Half Of A Yellow Sun - A Review

Yesterday I found out that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's second novel Half Of A Yellow Sun is being adapted into a film. Yesterday it was announced that Thandie Newton has joined the production, which will begin shooting this March. This is all great news because I loved reading Half Of A Yellow Sun and look forward to the film. I wrote a review of the novel several years ago for another site, so I'm bringing it here for the occasion. 

 Not since the Civil War have Americans experienced the gut reality of war in their own backyards. Although the U.S. has engaged in various excursions over the centuries, including at present in Iraq, and many Americans have lost friends and family members to war, most civilians have as much experience with the mundane realities of life during wartime as they have experiencing life on Mars. War has become a foreign concept to many of us, which is a shame because, unfortunately, our literature reflects this lack of experience. While we have had writers such as Ernest Hemingway or Tim O'Brien who have written about their war experiences (WWI and Vietnam respectively) they usually write from the perspective of veterans. It is rare for an American writer to explore what life is like for civilians under the constant threat of death and destruction unless she is writing from an historical perspective.

9/11, of course, could change that. But even the terrorist attacks against the United States doesn't compare to the daily terror citizens face in other countries under the auspices of war. Therefore, writers from other countries who have experienced war have often been left to pick up the slack, exploring the very ways in which violence infiltrates the most intimate and mundane facts of life. One such writer who has taken up this mantle is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her latest novel Half of A Yellow Sun, which depicts the war which ripped her native Nigeria apart during the 1960s. Described as the "21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe" by the Washington Post Book World, Adichie captures the horror, mystery, and insanity of war, while also delving into the more intimate and personal daily struggles of her characters.

Half of A Yellow Sun depicts a Nigeria swept up in the turbulence of the period. Following the end of colonial rule, the country plunges into a war when Biafrans, who are majority Igbo, struggle to establish an independent sovereign nation. With the support of Britain and the United States, northern Nigeria engages in a brutal crackdown on Biafrans. Many Biafrans are slaughtered or are forced to flee from their homes. Adichie describes the horror of these events through the perspectives of three characters–Ugwu, a thirteen year old houseboy for the intellectual professor Odenigbo; Olanna, Odenigbo's lover and later wife; and Richard, the British ex-pat who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, Kainene. Their personal lives are a backdrop to the epic drama, highlighting themes of reconciliation, independence, and identity.

The personal dramas of her characters involve familial estrangements, affairs, illegitimate children, class and racial differences, and self-hatred. In the hands of a lesser writer, these themes would disintegrate into melodrama, but Adichie applies a quiet and subtle self-assurance to her material that respects and heightens these little dramas under the backdrop of the greater horrors that take place during war. War is treated with an even-handedness that likewise becomes frighteningly mundane. When Olanna, after being caught up in the ethnic cleansing against the Biafrans, travels home by a train crowded with other fleeing refugees, she is haunted by the image of the decapitated head of a woman's child, which the woman keeps in a calabash. Her language is direct, uncompromising, and shocking in its simplicity:

Olanna looked into the bowl. She saw the little girl's head with the ashy-gray skin and the braided hair and rolled-back eyes and open mouth. She stared at it for a while before she looked away. Somebody screamed.

The woman closed the calabash. "Do you know," she said, "it took me so long to plait this hair? She had such thick hair."

Even in the face of such evil, the longing for the normal and mundane becomes a life raft for those caught up in the throes of war. When Kainene, against military orders, crosses enemy lines to continue her black market business to provide much needed goods and food to refugees in the camps, her actions are predicated less by the needs of these refugees but her own desire to find a semblance of order in her pre-war life as an independent and enigmatic entrepreneur running the family business. The ways in which war rips apart lives and complicates the often complex web of relationships between her characters are the main themes of Adichie's fine novel. Death is both brutal and arbitrary, as Richard soon discovers when an airport official is slaughtered by Nigerian soldiers after his Igbo origins are discovered. Most Americans might not be able to relate to the fears of being forcefully conscripted into army, which is the issue that commands much of houseboy Ugwu's story after the family flees to a refugee camp, but can certainly relate to his desire for love and his willingness and foolishness to risk danger when he walks a young sweetheart home. This one simple and endearing act sweeps Ugwu into the middle of the events that are ripping the country apart when he is snatched by Biafran soldiers and is forced to fight in the civil war. The sequence when Ugwu is sent to training camp is both heartrending and ironic as it becomes apparent that the Biafran army, lacking weaponry, training, and discipline, is unmatched against the better trained Nigerian forces. Yet Ugwu's need to place the conflicts that are tearing his country and people apart in context, such as his obsession with a paperback copy of Frederick Douglass's autobiography, do not spare him from becoming complicit in the evil and bloodshed he has witnessed thus far. The gang rape of a barmaid during a night of revelry by a group of soldiers whose youth and immaturity are exacerbated by the immorality of war haunts young Ugwu for the remainder of the novel.

While the story of Olanna and Odenigbo's marital discord might seem like an anomaly in the face of the greater horrors taking place, their relationship forms the moral heartbeat of the novel and reveals how even the normal problems of marriage–lack of communication, betrayal, commitment–parallels their compatriots' independent struggles. As Biafra attempts to break away from Nigeria and form a national identity, often in the face of its own political, social, and class differences, Olanna and Odenigbo struggle to keep their marriage together despite Odenigbo's betrayal. The glimmers of hope in their reconciliation during their journey from their home to refugee camps provide the glimmers of hope that Biafra and Nigeria will see through their regional differences and that both war-ravaged nations will find peace.

Adichie's novel, nonetheless, is not a fantasy, nor does it offer simple resolutions. Her characters' growth come from the hard-won realities of life and war. Adichie neither placates the reader nor presents a sanitized portrait of Biafrans–they can be every bit as snobbish, arrogant, enigmatic, confused, and complicated as they are passionate about their country's freedom. Rather, Adichie documents the history of her country and allows the reader to come to her own conclusions.

Half of A Yellow Sun, which represents the flag of the independent Biafra, is a crowning achievement for so young a writer. Adichie documents a moment in African history that is otherwise overlooked, bringing to the intimacies of war a clarity that is rarely experienced on American shores. Haunting and sparse, Half of A Yellow Sun joins a pantheon of great African literature documenting post-colonialism and its haunting and troubling aftermath.

Schooling On MLK and the Civil Rights Movement

Today is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and as we honor this day I thought I’d make up a short list of works, both creative and scholarly, that are about Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement. One thing is for certain, there are very few people who know about Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement, outside of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. These works, I think, offer a broader perspective of who Dr. King was and what the civil rights movement actually did to fight for social justice. This is not an extensive list, by no means, but it does offer an entryway into a movement whose effects of social activism still touch us today.

Eyes on The Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1964; Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Crossroads 1965-1985

In 1987 and 1990, PBS aired this award-winning 14-hour documentary about the Civil Rights movement, beginning with the Montgomery Bus boycott to the legislative and electoral victories and failures of the 1980s. Produced by Henry Hampton, Eyes on the Prize uses news footage of all the important players and events in the movement from the bus boycott to the election of the first black mayor in Chicago, Harold Washington. Eyes on the Prize offers a more complex view of the Civil Rights movement and its longterm effects in American society.

America in the King Years Trilogy by Taylor Branch

Noted historian, Taylor Branch wrote a trilogy of books exhaustively documenting the Civil Rights movement much in the same way as Eyes on the Prize. Beginning with Parting the Water: America in the King Years 1954-1963, which won the Pulitzer, then leading into Pillar of Fire 1963-1965, and At Canaan’s Edge 1965-1968, the trilogy delves not only into the Civil Rights movement, but documents the Nation of Islam and the rise and assassination of Malcolm X, the Black Panther movement, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and their reactions to the Civil Rights movement, as well as the various men and woman, including Ella Baker, Montgomery N.A.A.C.P. chapter president E.D. Nixon, Bob Moses, John Lewis, Diane Nash, Vernon Dahmer, Fannie Lou Hamer and others, who were as much if not more important figures in the Civil Rights movement as Dr. King.

Boycott

In 2001, HBO aired this docu-drama about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Starring Jeffrey Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King and directed by Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T., The Wire), Boycott captures a moment in civil rights history that catapulted Dr. King into national and international prominence. Wonderfully acted and directed, the film brings a modern edge to these historical events and make them more accessible to today’s young audiences.

Dreamer by Charles Johnson

Johnson’s 1999 novel about Dr. King takes a moment in the civil rights leader’s life---when he took his campaign north to Chicago---and extrapolates larger questions about race and inequality. Told from three perspectives---Dr. King, his aide Matthew Bishop, and a King lookalike Chaym Smith---Dreamer has an almost hallucinogenic quality to it as it goes back and forth between all three perspectives. While certainly not a novel for anyone who knows little to nothing about the history, it does offer different and more profound inquiries about both Dr. King and the movement toward social justice in general.

Freedom Riders

Earlier last year, PBS aired another documentary on the Civil Rights movement, this time focusing solely on the Freedom Rides campaign in 1961 to enforce desegregation laws in interstate traveling. The two hour documentary covered the thousands of people who were a part of the Freedom Rides as they boarded Trailways and Greyhound buses and traveled through the south, facing down some of the most virulent hatred and violence the movement faced up to date. The documentary does an excellent job of revealing the bravery of the young men and women who undertook the campaign and how this campaign became a significant turning point in the movement.

JFK and the Mythic Imagination

November 22 is the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy and while it’s been nearly fifty years since that dreadful day, the historic moment still has a hold on the American imagination. It is so deeply embedded in our culture that it has taken on the note of mythology. In fact it is our modern-day myth---the bold, handsome president shot down in the prime of his virility, while his wife and throngs of Dallas well-wishers who lined up along Dealey Plaza to watch his motorcade go pass look on in horror. In an age before 24/7 cable news networks, the assassination would be recorded not by a newsman but a dressmaker named Abraham Zapruder, whose film footage wouldn’t be released to the general public until a decade later. Under those circumstances, it makes sense that the event would balloon into mythic proportions in the American public. That day was like a blank canvas onto which people painted their own memories or contributed their answers to questions that still remain unresolved. The Warren Commission's handling of the investigation only sparked more questions, creating a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists who insist that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone assassin in Kennedy’s murder.

This mythic quality has likewise sparked artistic and literary fascination. Only recently Stephen King published a novel, 11/22/63, a tale of time travel which centers around the assassination. There’ve been other works in the past, including Don DeLillo’s Libra, and Oliver Stone’s 1991 release JFK, which looks at New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's prosecution of the president's assassination. Television has also played its part, including a 1983 miniseries starring Martin Sheen and a recent cable version starring Greg Kinnear. The assassination is also heavily referenced in pop culture, such as The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The X-Files, and music videos. The cable TV series Mad Men dramatized the assassination in its second season to heavy anticipation.

No where in recent American history has an event scarred a nation so deeply. In JFK, America had found a model onto which it could project all of its best attributes: youth, vigor, imagination, intelligence. Not since President Obama’s 2008 presidential run, did Americans find similar excitement and transcendence. Yet over three years after that historic election, Obama is facing some of the most stringent opposition to his policies and criticisms from the left and the right. Kennedy likewise faced similar criticisms and experienced a major foreign policy blunder with the Bay of Pigs. Yet his untimely and tragic death has cemented not the criticisms nor the mistakes, but the Camelot image his widow and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy set forth after his death. We see only Camelot, not the real and very complicated man underneath. The myth lives on in our culture, in our literature, films, and TV, but we'd do well to separate the facts from the myth.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: A Review

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, A Novel in Words and Pictures, Brian Selznick. New York: Scholastic Press. 2007

Later this year, Martin Scorsese will release a new film called Hugo, based on the 2007 novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. This would seem like an odd choice for a director like Scorsese, known for his gritty urban dramas, to direct a film based on a children’s story. But this particular story is actually more up the alley for a well beloved cineaste.

The novel, which takes place in Paris during the early 1930s, is about a young boy named Hugo Cabret, left orphaned after his father is killed in a fire at the museum where he works and is taken under the wing of a drunken uncle who is in charge of making sure that all the clocks in the train station are on time. When the uncle disappears, Hugo is left to fend for himself, caring for the clocks and stealing food from the local vendors. One day he decides to steal a toy mouse from a toy booth across the way from the apartment where he is holed up. He is caught by the toy vendor and forced to work at the booth, mending toys, as punishment. He soon becomes embroiled in the lives of Papa Georges, the man who runs the booth, and his goddaughter, Isabel, who later helps Hugo undercover a mystery concerning an automaton his father tried to fix. After discovering the automation among the ruins of the museum fire, Hugo lugs it home and tries to fix it, hoping to discover the message his father left him through a mechanization which allows it to write. When he realizes that a key dangling from Isabelle’s neck might actually be the key that will turn on the automaton, he steals it. What he and Isabelle discover after they turn on the automaton uncovers another mystery about Papa Georges. It turns out that he is actually Georges Méliès, the film director responsible for the film A Trip to the Moon, one of cinema’s earliest sci-fi/adventure movies.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a novel about the wonder and beauty of film, so it’s hard to see why Scorsese wouldn’t have been attracted to such a project. Interspersed throughout the novel are the author’s own pencil hand drawings, which lend it a sense of cinematic splendor. Too bad the writing itself couldn’t have matched the illustrations. Selznick has a rather flat and unengaging writing style that could have used more of the same magical renderings of his illustrations. I never got a sense of the magic and mystery in Hugo’s story from the writing itself, which is disappointing since the story is interesting. 

No doubt, when Hugo will be released later this year, Scorsese will bring some of his own cinematic magic to a children’s tale about the magic of film. The film stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley as Méliès, and Sacha Cohen Baron.

Wendy and Lucy: DVD Review

There are few films today that explore the parameters of poverty and capitalism that have the same power as older films such as Umberto D, Nothing But A Man, and The Killer of Sheep. When film and television do explore such issues, it is often trapped within the confines of sociological case studies, designed more to explain to a mostly middle-class audience about the social pathologies and criminal behavior of the poor. The films mentioned above avoid such trappings, and instead present its characters as fully rendered human beings, capable of kindness as well as cruelty, whose perceptions and actions are nonetheless shaped by the socioeconomic realities of their lives.

Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 feature Wendy and Lucy follows more in the tradition of these earlier films, a rare breed that chooses to treat those who live within the margins of society with the respect they rarely get in popular culture. The plot of Wendy and Lucy is fairly simple. Wendy and her dog Lucy arrive in Portland, Oregon on their way to Alaska, where Wendy hopes to find lucrative work in the fishing canneries. While there, she faces a series of mishaps that force her to delay her trip and tax her meager financial resources. First her car breaks down. Realizing she will have to spend what little money she has to get it fixed, she shoplifts dog food at a nearby store, gets caught, and arrested. She spends more money to pay the fee to avoid a trial two weeks later. After she’s released from jail, she returns to the store where she had Lucy tied up  outside only to find that the dog is gone. Wendy spends the rest of the film searching for her dog and trying to get her car fixed. But along the way, she finds herself in more precarious situations that grate on her both emotionally and financially.

The quiet power and strength in this film, which is only 80 minutes long, lies in its social commentary about our society and the way it treats the poor and indigent. Reichardt doesn’t betray her story with didacticism, but rather carefully and masterfully reveals her vision through story and character. Every step of the way, the film reveals how society and relationships are shaped by the exchange of money. After Wendy sleeps in her car for the night in a Walgreen's parking lot, she is told by the security guard that is she in violation of parking rules. Already we see that rules, codes of conduct, and laws benefit those who are only willing to shop and spend. The young clerk at the store who catches Wendy shoplifting reports her zealously and with a rigid allegiance to rules and authority. He is the glue that holds a society together that keeps people like Wendy out. When Wendy finally finds Lucy at a foster home, she comes to the heartbreaking realization that her dog will be better off with a new family. Even her relationships with her sister is fraught with monetary exchange. During a phone call to her sister and brother-in-law, Wendy is promptly disregarded by her sibling with the stated fact that she is unable to loan her any money.

There are moments however when this rate of exchange is subverted, in which characters act not out of monetary gain but through the simple goodness of human exchange. Ironically, the security guard who tells Wendy to move her car out of the parking lot turns out to be the most humane of all the people she meets in Portland. He helps her move her stalled car out onto the side street, advises her on where to go shopping, and even loans her his cell phone so she can keep in touch with the local pound. The relationship that quietly develops between these two offer a bright ray of hope in so much building despair.

Reichardt is able to explore so many complex issues precisely because she allows the story to unfold slowly through characters and actions. The movie is rather slow-paced but is thoroughly engaging. When it was released, Wendy and Lucy was compared to such Italian neorealist films as Umberto D, which likewise tells the story of an old man, stricken in poverty, and his relationship to his dog Flag. Yet unlike neorealism, Wendy and Lucy is steeped far more in experimental filmmaking. The cinematography is slow and deliberate, capturing the minute details of Wendy’s world, lingering on wide and medium shots of nearly empty streets and roads, the inside of a grocery store, a jail cell, then closing in on tighter shots of fruits in stalls, of fingerprints being taken, to reveal how claustrophobic and alienating this environment is. There is no musical score. Rather the ambient noises of traffic, wind blowing through trees, footsteps on gravel express Wendy’s loneliness. Michelle Williams gives an understated performance that quietly builds in frustration as the story moves forward. She portrays Wendy as a young woman numbed by society, on the cusp of cynicism and jadedness. Her only trusting friendship is with Lucy. The emotional bond she forms with the dog snaps when she realizes she must give her up. Williams portrays this scene with the kind of quiet restraint that gives the film its emotional strength.

Recently, Reichardt’s latest film, Meek's Cutoff along with Terence Malick's Tree of Life, has stirred a debate among film critics about whether watching such movies is the equivalent of eating your vegetables: movies that are good for you but are boring as hell! I won’t delve into that debate since I haven’t seen any of the movies mentioned, but I do think it’s important to point out the difference between boredom and slow-moving. Boredom is a total disengagement of the things around you. A film or novel can be slow-paced and not be boring. Rather only the subject for what ever reason can fail to engage its viewers or readers. Wendy and Lucy is not such a film. I failed to not care about Wendy’s plight. We’ve all been in the situation where our dreams or goals are thwarted time again by bad luck. And we’ve all experienced times when we’ve had to sacrifice the things and people we love. Wendy and Lucy is one such exploration into the human condition, beautiful, quiet, and evocative in its vision of love and sacrifice.