Sefi Atta is being hailed as one of the members of the third generation of Nigerian writers in English. Her first novel, Everything Good Will Come can be placed along with Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel and Measuring Time, Chimamanda Ngozi _Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun and Chris Abani's GraceLand, Becoming Abigail and Virgin of the Flame. Sefi Atta is 40 this year. I was fascinated by Sefi Atta's short story The Lawless in Ama Ata Aidoo's African Love Stories: An Anthology (Mmegi 13 April 2007) - it is about a group of students and what they did after the Abacha regime had closed the university - so I then looked for her first novel. Now I will also seek out her next, Swallow, when it is published.
So far Sefi Atta life has been divided into thirds, between living in Nigeria, Britain and the States, where she has been since 1994. She began writing Everything Good Will Come in 1997. At a boarding school in England while doing A-levels she wanted to pursue literature. A bigoted advisor steered away from creative writing, so instead she studied accounting at university. Back in Lagos she worked in a bank. She finally completed a graduate degree in creative writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She now lives with her husband, Gboyega Ransome - Kuti (a medical doctor) and daughter, Temi, in Meridian, Mississippi where she teaches at the university.
Ironically Sefi Atta wanted to name her debut novel A State of Silence. It deals with the fear and oppression caused by a succession of military governments in Nigeria that had suspended the constitution and abolished all human rights. The heroine of Everything Good Will Come tells her story in the first person. Her father, Sunny Taiwo, is a lawyer who protests the preventive detention of his best friend Peter Mukoro, editor of Oracle magazine, and then Sunny vanishes into one of the State's prisons too. The state is silent about what has happened to him. His friends and relations are also silent. No one knows where he is and they are afraid to ask, as they might get locked up too. "We went to authorities to report crimes. Where could we go when the authorities committed one?" Can anything be done but wait? "At one end, silence could defeat a person, a whole country even. At the other end silence could be a shield ... an attack and a defence, and yet people always said silence was peaceful" (page 253).
The title used came from Atta's editor, and is derived from a Lagos insult that is thrown at people, particularly by taxi and mammy wagon drivers - "Nothing good will come to you" - uttered more like an angry curse. Sefi Atta comments that, "I like the fact that the new title is an expression of hope". It would appear that in the 47 years since independence Nigeria today needs more than hope to get out of its quagmire. A State of Silence would have been a fitting homage to Christopher Okigbo, whose third volume of poetry was Silences (1965). Okigbo was her aunt Sefi Atta's husband - he died in August 1967, fighting for Biafra. I'd met him first in 1962 and wonder how many remember him today. His collected poems were last published 20 years ago.
Sefi Atta's Africa is "an onslaught of sensations". Her love of Lagos comes through in vivid and poetic descriptions of myriad aspects of the city. She is writing for its fascination to her, not to explain Africa to others. Her feeling for Lagos flows throughout the novel like the undercurrents of a coastal tide filling and receding in the lagoon behind Ikoyi.
Enitan Taiwo tells her story in four unequal parts. The first is in 1971 when she was 11-years-old and establishes her home in Lagos, her relationship to her parents and servants, and the start of her friendship with Sheri Bakere who had a Nigerian father and English mother and who lived next door but found a hole in their fence. Enitan's parents viewed Sheri unfavourably as "omo-ita", a street kid. Enitan's father was too busy in his law practice and his secret other life to pay much attention to her. Her mother, after their son had died of a rare disease and she was rejected for not providing a male heir, became married again to her evangelical church.
Then in 1975, when Enitan is already at the Royal College and becoming disillusioned, the two girls escape on a secret outing with three boys. Disaster occurs that will leave a deep mark on them and accelerate their estrangement from others. The next section. "1985", finds Enitan back in Lagos after nine years schooling in England. She had hesitated returning to Nigeria because she was upset by the excesses at home. There had been "two military governments since the summer of 1975".
There was "Decree Two, under which persons suspected of acts prejudicial to state security could be detained without charge; Decree Four, under which journalists could be arrested and imprisoned for publishing any information about public officials" (page 78). Sheri had finished university, had been crowned "Miss Nigeria" and currently was an independent woman, surviving off the attentions of older men.
Enitan returned home in 1984, her father bought her a Volkswagen and she chose to live with him instead of her mother. She had to serve her period of national service. She met Mike Obi and was falling for him when she discovered he also had other women. On corporal punishment Enitan observes: "Their parents beat out of love, it was said, with love ... Teachers beat, neighbours beat. By the time a child turned ten, the adults knew they would have beaten out any cockiness that could develop into wit; any dreaminess that could give birth to creation; any bossiness that could lead to leadership. Only the strong would survive; the rest would spend their lives searching for initiative. This is what it took to raise an African child, a village of beaters" (page 131). When Enitan discovers by accident that she has a brother, Debayo, she moves out of her father's house. "The joke was that a man's families discovered each other at his burial. That they fought until they fell into his grave" (page 151).The last section is "1995". She says, "I finally understood why (Mother) she turned her mind to the church with such fervour. Had she turned to wine or beer, people would have called her a drunkard. Had she sought other men, they would have called her a slut. But to turn to God? Who would quarrel with her? 'Leave her alone,' they would say, 'She is religious'" (page 180). Enitan meets and takes up with another lawyer, Niyi Franco, who has a tendency to retreat from conflict into avoidance and silence. Enitan becomes pregnant and has a miscarriage.
She is pregnant again when her father vanishes. Her concern to do something angers her husband but leads her to get to know some interesting women, including a neighbour, Rhoda Busola and an activist and journalist, Grace Ameh of Oracle magazine after it is banned and goes underground; and later a group who meet to support journalists in detention. All are written about with sensitivity and insight. There are no stereotypes here.
Enitan's voice is a warm and friendly one, a welcome one, one you want to continue hearing. Her occasional use of Yoruba-English is melodic and captivating. Her insights into what is going on around her challenging: "I'm saying, we may never have a democratic government if we have an army" ... "Human rights were never an issue until the rights of men were threatened". To those who say it can't happen here, it can. Vigilance is eternal.
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