By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer
Dr. Uchechukwu Umezurike, an English professor from the University of Calgary, came to SFU to share his new book. The SFU English department and the Institute for African and Black Diaspora Research and Engagement organized the launch. In the three-hour event, Umezurike celebrated his newly released book Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction: Receptivity and Gender. The Peak spoke with Umezurike to learn more.
“I feel deeply elated by the reception and support my book has received so far.” Umezurike explained that his positionality as an African immigrant makes him “keenly aware of how diaspora shapes [his] sense of place, belonging, and relationality in this country.” As a part of the English faculty at UCalgary, his research that “encompasses the literature of Africa and the African Diaspora,” connected to his current project. The book addresses “home and belonging,” and how African Canadian writers can challenge a rhetoric which “deepens divisions and polarizes communities.”
Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction: Receptivity and Gender analyzes some of Nigeria’s most well-known novels to understand their relationships of ethics and masculinity. “The book restates that what connects us most deeply is not social constructs but our common humanity,” Umezurike said. The book analyzes four novels that “portray characters who remain receptive to others’ pains, even as they challenge dominant norms and ideals of gender and sexuality,” and those “who identify with those living on the margins of society.” Through the examination of the “abused, abject, and outcast,” from these books, masculine identity can be redefined. Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction does “not engage with Canadian notions of gender and sexuality.
“We must learn to recognize and identify with the pain of others— regardless of gender or sexual identity.”
— Dr. Uchechukwu Umezurike
As Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction “asks that we allow a sense of shared vulnerability to shape how we relate to one another,” Umezurike mused “one can extend this to the Canadian or global context.” In Calgary, he cherished “the warm and thoughtful conversations had with the graduate students at SFU.” This dialogue reminded Umezurike that we must “keep valuing and affirming the study of literature and the humanities.”
When asked if literature complicates or simplifies attempts to understand multidimensional ideas which branch outside of linear experiences, Umezurike refuted the idea that literature “reveals how complex and layered these experiences are.” Literature “resists attempts to flatten our world into a formula,” and “asks us to think more deeply and compassionately about the many contours of human and nonhuman experiences.”
Where Umezurike suggested “reality cannot be reduced to binary, simple categories, or neat conclusions,” we can read Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction to understand how “kinship can transcend oppressive social norms.”
