Literature
Reviewed by Isaac Attah Ogezi
In the late 1980s, Achebe, in his timeless classic, The Trouble with Nigeria, classified Nigeria as one of the most unsafe places to live in the world today. Daily events in the country have made this assertion truer in our times than in the late 1980s. Only last year when the nation was in a euphoric mood of celebrating her fiftieth anniversary, a gift of bomb blasts at her seemingly impregnable Eagle Square was handed to her. If the army barracks and the Police Force Headquarters in our federal capital could have their share of bomb blasts, where lies our security? Indeed, the perennial ethno-religious crises in Kaduna, Jos, Bauchi and most parts of the north appear to have come to live with us like the Isreali-Palistinian crisis. The Niger Delta militancy in the south-south, the emergence of the extremist Islamic sect called Boko Haram in the north and the obvious disaffection and disunity among the citizenry have made fear the commonest denominator
in Nigeria today, the all-pervasive kind of fear that preceded the Civil War in the late sixties which prompted Okigbo in his poem ?Come Thunder?, to lament: ?? a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of /the open air.? It is this fear, which is more often than not trailed by violence and debauchery, that has become a recurring decimal in our chequered history as a people and forms the fulcrum of Umaisha?s collection of seventeen short stories, Hoodlums.
In Hoodlums, Umaisha explores several themes, ranging from fear and violence in our polity, feminism and the plight of children during crises, politics of bitterness and godfatherism and love, to metafiction and dystopian literature. In the stories, ?Militant?, ?After the Riot? and ?Hoodlums?, we see the gory pictures of the activities of the Niger Delta militants and the ceaseless ethno-religious violence in the country. In a season of anomie such as Nigeria?s, hoodlums are daily birthed; whose targets are the sane, ?those who still had a future? (p. 13). Umaisha unravels further the moronic psychology of hoodlums on the same page 13 when he wrote: ?When the hoodlums sighted someone, they would rush and beat him repeatedly till he fell. Then they would slaughter him. The more a victim pleaded with them the more brutal they became. After slaughtering such a victim they would set the body ablaze.? Hoodlums are therefore
psychopaths who revel in bloodletting. They are monsters and bloodhounds. Like J. P. Clark?s all-embracing definition of casualties in the Nigerian Civil War in his famous poem ?Casualties?, Umaisha sees hoodlums as not only those who physically unleash violence but include even the educated elite who fan the embers of disunity such as the journalists who incite crises by sensational reporting. On page 27, Umaisha made a Police Inspector speak his mind, thus:
??Do you see those hoodlums out there?? He pointed at some fleeing matchete-wiedling youths. ?You and your editor and all the other journalists who help to escalate this crisis by sensational reporting are no better than them. They are all hoodlums and they will be treated as such.??
In reply to this accusation, Ben, a journalist character in the title story unwittingly drops his guard when he pleads: ?I don?t think it is too late, sir. One editorial is enough to do the magic. The fighting will stop. Even the reprisal attacks in other parts of the country will stop ? ?(p. 29). The activities of hoodlums on rampage will always result in mayhem as graphically painted on page 26:
?The number of policemen and soldiers on the streets was obviously too small to cope with the situation. Dead bodies were everywhere, the driver barely avoided running over them. The sight was so horrible that grave silence pervaded the van.?
In ?The Outcast? and
?The Forbidden Path?,
Umaisha shows his disenchantment with our patriarchal society for its preference for men over women. In ?The Outcast?, Ilema was discarded in a rubbish dump by her mother when she was an infant on account of her being a female child (p. 40). Umaisha paints the picture of a callous society that does not forgive a woman?s childlessness as he aptly put it in the mouth of his character Mummy on page 43: ??I am an outcast?, she continued. ?I was rejected by my people. I was branded a witch and rejected because of my inability to bear a child. Even though in my desperate quest for a child, I moved from one husband to another like a harlot, they still failed to understand my plight. They said I couldn?t give birth because I ate my babies in the womb.? Because of the sexist society that she lives in, Mummy dreams that Ilema will ?grow into a woman of substance, into a man? (p.
45). Similarly, in ?The Forbidden Path?, Onkwo, the oldest person in Irebu village is branded a witch and ?? from that day, children never went near her again? (p. 55) because apart from having one of her sons ?lost to the city? (p. 55), the rest of her other ten children are dead including her husband!
Stories like ?The Godfather? and ?Do or Die!? poke fun at our unsophisticated politics of bitterness and godfatherism. ?The Last Hiding Place? and ?The President?s Portrait? depict metafictive processes of creativity and the enigmatic nature of artistes generally, while ?Seat of Power? describes a dystopian world reminiscent of Orwell?s masterwork, 1984. It is worthy to note that despite Umaisha?s dark world marked with violence and savagery, the victimization of women and children, politics of ?do-or-die?, somehow love survives. In ?Soul Mate? and even the doomsday title story, ?Hoodlums?, love flourishes even in a time of war. The love between Ben and Mairo in Kaduna cuts across the religious divide. It is pure, unadulterated love that is religion-blind. This is a bold, no-holds-barred story that shows that Nigeria needs writers like Umaisha who are detribalized and de-religionized. Writers who, when possessed by the creative muse, will utilize the social function of literature to unite rather than to preach sectionalism and religious intolerance.
Unarguably, Umaisha?s Hoodlums is a celebration of the blissful marriage of topical themes and aesthetics. As a poet, Umaisha has been able to transfer the subtlety that poetry is renowned for to his short stories, thereby placing some high demands on the readers to read between the lines to be able to fathom some unsaid things. Umaisha employed great economy of language like Hemingway in Hoodlums. This kind of cryptic use of language is evident in ?The Forbidden Path? when the writer used just two versified lines on page 57 to tell the entire story of Onkwo, why she is labelled a witch. This is a skill which reinforces the short story?s unique singularity of effect apart from the fact that it can be read at one sitting, with no single word wasted. Edgar Allan Poe, in the first real analysis of the short story, posited that: ?In the whole composition, there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.?
Perhaps, the apparent weakness in Umaisha?s Hoodlums is the lack of experimentation in narrative styles. All the stories conform to the traditional form of storytelling in the mould of folktales evident in the works of the early masters of the short story form such as Poe and Melville. In the entire seventeen stories, none of them is Chekhovian nor experimental like Hemingway?s.
There is no doubt that the short story is more similar to poetry than the longer prose form of the novel, and just like poetry, form is as important to the short story, if not more important than the subject. Also, in one or two instances, Umaisha?s characters are flat, cowardly and not invested with heroism like Iyayi?s Heroes. The character of Ben, the journalist in the title story, is that of a despicable coward on page 30, as follows: ?He got down on his knees and began to pray ? something he had not done in a very long time ? No one looked back except Ben. And what he saw was beyond words. He slumped.? In ?The Outcast?, Ilema?s character is portrayed to be weak when, upon the revelation of the circumstances surrounding her birth, ?she suddenly lurched forward and slumped to the floor? (p. 45). Melodrama in fiction is always accompanied with weak character portrayal. Ironically, the effect of melodrama in literature is always the opposite and negative, for instead of striking the reader hard in the face, it falls off flat on the ground because of its lack of verisimilitude. On page 11, Umaisha wrote:
?Mummy was running fast. She spread out her arms when she saw Tene. The little girl also spread out her arms, running towards her as fast as she could. But just before she got to Mummy, another explosion went off close by and something she could not see lifted Mummy high and smashed her on the ground. Mummy struggled to her feet but fell back.?
The same can be said of Ben?s ?hazy image of Mairo, weeping and stretching out her hands, inviting him to come over? on page 29. Well-packaged and edited, Hoodlums is almost error-free save for a few lapses such as ?contentious difference? (p. 14), ?And as he presently focused on a mob? (p. 99) and ?His heart skipped a bit? (p. 102).
Be that as it may, Umaisha?s Hoodlums announces the arrival of an accomplished short story writer in Nigeria, who, in the succeeding years, will continue to give us more snapshots of the human condition and nature in a manner not amenable to the novel form. Even the great masters of the short story genre such as Melville, Turgenev, Chekhov, Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield could not boast of an accomplished first collection like Umaisha?s Hoodlums. It is indeed a must-read for all those aspiring to excel in short story writing and for those on the lookout for real entertainment.
- 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...
- 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
Rhythm of Fear and Violence in Umaisha?s Hoodlums
Reviewed by Isaac Attah Ogezi
In the late 1980s, Achebe, in his timeless classic, The Trouble with Nigeria, classified Nigeria as one of the most unsafe places to live in the world today. Daily events in the country have made this assertion truer in our times than in the late 1980s. Only last year when the nation was in a euphoric mood of celebrating her fiftieth anniversary, a gift of bomb blasts at her seemingly impregnable Eagle Square was handed to her. If the army barracks and the Police Force Headquarters in our federal capital could have their share of bomb blasts, where lies our security? Indeed, the perennial ethno-religious crises in Kaduna, Jos, Bauchi and most parts of the north appear to have come to live with us like the Isreali-Palistinian crisis. The Niger Delta militancy in the south-south, the emergence of the extremist Islamic sect called Boko Haram in the north and the obvious disaffection and disunity among the citizenry have made fear the commonest denominator
in Nigeria today, the all-pervasive kind of fear that preceded the Civil War in the late sixties which prompted Okigbo in his poem ?Come Thunder?, to lament: ?? a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of /the open air.? It is this fear, which is more often than not trailed by violence and debauchery, that has become a recurring decimal in our chequered history as a people and forms the fulcrum of Umaisha?s collection of seventeen short stories, Hoodlums.
In Hoodlums, Umaisha explores several themes, ranging from fear and violence in our polity, feminism and the plight of children during crises, politics of bitterness and godfatherism and love, to metafiction and dystopian literature. In the stories, ?Militant?, ?After the Riot? and ?Hoodlums?, we see the gory pictures of the activities of the Niger Delta militants and the ceaseless ethno-religious violence in the country. In a season of anomie such as Nigeria?s, hoodlums are daily birthed; whose targets are the sane, ?those who still had a future? (p. 13). Umaisha unravels further the moronic psychology of hoodlums on the same page 13 when he wrote: ?When the hoodlums sighted someone, they would rush and beat him repeatedly till he fell. Then they would slaughter him. The more a victim pleaded with them the more brutal they became. After slaughtering such a victim they would set the body ablaze.? Hoodlums are therefore
psychopaths who revel in bloodletting. They are monsters and bloodhounds. Like J. P. Clark?s all-embracing definition of casualties in the Nigerian Civil War in his famous poem ?Casualties?, Umaisha sees hoodlums as not only those who physically unleash violence but include even the educated elite who fan the embers of disunity such as the journalists who incite crises by sensational reporting. On page 27, Umaisha made a Police Inspector speak his mind, thus:
??Do you see those hoodlums out there?? He pointed at some fleeing matchete-wiedling youths. ?You and your editor and all the other journalists who help to escalate this crisis by sensational reporting are no better than them. They are all hoodlums and they will be treated as such.??
In reply to this accusation, Ben, a journalist character in the title story unwittingly drops his guard when he pleads: ?I don?t think it is too late, sir. One editorial is enough to do the magic. The fighting will stop. Even the reprisal attacks in other parts of the country will stop ? ?(p. 29). The activities of hoodlums on rampage will always result in mayhem as graphically painted on page 26:
?The number of policemen and soldiers on the streets was obviously too small to cope with the situation. Dead bodies were everywhere, the driver barely avoided running over them. The sight was so horrible that grave silence pervaded the van.?
In ?The Outcast? and
?The Forbidden Path?,
Umaisha shows his disenchantment with our patriarchal society for its preference for men over women. In ?The Outcast?, Ilema was discarded in a rubbish dump by her mother when she was an infant on account of her being a female child (p. 40). Umaisha paints the picture of a callous society that does not forgive a woman?s childlessness as he aptly put it in the mouth of his character Mummy on page 43: ??I am an outcast?, she continued. ?I was rejected by my people. I was branded a witch and rejected because of my inability to bear a child. Even though in my desperate quest for a child, I moved from one husband to another like a harlot, they still failed to understand my plight. They said I couldn?t give birth because I ate my babies in the womb.? Because of the sexist society that she lives in, Mummy dreams that Ilema will ?grow into a woman of substance, into a man? (p.
45). Similarly, in ?The Forbidden Path?, Onkwo, the oldest person in Irebu village is branded a witch and ?? from that day, children never went near her again? (p. 55) because apart from having one of her sons ?lost to the city? (p. 55), the rest of her other ten children are dead including her husband!
Stories like ?The Godfather? and ?Do or Die!? poke fun at our unsophisticated politics of bitterness and godfatherism. ?The Last Hiding Place? and ?The President?s Portrait? depict metafictive processes of creativity and the enigmatic nature of artistes generally, while ?Seat of Power? describes a dystopian world reminiscent of Orwell?s masterwork, 1984. It is worthy to note that despite Umaisha?s dark world marked with violence and savagery, the victimization of women and children, politics of ?do-or-die?, somehow love survives. In ?Soul Mate? and even the doomsday title story, ?Hoodlums?, love flourishes even in a time of war. The love between Ben and Mairo in Kaduna cuts across the religious divide. It is pure, unadulterated love that is religion-blind. This is a bold, no-holds-barred story that shows that Nigeria needs writers like Umaisha who are detribalized and de-religionized. Writers who, when possessed by the creative muse, will utilize the social function of literature to unite rather than to preach sectionalism and religious intolerance.
Unarguably, Umaisha?s Hoodlums is a celebration of the blissful marriage of topical themes and aesthetics. As a poet, Umaisha has been able to transfer the subtlety that poetry is renowned for to his short stories, thereby placing some high demands on the readers to read between the lines to be able to fathom some unsaid things. Umaisha employed great economy of language like Hemingway in Hoodlums. This kind of cryptic use of language is evident in ?The Forbidden Path? when the writer used just two versified lines on page 57 to tell the entire story of Onkwo, why she is labelled a witch. This is a skill which reinforces the short story?s unique singularity of effect apart from the fact that it can be read at one sitting, with no single word wasted. Edgar Allan Poe, in the first real analysis of the short story, posited that: ?In the whole composition, there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.?
Perhaps, the apparent weakness in Umaisha?s Hoodlums is the lack of experimentation in narrative styles. All the stories conform to the traditional form of storytelling in the mould of folktales evident in the works of the early masters of the short story form such as Poe and Melville. In the entire seventeen stories, none of them is Chekhovian nor experimental like Hemingway?s.
There is no doubt that the short story is more similar to poetry than the longer prose form of the novel, and just like poetry, form is as important to the short story, if not more important than the subject. Also, in one or two instances, Umaisha?s characters are flat, cowardly and not invested with heroism like Iyayi?s Heroes. The character of Ben, the journalist in the title story, is that of a despicable coward on page 30, as follows: ?He got down on his knees and began to pray ? something he had not done in a very long time ? No one looked back except Ben. And what he saw was beyond words. He slumped.? In ?The Outcast?, Ilema?s character is portrayed to be weak when, upon the revelation of the circumstances surrounding her birth, ?she suddenly lurched forward and slumped to the floor? (p. 45). Melodrama in fiction is always accompanied with weak character portrayal. Ironically, the effect of melodrama in literature is always the opposite and negative, for instead of striking the reader hard in the face, it falls off flat on the ground because of its lack of verisimilitude. On page 11, Umaisha wrote:
?Mummy was running fast. She spread out her arms when she saw Tene. The little girl also spread out her arms, running towards her as fast as she could. But just before she got to Mummy, another explosion went off close by and something she could not see lifted Mummy high and smashed her on the ground. Mummy struggled to her feet but fell back.?
The same can be said of Ben?s ?hazy image of Mairo, weeping and stretching out her hands, inviting him to come over? on page 29. Well-packaged and edited, Hoodlums is almost error-free save for a few lapses such as ?contentious difference? (p. 14), ?And as he presently focused on a mob? (p. 99) and ?His heart skipped a bit? (p. 102).
Be that as it may, Umaisha?s Hoodlums announces the arrival of an accomplished short story writer in Nigeria, who, in the succeeding years, will continue to give us more snapshots of the human condition and nature in a manner not amenable to the novel form. Even the great masters of the short story genre such as Melville, Turgenev, Chekhov, Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield could not boast of an accomplished first collection like Umaisha?s Hoodlums. It is indeed a must-read for all those aspiring to excel in short story writing and for those on the lookout for real entertainment.
- 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...
- 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...