ABSTRACT

This chapter examines a novel that, in many ways, picks up the narrative thread that Chris Abani leaves poignantly hanging at the end of GraceLand. The latter FRQFOXGHVZLWKWKHLPDJHRILWVSURWDJRQLVW(OYLVSRLVHGWRÀHH1LJHULDDQGHQWHU WKH8QLWHG6WDWHVXQGHUDIDOVHLGHQWLW\7KLVXQFHUWDLQ¿QDOVFHQHXQFRPIRUWDEO\ evokes the precarious global mobility of marginal urban migrants whose successive experiences of displacement accumulate to a harmful and alienating GHJUHH$V(OYLV¶LGHQWL¿FDWLRQZLWKWKHO\QFKHG¿JXUHLQWKH-DPHV%DOGZLQVKRUW story he is reading in the airport departure lounge suggests, his next destination is riven by its own histories of violence and discrimination, which evoke and intensify the hardships that he has already experienced in Lagos.