Chris Abani, the Board of Trustees Professor of English, became director of the Program of African Studies in September.When he joined North-western in 2013, Abani was the first African to teach creative writing at the University as a full-time faculty member. He previously taught at the University of California, Riverside. One of Africa’s most distinguished and multifaceted artists, Abani is a novelist, poet, theorist, essayist, playwright, and editor.He has won many international literary awards, among them a 2001 Prince Claus Award (the Netherlands), the 2002 Imbonge Yesizwe Poetry International Award (South Africa), a 2008 PEN Open Book Award (US), and a 2014 Edgar Allan Poe Award (US). He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009.
Abani is a transnational writer respected across continents, but he is especially passionate about Africa. Born in 1966 in eastern Nigeria to an Igbo father and a British mother, he grew up during the Biafran War (also known as the Nigerian Civil War) of the late 1960s, a conflict that shaped his writing and sensitivity. Keenly aware of his heritage, Abani comes from an ancient minority culture (5000–3000 BCE), the Egu of the Afikpo region, believed to be the region’s original settlers and famed for fearlessness and artistic prowess.
At age 16, Abani published his first novel, Masters of the Board (1985), a thriller about a failed coup d’état; two years later that achievement landed him in jail for six months on allegations that the novel had been a blueprint for the overthrow of the Nigerian government. After his release he became involved in antigovernment guerrilla theater at Imo State University. He and many students of his generation saw themselves as part of the vanguard protesting against Nigeria’s unpopular military regime. His theater activities led to a second arrest and detention, this time for a year, at the infamous Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in Apapa, Lagos State. A fellow detainee was the musician Fela Kuti, who reportedly told Abani that “the truth is a risky business.”
This second detention only hardened Abani’s resolve. Not long after his release, he wrote the play Song of a Broken Flutefor his convocation at Imo State, which led to his third imprisonment, in 1990. After 18 months his friends bribed prison officials to free him, and soon after he went into exile in England for several years. There he received an MA in English, gender, and culture from Birkbeck College, University of London. After relocating to California in 2001, he completed an MA and PhD in creative writing at the University of Southern California.
His most famous novel, Graceland (2005), is an experimental story about a boy who becomes an Elvis impersonator in a Nigerian slum. The novel depicts abject poverty and violence in Africa. Abani’s other important novels include The Virgin of Flames (2007), set in Los Angeles, and The Secret History of Las Vegas (2013), a spy thriller that addresses the theme of identity in globalized urban spaces. He has written two novellas, seven books of poetry, a book of essays, and many articles. In addition, Abani is the founding editor of the Black Goat Poetry Series, launched in 2004, an imprint of Brooklyn-based publisher Akashic Books. Black Goat aims to publish aesthetically or thematically challenging work that mainstream publishers might find commercially unviable. The series promotes the work of emergent African and other non-American poets.
Abani’s appointment as PAS director strengthens the stature of the program. He intends to reinforce areas of interest identified by former directors and build further awareness of African studies across disciplines and research clusters on campus, in Chicago, and at other Illinois universities.
Read more about him here.
This article originally ran in the PAS Newsletter, Fall 2020, Volume 31, Number 1