Reflection: Blackass

Lagos, Nigeria is my favorite character in Blackass (Graywolf Press, 2016) by A. Igoni Barrett. The book explores the cultural, social and physical landscape of Nigeria’s largest city, rather Africa’s largest city. I found myself referring to maps and looking up foods like egusi soup and eba. Lagos plays host to an ever-rising population, as evident in the city’s impossibly congested roads; traffic feels like a living, breathing character in and of itself. Cars crawl forward as engines rev, horns blare, smoke spews, temperatures rise, and radios roar, a hazy stasis endured by drivers hour after hour, day after day. The wealthy corners of Lagos are Ikoyi, Victoria Island and the Lekki Peninsula, where one is likely to find an oyibo, a white person, which is the bizarre fate of our protagonist.
 
This is a story of a black man who wakes up “alabaster”, of Furo Wariboko who becomes Frank Whyte. On the morning of his Kafka-like metamorphosis, Furo leaves home for a job interview, never to return, choosing instead to forge a new life as a newly minted oyibo. Blackass reflects a world that is far from colorblind, in fact it is a world obsessed with race. All that Furo experiences – job offers, bureaucracy, women, meals, conversations – centers on his newfound whiteness. Of course, a white man named Furo Wariboko wandering Nigeria is sure to inspire an exaggerated response. But rather than a distortion of how we observe race, the book reads more like a parable of its pervasiveness:
 
“No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world” (111).
 
The book is light, often funny, while addressing issues of race, class, and Nigeria, even social media: “To make money off selling us to ourselves, that’s the business model of social media” (80). The story is free to explore the far reaches of such issues due to its outlandish setup. I am far too unfamiliar with the works of contemporary African authors, but after the reverie of Blackass, I plan to change that.
 
Best, Yuri
@yuriroho

Note: Late February

I’ve begun to hear a murmur of impatience for the arrival of spring, still a month away, which I remain surprisingly patient for. When days effortlessly transform into weeks and then months, very little patience is required to pass a season. Spring has already dropped breadcrumbs, like the blindingly bright yellow fields that dot Highway 12, the containers of sown seeds in neighboring yards, and the light cotton dresses that reemerge from the depths of my closet.
 
February left a false impression when it introduced itself as winter amid dark clouds and rain. By the end of the first week, clouds broke to set loose an all too eager sun that has been shining ever since. The change was unexpected, my least favorite kind. After struggling to settle into the new home in the middle of winter, I had finally reached the end of a learning curve and was beginning to relish the season’s rituals; pulling on thick socks to guard against the icy kitchen floor, keeping spare jackets and scarves in the backseat of my car, collecting firewood, tending a fire, visiting deserted beaches, and driving with the heater on and windows cracked open.
 
The sun now pours itself into every room, urging me outside. I sometimes give in but I just as often decline, as the sun makes its way to me anyway, eager for attention. My desk sits alongside the window and warm air drifts in, knocking the vertical blinds against each other like modest wind chimes. Once spring arrives, I envision keeping open all blinds and windows, even the front and back doors, to erase any distinction between inside and out. But I feel perfectly fine waiting. Who knows, perhaps there is a rain spell waiting in the wings, there is a glimpse of one even now. Winter, take your time.
 
Best, Yuri
@yuriroho