Literature
Reviewed by Denja Abdullahi
Hoodlums, a collection of 17 short stories of varying length, is a much awaited work from the author, Sumaila Umaisha. For well over a decade, his stories have been read on the literary pages of major Nigerian newspapers, online magazines and one cannot forget his appearance in that seminal collection of short stories published by the Association of Nigerian Authors in 1999 entitled Cramped Rooms and Open Spaces. Followers of Sumaila Umaisha?s writing know he has an unpretentious knack for telling stories seething with the extra-ordinary richness of emotions of the ordinary man and woman. Umaisha tells believable stories set in familiar environment which call attention to the nobility of the human soul or the depravity that can assail it if negative extraneous impulses are not curtailed.
Many who have read his pieces here and there have wondered when he would bring out a book and the coming of Hoodlums seems to have laid to rest this concern. Readers of Umaisha?s stories before now are unanimous in their understanding of his predilection for x-raying the intentions and actions of characters in the midst of crisis, mostly violent. Going beyond the text, the author has lived most of his adult life in Kaduna, the hotbed of recurrent ethno-religious crisis in Nigeria, and it seems this fact has taken a hold of his writings, which often focus on chronicling the human-angle ends to the faceless crisis that have been bedeviling that city. Therefore, the title of Umaisha?s debut collection of short stories, Hoodlums, immediately betrays the social realism inherent in his creativity.
Four stories in the collection engage the controlling narrative construct of a writer immersed in witnessing and chronicling humans in crisis situation. ?Militants? is a very topical story told in the flash fiction manner on the bombing spree of the Niger Delta militants and their effects on the family particularly the young caught up in that environment. ?After the Riot? takes the reader through the hallucinating mind of a man who had suffered grievous loss in a riot in which he was not even a party to the contending sides. ?The Riot? tells the satiric tale of an Alhaji Ibrahim who plays Empero Nero as he watches with a binocular while the city burns, taking pleasure in exploring the sight and sounds of the unfolding carnage, only to be surprised in the end when the corpse of dear one was brought home. The title story ?Hoodlums? focuses on the experience of a sensational journalist whose reports feast on and sometimes inflame riots. The journalist, Ben, one of the most memorable characters in the book, who has a penchant for sometimes filing in ?reports in advance of the events? (p17), together with a colleague, get a dose of their own medicine from a very unlikely source in an uncanny manner of retributive justice.
The author in this collection dwells on the many dour faces of politics in stories such as ?Do or Die?, ?The Godfather? and ?Seat of Power?. Other stories such as ?The Last Hiding Place?, ?The King Himself?, ?The Honourable Minister?, ?The Outcast?, and ?Soul Mate? explore one human angle story or the other in varying depths. Some other stories in the collection are distinguished not by their subject matter but by their form as they seem to end abruptly before they get started. This form is what short stories critics call short short story or flash fiction. Writing in the flash fiction form in the hands of a writer who is not adept at it gives the reader a feeling of incompleteness or shallow attempt at story telling particularly in the eyes of a reader at home with the expansive world of the novel or the long short story. As such stories in the collection such as ?The Black Cat?, ?The President?s Portrait?, ?The Magic?, ?Roadblock? and some of the earlier aforementioned stories, that are in the flash fiction form leave the reader with a queasy feeling of unease suggestive that the author is merely experimenting with form, sometimes not too successfully.
The short story form is one in need of encouragement in our clime and is equally one in which to have a collection of all very successful stories is nearly impossible. Readers of even the most accomplished short stories collection coming from the stable of a renowned short story writer often come away with the feeling that some stories should not have been in the collection. In Umaisha?s Hoodlums there are definitely stories that should not have made the collection due to their thematic misalignment or should have been further worked upon for a future collection. That does not take away the many instances of brilliance in some of the featured stories, particularly those stories that are decipherable as emanating from the author?s social realist concern about living in an urban environment fraught with recurrent disharmony.
Sumaila Umaisha?s Hoodlums has come at a very auspicious time when we have seen recent happenings in real life mirroring the world of some of the most striking stories in the collection. Correlating some of the stories in the book to recent happenings in our socio-political sphere foregrounds the fact that we are moving in circles and may not have learnt anything from the past nor have we made any effort in overcoming most of our societal problems. Literature is a medium for reflection and re-appraisal and the many tales told in Hoodlums offer us again this opportunity.
Denja is former National Secretary of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA.
- Umaisha?s Harvest Of Crises
Title: Hoodlums Author: Sumaila Umaisha Publisher: Hybun Publication International Year of Publication: 2010 No. of pages: 110 ISBN: 978-49181-2-1 Reviewer: Usho Smith Adawa The spectrum of criminality in Nigeria cut across all facets of life....
- How Chris Ngige Inspired My New Book
In this interview with Henry Akubuiro, Sumaila Umaisha, literary editor of Nigerian Newspapers and two-time winner of Literary Journalist of the Year, awarded by Association of Nigerian Authors, speaks on his new book, HOODLUMS. Excerpts: What is your...
- Writer's Block Is Excuse For Lazy Writers
You recently published a short story collection, Hoodlums, centred on the violence rocking the country. What inspired the theme of the collection? Sumaila Umaisha: The collection was inspired by, as you put it, the violence rocking the country. I probably...
- Hoodlums: Portrait Of A Crisis-ridden Nation
Title of book: Hoodlums Author: Sumaila Umaisha Number of pages: 110 Publishers: Hybun Publication International Date of publication: 2010 Price: N500 Reviewer: Yahaya Ibrahim Over the years, protest writing has become the focal point for many Nigerian...
- Hoodlums: A Commentary On Society
Elizabeth Adeolu?s review of Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Umaisha, published by Hybun; pages ? 110 When one reads Sumaila Umaisha?s collection of short stories Hoodlums, one sees how the everyday mishaps, joys, and sheer insanity...
Literature
Bound to Violence
Reviewed by Denja Abdullahi
Hoodlums, a collection of 17 short stories of varying length, is a much awaited work from the author, Sumaila Umaisha. For well over a decade, his stories have been read on the literary pages of major Nigerian newspapers, online magazines and one cannot forget his appearance in that seminal collection of short stories published by the Association of Nigerian Authors in 1999 entitled Cramped Rooms and Open Spaces. Followers of Sumaila Umaisha?s writing know he has an unpretentious knack for telling stories seething with the extra-ordinary richness of emotions of the ordinary man and woman. Umaisha tells believable stories set in familiar environment which call attention to the nobility of the human soul or the depravity that can assail it if negative extraneous impulses are not curtailed.
Many who have read his pieces here and there have wondered when he would bring out a book and the coming of Hoodlums seems to have laid to rest this concern. Readers of Umaisha?s stories before now are unanimous in their understanding of his predilection for x-raying the intentions and actions of characters in the midst of crisis, mostly violent. Going beyond the text, the author has lived most of his adult life in Kaduna, the hotbed of recurrent ethno-religious crisis in Nigeria, and it seems this fact has taken a hold of his writings, which often focus on chronicling the human-angle ends to the faceless crisis that have been bedeviling that city. Therefore, the title of Umaisha?s debut collection of short stories, Hoodlums, immediately betrays the social realism inherent in his creativity.
Four stories in the collection engage the controlling narrative construct of a writer immersed in witnessing and chronicling humans in crisis situation. ?Militants? is a very topical story told in the flash fiction manner on the bombing spree of the Niger Delta militants and their effects on the family particularly the young caught up in that environment. ?After the Riot? takes the reader through the hallucinating mind of a man who had suffered grievous loss in a riot in which he was not even a party to the contending sides. ?The Riot? tells the satiric tale of an Alhaji Ibrahim who plays Empero Nero as he watches with a binocular while the city burns, taking pleasure in exploring the sight and sounds of the unfolding carnage, only to be surprised in the end when the corpse of dear one was brought home. The title story ?Hoodlums? focuses on the experience of a sensational journalist whose reports feast on and sometimes inflame riots. The journalist, Ben, one of the most memorable characters in the book, who has a penchant for sometimes filing in ?reports in advance of the events? (p17), together with a colleague, get a dose of their own medicine from a very unlikely source in an uncanny manner of retributive justice.
The author in this collection dwells on the many dour faces of politics in stories such as ?Do or Die?, ?The Godfather? and ?Seat of Power?. Other stories such as ?The Last Hiding Place?, ?The King Himself?, ?The Honourable Minister?, ?The Outcast?, and ?Soul Mate? explore one human angle story or the other in varying depths. Some other stories in the collection are distinguished not by their subject matter but by their form as they seem to end abruptly before they get started. This form is what short stories critics call short short story or flash fiction. Writing in the flash fiction form in the hands of a writer who is not adept at it gives the reader a feeling of incompleteness or shallow attempt at story telling particularly in the eyes of a reader at home with the expansive world of the novel or the long short story. As such stories in the collection such as ?The Black Cat?, ?The President?s Portrait?, ?The Magic?, ?Roadblock? and some of the earlier aforementioned stories, that are in the flash fiction form leave the reader with a queasy feeling of unease suggestive that the author is merely experimenting with form, sometimes not too successfully.
The short story form is one in need of encouragement in our clime and is equally one in which to have a collection of all very successful stories is nearly impossible. Readers of even the most accomplished short stories collection coming from the stable of a renowned short story writer often come away with the feeling that some stories should not have been in the collection. In Umaisha?s Hoodlums there are definitely stories that should not have made the collection due to their thematic misalignment or should have been further worked upon for a future collection. That does not take away the many instances of brilliance in some of the featured stories, particularly those stories that are decipherable as emanating from the author?s social realist concern about living in an urban environment fraught with recurrent disharmony.
Sumaila Umaisha?s Hoodlums has come at a very auspicious time when we have seen recent happenings in real life mirroring the world of some of the most striking stories in the collection. Correlating some of the stories in the book to recent happenings in our socio-political sphere foregrounds the fact that we are moving in circles and may not have learnt anything from the past nor have we made any effort in overcoming most of our societal problems. Literature is a medium for reflection and re-appraisal and the many tales told in Hoodlums offer us again this opportunity.
Denja is former National Secretary of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA.
- Umaisha?s Harvest Of Crises
Title: Hoodlums Author: Sumaila Umaisha Publisher: Hybun Publication International Year of Publication: 2010 No. of pages: 110 ISBN: 978-49181-2-1 Reviewer: Usho Smith Adawa The spectrum of criminality in Nigeria cut across all facets of life....
- How Chris Ngige Inspired My New Book
In this interview with Henry Akubuiro, Sumaila Umaisha, literary editor of Nigerian Newspapers and two-time winner of Literary Journalist of the Year, awarded by Association of Nigerian Authors, speaks on his new book, HOODLUMS. Excerpts: What is your...
- Writer's Block Is Excuse For Lazy Writers
You recently published a short story collection, Hoodlums, centred on the violence rocking the country. What inspired the theme of the collection? Sumaila Umaisha: The collection was inspired by, as you put it, the violence rocking the country. I probably...
- Hoodlums: Portrait Of A Crisis-ridden Nation
Title of book: Hoodlums Author: Sumaila Umaisha Number of pages: 110 Publishers: Hybun Publication International Date of publication: 2010 Price: N500 Reviewer: Yahaya Ibrahim Over the years, protest writing has become the focal point for many Nigerian...
- Hoodlums: A Commentary On Society
Elizabeth Adeolu?s review of Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Umaisha, published by Hybun; pages ? 110 When one reads Sumaila Umaisha?s collection of short stories Hoodlums, one sees how the everyday mishaps, joys, and sheer insanity...