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Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com Abigail and defines her as a victim. Her relationship with her care worker, the only man with whom she truly glimpses her own identity, is vilified and taken away from her. The removal of this love is, it seems, crueller to Abigail than the brutalities she has endured. It is vital that the novel itself does equally reduce Abigail to ‘victim’, the passive casualty of events. Instead, Abani juxtaposes the blunt, indicative style of writing with Abigail’s own subjunctive voice, aching with imagination and wishes. Her passions are aroused mainly by the experiences she longs for, those she desires and craves to make her who she aspires to be. She is never simply hostage to her experiences. Like all of us, her behaviour is self-consciously modified. Abigail is a character who muses on her own character, without the Postmodern sleight of hand that might imply. Telling stories is what we do, Abani seems to argue, who we are. It is inevitable, inexorable, that Abigail works herself out in this way. Even in the most meagre circumstances, we cannot help but be human. Because of this, there is always some anchor to the flux, some kind of residual persona: “These things just happen. Ije uwa, as the Igbos would say. One’s walk in this life. Interesting that the Igbo don’t believe the path to be fixed, or even problematic. It is the particular idiosyncrasies of the player, not the deck or the dealer, that hold the key. Personality always sways the outcome of the game.” BUY Chris Abani books online from and I find it hard to be critical of a book like this. Its poetic density roots in the imagination and flowers, giving it a perennial afterlife. You live with it and Abigail’s memories mingle with your own. Which is, I think, the very interplay between identity and the fictional process that Abani is trying to achieve. Abigail’s character has an emotional veracity for us in the same way that she must deal with the processes of her own memory. Like the ghost of her mother, Abigail begins to haunt our imagination, which is a more effective way of dramatizing the horror of sex trafficking than browbeating us with atrocity and data. Our sense of loss is personal, our empathy more deeply entwined and Abigail is retrieved from a dehumanized roll call of names and numbers. We might think here of efforts to replace statistics with photographs and biographies of those who died in the Holocaust. Hope lies in trying to unthink the unthinkable rather than complying with a mathematics which makes it possible. This poetic meditation on identity is crucial to a deeper understanding of the full cost of human trafficking, which has implications for our tolerance for brutality disguised behind statistics. Becoming Abigail is a tough book that wishes to avoid false comfort to the reader. Yet in exploring the dynamics of its character’s psyche, it insists on hope. Towards the end of the book, Abigail reflects on her experiences in light of her cultural background: “Second chances are a fact of life for the Igbo. A 010 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com person who lived poor and was buried poor can, when a relative makes enough money, receive a second burial. Full of the pomp and grandeur reserved for the rich. So even in death, in Hades, the dead one can get a chance to taste the wealth that eluded him in his previous incarnation, perhaps sweetening the deal for his next one.” For Abigail, true wealth lies in a relationship of BUY Chris Abani books online from and equals, in being noticed as a person and not as a thing, in wanting to give rather than being forced to take, in becoming a human being against dehumanizing forces. We are like the rich relatives who can, by paying attention to the trafficking industry, eventually sweeten the deal for the women to come. By writing this novel, Chris Abani suggests how the Abigail’s of this world can be given a second chance. � 011 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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