Sanctificum

Sanctificum
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2013-06-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619320711

Chris Abani finds the sacred in a charged and broken world, to "build meaning from detritus."

Sanctificum

Sanctificum
Author: Christopher Abani
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2010
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1556593163

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.

Chris Abani

Chris Abani
Author: Annalisa Oboe
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 152614719X

This is the first full-length book on the work of ‘global Igbo’ writer Chris Abani. The volume dedicates a chapter to each of Abani’s fiction books, the two novellas Becoming Abigail (2006) and Song for Night (2007), the three novels GraceLand (2004), The Virgin of Flames (2007), and The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), which are read against the grain of Abani’s most important essays and poetical production. By combining close readings and more theoretical reflections, this volume provides a significant insight for both scholars and students interested in the literature produced by the emerging African voices in the twentieth-first century, in the debate about human rights, and in general in how aesthetics is deeply linked with ethics.

We Have Crossed Many Rivers

We Have Crossed Many Rivers
Author: Dike Okoro
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2012-07-31
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9788422888

We Have Crossed Many Rivers: New Poetry from Africa is a fascinating anthology of some of the finest contemporary poetic voices from twenty-nine African countries. Inspired by the examples of first generation African poets like Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Dennis Brutus, and Mazisi Kunene, the poets in this anthology display rootedness in, and preoccupation with, the discourses of identity and political freedom. At the same time, they engage the more contemporary themes of human and economic rights, governance, the natural environment, love, family and generational relations representative of the African continent. Poems from Tanure Ojaide, Yewande Omotoso, Reesom Haile and Frank Chipasula are inlcluded and in all there are contributions from 68 poets.

Smoking the Bible

Smoking the Bible
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2022-05-17
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619322544

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.

Hands Washing Water

Hands Washing Water
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2012-12-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619320703

“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.

Kalakuta Republic

Kalakuta Republic
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Saqi
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0863568785

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

The Virgin of Flames

The Virgin of Flames
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007-01-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780143038771

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.

Becoming Abigail

Becoming Abigail
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1936070200

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.

Controlled Decay

Controlled Decay
Author: Gabriela Jauregui
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1933354526

"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.