| Chris Abani: Award-Winning Nigerian Author to Speak at CSUDH
At the age of 16, Nigerian author Chris Abani was accused of masterminding a political coup because he wrote a political thriller, Masters of the Board; he was subsequently imprisoned because of the book. He will speak about his award-winning work on April 25 at CSU Dominguez Hills at a reception and book-signing, celebrating his 2004 novel, Graceland.
Molly Youngkin, assistant professor of English, was impressed when she heard him read at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and who was instrumental in making the decision to bring Abani to campus, in order to revive the Pat Eliet Lecture Series, held in memory of Patricia Eliet, former professor of English,who taught at CSUDH from 1969 to 1990.
“Graceland is about the influence of American culture on Nigerian life and the struggle to maintain native Nigerian culture under that influence," she says. "The cross-cultural issues that Pat Eliet was interested in really come out in that book.
“Many students have read Abani’s work in their classes and hearing him read it is a reinforcement of what they’ve experienced in the classroom,” she adds. “It brings the work alive in a way that doesn't happen in class when you don’t have the writer there.”
 Sponsors of the event include CSUDH’s Department of English, the Honors Program, Associated Students, Incorporated, and the College of Liberal Arts.
Helen Oesterheld, assistant professor of English, describes the upcoming event as “a campuswide effort, although we’d like to make it reach even wider. We want to really get everyone here excited about bringing back the lecture series.”
“Although we’re dealing primarily with writers, it’s certainly something that people from other disciplines would be able to relate to,” Youngkin says, “especially because it deals with cross-cultural issues.”
Graceland is the story of a Nigerian teenager who aspires to work his way out of the ghetto of Lagos, Nigeria, by performing as an Elvis impersonator. It was awarded the 2005 PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) Hemingway Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for The 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2005 Best Book Category (Africa Region) of The Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Abani is an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside and also teaches in the M.F.A. program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.
Oesterheld points out the value of such events for students with an eye on a creative career.
“Students need to come in contact with people who are working and making their living as artists, because many of them have artistic aspirations and would be inspired,” she says. “Beyond that, they know that people are living and laboring for their art. They get so much out of that assurance that these voices continue to be heard and celebrated.
“Another thing that Abani does sometimes is play his saxophone at the end of his reading,” she continues. “He’s also a musician, and it raises interesting questions for students about the blending of different types of art and disciplines, and how you can enrich one kind of text or art by using another one.”
The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Welch Hall D-165, and will be followed by a reception and book signing in the University Bookstore, located in the center of campus. Welch Hall is east of parking lot 3, accessible from the Tamcliff Street-Toro Center Drive entrance from East Victoria Street.
Parking permits are $3 and are available from the yellow dispensing machines at the perimeters of the parking lots. CSUDH is located at 1000 E. Victoria Street, off Avalon Boulevard between the 91 and 405 freeways, east of the 110 freeway from 190th Street, which becomes East Victoria Street.
For more information on Chris Abani and his work, visit
http://www.chrisabani.com/.
- Joanie Harmon
Photo above: Assistant professors of English Helen Oesterheld (left) and Molly Youngkin; photo by Joanie Harmon
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