|
reviews
Reviewer: DIKE OKORO
Title:
Letters to the
Grammarians: Some Memories of Growing Up
Author: by Dipo Kalejaiye
Publisher: (Lanham:
Hamilton Books 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7618-3830-2
In this collection of nine
letters addressed to former high school classmates,
Maryland, USA based Nigerian author Dipo Kalejaiye attempts
to present to readers the topography of many relationships
he shared during his high schools days in postcolonial
Nigeria of the mid 1960s.
Humor, laughter, and
nostalgia flood the many letters collected here. In “A
Letter to Allan Parker,” the author, speaking in the first
person, conjures memories and reminisces over moments, both
happy and sad, he treasured with friends. “Yes, I remember
now. You liked to sing songs by The Beatles. Well, I
am not here to accuse you of anything. Your singing was
fine, but when you sang no one could stop you” (1), the
author states. For those that belong to the author’s
generation, memories such as the one captured here will
immediately reconnect them to other childhood moments they
shared jokes at liberty and enjoyed the company of friends
or roommates in the dormitory. Perhaps readers, especially
those from the present generation in Nigeria and elsewhere,
may have experienced similar moments, since the dynamics of
human behavior are often symptomatic irrespective of
ethnicity or race.
I enjoyed reading
this book for many reasons. The author’s diction and his
occasional diversion into folktales, jokes, serious
incidents and songs tied to Nigerian oral tradition made
reading pleasurable for me. I also learned from him the
usual cases of using unforgettable incidents to locate the
weakness in human actions. This was what I learnt when he
recalled the case of the boy named Tormentor, who had denied
his own mother the day she came to school to look for him,
since he was ashamed that one of his mother’s legs was
shorter than the other. As a result of which the author
dubbed him Judas and he never spoke to the author again. But
even then, somewhere in the same letter, the author finds it
useful to pay tribute to the same friend who he stopped
talking to, as he remembers that the same friend taught him
Sigidi, a Yoruba incantation.
For all its overflow
of memorable moments and times, this book also borders on
the rich impact the reading culture on the lives of African
high school children in Anglophone African society following
the independence years, using Nigeria as an example. The
author cites such books as Pride and Prejudice by
Jane Austen, Oliver Twist and David
Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Shakespeare’s Twelfth
Night, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet, as
some of the books he devoured to augment his interest in
literature and improve his vocabulary as he prepared for
literature exams.
Overall, this book
will leave a lasting impression on the mind of any reader,
for its highlights are the numerous vignettes and anecdotes
meant to surprise, enchant, puzzle, and educate. Family,
friendships, and coming of age tales are the chief building
blocks in the numerous stories Kalejaiye assembled in his
letters. And without reservation, I am satisfied with his
narratives because they are important chapters from his life
that make the narrative form into a range of experimental
writing based on recollections. This is why the significance
of these letters and their stories lie in the sincerity and
memory of their author. SLQ
<Previous | Next>
|
OCTOBER INDEX
EDITOR'S NOTE
DRAMA
ESSAYS & REVIEWS
FICTION
POETRY
COMPETITIONS
Dike
Okoro, PhD, is a
professor of world literature/creative writing at
Olive-Harvey College, Chicago, USA. Okoro obtained both his
MFA in creative writing and MA in African American
Literature from Chicago State University. His poetry
collection, Dance of the Heart, was published by Malthouse/ABC
Books in 2007. He is the editor of three anthologies of
poetry and one selection of contemporary short stories from
Africa (Trenton: AWP, forthcoming). As a scholar, he has
contributed essays/chapters to Dictionary of Literary
Biography: African Writers Series (Detroit: Broccoli Clark
Layman 2010) and Emerging Voices of Post Colonial African
Literature (New York: Cambria Press 2010).
|
