Nigerian author (1966- )
Story is powerful. Story is fluid and it belongs to nobody. And it should come as no surprise that my first novel at 16 was about Neo-Nazis taking over Nigeria to institute the Fourth Reich. It makes perfect sense. And they were to blow up strategic targets and take over the country, and they were foiled by a Nigerian James Bond called Coyote Williams, and a Jewish Nazi hunter. And it happened over four continents. And when the book came out, I was heralded as Africa's answer to Frederick Forsyth, which is a dubious honor at best. But also, the book was launched in time for me to be accused of constructing the blueprint for a foiled coup attempt. So at 18, I was bonded off to prison in Nigeria.
CHRIS ABANI
"Chris Abani on the stories of Africa", TED conference
This is the prevalence of ritual. To remember something that cannot be forgotten.
CHRIS ABANI
Becoming Abigail
The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.
CHRIS ABANI
"Chris Abani on the stories of Africa", TED conference
I have not spoken in three years: not since I left boot camp. It has been three years of a senseless war, and though the reasons for it are clear, and though we will continue to fight until we are ordered to stop--and probably for a while after that--none of us can remember the hate that led us here. We are simply fighting to survive the war. It is a strange place to be at fifteen, bereft of hope and very nearly of your humanity. But that is where I am nonetheless.
CHRIS ABANI
Song for Night
You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.
CHRIS ABANI
The Boston Globe, Mar. 22, 2014
I read everywhere. It's like a bodily function. I don't need quiet. I write and read with the TV on. I follow the TV show while I read. TV doesn't require a lot of brainpower.
CHRIS ABANI
The Boston Globe, Mar. 22, 2014
What we know about who we are comes from stories. It's the agents of our imagination who really shape who we are.
CHRIS ABANI
Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference, Arusha, Tanzania, Oct. 2007
When I was growing up in Nigeria -- and I shouldn't say Nigeria, because that's too general, but in Afikpo, the Igbo part of the country where I'm from -- there were always rites of passage for young men. Men were taught to be men in the ways in which we are not women, that's essentially what it is. And a lot of rituals involved killing, killing little animals, progressing along, so when I turned 13 -- and, I mean, it made sense, it was an agrarian community, somebody had to kill the animals, there was no Whole Foods you could go and get kangaroo steak at -- so when I turned 13, it was my turn now to kill a goat. And I was this weird, sensitive kid, who couldn't really do it, but I had to do it. And I was supposed to do this alone. But a friend of mine, called Emmanuel, who was significantly older than me, who'd been a boy soldier during the Biafran war, decided to come with me. Which sort of made me feel good, because he'd seen a lot of things. Now, when I was growing up, he used to tell me stories about how he used to bayonet people, and their intestines would fall out, but they would keep running. So, this guy comes with me. And I don't know if you've ever heard a goat, or seen one -- they sound like human beings, that's why we call tragedies "a song of a goat." My friend Brad Kessler says that we didn't become human until we started keeping goats. Anyway, a goat's eyes are like a child's eyes. So when I tried to kill this goat and I couldn't, Emmanuel bent down, he puts his hand over the mouth of the goat, covers its eyes, so I don't have to look into them, while I kill the goat. It didn't seem like a lot, for this guy who'd seen so much, and to whom the killing of a goat must have seemed such a quotidian experience, still found it in himself to try to protect me. I was a wimp. I cried for a very long time. And afterwards, he didn't say a word. He just sat there watching me cry for an hour. And then afterwards he said to me, "It will always be difficult, but if you cry like this every time, you will die of heartbreak. Just know that it is enough sometimes to know that it is difficult."
CHRIS ABANI
"On Humanity", TED conference
All that day and into the night, my mother knelt before her altar, before the icon of the Virgin, before the candles burning, and rolled her rosary between her hands, beating her chest and calling for mercy, for some intercession. As I watched her, I realized that she could see death, and I too, and it wasn't some ugly skeleton with a scythe--death is a beautiful woman, eyes soft from morning dew, lips pulled back in the saddest smile, praying at an altar for her husband's life.
CHRIS ABANI
Song for Night
Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, Jul. 2008
Eden is not the thing we seek.
It is the thing we cannot find.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
The thing about courage is this: Courage requires us to take an action. And every time we take an action in this world there is a reaction--basic laws of physics. So, often times we are afraid; we just are not sure that the action we take will create the reaction we need. One has to accept that we'll never know. In other words, if someone is hungry and you offer them food, you might be offending them. But if you don't offer them food, they could die of hunger. I would rather offer them food and while they're eating, let them be angry at me. I've seen many bad things come out of people who were trying to do good, but I would rather six bad things happen out of people trying to do good than six good things not happen because people were afraid that six bad things might happen.
CHRIS ABANI
interview, UTNE Reader, Jun. 2010
I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.
CHRIS ABANI
interview, UTNE Reader, Jun. 2010
In the old country my mother planted flowers
in the face of my father's disdain.
In every garden,
in every house,
no matter how long
we lived there.
I think it was the war,
the Blitz in England, that took all the flowers.
I think it was for the love she couldn't show him.
I think it was for me.
To show me that only the unspeakable remains.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
Here's the thing: You rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, Jul. 2008
Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression--how long before the pot boiled over.
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas
What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.
CHRIS ABANI
"Chris Abani muses on humanity", dotSUB, Nov. 13, 2008
That women are mysterious and unknowable is something every young man grows up believing. Men, on the other hand, never think of themselves as mysterious or confusing, and we are often at a loss as to why women want to figure us out.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, Jul. 2008
Something that had the quality of a dimly lit stage set just before the curtains rise on opening night. There was a rhythm to it, a beckoning, and a bittersweet tear in time.
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas
Every day is a careful balance fought between the despondency that threatens to swamp me and the incredible joy of living.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic