I Am Still With You
A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this “epic and intimate” memoir (Margo Jefferson, author of Constructing a Nervous System), acclaimed writer Emmanuel Iduma returns to Nigeria to investigate the disappearance of his uncle and confront the truth about a war that shaped him, his family, and a nation: “Quietly brilliant” (Vulture)
A FINALIST FOR THE ZORA NEALE HURSTON/RICHARD WRIGHT FOUNDATION LEGACY AWARD ** NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND TIME MAGAZINE
In inimitable, rhythmic prose, the author and winner of the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize Emmanuel Iduma tells the story of his return to Nigeria, where he grew up, after years of living in New York. He traveled home with an elusive mission: to learn the fate of his uncle Emmanuel, his namesake, who disappeared in the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. A conflict that left so many families broken, the war remains at the margins of the history books, almost taboo to discuss. To find answers, Iduma stopped in city after city throughout the former Biafra region, reconnecting with relatives dear and distant to probe their memories, prowling university libraries to furtively photocopy illicit books, and visiting half-abandoned monuments along the highway. Perhaps, he realized, if he could understand how his father grieved the loss of a brother in the war, he might learn how to grieve his late father in turn.
His is also the story of countless families across the country and across the world who will never have answers or proper funerals for their loved ones. It’s a story about the birth of an artist, about writing itself as an act both healing and political, even dangerous. And it’s a story about family history and legacy, and all the questions the dead leave unanswered. How much of the author’s identity is wrapped up in this inheritance? And what does it mean to return home, when the people who define it are gone?
Equal parts memoir, national history, and political reckoning, I Am Still With You is a profoundly personal story of collective loss and making peace with the unknowable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art critic and journalist Iduma (A Stranger's Pose) delivers an immersive memoir about his uncle and namesake, who disappeared during the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s. Iduma, an Igbo who was born and raised in Nigeria, wades through murky family history following his father's death in 2018, drawing on family interviews, visits to war sites, and academic research to piece together his uncle's last days and reveal the connection between his death and the political upheaval in Nigeria at the time. Iduma's uncle, who enlisted in the Biafran Army just before the war started, was killed after providing cover for his comrades. As Iduma grapples with his own grief, mirrored by his father's losses, including the death of Iduma's mother when he was a child, he wonders "how to transfer a man's consciousness to those he leaves behind." Throughout, Iduma reflects on the power of family to both unite and divide, and as he weaves his background into Nigeria's historical tapestry, he acknowledges how his heritage is reflected in his uncle's story ("to be Igbo in Nigeria is to be a victim," he concludes), eventually finding peace in his uncle's choice to sacrifice himself for others. Iduma's unraveling of the past is bound to leave readers eager to uncover their own family secrets.
