We have another review today
The book is Tomorrow Died Yesterday by Chimeka Garricks.
Let me be honest, when I bought this book and saw the cover, I did not expect a lot from it.
The cover is not only pretty ordinary, the design is also in the tradition of those very average books that I used to read in secondary school. Where it felt like the author didn’t put too much effort into the plot structure of the book, or into the copyediting really – you’d just find a lot of odd typos and wonder what the point was. Couldn’t more effort have been put into the work?
But this book, nope. As I said in this my last post where I gave you all an update on everything, I got to relearn that lesson of not judging a book by its cover.
At all.
This book is a pretty nuanced take on the Niger delta region in Nigeria. If you don’t know, it is the oil-producing part of Nigeria- not the only one, but the major one. And ever since oil was discovered there, that region and its people have had to deal with a lot of negative impacts; like the pretty much irreversible environmental pollution from oil spills that still haven’t been fixed till date.
Then other things like the way violence has been normalized with oil bunkering and the general theft of crude oil products.
But really, the big underlying hurt I noticed in this book is the loss of agency that Niger deltans have in what happens to their own ancestral land.
All of this is woven together in a complex tapestry of boyhood, friendship, life of a remote island that found itself center stage in a country’s politics, and a pretty non-cringey exploration of romantic love thrown into it.
It was really right up my alley and it is definitely one of those books that I will be keeping the physical copy on hand; just so I have it whenever I want to go through some of the story telling again. Some of the scenes that absolutely deserve a second read.
SOME PRETTY MASTERFUL STORYTELLING.
This book was recommended to me by a random tweet that showed up on my X timeline.
It praised the way that friendship was depicted in the book. And, because there isn’t as much Nigerian literature about male friendships, at least that I know of, I thought why not?
I love reading books that take me into a perspective that I would never have access to in my daily life. And this book really went through with it.
You know, there is something very special about a friendship that lasts beyond childhood. To be able to survive the tumult of the teen years and all of the antecedent changes to one’s psyche, and still be friends? Wow. That is truly something. It’s an absolute gift, and I’m glad I have a few friends that I share that experience with.
In this book, there are four men or boys who became men in the shadow of the Niger Delta being explored for oil. Their names are: Tubo, Kaniye, Amaibi and Doye (or Doughboy).
But the friendship of these men is under the tension of a new development; one of them has been arrested for participating in the kidnapping of an oil worker.
Now, the book makes it very clear to the reader that Amaibi, quiet intellectual, professor-type Amaibi is not the one who was responsible for the kidnapping. It was Doye, the only one among the four friends who became a violent man running oil bunkering operations, and other crimes like kidnapping international oil workers.
But Amaibi is caught up in the madness of it by volunteering to be the middleman in the negotiation for the kidnapped man’s release. What comes next is the complex story of how it was all a tightly coordinated set up, and how Kaniye who is a reluctant attorney tries to fight for Amaibi’s freedom in the courts. And then Tubo, a very funny Tubo – (the right word is lacking in a moral compass) dithers between his loyalty to his job at the oil corporation that is pretty much destroying his homeland, and the old friendships he has with the others.
Will Tubo do what is right and give the information that could acquit Amaibi?
Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. I don’t give spoilers ha-ha.
There’s a lot of other stuff in this story that I found to be very adorable. Very interesting.
SOME OF THAT STUFF INCLUDES
Well, the fact that I actually got to read a story about the Niger Delta.
I mean, the annoying thing in the general consciousness of my country is how Niger Deltans, and truly, every minority tribe in the south-south of Nigeria gets lumped together ethnically as Igbo. When they make it very, very clear that they are not ethnically Igbo.
There are many tribes there, and they all have their own unique cultural heritage.
So, it was really nice to see a culture that doesn’t get as much spotlight as the larger ones in this group.
I loved how we got to see a glimpse into the first encounters between Nigerians who now live in the Niger Delta, and you know, colonialists. It is still the same annoying story of slave trade and imperialism, but I loved the way the story was explained. How the people living in these small remote islands cut off from the rest of modern day Nigeria navigated the changing of the times.
Then, the descriptions of the world in this book are so immaculate.
“We are influenced by the intangibles: the history of the Island, the spirit of the place, and the secrets of the waters”
You know, I recognize the sentimentality of a person who loves their hometown when I see it.
That care crafted into the sentences is pretty reminiscent of the love I poured into my prize-winning and Pushcart nominated story Mountain Song. I wrote that story about Idanre, my ancestral hometown. And almost about my father’s childhood – at least, a patchwork of the things he told me about it.
I was completely in my feelings when I wrote it, and I was very happy it went out into the world and did so well.
Reading someone else share that emotion about a very, very different landscape – what is more different than mountains and swampy creeks? – is lovely.
It requires a specific mastery and skill to write a story that holds this particular sort of beauty, and can still be thoroughly a political statement about the Niger Delta.
It makes it an even bigger shame that such a beautiful place has been torn apart and polluted for the next generation due to greed, and in some cases just plain callousness.
OTHER THINGS TO NOTE
- I read this interview the author, Chimeka Garricks, did with The Republic. Someone asked him something that surprised him about his first book which is this one, and he said he didn’t know till he had written it that a fictional character could get marriage proposals. Something tells me it is the character of Kaniye. His is the only simple-ish love story in the book. And his character is written with a certain complexity that I understand that a lot of women would really appreciate. I mean, who else will it be? Tubo the Casanova?
- I didn’t think I could enjoy court scenes. The ones in this book were super riveting! I used to see copies of John Grisham books being swapped around among my classmates in secondary school, but I was really put off from the fact that it centered around law and crime. And you know, how interesting could that be? This book definitely changed that view. I just might order a John Grisham book soon.
- Christianity was actually depicted with respect in this book. I am not used to seeing that in African storytelling because of the rather complex way Christianity came to West Africa: on the backs of colonization. Now, I did not say, Africa as a whole – Ethiopia had Christians in it well before the British Isles did, but I do recognize how Christianity was used as a tool for conquest. Yet, it was also one of the major ways that education got to smaller places in Nigeria. Like in this story, Asiama town get its first school from the donations of parishioners. And that is pretty true in many cases. Now, is there a lot of nuance to how these schools operated? Yes. But I still admire how the faith was treated with respect – and I suspect it is because it is a faith that the writer subscribes to. Rarely do you see it that way otherwise
- Do not judge a book by its cover.
Okay, that’s it.
The story is a bit more expansive than that. But all I wanted to do was give you a taste of what you would be getting from this lovely book wrapped in a pretty unassuming cover.
I hope you enjoyed the review.
And would you consider reading it? Or if you’ve read it before, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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