Blessings is an enjoyable novel with smooth prose and impressive writing for a young writer. Although it tells a familiar story, it attempts to infuse added creativity.
By Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera
Stories bear numerous insights into the human condition. One of the most important double-edged utility of a story is how it helps the tellers express themselves at the very core of their being and affords the audience a peek into the world of the storyteller and perhaps, elicit understanding. Stories, when we read or listen to them with open minds help us put ourselves in the shoes of others, they are an arbiter of empathy.
This is one of the lessons I have learnt from reading some of the queer stories by contemporary writers. Initially, I read them on my own, uncertain who around me would be receptive to such stories. Years later, I began reading them with members of my literary community in Awka and Enugu. Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh adds to the growing list of stories about queerness, in addition to writers like Pwaangulongii Dauod, Akwaeke Emezi, Otosirieze Obi-Young, Binyavanga Wainana, and Arinze Ifeakandu, whom I have now read.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings is a coming-of-age novel about a boy, Obiefuna, whose life literally changes the day his father goes to the village and returns with an older boy, who Obiefuna quickly falls in love with, to be his apprentice. Like falling in love between childhood and adolescence, the experience begins with a series of events which even though the character does not fully understand, sparks glee in them. Slowly, both boys are entangled in a subtle romantic intrigue.
When Obiefuna’s father discovers them, he sends his son to a boarding school and the apprentice away, keeping what transpired a secret from his wife. And through the rest of Blessings, we follow Obiefuna’s journey as he is thrust into a world that tests and interrogates his being, and how he unfurls through each of the ordeals.
Chukwuemeka Ibeh’s Blessings is also about the conflict of the mind, body, and soul, of the mind’s inner epiphanies about what one is, and how it contrasts with what is socially acceptable. The development of the main character sets him on a path that makes him an outlier, his existence sooner or later bound to be one of stark contrast with what is normative in the world he knows.
To live true to himself, he must turn away from most of what he knows. What makes a good bildungsroman is how it fits the individual story of its character into this template, which is not so much a template as it is a recurrence of life writing itself over and over again. We all carry a part of us that yearns for a bit of difference, a break from the dictionary of normative behaviour handed over to us.
Ibeh is an observant writer. He sure knows how to create an atmosphere in his works with his description of his character’s physical surroundings, the trees, and how the wind blows softly. He skillfully crafts scenes that strike a deep chord of familiarity. For instance, the scene where someone hisses just as a senior is about to leave the class, prompting the senior to return and ask everyone to kneel, followed by an interrogation about who hissed while the whole class remains silent, and Obiefuna nearly takes the punishment as the scapegoat, vividly reminded me of my junior secondary school days.
One of the premises of the story, the boarding school part, is a story all too familiar; Jekwu and Wisdom, the friends who are ride-or-die companions; the routine of school life; bullies who sometimes make you their most loyal friend or followers by inflicting a kind of Stockholm syndrome on you as Papilo does to Obiefuna; Festus, the odd one who is strangely fascinating and confident; Kachi, the hypocrite who pretends to despise those like him while hiding his true self behind closed doors; and the wicked chaplain, etc.
Despite this familiarity, Ibeh succeeds in painting the world behind the closed door of the boarding school as a bizarre realm where the good and odd characters of human beings emerge in dramatic fashion, and one begins to navigate one’s way through it—all in the heat of adolescence. This world can be scary but is often inescapable.
Ibeh writes of one of the points of Obiefuna’s anguish, “From there in the vast seminary, he felt cut off from the world, overwhelmed by a pure and intimate sense of ordinariness. If he screamed with all his might, nobody would hear him”. Besides capturing the world so aptly, Ibeh’s characterisation is impressive, his characters often three-dimensional in their outlook.
The novel could be divided into two parts. The first half is Obiefuna’s epiphany, which for the most part looks inward. Who are you? the story seems to ask Obiefuna. The last hundred pages, which explore his adult relationships from his university years up to his 23rd birthday, look outward. How do you navigate your path in the world? the story now asks. It juxtaposes Obiefuna’s inner life with how it is affected by the peculiar events of that time in Nigeria especially with the laws passed against queer people, and how Obiefuna and those around him respond to it.
Chukwuemeka Ibeh’s Blessings is also about how Obiefuna’s epiphany affects the life of his parents and his relationship with them. The narrative explores his estrangement from his father and how his mother grapples with her son being yanked away from her, initially fighting to reconnect with him until a queer twist in the story makes everything ironic.
In the course of the book, Ibeh demonstrates perhaps the apex of wisdom in his novel, particularly in how the dynamics of Obiefuna’s relationship with his father change over time. The once aggressive and exacting man, now weakened by age and ailing health, can only shake his head in situations where he would have once flared up.
Ibeh is definitely a writer to watch out for. At just 24, he is perhaps the first mainstream Gen-Z novelist from Nigeria. Blessings is an enjoyable novel with smooth prose and impressive writing for a young writer. Although it tells a familiar story, it attempts to infuse added creativity. Obiefuna, his main character, is not very notable, as he is mainly passive and barely active where it matters. For most of the story, his reactions to what happens to him are barely remarkable.
He comes off like a character beaten by life in different shapes. And at the times when he makes to stand up for himself, it is in passive aggression. This is understandable, as it reflects the life many queer people are forced to live in Nigeria. While one might long for characters bursting with life on the page, like those in Arinze Ifeakandu or Otosirieze Obi-Young’s short stories, Chukwuebuka Ibeh is definitely a writer to watch. His novel, Blessings, is a worthy debut.
(Buy Blessings on Bookpeddler or Amazon)
Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera is the author of the novel, “Loss is an Aftertaste of Memories” and the director of Umuofia Arts and Books Festival. Follow him on Twitter @Chukwuderaedozi