By Shania Russell
It was Thursday, March 12th, when the North Academic Ballroom of City College had a special guest. At as early as noon, the room was filled with the chatter of excited academics, students and just regular readers. Everyone present was looking forward to meeting and hearing from that particular day’s speaker, Chris Abani.
The author, public speaker and educator appealed particularly to those in the field of Black Studies — the campus organization that sponsored him as part of their Chinua Achebe series — and it was shown heavily in his speech. He spoke of the home he had came from, and the home he had made for himself here. He made particular points about differences in culture — and his main way of illustrating this contrast was through proverbs. While they are occasionally quoted here in America, the Nigerian author had personal experiences of growing hearing nothing but proverbs quoted by elders and even peers. Obviously, it rubbed off
Abani’s speech wasn’t only for Black Studies majors. It also had appeal to readers. He was there to promote his new novel, The Secret History of Los Vegas, and in doing so, answered questions about his writing process, name-choosing for characters and his books in general (he has written poetry, nonfiction, fiction, the whole gamut!) He even offered advice for writers — the kind of advice that couldn’t possibly be re-quoted when it was so eloquent in it’s original form. I will say this though — towards the end, Abani took his time to sign books for any and every person that was interested. Even those of us who didn’t have a book got a little note on our program, and a short chat. With the few minutes I had, I requested his personal favorite proverb and Abani told me, no one can outrun their shadows.
The Raven 