted countries, they still contribute financially, politically, intellectually and culturally to the growth of Israel, and lobby foreign governments on behalf of Israel. Besides, they return and enrich Israel with the experiences they have from their adopted countries’’.
Another member of the diaspora from Nigeria whom I met during my reading tour believes that disaporans can do more than just sending remittances to their friends and relatives back home or building mansions in which they never come back to live, or worse still, coming back in a coffin, to lie briefly in it before interment.
According to him; ‘’We have to take an active interest in the political, intellectual, and cultural lives of our mother countries. By dint of our long stay abroad, we see things that the locals do not see. Let’s bring these experiences to enrich our countries. What gets me angry with some folks in the diaspora is that they luxuriate in the economic feast of some of the world’s developed countries where they have taken citizenship and have the temerity to criticize those who love their home countries stayed, endured and contributed while suffering’’.
On my last day in the US, my friends in New York took me to a Chinese Restaurant for dinner. After a hearty meal of Peking soup, spring rolls, steamed rice, duck and chicken sauce, I cracked open the Chinese fortune cookie that the waitress handed over to me. ‘Expect a future of hard work and happiness’ it read. It was a befitting epitaph to a successful and eventful book reading tour.
