Graceland

GRACELAND

by Chris Abani

 

Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 2005

 

Nominations: Dublin Finalist 2006, LA Times Finalist 2004

 

Date Read: May 10, 2021

 

Living in a ghetto in Lagos, Nigeria is no joke. By the tender age of 12, Elvis Oke has just about seen it all – violence, rape, theft, death – you name it. He is further burdened by the loss of his mother who died too young from breast cancer. Yet, Elvis’ pure and tender heart still just wants to dance. Mostly self-taught, he also picks up dance steps by spying on a dance class, a class he could never afford.

 

As young as he is, Elvis is forced to navigate a world of adults without the shrewdness and discernment of an adult. He is essentially left to his own devices having lost his father to drink and grief and his stepmother to carelessness. Too many people in Lagos are eager to step in to show Elvis their way of life, some of it good and some of it dangerous. Luckily, Elvis has certain boundaries he simply will not cross. Elvis continually searches for a role-model, someone to teach him how to be a man, and how to overcome utter corruption, horrific violence, and the sense that individual life is worthless.

 

Lamenting how far his family has fallen after his father’s failed political run, Elvis has no idea how much further the deprivations can descend. Dabbling in crime for a brief moment, he realizes quickly that isn’t the life for him. He briefly travels with a song and dance troop but is apprehended by the police, tortured for days and dumped in a world he no longer recognizes. The ghetto where his family lived has been razed and his father’s body discovered. All of this happening to a mere child.

 

This novel is vivid, brutal and painful. The reader suffers right alongside this child as he figures out who he is going to be and what options he has for his future (spoiler alert: not many). The fact that America looms as his saving grace is depressing. America has assisted in gutting his own nation, a place that Elvis still ultimately wants to be, but leaving it becomes his only option. As a world and global citizen, we can do better. Can’t we?

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