Chigozie Obioma’s “An Orchestra of Minorities”
When you reach the last harrowing page of Chigozie Obioma’s epic An Orchestra of Minorities, you might feel a vacuous unease, a fear deep in your stomach. What will happen to Chinonso? Obioma’s novel has been compared to a modern-day Odyssey (Goodreads), though a Shakespearean or ancient mythological tragedy is a more apt comparison. However, such comparisons are unnecessary, particularly as they center a Western, hegemonic canon that Obioma seeks to disrupt. Parallel to Marlon James’ (2019) Black Leopard, Red Wolf (my top book of 2019), Obioma’s epic novel seeks to raise Western reader consciousness of African folklore, spiritual, and cosmological traditions. In this novel, Igbo cosmology, specifically.
Our narrator is a chi, a spiritual guide and protector. In Igbo cosmology, each person consists not only of their physical body and conscience, but also a chi. Chinua Achebe, who provides an epigraph for Obioma’s (2019) novel, describes a chi in the following way:
In a general way, we may visualize a person’s chi as his other identity in spiritland — his spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being; for nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside it.
Though a chi has no power to shape the actions of their human hosts, they carry with them the wisdom of the fathers and mothers, memories of their previous lives. They can make suggestions to a human host, planting thoughts in their mind. A chi, when it dutifully performs and protects its host, is reincarnated into new human hosts.
Our main character is Chinonso, and his chi is currently in his seventh life on earth. In the novel, told in three incantations, Chinonso’s chi is beseeching Chukwu (God) to intervene on behalf of his host, who we learn early in the novel has committed an atrocious act, one of which he is likely not even aware. A chi, it turns out, can in rare circumstances plead with the ancestors or Chukwu to intervene in the life of humans on Earth. Chinonso’s chi is deeply attached to his host, upset by the events that have unfolded, and desperately seeks to save his host, and itself, from ending up in Benmuo, domain of evil, vagrant, condemned spirits. The three incantations are Chinonso’s chi detailing his host’s act, for which he seeks intervention and forgiveness from Chukwu.
In the first incantation, one believes this novel is about unattainable love. The novel is, above all, a powerful, moving, beautiful, and tragic love story. Chinonso meets Ndali, who is preparing to jump off a bridge into a raging river. A fowler, Chinonso convinces Ndali to spare herself by sacrificing two of his recently purchased birds into the river. The sound of their squawks as they defenselessly descend, and the force with which they hit the water, convinces Ndali to step down from the bridge. They part, and for several months attempt to find one another. When they finally do, they quickly fall in love. The problem is social class and education level. Ndali comes from a rich family and is studying to become a pharmacist. Chinonso is a poor agricultural worker with no education. An illiterate. For these reasons, Ndali’s family rejects Chinonso, humiliating him at a family gathering. Their love, it seems, will be unrequited.
Chinonso becomes convinced that if only he attains his education, and moves into a better social position, Ndali’s family will accept him. Ndali, deeply in love with him, rejects such assertions. Her love for Chinonso is unwavering. She does not seek her family’s approval. She is willing to reject her family for Chinonso’s love. Yet, Chinonso will not accept this, and (fatefully) runs into an old childhood acquaintance, Jamike, who has enrolled at university in Cyprus. Convinced at the possibility of attaining a college degree in three years, he sells his home, land, and birds, giving Jamike all his money to secure his admission and housing at the Cyprian university. Against Ndali’s protests, neglecting her bad dreams and premonitions, Chinonso departs Nigeria for Cyprus.
The remainder of the novel follows Chinonso’s descent into a form of madness. Fate, the cosmos, the ancestors, and Chukwu, do not appear to shine any luck on Chinonso. A long, harrowing tale unfolds, wherein Chinonso experiences hope, pain, betrayal, torment, violence, inner transformation, reconciliation, forgiveness, and ultimately, tragic loss. Herein lies the epic nature of An Orchestra of Minorities.
Timeless Questions
As a cross between epic, tragedy, cosmology, and mythology, Obioma’s (2019) An Orchestra of Minorities pulls on the great traditions of literature and storytelling to ask timeless questions. What will we do for love? Does love drive us mad? How does fear drive human actions? How do we forgive — others, ourselves? Does fate drive our destiny? Are we solely responsible for our actions? Who or what will intervene on our behalf? What is revenge? If we suffer, must others? What are power and oppression? What is individual and collective resistance?
The orchestra of the book’s title parallels the chorus of many ancient tragedies. Birds sing the chorus of this book. There is young Chinonso’s gosling, the chickens, roosters, and hawks. In one of the novel’s signature moments, Ndali notices that the chickens in the coop will gather when a young chick has been picked off by a hawk. They squawk, cry, and wail in unison. “It is like a coordinated song, the kind they sing during burial ceremonies. Like a choir. And what they are singing is a song of sorrow. Just listen, Nonso” (p. 249), Ndali says. “It is an orchestra of minorities” (p. 250).
An Orchestra of Minorities raises questions about power and solidarity when the powerful take advantage of the weak. Chinonso feels he is powerless. His social class, his lack of education, these realities, he feels, have put him in the position of being unable to be with Ndali. In Cyprus, facing hardship and deception, he laments:
He had now joined many others. . .all those who have been captured against their will to do what they did not want to do either in the past or the present, all who have been forced into joining an entity they do not wish to belong to, and countless others. All who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed, and killed. With all these people, he’d come to share a common fate. They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail. (pp. 250–251)
I continue to wrestle with the questions of power, oppression, solidarity, fate, human agency, and spiritual intervention raised by Chinonso’s story. Obioma (2019) purposely leaves these questions in tension, unresolved. Are those without power destined to a life of crying and wailing? Does Chinonso’s story represent the impacts of power on the oppressed? Or, does Chinonso possess a fatal flaw? Did Chinonso bring retribution upon himself? What defines goodness and evil? Hate, fury, and vengefulness catalyze Chinonso’s descent into madness. Do the circumstances of our lives dictate such falls, or are these descents the result of our mind, a reaction to our circumstances? Obiama’s epic novel really challenges one to think about these questions because the answers are not clear. We see a pantheon of choices for Chinonso, even to the very end of the novel. We experience his chi and his consciousness working to convince him against his most base instincts. But we also read the insinuation that what we call the baser instincts are not inherently human traits. We see Chinonso forgive, but also witness the power of memory, fear, anger, and frustration. We get no resolution to whether Chukwu will intervene in Chinonso’s situation. The epic tale is only his chi’s testimony.
“Peripatetic Wisdom”
One of the joys of this book, particularly as the incantations progress, is the wisdom of the chi. Each chapter starts with a fable, philosophical truth, or contemplative story, narrated by the chi. These moments in the novel almost serve as omens, but also present an intriguing juxtaposition of the novel: that even Chukwu (God) is not all knowing. Chukwu needs some reminders, some lessons and guidance about the human condition. A chi can provide such wisdom for Chukwu’s consideration. In Chapter 11, the chi calls such knowledge — drawn from the fathers, accumulated memory, and experience, “peripatetic wisdom” (p. 192). This is my favorite phrase in the entire novel. Peripatetic wisdom is cosmic. Here are just a few pieces of wisdom ushered by Chinonso’s chi:
· “I have lived among mankind long enough to know that loneliness is the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief. I have seen it many times” (p. 15).
· “I have come to know that when the peace of the human mind is threatened, it often answers with benign silence at first, as if stunned by a withering blow whose impact it must allow to dissipate” (p. 87).
· “The true state of a man is what he is when he is alone. For when he is alone some of all that has come to constitute his being — the profound emotions, and the profound motives of his heart — rise from deep within him up to the surface of his being” (p. 163).
· “Olisabinigwe, the great fathers say that when a man crosses into an unknown land, he becomes again like a child” (p. 175).
· “The men of your kin say that even a man who stands on the highest hill cannot see the whole world” (p. 306).
· “It has always perplexed me how a man’s mind sometimes becomes the source of his own confrontation and inner defeat” (p. 334).
· “The great fathers, in their esoteric wisdom, say that whatever a man desires to see in the universe, that he will see. . .if a man wants something, if he does not desist from pursuing it, he will eventually find it” (p. 338).
· “the head that stirs the wasp’s nest bears its sting” (p. 360).
· “Fear is a subaltern god, the silent controller of the universe of mankind. It might be the most powerful of all human emotions” (p. 427).
(Re)(Un)Learning
It is perhaps my early education that make books such as An Orchestra of Minorities and Black Leopard, Red Wolf (James, 2019) so compelling, enriching, enthralling, and necessary for my life. In high school, we did not read Romeo and Juliet. Rather, we read Julius Caesar and King Lear. We also read both The Odyssey and the Illiad. To this day, I have my worn high school copy of Seven Famous Greek Plays. Agamemnon, Antigone, The Frogs. I read all these tragedies in high school. In college, I took every Shakespeare class I could. Though now drawn to the ‘greenwood’ plays, in college I loved the tragedies. I early fell in love with the great epics, their long storylines, elaborate characters developed over hundreds or thousands of pages; their choruses and mingling of the human and more-than-human world. The psychological and philosophical questions such dramas and epics draw out are vital to our human experience. We need these stories, in all their forms.
In one of his opening incantations, the chi makes this point clearly. Epic stories are important parts of our cultural history, our learning, un-learning, and re-learning:
Every person must hear this. Tell it in the village squares, in the town halls, along the corridors of the big cities. Tell it in the schools, at the gatherings of the elders. Tell it to the daughters of the great mothers, so they may tell it to their children. Tell, O world, tell! Tell them this: in the end, there will be a reckoning. They must recite it like an anthem. They must tell it from the tops of the trees, on the tops of the mountains, on the pinnacle of the hills, along the river shores, at the marketplaces, in the town squares. They must say it again and again: in the end, it does not matter how long it takes. There. Will. Be. A. Reckoning. (p. 360).
Chinonso’s story is about a reckoning. Power. Oppression. Hate. Revenge. Fury. Forgiveness. Unrequited love.
I’ve had the good fortune of seeing both Chigozie Obioma and Marlon James speak in Houston about their books. In a talk at Brazos Bookstore on 19 January, 2019, Obioma spoke about what influenced his epic novel: his father’s love of Shakespeare. Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. Despite these influences, and their parallels with Obioma’s novel, his larger project is really about decolonization. A sub-theme in An Orchestra of Minorities is about the impacts of the White man’s colonization in Nigeria. At his talk in Houston, Obioma spoke of how “colonization has wiped out Nigerian’s view of anything African” (19 January, 2019). In the author’s notes, Obioma (2019) states An Orchestra of Minorities “is firmly rooted in Igbo cosmology, a complex system of beliefs and traditions that once guided — and in part still guides — my people” (p. 445). He goes on to quote Chinua Achebe, another great Nigerian author, who states the importance of this cosmological worldview and its use in novels as “draw[ing] attention to it in a manner appropriate to one whose primary love is literature and not religion, philosophy or linguistics” (Achebe, cited in Obioma, 2019, p. 445).
Thus, my ultimate conclusion is that though novels like An Orchestra of Minorities and Black Leopard, Red Wolf might naturally compare by Western audiences to many ‘world classics,’ and though the authors themselves might be greatly influenced by such works, these novels are really a form of (re)(un)learning. Decolonizing the Western canon, and for those of us educated in the West, ourselves, necessitates reading novels such as these. They are the epics of our time, but also of the timeless time of our species. Rooted as they are in African cosmology and folklore, they open new worlds to those of us educated in the West. Like the ancient epics, poems, and dramas on which we were raised, they ask the timeless questions. They provoke tremendous thought and pull on our emotions and psyche in profoundly tremendous ways.
What if these novels became the staples of our literary curriculum? Not to advocate replacing one canon with another, it is evident that authors like Chigozie Obioma and Marlon James (and likely many others whose works I have not yet read) are establishing themselves as the epic storytellers of our times. These are the wise fathers and mothers, relinquishing to us through these epic novels, wisdom on which to ruminate. I relish their work for its beauty, heart, passion, despair, and unparalleled examination of the human condition. Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities joins a short list of contemporary novels that I believe will become timeless classics, and which will certainly be carried in my psyche, heart, and soul for the remainder of this incantation on Earth.
A Few Additional Notes
· Obioma’s novel An Orchestra of Minorities was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. You can see him read an excerpt from his novel HERE. His previous novel, The Fisherman was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. You can read more HERE.
· Obioma recently appeared on a new app, Alexander, with a story about his days at university in Nigeria. The story, “When the Risen Dust Settles” is compelling, harrowing, and anxiety producing, but well worth the listen. Watch a preview HERE.
· Obioma’s (2019) novel An Orchestra of Minorities deals with many additional themes not covered in this review. I continue thinking about this novel’s discussion of religion, spirituality, tradition, modernity, and sexual violence. All these themes are also classic parts of the human condition, and are worthy of a reader’s consideration.
To learn more about additional themes of the book, check out the Rhizomatic Reader podcast Instagram account (@rhizoreader), where I highlight some additional quotes from the novel.
References
James, M. (2019). Black leopard, red wolf. Riverhead Books.
Obioma, C. (2019). An orchestra of minorities. Little, Brown and Company.
