Praise for Everything Good Will Come
Winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa
Finalist, Multicultural Fiction, Independent Publisher Book Awards
Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award—Honorable Mention
“A literary masterpiece... Everything Good Will Come put me into a spell from the first page to the very last... It portrays the complicated society and history of Nigeria through... brilliant prose.”
—World Literature Today
“Skillful … impressive debut novel…Thematically, her work is wide-ranging and yet powerfully focused, the different areas of concern drawn together so that they inform each other… Again and again Atta’s writing tugs at the heart, at the conscience. At the same time, reflecting the resilience of the Logosians whose lives she explores, humor is almost constant, effervescent, most often with a satirical slant… There are no delusions in Atta’s novel, no romanticisation or overstating of a case. Her work stands as a paean to her central character’s strengths and her determination to combat oppression.”
—The Sunday Independent (Lesotho, Africa)
Praise for News from Home
Winner of the NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa
“Atta demonstrates a fresh, vital voice in these 11 stories that move fluidly between pampered Nigerian émigrés and villagers grinding out a meager subsistence. Atta's characters are irrepressible… Atta movingly portrays these conflicted lives and gorgeously renders a wide spectrum of humanity and experience.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review and featured author interview)
“Nigerian-born Atta’s prize-winning novel, Everything Good Will Come (2006), was about a young woman’s coming-of-age in Lagos. Now Atta lives in the U. S., and this powerful collection is about the search for home… Never messagey, the wrenching contemporary stories are universal in their appeal and impact.”
—Booklist
“Sefi Atta's steady, quiet, and yet bold narrative voice is unwavering in its dedication to craft, originality, and last but not the least, truth. Truth, that is, in artistic rendition of our lives. (She) writes like one who has lived the life of each single character in her dazzling collection of short stories. The reader comes off with the sense of a story teller who is so in tune with the suffering and other life happenstances of her characters, that the reader is bound to find a commonality with them—be it cultural, psychological, social, or human.”
—Mohammed Naseehu Ali, author of The Prophet of Zongo Street
Praise for Swallow
“In Atta's spirited and large-hearted second novel (after the collection, News from Home), two young woman office workers navigate the rapids of the urban jungle of Lagos… Tolani's tale encompasses towns and villages, corruption and superstition, deceit and loyalty, all beautifully layered and building toward a wallop you never see coming.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Nigerian-born Atta, now living in the U. S., excels at telling stories of her native land, this time centering on bank clerk Tolani Ajao and Rose, her friend, roommate, and colleague at Federal Community Bank in Lagos, with interspersed accounts by Tolani’s mother, Arike, in her native village of Makoku… Atta captures the sights, sounds, and smells of her native land in the 1980s, with its War against Indiscipline in effect, as it straddles Western ways and native customs. A meandering novel with a painful punch.”
—Booklist
a bit of
difference
sefi atta
An imprint of Interlink Group, Inc.
Northampton, Massachusetts
First published in 2013 by
INTERLINK BOOKS
An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc
46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060
www.interlinkbooks.com
Copyright © Sefi Atta 2013
Cover image copyright © Funmi Tofomowo-Okelola 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic/digital means and whether or not transiently) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atta, Sefi.
A bit of difference / by Sefi Atta.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56656-892-0
1. Single women—Nigeria—Fiction. 2. Homecoming—Fiction. 3. Life change
events—Fiction. 4. Nigeria—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3601. T78B5 2012
813'.6—dc23
2012012204
Printed and bound in the United States of America
To order or request our complete catalog,
please call us at 1-800-238-LINK, or e-mail: [email protected]
For my father Abdul-Aziz Atta,
forty years in memoriam.
Reorientation
The great ones capture you. This one is illuminated and magnified. It is a photograph of an African woman with desert terrain behind her. She might be Sudanese or Ethiopian. It is hard to tell. Her hair is covered with a yellow scarf and underneath her image is a caption: “I Am Powerful.”
An arriving passenger at the Atlanta airport momentarily obscures the photograph. She has an Afro, silver hoops the size of bangles in her ears and wears a black pin-striped trouser suit. She misses the name of the charity the photograph advertises and considers going back to get another look, but her legs are resistant after her flight from London and her shoulder is numb from the weight of her handbag and laptop.
She was on the plane for nine hours and someone behind her suffered from flatulence. The Ghanaian she sat next to fell silent once she mentioned she was Nigerian. At Immigration, they photographed her face and took prints of her left and right index fingers. She reminded herself of the good reasons why as she waited in the line for visitors, until an Irish man in front of her turned around and said, “This is a load of bollocks.” She only smiled. They might have been on camera and it was safe for him, despite the skull tattoos on his arm.
I am powerful, she thinks. What does that mean? Powerful enough to grab the attention of a passerby, no doubt. She hopes the woman in the photograph was paid more than enough and imagines posters with the prime minister at Number Ten and the president in the Oval Office with the same caption underneath, “I Am Powerful.” The thought makes her wince as she steps off the walkway.
She has heard that America is a racist country. She does not understand why people rarely say this about England. On her previous trips to other cities like New York, DC, and LA, she hasn’t found Americans especially culpable, only more inclined to talk about the state of their race relations. She has also heard Atlanta is a black city, but so far she hasn’t got that impression.
At the carousel, a woman to her right wears cowry shell earrings. The woman’s braids are thick and gray and her dashiki is made of mud cloth. On her other side is a man who is definitely a Chip or a Chuck. He has the khakis and Braves cap to prove it, and the manners. He helps an elderly man who struggles with his luggage, while a Latina, who looks like a college student, refuses to budge