Title:                         Why Women Won’t Make Heaven
Author:                     Dul Johnson
Genre:                       Short Stories
Publisher:                SEVHAGE Publishers
Year of Publication:  2018
No. of Pages:         140
Reviewer:             Eugene Yakubu

 

This electrifying title should already give you a sneak preview of what to expect in this collection: a lot of thrilling images and urban diction. Yes, it gives the reader just as it is— uncensored language with a fast-paced narration befitting an urban novel or action movie that has pipe-smoking characters, picked straight from the street and portrayed so realistically that you might as well look down the street if you can see one of them. Johnson’s collection is a break from the tired cliché that is African literature. And if I am to say just one word about this collection it’d be “Honest”. Yes! Honest. It lacks all the pretentiousness of the typical African novel – village setting, domesticated livestock, farming households, prudish communities and gossipy neighbors, like there is a single way to write about Africa.  This is contemporary, reconstructing the society as truthful as it could be.

Johnson has proven that there is no stereotypical way to write about Africa. Africa is the man and the man is how he sees his society. And this fresh effort here is how an ardent observer views his society from his lenses and which of course might not be totally similar with what other sees, but nonetheless, it is his own personal testimony. At least the local names, characterization and recognizable settings are enough reasons to say the author isn’t totally at a remove from his society.

Johnson has proven that there is no stereotypical way to write about Africa. Africa is the man and the man is how he sees his society.

The stories seem weaved together. Despite having different themes and settings and even characters, the stories all have a unique feel around them: A certain urban and contemporary atmosphere where fashion, passion, power, crime, and materialism is the driving force behind most of the actions and events. Thus, they are knitted together through the author’s unique style.

The story Why Women Won’t Make it to Heaven is satiric as well as amusing. The reader gets to laugh at a part of women’s behaviors that have never been so captured before as in this story. We see the capricious, naïve and, if you may say, simple attitudes that women have over fashion. The author captures the anxiety they show so well and the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder they exhibit when it comes to their physical appearance. The story is both amusing and instructive and shows the reader painstakingly went out of his way to reconstruct this part of women that most writers rarely cover.

Of special interest too is the emotional travelogue Laughing in Sadness where the reader gets to hear the history and anatomy of religious extremism and violence in Northern Nigeria. The narrator takes us through the psychology, sociology and even the economy of violence. It isn’t an accidental plot that sees the narrator trapped among elite intellectuals from different cultures and religions relating peacefully and enjoying each other’s company while the town outside burns in flames of bigotry. Within the intellectuals in the society, we can see a Christian referring to a Muslim as “brother” and vice versa whereas out on the street the common man is “lining the highway… faces painted red or black, all carrying clubs, cudgels and Dane guns”. The narrator proves that there is a certain level of tolerance and liberality that comes with intellectualism. Thus, where ignorance and intolerance draws a border with walls of religion and culture, education pulls down the wall and mends the bridge between different religion, culture, and even beliefs.  Laughing in Silence breaks the stereotypes we have of religion which even the narrator initially had prior to his journey to Katsina. He wouldn’t have believed that he would be trapped in a bus travelling to the far North with people of different religion in a time of unrest but his journey proved that religion isn’t the problem with the world but the religious, the extremists are the problem with the world. In this essay, the author philosophizes on religion and tries to reconcile the place of God in a sea of religion, the unique ideologies of each religion and the relationship they share with each other.

The writer has a certain professionalism with words that befits poets alone. The diction is creative, breaking rules and conventions, nonetheless making profound sense. The beginning sentence of Game Up is commendable. It is unimaginable how much the writer goes to defamiliarize his language and carve his images to have literary merit. This technique is what holds the reader spell-bound, filled with the writer’s words in his head all struggling to make meaning and which eventually makes sense. Game Up is a satire which portrays how much politicians need to be coerced to carry out the primary duties they’ve been elected into office to perform. The fact that the masses had to take the law into their hand to correct erring politicians signifies the needful revolution that needs to be implemented in Nigerian politics. In the story, Janko queries Abraham, their political representative ‘Abraham what do we elect you to do?” This, as portrayed in the story is what the people need to ask of their leaders. After Abraham went through the humiliation we learn that he decides to “fight tooth and nail to make Tilde the best village in the district.”

Johnson’s tales are socially conscious even though the style of narration isn’t adequately delivered on, the themes are worthwhile and the stories swirl around contemporary socio-political discourses, religion, power and love. So much for a nice collection, the author unfortunately hoards information, avoids describing settings and making the stories as real as they should be. In fact, the stories are bare, shunning elaborate developments of settings (spatial and temporal), adequate emotions and does more of “telling” the story than “showing”.  Nonetheless, I must commend him for his good, even standard dialoguing skills. The characters are always conversing, revealing their characterization and giving in detail where the narrator seems withdrawn from the story.

Dul Johnson’s Why Women Won’t Make it to Heaven is deliberately provocative. At least, the title is enough proof. Once in a lifetime, a writer got to write a book like this: A book that is honest to a fault and will shred the tiniest degree of pretentiousness. A book that will get heads poking, eyes squinting, feet jittery and hands rubbing brows, I believe this is it for Dul. I don’t know if the names of characters in the undauntedly honest story The Wedding are genuine but I can wager the voice, the emotions, the thoughts, are as real as the writer. This story (and by extension the collection) will be a lot of things for so many readers: daring, honest-to-a-fault, funny, sarcastic, accusatory and even presumptuous but it won’t change the fact that the writer has a big and accommodating heart which has not taken his friend’s love, callousness, carelessness, sometimes irresponsibility, dedication, support, betrayal, nonchalance, empathy, sympathy and indifference for granted. He appreciates the fact that their different personality is what makes them unique and that’s what keeps their bond as friends. At the end of the story, the author is left with not even the littlest grudge against his friends that the reader finally gets to release his breath to commend this good heart that can as well forgive and forget. Nonetheless, like the author, the reader leaves the story with the take-home point “If it must be done, do it alone. If you cannot, then it must not be done. If any others would come in, let it be on your own terms and by their own choice”.

This is a commendable effort and I think everyone needs to read this book. Everyone! Especially Dul’s friends and family. Though I would not call it the perfect book, I will call the author promising and I will go out looking to read more books from him.

 

 

 

Eugene Yakubu, creative writer and reviewer, writes from Kaduna.

You can order your copy of Why Women Won’t Make it to Heaven, Professor Dul Johnson’s short story collection by sending a mail to sevhage@gmail.com