Stay with Me, Ayobami Adebayo’s work of fiction, is hailed as a “debut” production in the West (first published in Nigeria, I guess it is not a book, unless it is published abroad!). By the way, much of what is published to critical acclaim in the West has already been (sometimes admittedly poorly) published in Africa. Teju Cole’s Every Day for the Thief was first published by Nigeria’s Cassava Republic. Similarly, Elnathan John, Abubakar Ibrahim’s books were initially published in Nigeria. I understand that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book Half of a Yellow Sun has a version that was first published at home. I’d like a copy of that, I am sure it would be worth a lot of money some day, lol.
Stay with Me is also a conversation about what happens to indigenous narrative if it has to be paid for by the other. Perhaps it is time for me to stop sneering at “African fiction”, as made to order for the paying Western readers and admit that it’s a genre that is here to stay. I am not happy about it, but what do I expect young African writers to do? The reading and paying audience is abroad. He who pays the piper dictates the tune. A lot of the work I speak of is actually Diaspora writing pretending to speak for “Africa.” It is perversely important work, but 99% of Africa’s narrative breathes loudly on the Internet.
Stay with Me is a good read, I highly recommend it. When the dreaded Michiko Kakutani the number one critic of the world loves a book and calls it “stunning”, you pay attention. Having said that, what the West sees as “stunning” may come across differently to a Nigerian reader. “African fiction” read in the West struggles to deviate from the same tired script: Protagonists as dreamers whose ideas for Africa are compromised by the incompetence and greed of infantilized sloth-humans. Kakutani hasn’t read many African writers; or she’d see hints of, not foreign authors, but of Lola Shoneyin, Flora Nwapa, Dambuzo Merechera, Alan Paton in the book’s many beautiful lines.
After reading the book, as a Nigerian born in the space Adebayo writes of, one would dismiss Kakutani’s generous review as patronizing. It is not. Ayobami put a lot of sweat equity in it, it is pretty in many places and it is an accessible primer of the culture of Yorubaland. Yorubaland is a deeply mysterious nation and Westerners may view its spiritual folktales and traditions as exotic, if not comical. Westerners would be enthralled by the simple interpretations of the ancestral tales of the Yoruba that feature the wily tortoise.
There are many reasons to like Stay with Me. The reader learns a lot about polygamy, the power differential between genders, the scourge of sickle cell anemia and the connection with the mythical abiku child who is always dying early and returning to break the hearts of doting parents. There are many rituals that one learns about during and after the birthing process, etc, it’s fascinating reading, Africa remains this exotic place (it is, let’s stop being in denial) that struggles with its past and present and is too exhausted to worry about the future.
The first thing you learn in Ayobami’s Book is what you’ve learned before from reading “African fiction.” Africa is a vast space of mediocrity. One gets the impression that all Nigerians do is merely exist: eat, shit, fuck, sleep, repeat. It is probably the reality. Sad though. The packaging is fascinating. It is clearly aimed squarely at the paying eyes of the Western reader, the blurbs are by Westerners or folks living in nice addresses in the West, and the breathless reviews compare Adebayo to white names that I have never heard of.
The book also continues the conversation about what gets lost in the translation when we write in English what ought to be in Esan, Yoruba or Igbo. The scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah talks about this in his ode to Achebe’s defiant use of the language. Appiah nails it: “Achebe solved a problem that these earlier novels did not. He found a way to represent for a global Anglophone audience the diction of his Igbo homeland, allowing readers of English elsewhere to experience a particular relationship to language and the world…”
I complained about this upon reading Chigozie Obioma’s book, The Fishermen… I am thinking beyond Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s experiments and challenges with writing in indigenous languages, anxieties captured in his book of essays, Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature. And the spirited rebuttal by Achebe.
Those who control the narrative literally control the literary world. Chinua Achebe reminds us of the African proverb: Until the lions get their own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Traditional African narrative as exists in books is controlled by the gatekeepers of Western publishing houses. But then, the world is changing.
I loved the book, yes, despite its glaring flaws. The book’s plot is compromised by mediocre research, any knowledgeable reader would be bothered by the improbable plot twists that ambush the book’s credibility. The translations from Yoruba to English are poorly done, but I understand why. The paying West needs to understand the book, but still the italics and the comic translations rankle. Calling ponmo “cowhide” is unforgivable. And what’s with the italicizations of Yoruba terms? It’s a shame; take the nursery rhyme, Babalawo mo wa bebe… Who remembers this Yoruba nursery rhyme from the boju boju days? Ahem! Thanks to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in primary school in Ibadan, Yoruba was a compulsory subject, you like you come from Nnewi or Makurdi. I dream of a truly digital edition of this book and all those folktales would be told in Yoruba, the songs belted out by a true daughter of the soil, not just to expose what harm English literature has done to our narrative but to share with the world, our true and rich heritage.
So, do I recommend Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay with Me? Absolutely. It is a good book. Would I read it again? Nah. I would read Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Seyi’s Wives first, lol. But watch, Adebayo, she’s going to write awesome things. I salute her industry and prodigy.
CORRECTION: I misspoke, apparently, the book was first published by Kwani? based in Kenya.
