I am 10 the first time I remember being asked this question, Do you have a boyfriend? We are sitting at a church table for religious education on a Saturday morning. It is our first session and we are getting to know each other. The teacher tells us to write a secret about ourselves on a slip of paper and fold it up. I cannot remember what mine said, perhaps that I played the violin, or some such. She collects the slips and opens one at random: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND, she reads, and asks us to guess who wrote it. 

There are only two girls in the class: me and Kisha. Everyone turns to me. Do you have a boyfriend? they ask. I say no; they are surprised. I should have one, I am told, because I am pretty. I look at Kisha, who giggles into her palm. She has not come clean yet, and I realize they do not believe me. She has a nice smile, round cheeks that squeeze her eyes shut when she laughs. I wonder whether I am prettier than her. Is that why they all guessed it was me? No matter how much I deny it, my cheeks flushing red, the others do not stop peppering me with questions. Finally Kisha confesses. She asks me why I don't have a boyfriend, says I'm supposed to. 

It is the first time I remember feeling there must be something wrong with me because I do not have a boyfriend. 

More than 20 years later, I still do not have one. At times it is a badge I wear--single black female, like a rallying cry. I have a Bachelor's and (almost) Master's degrees, attended an Ivy League(ish) school and am well on my way to a brilliant career. For women like me, I am told, eligible men are an endangered species. 

Yes, in fact, I have been single for the majority of the past two decades. I am not emasculating or threatening, at least, I don't think I am. I just have never been in a stable, long-term committed relationship. There have been deaths and grief--frequently enough over the past ten years, beginning with my mother--that have greatly affected the way I relate to other people. I am always looking for the exit, for what's wrong with me or the other person. In all cases, I have found something that has made me leave. Then there is the knee jerk reaction, before birthdays and holidays, to get out of something I am in so I do not have to feel disappointment at what someone fails to do or say. 

I think it is hard, having grown accustomed to not having one, to have a boyfriend now. To meet someone you like, to get to know them, and keep trying even when they get on your nerves. What if they hurt you? Leave you? Die? With planes disappearing mid-air and buildings blowing up in Harlem, I have started avoiding construction sites. I will not date a policeman, fireman, or soldier. I will not date someone who climbs rocks or mountains or shoots guns, real or fake.

To make it harder, at my age, most people assume I should have a husband already. How does that work? I wonder. I have not had a boyfriend in years. When I have had one, I have picked the wrong guy, stayed for the wrong reasons, left for the right ones. I consider myself lucky that I knew enough not to marry any of the men I dated. I could have been an adequate wife to any one of them, just as I could have been an adequate doctor. 

But I am looking for something more.

I neither know what that thing is, nor do I understand what I mean by that. All I know is I keep meeting better versions of myself as I age. More confident, more self-aware and loving. I feel more beautiful, especially given that I never remember feeling that way as a kid. I am kinder and more patient, less selfish than I used to be. 

I am thankful to the handful of men who tried to be my boyfriends, to the ones who flat out rejected me, and those who were merely passing the time until someone better came along. I appreciate how much they taught me about how important it is to like myself, to not run around mad looking for someone else to complete me. 

All of that said, I am genuinely scared sometimes that I will never meet someone. Not because I have any trouble meeting people, or carrying on a conversation, or being asked out, but mostly because I am no longer merely happy to be chosen, as I was when I was younger. I should be with someone equally special who also treats me well. Sometimes I worry that I will never meet this person or, if I do, that they won't pick me to walk with them through this crazy world. 

I would probably be a good girlfriend now. And maybe, one day, even a good wife and mother. At least I no longer think there is something wrong with me because I'm none of these things. And I think that is a start.

Love,
AL.

(Disclaimer: I realize that this is a blog, but it is really a message to myself. I needed to send it into the universe, so thanks for reading.)

Elizabeth's Daughter: In Words and Pictures is a volume of essays and photos from my memoir about a would-be nun in post-war Nigeria who became my mother, and my experiences as her daughter, an artist, and Nigerian-American woman. 

Proceeds from sales of the essay collection will be used toward a broader project incorporating video and photography. Consider making a donation today to help me realize this vision. 

DONATE: http://bit.ly/elizabethsdaughter

(Pictured here, L-R: My mother Elizabeth and her friend Philomena as Girl Guides)

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i've been meaning to share an excerpt from my memoir project, Elizabeth's Daughter, that I've been working on this past year. the essays (and photographs and video) are meant to be read/viewed in conversation with each other, but this piece works as a standalone.

i am putting together a preview collection called 'Elizabeth's Daughter in Words and Pictures' that will be ready in the coming months (i hope i hope!). the purpose is to collect my writing, photos and ideas so far, as well as allow for my blog readers to engage a bit deeper with my work and potentially support my project.

you can read an excerpt from the essay "granny's house" here and also download/scroll through below. enjoy! --AL.
Grannys House by Iquo B Essien

i am heading to akwa ibom tomorrow for a few days. have been dragging my feet like a petulant child, only because i have a difficult time tearing myself away from the lagos-style enjoyment of life. while there i will not be conducting any further interviews toward my memoir project, elizabeth's daughter, although i have spent the past few days putting together quite a bit of writing from the past year.

i'm pleased with how it's progressing, and should be able to publish a few essays very soon and at least start the ball rolling with a publisher (wish me luck). tho it might take several years, i'm certain the linked essay approach is my best bet at moving steadily toward the goal. will workshop some of them here, if i feel so inclined.

heard tons of wonderful songs and poetry at bogobiri open mic yesterday, namely from the ever fabulous wana udobang. found myself wanting to share something, sang a couple of songs, but it would have been great to do a reading, too. in light of this, i felt compelled to repost a poem i wrote awhile back in response to seeing an old picture of my mother. enjoy. --AL.

mother

on a hot day in
february 1964
a white buick waits on a
winding, dusty road
somewhere in akwa ibom

the parched shrubs and
sun-bleached road
communing their boredom, waiting
for your girlfriends to
get inside the car

while two, stylish young men in the front seat
rev the engine and
tune the radio to high life

there is another girl
clad in a white polka dot tank top
who has just handed off her camera and is
cutting a line back toward the car

(and a moment after this picture is taken she will turn and shout
"but i told you to wait!"
giggling)

there is another girl, no more than twenty
standing behind the car
smiling
whom i cannot see so clearly

i think it is you, but
she appears like a
ghost--
a lone head with a jet black afro
floating
and the same
cheekbones
gap-toothed smile
and
dark amber-colored irises
that are my own

perhaps it is my own image, like a
phantom
reflected off the shiny Kodak paper;
your face,
burnished by the hot sun to a
deep bronze, and
your teeth shining bright

years after your father died, but
still before the war
you are all joy
and
eternal hope

and
i wonder whether
if i could have met you then
as a young woman
whether we might have been
friends

(on the back of the photo you wrote:
Veronica, Alicia and their friends.
They took me on an evening ride in their mother's car)

taking great pleasure in reading some of my writing today. at the risk of oversharing, thot i'd post this. a nothing passage, really, part of something much larger, but i like it. this is my voice. i feel it much stronger now. --AL.

I rest my head on the seat, watching the palm trees on the horizon as we make our way over the hilly, unpaved road leading from the village back in to town. My driver, Ekemini, turns the radio on to a station playing American R&B. I am content and at peace and without a sound. Speechless. It has been a great day. A success. I have spent time with my Uncle Joseph, listened to all the old stories about my mother. Am beside myself with pleasure, so much that I can feel it bubbling up and out of me like a divine radiance.

And I want to feel love, to be touched, to express my joy on somebody. Badly. So badly that the feeling squeezes my womb and turns my insides around. I want to see A— tonight. To smother his face in kisses. To love and be loved. As we turn onto the main road and the bars on my cellphone return, I see he has texted me a message, likely hours ago, that he is coming to the house. I send a reply that I am on the way home from the village, have been swallowed in a bad network for hours. He replies, see you later, which I know could mean hours or days.

Leaving behind the peace and tranquility of the village, we descend through a police checkpoint into town. Surrounded by the chaos and friction, the lusty feeling in my gut fades as my insides harden up again. I sit in silence all the way home until I hand Ekemini a fistful of Naira notes.

"Is that enough?" I ask, glancing back into my lean wallet. Money is depressingly short these days.

"Yes, yes. Aunty, thank you. Thank you very much." He gives me a wide, boyish grin, his dimples shining from cheek to cheek.

And I am grateful for this man--the only one in my life who shows up when I need him. I thank him for his time and wish him a good night, slamming the car door behind me and walking in through the front gate.

My mind drifts back to earlier today, when I sat drinking a cup of coconut water in Uncle Joseph's backyard and Ekemini wandered in to ask permission to leave for awhile. The sun cast a beam of light across his face and lean shoulders--clad in a rumpled green shirt--and I felt myself drawn to him for the first time. I saw his patience and devotion, his willingness to accept whatever it is that I give him from my heart. At times like this, when I am lonely, I find myself wondering whether he could love me.

As I walk into the house, I think that I should give him something to remember me by when I leave. Yes. I will buy him a new shirt.

there's an interesting article online by hedgebrook alum rahna reiko rizzuto about why she left her children for six months, to pursue a writers' residency in japan, and ended up leaving them, and their father, altogether.

i don't often speak about marriage or motherhood because the institutions strike me a bit like mlk jr's beloved community--an unattainable ideal, or perhaps a figment of the imagination, that may never exist in reality anywhere. i don't have ample examples of positive marriages to provide evidence of the benefits of this union. since i prefer to deal with what i see reflected in my reality, marriage has been largely irrelevant to me. i also have never been clear that motherhood is a better institution than selfhood. perhaps why i have walked away from every man who has ever dared utter the words 'marriage' and 'children,' usually within mere months of our meeting. i wonder, does he think i'm just going to slip into this perfect picture of a life he's imagined for himself? is he crazy? i'm not falling for that trick."

don't get me wrong: i would love to be someone's partner, perhaps even for life, but i have never wanted to be someone's wife and all that implies. i am a free spirit, have a tendency (and perhaps, a desire) to float around from mate to mate like a muse. i like to sample a little bit of everything on the table before i choose what i want to eat. and i value my freedom, my independence, my singledom somewhat fiercely.

but lately (oh, lately) i have begun contemplating giving up this freedom. you could chalk it up to my upcoming 30th birthday this year, or the new gray hair on my head that brings the count up to two. or maybe i'm just tired of these fleeting relationships i have that, nevertheless, leave my emotional energy sapped dry.

and don't get me wrong (again): i hate those movies where the independent, no nonsense career woman is ultimately rescued from the exile of singledom by a (strong, handsome, and yet sensitive) man. that has never been my story. first off, i love myself as i am. not in that 'i'm so fabulous' kind of way, but in that bone deep understanding that i am a person of conscience, of spirit, of intelligence, and of value with or without a mate.

it is a prevalent assumption that all women want to marry and have babies. but when i was a little girl, i never dreamt of any those things. i had baby dolls, but they were often my patients (i wanted to be a doctor then) and rarely my children. i would leave them lying askew under the dinner table for days at a time, later chiding myself for my carelessness, knowing deep down i would make a terrible mother. and this notion changed very little in adolescence and young adulthood. i was simply too selfish, too insecure, too neurotic to be trusted with another person's heart, let alone a child's.

i would raise children who were desperate to find the care and validation they never got from me in the world around them. they would end up as emotional doormats or, worse yet, in abusive relationships that would land them in therapy for decades. i was not going to allow this to happen under any circumstances.

but over the past few years, i find myself changing. i am slightly less insecure, less neurotic. i still don't want kids, at least right now, but i can at least dream of having them one day. no matter how i've felt in the past, i always figured that one day i'd rise to the occasion of being someone's mate and mother. i'm not sure if/when that day will come, but i'm not sure i'm ready to decide that it never will.

i was thinking about it a lot today, and then i read that article, and then i was ambivalent again. i think it is courageous to step out of the mold of traditional femininity to pursue one's art/dream. another major reason why i have never wanted to marry/mother is that, deep down, i don't want to resent my spouse/children for limiting my ability to achieve my creative dreams. i have been happily wedded to myself as an artist for many years now, and am still laboring to give birth to my creative ideas. there just hasn't been time/energy/room for anyone else.

i just really hope that i'm not missing something.

i am somewhat reluctant to share this here. however, as i write this memoir about my mother, it brings up all these unreconciled notions about marriage and motherhood that i need to work through somehow. thankfully, very few people read this blog. --AL.

mrs. usanga (l.) with CCC students

Classes have long been dismissed and this corner of the quad is absent the voices of girls on their way to lecture hall. Vice Principal Affiah and I come to the music room, an enclave nestled behind the assembly hall where Cornelia Connelly students hold plays and meetings. Where the soil has eroded away, the building's foundation stands half a foot above the ground.

"Watch your step," Mrs. Affiah says, pointing to a giant crack in the cement that has caved in near the doorway. I hop over it and step inside the room, where a tired-looking, middle-aged woman in a headtie and native dress sits at a table with three other teachers, discussing the events of the day. They greet us as we walk in and I wait to be introduced.

While Mrs. Affiah banters jovially with the women, my eyes graze over the room. Etched into the wall in chalk are a series of chord progressions, the day’s lesson, I imagine. Unlike the music rooms I've known in the States, this one has few instruments aside from an odd pile of traditional drums wedged into a dark corner between the door and a bookshelf. In the adjacent corner sits a pile of costumes used by the cultural dance group. There are no books to speak of. But how do they teach here? I wonder.

The women quiet down suddenly as Mrs. Affiah introduces me, finally, as the daughter of a late old girl of CCC.

"The face is very familiar," says the woman in the headtie. "What was the mother’s name?" She asks the question of Mrs. Affiah, her eyes fixed on me.

"Her mother was a sister to Lady Valerie Ebe." At this news, the woman lets out a yelp and claps her hands together, jumping to her feet.

"Elizabeth! She was my school mother. We stayed in Saint Joseph’s dormitory together."

She flies over to where I stand, taking me by the wrists and pulling me closer to the sunlight streaming in the door. Opposite the doorway, a student swings by both hands from the branch of a frangipani tree whose tired stump pokes out from a rubbish heap. As the woman tilts her head backwards, inspecting my cheekbones, eyes, and mouth, I can hear the girl laughing with her friends on the ground below. After what seems like hours, she releases me, satisfied with the results of her cursory examination.

"Same face," she says, returning to her chair. She sits down with a sharp exhale that deflates her shoulders and chest, her face bearing a melancholy expression as she bows her head in thought.

When she finally speaks, it is to say, "My name is Felicia Usanga. Your mother was my school mother. There was nothing that she wouldn't do for me. She wrote me letters even after she crossed to that side." She raises an arm overhead and points across the room, like a compass, to America. "Until 1975 when she said she was getting married. She said she would send a letter with the new address, but we missed each other. I never got the letter. When I heard about her death--"

She stops mid-sentence, her voice choked with tears. I feel sorry that she must feel this pain again, to look upon the image of her long lost school mother--gone forever, without so much as a goodbye--in my cheekbones and smile. But in another way, I am glad for her pain. We share something, motherless daughters, an emptiness inside that can never be filled, an ache that will never wane. Her sadness helps me know for certain that I am not alone, that my mother was loved. After a long silence, Mrs. Usanga speaks again.

"I am happy for this day. God has brought us together again. I could have left early after classes, but God asked me to wait and see. I didn’t know that God asked me to wait and see good things."

-- Excerpt from Elizabeth's Daughter, a work-in-progress by Iquo B. Essien (aka Alligator Legs)

i got into a virtual disagreement of sorts with one of my friends on facebook about sharing work. he is also a writer, and regularly puts his work up on his blog. i emailed him a poem i had written once upon a time that he wanted to share. he wondered why some people, myself included, are so private about sharing their work with the public. i responded that i am either not a poet or an unfinished one, not yet ripe for public consumption. he said something about labels being a very 'american' thing, before we agreed to disagree.

i feel hesitant, always, to share the writing that matters most to me. i have always been a perfectionist and worry about being judged by work that has not quite matured, about it following me around for years like a shadow. i haven't screened any of my student films anywhere. i doubt that i ever will. (curiously, there was a retrospective of spike lee's student films at the brooklyn academy of music last year that was sold out.) maybe someday, if i rise to the notoriety of a chimamanda, i will subject you all to my youthful short stories, reworked and repackaged for 30USD a pop. but this has never seemed appropriate for the moment 'now' as opposed to 'later.'

i also have a profound distaste for the kind of 'bad' (this is a subjective opinion and judgment, of course, take it as you will) poetry/prose i am barraged with daily online. while i appreciate the boon of instantaneous self publishing that creates more opportunities for myself and others to get their work out in front of people, i tend to think that more editorial restraint need be exercised.

all in all, i really do believe that the process of growing and maturing as a writer/artist need not be performed in public.

however, all that being said, i had a really great writers' brunch/reading on saturday that has relaxed my anxiety and boosted my spirits a bit. i think i will share some work, a few paragraphs from the memoir project i have been researching/writing the past several months. i haven't reviewed this particular chapter in months, but found it very touching and astounding that i managed to write this. read it here. --AL.

there is a question i have asked frequently ever since i was a little girl. that is, who am i? i suppose this stems largely from being born in the west to nigerian immigrants. without the luxury of being born in my parents' place, the question begs an answer.

i live at the nexus of over a half dozen cultures. there is white america, black america, brown america, immigrant america, akwa ibomites in america, akwa ibomites in nigeria, nigerians in the diaspora, and of course nigerians in nigeria. i have always held it up as some miraculous thing, having access to all these cultures, but it is a major task to remain conversant in all of them.

at some point, tiring of the politics of black america, i can simply say i am a cultural outsider and don't understand what they're on about (i used to do this alot as a kid, in fact, i hardly understood some aspects of black culture although i secretly wanted to be "cool enough" to be black).

at some point, tiring of the politics of being an akwa ibomite in america, i can simply pronounce my name in that weird way that sounds like 'spoon' instead of 'song' and pretend i don't know how to say good bye in ibibio. this is much how i walked by the 'concerned citizens of akwa ibom' group three weeks ago, protesting kidnappings near the UN. although i came to join them, they looked like a bunch of crazies shouting on the street with their placards raised, while a passerby shouted back that akpabio's built so many good roads and how could they possibly jeapordize the success of the state in this way. i was happy to pass by unnoticed.

and tiring of politics in general, i can always sit among a gathering of my white friends and pretend to be somewhat cultureless and colorless. (it is the path of least resistance, and yet the one i shun the most.)

but who am i really? i tried going through all my blogs to find a place where i say definitively who and what i am and found nothing. a part of it is i love personas, am intrigued by the way other people project their realities on to me. there are friends who've known me for decades and have been told on several occasions that i was born in the u.s.of.a. and still don't believe me. i am a sleeper cell, in their eyes, who will one day take over america and redistribute all her resources appropriately to the developing world. or i'll simply take over hollywood and move it out of country, hire native nigerians (and maybe indians) to run it and say to hell with white people. (i am not that interested in hollywood. i might also respond that the nigerians and indians would label me as not being 'authentic' enough and reject the offer, not before chopping all the money and running it into the ground, of course.)

so what does it all really mean? are place, race, culture, custom, and nationality everything? or are they relative? i have always fancied myself a bridge between cultures and it seems that, despite the many internal questions that still prevail, this is finally becoming a reality. i'm now the family historian, of sorts, and the first person people think of to ask obscure questions like what year my mother came to the u.s. from nigeria. (it was my uncle, her elder brother, who asked. he's also the one who brought her here.)

they place their hope in me, marveling at how i am able to simply plop myself down in akwa ibom and not complain about the electricity or have a care for what's going on in the states. some of them have never thought of going back, but secretly long for the courage. i imagine that, as a person who craves an existence that is not relative, it has been very important for me to create a space for myself there. perhaps also why i am an artist, so that i can live and create any- and everywhere.

if i could only choose one thing to be, it would be an inspiration. appropriately so, my life now seems to be less about 'who i am' than my chosen purpose and what i represent for other people. i am not sure whether to raise disclaimers about being their great hope, or to simply embrace it and rise to the occasion. i only hope that i will be able to express the pluralities that exist within me in a way that i do not misrepresent myself.

i have no answers and certainties, only questions and relativities. i exist as a being in the flesh, but perhaps am closer to a concept than a reality. i think it would be easier for me and those around me if i was some other way, but it wouldn't be authentic to who i am. such is life. --AL.

we will bury my uncle on friday. his wasn't a good death, after a long life filled with love and laughter. he was young, unmarried, and childless when his house burned down to the ground two weeks ago. we can't seem to figure out if he put something on the stove and fell asleep, or if it was some kind of electrical fire, but it started in the kitchen. i'm not sure that how it started is that important, although something about not knowing what really happened leaves the matter unresolved.

in his heyday he was the epitome of cool--sunshades, bellbottoms, a blazer thrown casually over his back (see him above, center, jamming with his band). and tho he hadn't been back to nigeria in over 30 years since he left, he was spoken of fondly and often by those who remember him simply as Uncle F.O.B.

i sat on this blog over a week wondering whether to publish it, thought it too morbid, but have decided to go ahead. simply to say that a man named Frances Okon Bassey, the last child of Obong Paul Okon Bassey, died in his sleep from smoke inhalation related to a fire on march 2, 2011. he had an offbeat sense of humor, a flair for dramatic fashions, and was loved by his friends and family.

i cannot shed any light in the way of mortality, fate and providence. i can only say that i wish i had known him better. there were circumstances beyond my control that prevented this, i think, or maybe i simply was not wise enough to overcome them. --AL.

wonderful essay on the dangers of a single memoir by hedgebrook alum manijeh nasrabadi. i have been thinking a lot about this in light of the memoir project i'm working on. what nasrabadi describes about the publishing establishment with regard to iranian american memoirs sounds eerily similar to writing about africa and her diasporas. at least i am certain, both in nasrabadi's case and mine, that one must first write for oneself and then for others. --AL.

"My agent told me how I should envision my book: it should start with 9/11 as a catalyst for my decision to travel alone on a one-way ticket to Iran, my first time going to the country my father was from, where his entire extended family still lived. I would then be like a tour guide, she said, outsider and family member at the same time, showing my readers what life in Iran was really like. The fact that my family members are working-class Zoroastrians was added caché. We haven’t heard that before! I should write about their rituals and attitudes towards the Muslim state. I should write about their persecution as religious minorities. Flashbacks to my childhood in DC with my Iranian immigrant father and Jewish American mother would then be interspersed with the action in Tehran.

Ever so grateful that someone had given me permission to speak, ever so araid of displeasing the powerful people who had gone out of their way to help me, I tried to write this book. But it wasn’t working. The writing felt timid to me, overly concerned with explaining myself and my family to an audience I was told to imagine as ignorant about Iran but open-minded and eager to learn. What was never said was that this presumed audience was white and middle class. I was supposed to write for this demographic because they buy the most books. What I couldn’t put into words at the time was that I felt I was being asked to participate in a new form of assimilation, to perform a certain version of difference, to become the 'Other' who could then be revealed and made knowable within the dominant American cultural framework." -- Manijeh Nasrabadi, The Essay I Never Wanted to Write

thanks to justice philomena etim for the photo. i really dig the vibe. --AL.

i followed mrs. usanga to her village in itu local government area yesterday. these days i never know what someone means when they say they live in the village. i find that they could mean marble staircases and satellite television or no running water, and various stages in between. what i found was a completely different side of itu that i hadn't seen when i followed my aunt campaigning for the governor at the itu secretariat a couple of weeks ago.

construction giant julius berger felled all the electric wires last year under the auspices of bringing an access road to mrs. usanga's village, though none ever materialized. the residents rewired the place, only to have nepa come in subsequently and pull the wires down again. so, absent a road, i left the taxi at the highway as we made our way down a steep bank and across a narrow path to her modest home.

it is cozy, quaint, painted a friendly peach and green. she has a tv, ice box, everything you find in town except for electricity. mrs. usanga stays here with her son, a housegirl, and tenants who rent out an adjacent room. they have a little boy, no more than two, whom she affectionately calls "We Thank God," a literal translation of his name, Abasisosong.

we spent a good two hours talking and looking at old pictures, until i'd exhausted all my questions, before we sat down to a delicious meal of ekpangkukwo. i've been finding it quite challenging to interview people. the little bits of information i need as a writer differ greatly from the bits i want as a daughter, trying to connect with a mother who is gone. what i do get, in the end, leaves me somewhat unsatisfied on both ends.

nevertheless, i left with my belly full, a stack of forty-year-old photos, and a bunch of plantain and two coconuts from her farm. would have been a great day all around had the police not stopped us for hours at a checkpoint after we left the village and confiscated the taxi, just to collect the N1000 I paid the driver for his services, before they agreed to release the car.

how will eight grown men with families split little little money? naija, abeg. --AL.

sincerely grateful to mrs. felicia usanga--and the girls at cornelia connelly college--for all their hospitality. it was mrs. usanga whom i met randomly last week while retracing my mother's footsteps at her old secondary school. when she got to hear my name and see my face, she began shouting weeping shouting about how my mom was her school mother in those days. how they exchanged letters until 1975, after my mom left for the u.s., but lost touch after that. of course she heard about my mom's death years ago, and the black hole of grief never quite filled up.

so yesterday we sat over 40-year-old photos of my mom as a girl and toured the campus, remembering her. visited the room where my mother slept, the assembly hall where she performed in julius caesar with the drama group. and i tried to keep from crying. how i wish i could've known her then. known her better as my mother. and i can't imagine the number of celestial miracles responsible for my meeting mrs. usanga. that this woman should have known my mother as her own mother, become a teacher, posted to ccc some forty years later, and sitting in the arts department on the very day i stumbled by.

imagine. --AL.

Went to a memoir workshop last night at my new favorite bookstore, taught by Gotham Writers' Workshop instructor Cullen Thomas. I have been lagging in all matters of writing lately, had a moment last week when it all seemed rather pointless and stupid. But I showed up late anyway, grabbed a seat near the back row that somehow ended up directly in Cullen's sight lines.

We did a short character exercise and some shared their meager sentences with the mostly female, white, and slightly older crowd. He went through the basics of plot, character, setting, dialogue, and theme, did a plug for his memoir and for Gotham.

Then he said, quite simply, that we all have a story to tell. (I have always believed this, perhaps I needed someone to say it out.) That we needn't come to the workshop and the page expecting to publish, but perhaps to have a cathartic experience that helps us understand a moment in our lives better.

He offered a quote by Anais Nin: We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

I suppose I should mention, perhaps I have already, that the novel I am writing was first a memoir. I might also add that I am now developing (whatever that means, I haven't touched it in weeks) a collection of memoir essays loosely about identity, language, loss, and alienation. They are the little bits and pieces of thoughts floating in my head on the subway, that I jot into my notebook.

I find that I am always writing, whether on purpose or by chance, yet I am also somewhat obsessed with getting published. Ever since, as a child to whom such things came easy, I published a poem at 14, I assumed it was a simple matter. Come to find, as an adult, it is nothing of the sort. It is challenging and requires more determination than I sometimes think I have.

It is also the biggest emotional-mind-fuck ever conceived.

In truth, the novelization of the memoir was intended to create a safe psychological distance for myself. But, the deeper I get into the work, that distance slowly peels away, layer by layer. The writing also creates a type of "silence" that is only broken through the act of sharing those words.

I imagine, then, that I am really learning to speak, to find my voice through writing.

When I have a bad day at work, I take my lunch break at the bookstore. I just found an extremely bourgie one on Prince St, with soft lighting and rocking chairs, though my favorite is still Strand. Miles and miles of books make me extremely happy. Rather than alone in my bedroom, I am out celebrating with a hundred of my dearest friends (the books, of course).

Picked up a copy of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoirette by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Trapped in his body after a massive stroke, he wrote the entire book by blinking his left eyelid. Now, when I am feeling especially lazy or impotent, I think of him and draw courage.

The human mind in all its infinite possibilities. I think therefore I am, and all that.

In film school, my cinematography prof screened the opening of the film version, shot by Janusz Kaminski with a tilt-shift lens. How rare and utterly glorious to see a film adaptation rise to meet (and, maybe, exceed) the book form. I'll have to finish the book entirely before watching it again.

I've been reading a bunch of memoirs on writing lately, notably On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (pictured above). King's is gripping; not only as a study on the craft of writing and the vagaries of publishing, but also in its unflinching honesty about his battles with alcoholism, drug abuse, and rebirth after a near fatal run-in with a 15 passenger van.

What I enjoyed most about King's memoir was his honesty about where he comes from -- he was among the working poor most of his life -- and its impact on his life. What irritates me about Ms. Lamott's writing is her inability to grasp the effect of her socioeconomic status and racial privilege on her success.

Lamott says, of her college days, "I was drawn to oddballs, ethnic people, theater people, poets, radicals, gays and lesbians." By her own admission, she is normal, while the rest of us are different. Exceptional by virtue of our idiosyncracies -- be they race, gender, or sexual orientation.

In essence, she is a middle class, college-educated white woman whose father was a writer. There is a certain degree of privilege in that, but Lamott is unwilling or unable to own up to that privilege. She claims her experience as a universal one and, by omission, pushes all others to the margins.

Of South and Central American writers, Lamott writes: "When I read their books, I feel like I'm sitting around a campfire at night where they are spinning their wild stories...I understand why this style is so attractive to my students: it's like primitive art. It's simple and decorative, with rich colors...like watching a wild theater piece with lots of special effects."

She describes one character as "an old black woman from the South," as though this description alone is evocative, stumbling over her own predisposition for campfire/mammy imagery.

While I struggle to write the people in my life, many of whom happen to be "ethnic" -- for lack of a pithier, though less derogatory, adjective for non-white -- as real people and not caricatures, hundreds of successful writers sell books peopled by "old black women from the South."

It seems unfair that those of us who conceive of ourselves as "ethnic" must shoulder the burden of our sensibilities alone.

That's me at about ten-years-old drinking coconut water on my uncle's lawn in Uyo, Nigeria. Those were my favorite pair of glasses, blue and pink plastic hexagons, that I picked every two years, religiously, when my mom took me to the eye doctor.

There are far stranger stories from my childhood, all of which led me to start penning a memoir, Alligator Legs. It's a nickname my big sisters gave me as a kid when I scratched my legs so much that they grew bumpy from childhood eczema. I was sickly, in and out of the hospital with asthma attacks, and generally uncomfortable in my own skin.

Today, I am a Stanford University biology graduate completing MFA studies at NYU graduate film. I am a professional writer and editor, most recently awarded a 2009 Hedgebrook Writers Residency.

First conceived in 2003, Alligator Legs is a novel based upon my experiences growing up the youngest of four daughters of Nigerian immigrants living in that difficult space between Africa and America.

The protagonist of Alligator Legs is a little girl from a working class immigrant family trying to fit in somewhere that will never be home -- negotiating what it means to be a girl or boy, pretty or ugly, rich or poor, in often hostile territory.

I plan to finish a draft of Alligator Legs by May 2009 and begin working on a screenplay adaptation of the novel. This blog is a place to share my thoughts and explore ideas emerging from my writing and filmmaking. I also hope to gain insight from other writer/filmmakers engaged in similar endeavors.

Drop me a line and say hello or post a comment. I love hearing from my blog readers especially while killing time at work. ;)

I'm writing my memoirs. Yes, it has been brought to my attention that, at only 25-years-old, what could I possibly have to say about life at this point? Well, many things.

I am a first-generation American-born Naija. That distinction has always been a source of ire toward my parents for robbing me of my birthright. You see, even if you were born in NG and whisked away at four-months-old to the US, somehow you're more authentic than those of us born here. All I know is, my favorite foods are plantain & eggs and coconut rice. I can cook edikangikong, okra soup, afang soup, atama soup, pepper soup, egusi soup, fufu, jollof rice, coconut rice, akara, chin chin, and beans. I can prepare plantain at least ten different ways. Count to ten, say hello, goodbye, I'm sorry, come and eat, sit down, where are you going, what is your name, nice to meet you, how much does it cost, i love you. I know when someone's talking about me and usually, if I put enough effort into listening, I know what they're saying.

My mom used to take my sisters and me back "home," as we call it, every two years. We knew our cousins in Nigeria better than we knew the ones in the States. When my mom started a dance troupe, she took us to the village to learn traditional Ibibio dance properly. Between the palm wine and goat pepper soup, I always knew I was different from an American, but something else distinguished me from a black American too. As many identity issues as it created for me growing up -- other kids said I had snakes in my hair when I wore it threaded -- it has helped me find my place as an adult: what I am here to do, to write my life.

So I am writing a book about growing up as an African in America. It is a not-so-easy task -- not just the writing part, which takes a lot out of me emotionally, but selling the idea. I have submitted the proposal to a dozen agents and keep opening up rejection letters that say, "You're a wonderful writer, but I would have a difficult time getting this story published."

And I am not used to rejection. Usually, if I apply a certain amount of energy in a particular direction, whatever I want comes to me. But with this book, I have put out more energy than ever before without receiving much validation.

I wanted to blog a summer reading list today, but I realized that what I really want to do is publish and read my own book. I tend to believe that more women my age want to tell their stories, but I have to ask, where are they? I look to contemporary African authors like Ama Ata Aidoo, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, and Chimamanda Adichie for inspiration, but there should be so many more.

We have to tell our own stories or they die with us. And I look forward to the day when our stories, no longer at the margins, are placed squarely at the center of history. So these agents and editors see my memoir as something essential -- a must- instead of a cannot-publish -- that tells the very central story of Africans in America, of America itself.

I interviewed former child soldier Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, for The AFRican Magazine. Beah's memoir is a recent offering from Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, being sold at Starbucks coffee houses throughout the nation.

I first read about Ishmael in a New York Times Magazine cover story featuring an excerpt from his memoir about his experiences during the 1990s Sierra Leonean Civil War. At thirteen-years-old, his entire family was murdered by rebel forces, forcing him to fend for himself. He traveled on foot from village to village with a group of boys looking for safety, and thought he found it when they entered a village occupied by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces.

Eventually, the boys were given a choice to either conscript into the army or leave the village. They joined, and were transformed into coldblooded murderers, Ishmael even earning the title of junior lieutenant for his cutthroat tactics.

After some years on the front lines, a UNICEF convoy arrived at the base and some of the boys were selected, their weapons and ammo removed, and ordered onto the trucks. Ishmael was one of several child soldiers rescued from the war front and taken to a rehabilitation center, Benin Home, where he received intensive support and counseling.

Though his war experiences robbed Ishmael of his childhood and any semblance of a normal life -- leaving permanent scars on his body and psyche -- he was able to regain his humanity and be repatriated.

Near the end of his stay, he was one of two children selected to travel to the United Nations in New York City and speak about their experiences as former child soldiers. The experience was a defining moment in his career as an anti-child soldier activist, and ultimately led to his writing the memoir, as a means of raising awareness and understanding about this issue.

In addition to continuing his writing and speaking engagements, Ishmael is in the process of setting up the Ishmael Beah Foundation to raise awareness about child soldier rehabilitation. To learn more, visit beahfound.org.

***
Q: One thing I noticed in your book was that you didn't talk much about girls. I know that some were conscripted to do odds and ends, help carry food and ammunition, even become sex slaves. Can you talk a little bit more about girls that you encountered during the war?

Ishmael Beah: That was a decision that I made not to write about [girls] in particular. I think when people think of child soldiers they only think of boys, but that's not all -- there were girls with AK-47s, as well. They were in the groups that I encountered and in ones that I fought in too. But not only that, these girls were also sexually abused by their commanders and became their wives. Some, during the course of the war, were raped, impregnated, and after the war they had to live with these children. It's not my story. I would do an injustice to it if I had written about it because I don't fully understand that double suffering (I like to think of it that way). Not only to be traumatized, exposed to violence, but to also be victimized in that way. I cannot explain that. I'm hoping that there is a girl who is brave enough to write her story, it would be more powerful than any book I could have written. That was one of the downsides of the rehabilitation process. Because there was so much focus on boys, when the rehabilitation centers sprang up, there were very few girls who were taken care of. And some of these girls didn't come for rehabilitation even when the war was ending because they were afraid of being stigmatized. Society stigmatized girls raped by their commanders, calling them bush wives, so they would hide instead of come forward to receive help. Some didn't even go back to their families because they wouldn't take them in, so they went to cities and took up [commercial sex work]. Now in Sierra Leone people are putting together programs to protect such women, to take care of them in a discreet fashion.

Q: What also struck me from the book was the number of times that rap music saved your life. You talk about the time when you and the boys entered a village and were captured and held as potential rebels, until the chief ordered his men to play the rap cassette they found in your pocket, and had you all dancing to: You Down with OPP (Yeah You Know Me)/ You Down with OPP (Yeah You Know Me)/ You Down with OPP (Yeah You Know Me)/ Who's Down with OPP (Every last homie). So you guys started dancing and he realized you were just boys and not killers, so he let you go. My question is, on a larger scale, do you think there's a role for music and the arts in activism? There are a lot of projects underway like Live 8 to end poverty...

Beah: I think there is definitely a role for music in activism, particularly for young people. A lot of young people are more willing to listen to rap artists or musicians if they preach a political message than politicians who they distrust. Just to give you an example, in Sierra Leone, a lot of the hip hop that's there -- which is rapped in Creole and local languages -- is used to not only question what government is doing but to also talk to the youth so that they hope, have something to look forward to, and don't despair so quickly. So I think hip hop and any musical form that's popular can definitely, if it's done well, be used creatively to talk about social issues. And there's so much going on in the world right now...in Sierra Leone we have Jungle Leaders, Daddy Sarge, Dry Eye Crew, there's a new guy Paps who just came out with a new album. In Sierra Leone there's really not a venue for young people, or anyone, to speak to the government, to have a dialogue. So music has become a way for young people to talk about what's going on, to question what is going on, and to find a way to understand it.

Q: What other kinds of music do you listen to? Did you grow up on?

Beah: Before the war there was the influence of American hip hop and a strong love for reggae in Sierra Leone. There are a lot of rastas there. Every year they would have a celebration for Bob Marley -- not so much anymore -- and there was a lot of music playing in the streets. There was King Yellow Man, a lot of dancehall, which we call ragamuffin. Now I listen to all kinds of music as long as it's good. [Laughs.] Jazz. I listen to the big guys like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock. There's some African jazz that's quite good too, like Hugh Masekela. I also listen to Soukous -- my all time favorite is Alain Kounkou. There's Kanda Bongo Man, but he's old school. Of course, reggae, I listen to Damian Marley, his album is really good. And there's a fellow named Tiken Jah Fakoly, an Ivorian musician, he'll actually be performing in Central Park. I listen to afrobeat, Fela, his son Femi is okay, but no one can ever play like Fela. [Laughs.] If I go to the club I listen to the ones that everyone dances to, and it's good to dance to, but the lyrics are horrible.

Q: It's true! And what do you think about that? The lyrics in some American, not all, hip hop music?

Beah: Well, one of the disappointments I have is that, for me, what attracted me to hip hop was more political poetry. And back in the day, you know with Run DMC and other people, they were able to do it in such a way that it was still party music. You could go to A Tribe Called Quest, still party music, but they talked about interesting things, even if they just chilled it out. It made it so much more interesting, the storytelling aspect of it, the good things. Now, the way hip hop is done it's so difficultu to defend it, the poetry and artistic aspect of it. It's become more you find a good beat and you say whatever you want over it and people are like that's a good song, but they don't know what they're dancing too. Not all of it, but most of it, the ones that get the play on the commercial radio. But still there are guys like Talib Kweli, Mos Def, a lot of underground cats. There's one group I like called Typical Cats in Chicago, I like their stuff quite a bit. A guy from Somalia who lives in Toronto, K'Naan, his album is called Dust foot Philosopher, he does a song with Damian Marley. His album is excellent. He mixes African drumming, music, and hip hop, but his lyrics are just amazing. He has a line in one of his songs where he says, "In the land of Somalia where life is cheap, but wisdom is free." You should listen to the album, it's beautiful.

Q: And my last question is a fun question. Did you see Blood Diamond? What did you think?

Beah: Well, I always like when people find a way to raise awareness. And I think Blood Diamond really did raise awareness to the point that a lot of people do know about Sierra Leone. I think that is good. But with that said, the film did well showing the extent of destruction, but I don't think it did enough research. First of all, it made it seem like only the rebels were recruiting children [and not the Sierra Leone Armed Forces]. In truth, all troops were recruiting children...so there were things that weren't done properly. They had some stereotypical things about Africa, but there's always gonna be a dark savannah, that kind of thing in films. But one thing that really upset me was how they made it seem that healing, recovery, and rehabilitation from war is so quick. I was completely upset. I think that they could have done more. Because what it does is that people are really inspired by that. They think that all you have to do is pull a kid out [of war], shake him, tell him he's a good boy, and he'll cry and be fine. This is not the case. And then they could have rehabilitation centers with shorter life spans. It took me months to get a grip on things. If somebody believed that two months was enough for me, I would not have survived. In different countries people believe in a quick fix. With war, there is no quick fix.