Download or read book Sanctificum written by Christopher Abani and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Abani's fifth collection of poetry. Utilizing religious ritual, the Nigerian Igbo language, and reggae rhythms, Abani creates a post-racial, liturgical love song that covers the globe from Abuja to Los Angeles and explores the charged intersections of atrocity and love, politics and religion, loss and renewal.
Download or read book Hands Washing Water written by Chris Abani and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Chris Abani’s poetry resonates with a devastating beauty which cuts through to the heart of human strength.”—Pride Hands Washing Water is Chris Abani's fourth poetry collection—a mischievous book of displacement, exile, ancestry, and subversive humor. The central section, “Buffalo Women,” is a Civil War correspondence between lovers that plays on our assumptions about war, gender, morality, and politics. Sweetest Henri, I know we promised to be honest, one to the other, but your recent missive, though welcome as any epistle from you, filled me with a dread that clung like dampness to wet wood. I am terrified for your immortal soul, dear sweet Henri. This mad war of Lincoln is infecting you with a sickness too depraved to even address. . . Abani’s writing is ruthless, at times traumatic, and consistently filled with surprising twists and turns.
Download or read book Becoming Abigail written by Chris Abani and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breathtaking novella from the award-winning author of Song for Night and GraceLand. —A New York Times Editors’ Choice “Moody, lyrical prose reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s Beloved . . . Though the fictional Abigail exists only on the pages of Abani’s novella, her character will seize the imagination of everyone who reads her story.” —Essence Magazine “Becoming Abigail, a spare yet voluptuous tale about a young Nigerian girl’s escape from prostitution is so hypnotic that it begs to be read in one sitting . . . Abigail is sensitive, courageous, and teetering on the brink of madness. Effortlessly gliding between past and present, Chris Abani spins a timeless story of misfortune and triumph.” —Entertainment Weekly Tough, spirited, and fiercely independent Abigail is brought as a teenager to London from Nigeria by relatives who attempt to force her into prostitution. She flees, struggling to find herself in the shadow of a strong but dead mother. In spare yet haunting and lyrical prose reminiscent of Marguerite Duras, Abani brings to life a young woman who lives with a strength and inner light that will enlighten and uplift the reader.
Download or read book Kalakuta Republic written by Chris Abani and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful collection of poems details the harrowing experiences endured by Abani and other political prisoners at the hands of Nigeria's military regime in the late 1980s. Abani vividly describes the characters that peopled this dark world, from prison inmates such as John James, tortured to death at the age of fourteen, to the general overseers. First published after his release from jail in 1991, Kalakuta Republic remains a paean to those who suffered and to the indomitable human spirit. 'Reading Abani's poems is like being singed by a red hot iron.' Harold Pinter 'Abani's poetry resonates with a devastating beauty which cuts to the heart of human strength, survival and tyranny.' Pride Magazine 'Stunning poems ... Abani conveys the experience in words shaped into art and made unforgettable by their quietness.' New Humanist 'A beautiful work of art ... elevates art and humanity above meanness and inhumanity.' World Literature Today 'A brave and challenging book ... I was moved as much by what the poems have achieved as by what they have rescued from that nightmare world. Reading, I found myself in tears.' Sunday Tribune 'An unheralded chunk of authentic literature' New Statesman 'Abani's ...poems contain moments of grace, humanity and humor.' Susannah Tarbush, Diwaniya 'Chris has emerged with poems that are graceful pieces of art, almost ready to be hung in a gallery for others to come and enter them and rest in them and weep in them and admire them.' Kwame Dawes, professor of English literature, University of Columbia, South Carolina, USA
Download or read book The Virgin of Flames written by Chris Abani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the award-winning GraceLand comes a searing, dazzlingly written novel of a tarnished City of Angels Praised as “singular” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and “extraordinary” (The New York Times Book Review), GraceLand stunned critics and instantly established Chris Abani as an exciting new voice in fiction. In his second novel, set against the uncompromising landscape of East L.A., Abani follows a struggling artist named Black, whose life and friendships reveal a world far removed from the mainstream. Through Black’s journey of self- discovery, Abani raises essential questions about poverty, religion, and ethnicity in America today. The Virgin of Flames, a marvelous and gritty novel filled with indelible images and unforgettable characters, confirms Chris Abani as an immensely talented writer.
Download or read book Song for Night written by Chris Abani and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Luck, a West African boy solider who has not spoken for three years, fights in a senseless war and embarks on a terrifying yet beautiful journey to find his lost platoon.
Download or read book GraceLand written by Chris Abani and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2005-01-26 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Graceland is a dazzling debut by a singular new talent The sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria, provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis, a teenage Elvis impersonator hoping to make his way out of the ghetto. Broke, beset by floods, and beatings by his alcoholic father, and with no job opportunities in sight, Elvis is tempted by a life of crime. Thus begins his odyssey into the dangerous underworld of Lagos, guided by his friend Redemption and accompanied by a restless hybrid of voices including The King of Beggars, Sunday, Innocent and Comfort. Ultimately, young Elvis, drenched in reggae and jazz, and besotted with American film heroes and images, must find his way to a GraceLand of his own. Nuanced, lyrical, and pitch perfect, Abani has created a remarkable story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria where the trappings of American culture reign supreme. "A richly detailed, poignant, and utterly fascinating look into another culture and how it is cross-pollinated by our own. It brings to mind the work of Ha Jin in its power and revelation of the new."--T. Coraghessan Boyle
Download or read book The Secret History of Las Vegas written by Chris Abani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gritty, riveting, and wholly original murder mystery from PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author and 2015 Edgar Awards winner Chris Abani Before he can retire, Las Vegas detective Salazar is determined to solve a recent spate of murders. When he encounters a pair of conjoined twins with a container of blood near their car, he’s sure he has apprehended the killers, and enlists the help of Dr. Sunil Singh, a South African transplant who specializes in the study of psychopaths. As Sunil tries to crack the twins, the implications of his research grow darker. Haunted by his betrayal of loved ones back home during apartheid, he seeks solace in the love of Asia, a prostitute with hopes of escaping that life. But Sunil’s own troubled past is fast on his heels in the form of a would-be assassin. Suspenseful through the last page, The Secret History of Las Vegas is Chris Abani’s most accomplished work to date, with his trademark visionary prose and a striking compassion for the inner lives of outsiders.
Download or read book The Face written by Chris Abani and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nigerian-born author and poet Chris Abani gives a profound and gorgeously wrought short memoir that navigates the stories written upon his own face. Beginning with his early childhood immersed in the lgbo culture of West Africa, Abani unfurls a lushly poetic, insightful, and funny narrative that investigates the roles that race, culture, and language play in fashioning our sense of self
Download or read book Smoking the Bible written by Chris Abani and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning author of numerous books, Chris Abani moves between his Igbo ancestry and migration to the United States in poems that evoke the holiness of grief through the startling, central practice of inhaling an immolated Bible. Smoking the Bible is an arresting collection of poems thick with feeling, shaped by Chris Abani’s astounding command of form and metaphor. These poems reveal the personal story of two brothers—one elegizing the other—and the larger story of a man in exile: exile of geography, culture, and memory. What we experience in this emotionally generous collection is a deep spiritual reckoning that draws on ancient African traditions of belief, and an intellectual vivacity drawing on various wisdom literatures and traditions. Abani illustrates the connective geography between harm, regret, and release, as poems move through landscapes of Nigeria, the Midwestern United States, adulthood, and childhood. One has the sense of entering a whole and complex world of the imagination in reading this collection. There is no artifice here, no affectation; and these poems are a study in the very grace of image.
Download or read book Lagos Noir written by Jude Dibia and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A stellar cast of award-winning Nigerian authors . . . a must-read for crime lovers looking for something different.”—Brittle Paper In Akashic Books’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Now, West Africa enters the Noir Series arena, meticulously edited by one of Nigeria’s best-known authors. In Lagos Noir, the stories are set in “a city of more than 21 million and an amazing amalgam of wealth, poverty, corruption, humor, bravery, and tragedy. Abani and a dozen other contributors tell stories that are both unique to Lagos and universal in their humanity . . . This entry stands as one of the strongest recent additions to Akashic’s popular noir series” (Publishers Weekly, starred review, pick of the week). The anthology includes stories by Chris Abani, Nnedi Okorafor, E.C. Osondu, Jude Dibia, Chika Unigwe, A. Igoni Barrett, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Adebola Rayo, Onyinye Ihezukwu, Uche Okonkwo, Wale Lawal, ’Pemi Aguda, and Leye Adenle. “The beauty of this book, which contains 13 stories from Nigerian writers, is that it serves as a travelogue, too.”—Bloomberg, “The Darkest Summer Reading List for Those Bright, Beachy Days” “With writers like Igoni Barrett, Leye Adenle, and E.C. Osondu contributing, Lagos Noir offers wildly different perspectives on both the city itself and the state of noir fiction. This book is almost like a world in itself, one that you’ll want to dive back into and get lost in again and again.”—CrimeReads, “One of the 10 Best Crime Anthologies of 2018”
Download or read book There Are No Names for Red written by Chris Abani and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There Are No Names for Red is a collaborative work featuring the poetry of Chris Abani and the paintings of Percival Everett.
Download or read book Daphne s Lot written by Chris Abani and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rear cover blurbs by: David St. John, Ronald Gottesman, Joy Harjo, and Carol Muske-Dukes.
Download or read book Dog Woman written by Christopher Abani and published by . This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Abani's Dog Woman is a mesmerizing, haunting, and sometimes subversive exploration of the personal and cultural politics of disempowerment and power. In these heart rousing and lyrically complex poems, the poet enacts the reconstruction of his feminized selves, and his personae struggle to re-form and transform both themselves and the difficult worlds they inhabit. At turns, earthy, enigmatic, devout, outraged, and compassionate, these elemental women's voices ring true, as they sing siren songs, dirges, and hosannas, and as they navigate into new and unknown territories of human will and endurance. Dog Woman is a daring, trailblazing, and important book; it's a vital addition to the poetry of our times. - Maurya Simon, author of Ghost Orchid These poems reveal a prodigious imagination, which is enlivened by sardonic wit and an inexhaustible capacity for irony and empathy. Daring to span a historical continuum that takes us as far back as the rituals of Christ suffering, through the tragic history of the Mayans of Mexico, to the starkly modern concerns of contemporary life, these poems find beauty and grace in the most painful things. The achievement here lies in the poet's ability to bring an engaging. Intelligence to bear on the complexities of race, gender and memory. Abani's line has a sharp precision that turns a scream into a line of memorable lyric music without losing the emotion and force. That he does this again and again in poems of such vulnerability speaks highly of Abani's art. - Kwame Dawes, author of Midland
Download or read book Feed Me the Sun written by Chris Abani and published by Peepal Tree PressLtd. This book was released on 2010 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of imaginative and witty poems, this work displays astonishing energy; beauty of expression; and a range of reference to contemporary life, history, art, and literature. Including both meditative and narrative poems, this volume frequently focuses on extreme situations where compassion, love, and individual determination triumph against all odds. "Daphne’s Lot” explores the life of an Englishwoman, the poet’s mother, as she is caught up in the madness of the Nigerian civil war, while "Buffalo Women”--an epistolary sequence of poems--follows two lovers mired by the American Civil War. Through irony and empathy, this collection presents characters who are at odds with their societies.
Download or read book Masters of the Board written by Chris Abani and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Controlled Decay written by Gabriela Jauregui and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remarkable. . . . Gabriela Jauregui displays perfect pitch: Her lyrics are impressive in their scope, range, empathy--and especially their authentic passion."--Marjorie Perloff, author of 21st-Century Modernism Gabriela Jauregui was born in Mexico City. Her work has been published in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. She is a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California.
