Literature
Review of Sumaila Umaisha?s Hoodlums written and presented by Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, Director, International Institute of Journalism and President of Abuja Writers Forum, at the public presentation of the book in Abuja on 21st July, 2011.
Sumaila Isah Umaisha has been the literary editor of the New Nigerian Newspapers for some years and has won a couple of accolades. He also does media consultancy and as a creative writer, he writes short fiction and poetry. Some of his stories and poems have been published in journals, online magazines and anthologies. With such a growing body of material, it is not a surprise that Umaisha has taken the next logical step in his creative writing career by putting together a collection of short stories, published by Hybun Publications Limited.
Titled Hoodlums, this debut collection of 17 short stories is rather unusual because of the seemingly large number of stories which goes against the conventional approach. Short story collections normally do not have this number of stories since the standard average length of a short story is 2, 500 words and publishers want enough pages to justify the publication, knowing that novels tend to have better patronage. Yet, as shall be explained later, Umaisha is able use this large number of stories to his advantage partly because there is a thematic centrality.
The stories provide a platform for him to explore a variety of themes including political violence, thuggery, assassinations, militancy, witchcraft, astral projection, prostitution, drug addiction and insanity. Thus most of the stories are topical giving the collection a strong contemporary relevance, more so given that the background is Nigeria. The aptly named collection
This contemporaneous tone is struck from the very first story called ?Militants?. Six-year-old Tene, who should be having an exciting childhood with her friends, is caught in the violent skirmishes enveloping her community, where a group of militants called the Niger Delta Liberation Movement is having a fierce confrontation with the soldiers deployed to the area. During one of such clashes which erupts catching the populace off-guard, Tene is part of the melee scampering to safety. Instinctively , rather than joining the crowd heading to the outskirts of the town, she heads for home where she had left her parents earlier to spend some time at the playground. But just as she overcomes some odds and gets home, the mother who rushes out to take her to safety is felled by an explosive.
This three-page story, as short as it is, provides a template for the rest of the collection, especially the way it ends on a painful and tragic note. This template which includes an admixture of unnerving moments is underscored by the title of the collection. In his defence of the short story format, to counter the various arguments raised to explain its limitations and seemingly declining popularity as a narrative form, Patrick Gates states that: ?Since the short story as a form demands that things be left out, left unspoken, it is particularly well suited to narratives that unsettle, that replicate on the page those moments in life where a hurt that was not meant to be overheard or a glance that was not meant to be intercepted have devastating emotional effect.?
It is difficult to think that a reader would go through these stories without being unsettled by the overall commentary. Almost every story is a painful reminder of the sorry state of our country. It is a controlled lamentation. A wailing that sears through our consciousness as we watch the self-serving behavior of politicians who, instead of working to ensure the progress of the country prefer to mindlessly oversee its underdevelopment through lawless behavior such as rigging elections, meting violence on opponents, endorsing assassinations, manipulating election tribunals, refusing to embark on projects that would improve the lives of the citizentry or even destroying those that have been undertaken by a few reasonable ones. The culture of impunity is consciously cultivated by political godfathers.
The society becomes increasingly unstable breeding thugs, rioters and militants who without hesitation take the laws into their hands by unleashing mayhem at every opportunity, thereby further retarding the progress of the society as evident in stories like ? Hoodlums?, ?The Godfather?, ?The Riot? and ?Do or Die?. The police too become accomplices sometimes working in cahoots with rioters.
It is no surprise that more people find ways of manipulating the chaos for their own profit including journalists who exaggerate every crisis, and businessmen who look at all angles that such situations can benefit them including being the ones from whom relief materials are bought for victims in refugee camps. The good values of the society are steadily upturned, to be replaced by vices such as drug addiction, prostitution and armed robbery.
But there are mo
ments of redemp
tion such as in ?The Soul Mate?, when Lilian the prostitute ends up marrying Bulus, the Medical Doctor, who had initially reached out to her at a critical moment in her life. So too in ?The Godfather? when the new god son, after becoming the Mayor of Gold City, comes to a realization that the right thing ought to be done and damns the consequences. He is assassinated at the end but there is the inference that he has put down structures that could begin to bring some succor to the society.
The redemptive moments may appear insignificant when compared with the larger picture of oppression, exploitation and pain. However, their importance is underscored by being the very opposite of the negativity that suffuses the society. That a prostitute?s past can be overlooked so that she gets a new lease of life, points to the fact that all is not lost. This ray of hope could possibly become a beam of greater restoration.
In ?The Last Hiding Place?, the marriage of Amelia and Professor Deen is threatened by addictive habits both have hidden from each other. They have secrets that threaten to undo the union. Sincerity leads to shocking revelations and an awakening that ushers in a new and promising chapter in their matrimony.
Umaisha is at home with the use of irony especially in the manner he sometimes ends the stories with unexpected but refreshing twists. In ?Do or Die?, Senator Abu Dambo contracts Saleh to kill a political rival, Alhaji Aliyu Hamza but at the end it is the employer who is killed by the same hired assassin. Alhaji Ibrahim who is gleeful about the riots, looking forward to making gains, has his wife killed. Tene runs home for safety only to be deprived of what symbolizes safety for her.
The closing sequence of ?Hoodlums? has this unexpectedness that heightens the horrible situation. Both journalists become victims of the riot they had inadvertently fuelled through their exaggerated reportage. But the bigger irony is that the Police who should be working to quell the riot move around the various gangs providing them with victims, a collusion that accentuates the collapse of security and serves as an indictment, showing that the rioters and law enforcement agents are really no different.
What should have been a major drawback in the collection, the high number of stories, becomes a strength because they not only have a thematic variety, but they are not all of the same length. There are some that a very brief, just about three pages long, giving the impression that the author is experimenting with minimalism. The truth is that given that some of the stories had to be published initially in the literary section of the New Nigerian Newspaper, he may have been forced to work with space constraints.
Fortunately Umaisha manages to use the situation to his advantage because these very short pieces are sometimes the most artistically compelling narratives. Examples include ?Militants?, ?After the Riot?, ?Roadblock? , ?The Riot? and ?The President?s Portrait? where the painting itself becomes a damning symbol of a leader and this is achieved by detailing the painting process in three pages.
Contrast these short pieces with ?Hoodlums? which is weakened by the seeming initial uncertainty of who to focus on in the initial sequence. One gets the impression that the story may have been conceived initially as a novel and then it was abridged to a short story. There is so much background detail about Ben and Mairo which slows down the pace of the narration and would have been better suited for a longer narrative, where all those details would have been fleshed out to strengthen the story. In fact, there is a larger story demanding to be told because the materials are there for Umaisha?s taking, with several characters and situations tugging for amplification because the platform on which they are currently placed is somewhat constrictive.
The elegance of the short story is being able to work within a narrow space, with the writer putting in place just enough essentials. But that space will not be adequate in handling a complex issue as is evident in ?Hoodlums? and ?The Godfather?. Marisa Silver makes an observation that is pertinent to the present context : ?I?m often asked whether I want to turn a particular story into a novel. It?s a flattering question, because it is usually asked by a reader who is captivated by a set of characters. But the truth is, I never do want to do this. An idea appears to me as a short story, or it appears to me as a novel. I suppose that some ideas just feel that they need to be contained, that their power and effect will be most forceful if I express them using the tools of the short story. Other narrative notions have resonances that are like tentacles that reach out, ideas that lead to other ideas. These extenuating ideas circle around the central notion, but the central notion will not be complete, and will not reach its full potential, unless I take the time and space to explore all that richness that surrounds it in words.?
Sometimes the author?s favoured sandwich technique becomes predictable, just as his pre-occupation with telling rather than showing occasionally stifles the immediacy of the stories. There are hardly any typos and the print size is reader-friendly but the binding does not suggest durability and pages may fall apart eventually.
Overall this is a very encouraging debut showing that Umaisha not only has a keen sense of observation, a virtue which every creative writer ought to have, but that he is willing to experiment as in, ?The King Himself?, ?Seat of Power?, ?The Magic? and ?The Black Cat?.
- 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....
- 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,...
- Gripping Tales Of Violence
Title: Hoodlums Reviewer: Uchechukwu Agodom Publisher: Hybun Publications International; Pages: 110 pages. A loud explosion desecrates the peaceful atmosphere of the six-year old Tene and her friends as they are going to a playground. Everybody...
- Umaisha Unleashes His Hoodlums On The Public
Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Isah Umaisha, an Associate Editor with the New Nigerian Newspapers, and Chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, was presented to the public in Abuja,...
- 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
Hoodlums: A Template of Pain
Review of Sumaila Umaisha?s Hoodlums written and presented by Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, Director, International Institute of Journalism and President of Abuja Writers Forum, at the public presentation of the book in Abuja on 21st July, 2011.
Sumaila Isah Umaisha has been the literary editor of the New Nigerian Newspapers for some years and has won a couple of accolades. He also does media consultancy and as a creative writer, he writes short fiction and poetry. Some of his stories and poems have been published in journals, online magazines and anthologies. With such a growing body of material, it is not a surprise that Umaisha has taken the next logical step in his creative writing career by putting together a collection of short stories, published by Hybun Publications Limited.
Titled Hoodlums, this debut collection of 17 short stories is rather unusual because of the seemingly large number of stories which goes against the conventional approach. Short story collections normally do not have this number of stories since the standard average length of a short story is 2, 500 words and publishers want enough pages to justify the publication, knowing that novels tend to have better patronage. Yet, as shall be explained later, Umaisha is able use this large number of stories to his advantage partly because there is a thematic centrality.
The stories provide a platform for him to explore a variety of themes including political violence, thuggery, assassinations, militancy, witchcraft, astral projection, prostitution, drug addiction and insanity. Thus most of the stories are topical giving the collection a strong contemporary relevance, more so given that the background is Nigeria. The aptly named collection
This contemporaneous tone is struck from the very first story called ?Militants?. Six-year-old Tene, who should be having an exciting childhood with her friends, is caught in the violent skirmishes enveloping her community, where a group of militants called the Niger Delta Liberation Movement is having a fierce confrontation with the soldiers deployed to the area. During one of such clashes which erupts catching the populace off-guard, Tene is part of the melee scampering to safety. Instinctively , rather than joining the crowd heading to the outskirts of the town, she heads for home where she had left her parents earlier to spend some time at the playground. But just as she overcomes some odds and gets home, the mother who rushes out to take her to safety is felled by an explosive.
This three-page story, as short as it is, provides a template for the rest of the collection, especially the way it ends on a painful and tragic note. This template which includes an admixture of unnerving moments is underscored by the title of the collection. In his defence of the short story format, to counter the various arguments raised to explain its limitations and seemingly declining popularity as a narrative form, Patrick Gates states that: ?Since the short story as a form demands that things be left out, left unspoken, it is particularly well suited to narratives that unsettle, that replicate on the page those moments in life where a hurt that was not meant to be overheard or a glance that was not meant to be intercepted have devastating emotional effect.?
It is difficult to think that a reader would go through these stories without being unsettled by the overall commentary. Almost every story is a painful reminder of the sorry state of our country. It is a controlled lamentation. A wailing that sears through our consciousness as we watch the self-serving behavior of politicians who, instead of working to ensure the progress of the country prefer to mindlessly oversee its underdevelopment through lawless behavior such as rigging elections, meting violence on opponents, endorsing assassinations, manipulating election tribunals, refusing to embark on projects that would improve the lives of the citizentry or even destroying those that have been undertaken by a few reasonable ones. The culture of impunity is consciously cultivated by political godfathers.
The society becomes increasingly unstable breeding thugs, rioters and militants who without hesitation take the laws into their hands by unleashing mayhem at every opportunity, thereby further retarding the progress of the society as evident in stories like ? Hoodlums?, ?The Godfather?, ?The Riot? and ?Do or Die?. The police too become accomplices sometimes working in cahoots with rioters.
It is no surprise that more people find ways of manipulating the chaos for their own profit including journalists who exaggerate every crisis, and businessmen who look at all angles that such situations can benefit them including being the ones from whom relief materials are bought for victims in refugee camps. The good values of the society are steadily upturned, to be replaced by vices such as drug addiction, prostitution and armed robbery.
But there are mo
ments of redemp
tion such as in ?The Soul Mate?, when Lilian the prostitute ends up marrying Bulus, the Medical Doctor, who had initially reached out to her at a critical moment in her life. So too in ?The Godfather? when the new god son, after becoming the Mayor of Gold City, comes to a realization that the right thing ought to be done and damns the consequences. He is assassinated at the end but there is the inference that he has put down structures that could begin to bring some succor to the society.
The redemptive moments may appear insignificant when compared with the larger picture of oppression, exploitation and pain. However, their importance is underscored by being the very opposite of the negativity that suffuses the society. That a prostitute?s past can be overlooked so that she gets a new lease of life, points to the fact that all is not lost. This ray of hope could possibly become a beam of greater restoration.
In ?The Last Hiding Place?, the marriage of Amelia and Professor Deen is threatened by addictive habits both have hidden from each other. They have secrets that threaten to undo the union. Sincerity leads to shocking revelations and an awakening that ushers in a new and promising chapter in their matrimony.
Umaisha is at home with the use of irony especially in the manner he sometimes ends the stories with unexpected but refreshing twists. In ?Do or Die?, Senator Abu Dambo contracts Saleh to kill a political rival, Alhaji Aliyu Hamza but at the end it is the employer who is killed by the same hired assassin. Alhaji Ibrahim who is gleeful about the riots, looking forward to making gains, has his wife killed. Tene runs home for safety only to be deprived of what symbolizes safety for her.
The closing sequence of ?Hoodlums? has this unexpectedness that heightens the horrible situation. Both journalists become victims of the riot they had inadvertently fuelled through their exaggerated reportage. But the bigger irony is that the Police who should be working to quell the riot move around the various gangs providing them with victims, a collusion that accentuates the collapse of security and serves as an indictment, showing that the rioters and law enforcement agents are really no different.
What should have been a major drawback in the collection, the high number of stories, becomes a strength because they not only have a thematic variety, but they are not all of the same length. There are some that a very brief, just about three pages long, giving the impression that the author is experimenting with minimalism. The truth is that given that some of the stories had to be published initially in the literary section of the New Nigerian Newspaper, he may have been forced to work with space constraints.
Fortunately Umaisha manages to use the situation to his advantage because these very short pieces are sometimes the most artistically compelling narratives. Examples include ?Militants?, ?After the Riot?, ?Roadblock? , ?The Riot? and ?The President?s Portrait? where the painting itself becomes a damning symbol of a leader and this is achieved by detailing the painting process in three pages.
Contrast these short pieces with ?Hoodlums? which is weakened by the seeming initial uncertainty of who to focus on in the initial sequence. One gets the impression that the story may have been conceived initially as a novel and then it was abridged to a short story. There is so much background detail about Ben and Mairo which slows down the pace of the narration and would have been better suited for a longer narrative, where all those details would have been fleshed out to strengthen the story. In fact, there is a larger story demanding to be told because the materials are there for Umaisha?s taking, with several characters and situations tugging for amplification because the platform on which they are currently placed is somewhat constrictive.
The elegance of the short story is being able to work within a narrow space, with the writer putting in place just enough essentials. But that space will not be adequate in handling a complex issue as is evident in ?Hoodlums? and ?The Godfather?. Marisa Silver makes an observation that is pertinent to the present context : ?I?m often asked whether I want to turn a particular story into a novel. It?s a flattering question, because it is usually asked by a reader who is captivated by a set of characters. But the truth is, I never do want to do this. An idea appears to me as a short story, or it appears to me as a novel. I suppose that some ideas just feel that they need to be contained, that their power and effect will be most forceful if I express them using the tools of the short story. Other narrative notions have resonances that are like tentacles that reach out, ideas that lead to other ideas. These extenuating ideas circle around the central notion, but the central notion will not be complete, and will not reach its full potential, unless I take the time and space to explore all that richness that surrounds it in words.?
Sometimes the author?s favoured sandwich technique becomes predictable, just as his pre-occupation with telling rather than showing occasionally stifles the immediacy of the stories. There are hardly any typos and the print size is reader-friendly but the binding does not suggest durability and pages may fall apart eventually.
Overall this is a very encouraging debut showing that Umaisha not only has a keen sense of observation, a virtue which every creative writer ought to have, but that he is willing to experiment as in, ?The King Himself?, ?Seat of Power?, ?The Magic? and ?The Black Cat?.
- 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....
- 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,...
- Gripping Tales Of Violence
Title: Hoodlums Reviewer: Uchechukwu Agodom Publisher: Hybun Publications International; Pages: 110 pages. A loud explosion desecrates the peaceful atmosphere of the six-year old Tene and her friends as they are going to a playground. Everybody...
- Umaisha Unleashes His Hoodlums On The Public
Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Isah Umaisha, an Associate Editor with the New Nigerian Newspapers, and Chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, was presented to the public in Abuja,...
- 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...