Nigerian author (1966- )
Misreading is really the chance for complication and opportunity. The first Igbo Bible was translated from English in about the 1800s by Bishop Crowther, who was a Yoruba. And it's important to know Igbo is a tonal language, and so they'll say the word "igwe" and "igwe": same spelling, one means "sky" or "heaven," and one means "bicycle" or "iron." So "God is in heaven surrounded by His angels" was translated as -- [Igbo]. And for some reason, in Cameroon, when they tried to translate the Bible into Cameroonian patois, they chose the Igbo version. And I'm not going to give you the patois translation; I'm going to make it standard English. Basically, it ends up as "God is on a bicycle with his angels." This is good, because language complicates things.
CHRIS ABANI
"Chris Abani on the stories of Africa", TED conference
He too, it seemed, had come to believe that he could somehow escape history. That it was possible, and even desirable, to live in a perpetual present.
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas
The Internet is really our meeting place. We have this amazing listserv. Every time I log onto it I feel a sense of pride, because if you log on and say, "Oh I was just in San Diego and I was in a park and I saw a lion," the flurry of replies on average is just like--wow! All these existential questions about what it means to be an African, and never having seen a lion at home, but having seen a lion here. Everything you say turns into this real philosophical debate--it's incredible in so many ways. And it's an invigorating place to be.
CHRIS ABANI
"In Conversation with author Chris Abani", Truthdig, Apr. 18, 2006
I think that my art, my poetry, prose and music come from these cracks in my being, these ley lines where spirit is said to reside. I have come out of the horror of that experience having lost my faith in the inherent goodness of humanity, yet curiously appreciating even more the effort it takes to be good.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic
Deach becomes some men. Others wear it shamefully; others still, defiantly. Their protest choking, suffocating.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic
For is prayer not disobedience?
The questioning of God's order?
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
And night, free at last, stirred, stretching, feral.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
Death is always the expectation here and when my throat was cut it was no different.
CHRIS ABANI
Song for Night
Sex is not always a choice
lovingly made and enjoyed like
plump well-handled self-chosen fruit
teeth sinking into soft flesh in a dribble of pleasure.
Nevertheless
it abounds.
Some because it is the
truth of their being.
Some to deny, negate, sate
deep yearning, wordless, timeless.
CHRIS ABANI
"Passion Fruit", Kalakuta Republic
The wind is calling in a voice I remember.
CHRIS ABANI
Song for Night
There are things you can only say
with a canyon. Or smoke
moving across a vally toward the mist.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
Sometimes we say we want an end to hate or racism or sexism. But we all participate in keeping these structures alive. If everyone decided to relinquish the past what would happen to people who feel that there hasn't been proper atonement made to them? And what happens to the person who feels that the constant atonement is their identity?
CHRIS ABANI
interview, UTNE Reader, Jun. 2010
My brothers must be as tired of this as I,
dragging love as a tally board behind us,
marking off an endless but complex math
of ego and one-upmanship and debt.
But the men who came before us didn't
teach us another way.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
Men do communicate, often very directly, but women sometimes cannot accept how simple what we have to say is. We seldom play games--we aren't that sophisticated.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, Jul. 2008
To some I am a rabid vampire feeding
on their humiliation.
CHRIS ABANI
"An English Gentleman", Kalakuta Republic
We are hunting the demons that haunt others. We get a smell and off we go. And you know why, Sunil? You know why we are so good at hunting the demons of others? Because we are so good, gifted even, at stalking and evading our own. But all demons hunters think that they are really heroes, and you know what all heroes need?
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas
Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa.
CHRIS ABANI
"In Conversation with author Chris Abani", Truthdig, Apr. 18, 2006
Death is a flock of blackbirds low over muddy streets
in war-torn Sarajevo. Dirt-stained walls yearn
for all that is night. Elegies fall like raw silk.
If there is a way it is here.
Salt and ash.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape ... a sideshow is a confrontation.
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas
The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.
CHRIS ABANI
attributed, Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction