{"id":12390,"date":"2024-06-18T11:46:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T10:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12390"},"modified":"2024-06-18T11:47:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T10:47:51","slug":"uche-okonkwo-a-kind-of-madness-reviewed-by-usma-malik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12390","title":{"rendered":"Uche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness<\/em>, reviewed by Usma Malik"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness, Tin House: $16.95
\nReviewed by Usma Malik<\/p>\n

Uche Okonkwo, an award-winning short story writer, is a former Bernard O\u2019Keefe Scholar and recipient of: a Steinbeck Fellowship, the George Bennett Fellowship (Phillips Exeter Academy), and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. <\/p>\n

Set in contemporary Nigeria, Okonkwo\u2019s debut short story collection A Kind of Madness<\/em> explores madness in its many forms. Thematically centered on family, friendships, and love, these stories delve into the heart of the human condition: desire, hunger, shame, ambition, and the lengths a person is willing to go to in order to survive. There\u2019s the mother whose obsession with social mobility threatens to derail her daughter\u2019s promising future. A young boy whose secret hopes of a new, exciting life, lead to bitter disappointment, a child – silent witness to her mother\u2019s mental illness, who trails behind on a futile quest for a cure.<\/p>\n

Written in beautifully evocative prose, Okonkwo takes readers down some dark paths \u2013 surprising us with humour in the most unexpected of places. Heartbreak and joy, grief and hope, acceptance and denial, each story sheds a particular light on myriad of strands that together make us human.<\/p>\n

The collection opens with Nwunye Belgium. Young Udoka is all set to marry Enyinna, a trader who is \u2018doing okay.\u2019 But when Udoka\u2019s mother, Agatha, learns of the eligible \u2018Belgium doctor\u2019, she sees it for what it is: a sign from God. Agatha spins her daughter an enticing tale of a more promising future with the Belgium doctor. As for the promises made to Enyinna and the incumbent shame in breaking them? Well, \u2018leave shame to its owners\u2019, says Agatha. Despite her secret misgivings, Udoka allows her mother to persuade her into transferring her affections. The imminent prosperity that this match will bring, the higher social status it will accord them, has mother and daughter flaunting their good luck \u2013 this rankles the community: they disapprove of Agatha\u2019s tactics in procuring the engagement. When the opportunity arises, they take pleasure in getting their own back. Agatha certainly succeeds in altering the course of her daughter\u2019s future, and by association her own \u2013 though not in the way either of them expected. <\/p>\n

Debri, the shortest story in the collection, follows D\u2019Boy, a professional pickpocket who gets by on street smarts and nimble fingers. Abandoned by his mother to a father who treats him like the debri of the title, D\u2019Boy learns the rules of life fast, primarily: nothing is free \u2013 not even the food organisations infrequently parcel out. D\u2019Boy sees these handouts for what they are: publicity stunts. For as long as it takes to clear a trestle table of food, D\u2019Boy and those like him: poor, hungry, with no recourse to the opportunities that would allow them to rise out of their poverty, will be acknowledged. In return, all the children need do is fall into dutiful lines, and once fed pose for pictures, \u2018mouths shiny with gratitude and oil from jollof rice.\u2019 This is a familiar transaction, agreed upon by both parties as being mutually acceptable. D\u2019Boy has no illusions about the system he is trapped in: there will never be enough, not for children like him, nor their adult counterparts \u2013 who are \u2018creeping around with sacks\u2019 to collect \u2018uneaten packs of food\u2019 from the children because \u2018only children were getting fed this time.\u2019 This is their social-economic reality: the numbers will never add up, their hunger is one that will never be sated. So, eyeing the rapidly dwindling pile of food boxes, calculating the ratio of food to hungry mouths (it will be long gone before D\u2019Boy reaches the front of the line) D\u2019Boy takes his agency where he can. D\u2019Boy\u2019s hitherto carefully controlled emotion is set loose in an all consuming howl, one that reaches out to us beyond the final words of Debri: a howl that says: this is Hunger, and this is Survival.<\/p>\n

In Long Hair<\/em>, new girl Jennifer causes a stir in the Girls\u2019 Boarding school. The problem, as our unnamed narrator informs us, is Jennifer\u2019s hair: it \u2018needed an explanation\u2019. Unlike the rest of the girls in the school clamouring to be Jennifer\u2019s friends, our narrator stands aloof, she couldn\u2019t care less for Jennifer\u2019s prettiness, she\u2019s not interested in whether Jennifer\u2019s \u2018fair skin\u2019 is from a \u2018mixed\u2019 heritage. Yes, the narrator would like to \u2018reach out and touch\u2019 Jennifer\u2019s \u2018relaxer straightened\u2026silky\u2026hair\u2019 \u2013 but it is only a passing curiosity, the narrator\u2019s own hair used to be much longer before her mother cut it, not wanting it to be a distraction from study. <\/p>\n

Jennifer, we learn, is obviously the \u2018proud type\u2019, a \u2018show-off\u2019, walking round \u2018like it was her father\u2019s compound\u2019. By contrast, our narrator\u2019s lack of airs, her righteous modesty \u2013 you won\u2019t catch her swanning around flaunting herself as if she were better than everyone else, sets her apart from the crowd. It doesn\u2019t bother our narrator that even the one girl, Dumebi, who still talks to her after the gossip scandal, which wasn\u2019t even the narrator\u2019s fault, now cares more for Jennifer\u2019s company than hers. It\u2019s in this tension between the narrator\u2019s obsessive observation of everything-Jennifer and her simultaneous denial of interest in her, the casual asides, that the humour lies. <\/p>\n

When Senior Vision, the resident fortune-teller whose dreams predict the future tells the girls that \u2018Mami Wota sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with all her pretty girl servants [\u2026] had sent one of her girls as an agent [\u2026] to make trouble,\u2019 events take a troubled turn. Senior Vision\u2019s \u2018sweet mouth\u2019 and gift for storytelling that beguiles the girls, whipping them into a frenzy of fear and distrust: Who is she – Mami Wota\u2019s agent? Nobody is above suspicion. Whilst the girls\u2019 huddle under their blankets in fear, our narrator sees an opportunity to good to miss \u2013 she takes it. Once she has set things in motion, our narrator sits back to enjoy the drama unfold until it reaches its dramatic climax.<\/p>\n

In Chicken, a chilling encounter with a local police officer sends fissures crackling through a family. Analeptic jumps in time unravel the collective and individual familial relationships setting wife\/husband, mother\/daughter, husband\/son, brother\/sister at odds. <\/p>\n

The chicken of the title is \u2018Otuanya\u2019, a one-eyed bird destined for the \u2018pepper soup pot\u2019, a fact the mother, Uzoma, impresses upon Nedu, her seven-year-old son. Nevertheless, Nedu insists on conducting a naming ceremony in the desperate hope that \u2018if you gave a thing a name, you couldn\u2019t turn around and eat it as food.\u2019 Otuanya\u2019s presence in the home comes to signify more than the promise of delicious pepper bowl soup. As we shift from one family member\u2019s point of view to another, Otuanya is in turns: a redemptive offering, a scornful rebuttal, a social media opportunity involving a comedic chicken chase, and last, a distraction from night terrors. At the centre of it all stands the black uniformed police officer, his \u2018dull AK-47\u2026a rash of rust creeping across the barrel like an infection\u2019, the casual, easy, threat of violence in his \u2018You have phone and mouth, I have gun and bullet.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Like with Chekwube, of Milk, Blood, Oil, readers will find themselves entranced by these stories where \u2018ink pours and pools on to the page\u2019. We\u2019re drawn into intimate spaces of madness where desire, longing, and survival in a capricious, often unforgiving, world pit characters against each other. In this collection, traditions, myths, and beliefs vie with the modern world. Okonkwo strikes a delicate balance between darkness and light, juxtaposing humour with tragedy in this stunning, original, debut collection.<\/p>\n

By Usma Malik<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness, Tin House: $16.95 Reviewed by Usma Malik Uche Okonkwo, an award-winning short story writer, is a former Bernard O\u2019Keefe Scholar and recipient of: a Steinbeck Fellowship, the George Bennett Fellowship (Phillips Exeter Academy), and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. Set in contemporary Nigeria, Okonkwo\u2019s debut short story collection A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nUche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness, reviewed by Usma Malik - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12390\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Uche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness, reviewed by Usma Malik - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Uche Okonkwo, A Kind of Madness, Tin House: $16.95 Reviewed by Usma Malik Uche Okonkwo, an award-winning short story writer, is a former Bernard O\u2019Keefe Scholar and recipient of: a Steinbeck Fellowship, the George Bennett Fellowship (Phillips Exeter Academy), and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. 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