Author: Atta, Sefi.
Title: Everything Good will Come.
Publisher: Farafina Lagos:(2005).
About the author
Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and has had most of her education in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although a Chartered Accountant, she is also a graduate of the creative writing programme at the Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in journals, including Los Angeles Review and Mississippi Review; they have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation. She is the winner of PEN International’s 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize, and in 2006, her debut novel, Everything Good will Come, was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Sefi Atta lives in Mississippi with her husband, Gboyega Ransome-Kuti. She has two novels to her credit- Everything Good will Come (2005) and Swallow (2008). She also has a published a collection of short stories entitled Lawless (2007). Everything Good will Come brought her fame and inclusion in the list of Nigerian authors who narrate their motherland from the Diaspora.
The Book
The primary theme of Everything Good will Come reflects Attas desire to project the woman as a survivor of the harshest conditions, vicissitudes and hurdles which characterise post-independence existence, and the wearisome atmosphere in contemporary Nigeria. Her central character’s education (formal and informal) and growth, therefore, function as a veritable launching-pad for surmounting the adversities that she encounters.
The novel captures a passionate and lyrical story through the eyes of Enitan who narrates the events that bedevil the country, her family, herself and the women who are close to her. It is a courageous story about friendship, family, ambition and self-discovery. The story which is told from a first person perspective (Enitan’s perspective) is one which is told from a child who eventually grows up to be a wise, self-conscious and assertive woman.
Sectionalised into four parts, the novel chronicles the heroine’s life and the activities that occur around her from childhood till adulthood. Each attests to a particular phase in the journey to Enitan’s self-discovery and realisation, a journey which begins with departure and ends in no-return. Each of these sections also situates the character’s experiences within the time frame of 1971, 1975, 1985, 1995 and the experiences of the nation as an entity. These sections reveal the heroine’s closure on the hinds of self-discovery, freedom and fulfillment. As Atta’s story unfolds, different stages in the country’s socio-political life are imaginatively captured. Domestic crises and tensions in Enitan’s immediate environment are mirrored. The author did not only critique these tensions, overtly and covertly, but also presents the reader with the platform on which her heroine’s sensibilities are developed.
Everything Good will Come beams its searchlight on the smallest unit of the society which is a microcosm of the larger society. As a result, the Nigerian government, Enitan’s constantly feuding parents, her friend (Sheri) and her boy friends come under Atta’s scrutiny and criticism. Enitan and other female characters in the novel portray the twenty-first century Nigerian woman caught in the restrictive and contradictory demands of traditional mores and norms introduced by Westernisation. Atta’s novel seems to question the extreme and erroneous aspects of traditionalism that are stifling to women, while she questions the move from traditional norms of nationhood to the individualistic, capitalist orientation which attend this.
In what looks like a terse opening of the novel, the narrator (Enitan) introduces herself as a novice and gullible child. Enitan says:
“From the beginning I believed whatever I was told, downright lies even about how to behave, although I had my own inclination” (p.1).
By projecting herself as credulous, Enitan sets us on a pedestal through which her growth, self-realisation and assertion could be gauged as the story unfolds. Nevertheless, her careful observation and participation in life furnishes her with courage and makes her the assertive heroine we see at the end of the novel. Atta does not mince words in betraying her objective as a creative writer; instead, she critiques the mega-and-micro systems in Nigeria which unfortunately are defined by their dysfunctional nature. This and the predicament of the woman in post-independence Nigeria underscore Atta’s discourse of motherland from the Diaspora.
Although Enitan gives the details of the information she obtains from the activities she sees around her and other adult conversations, her meeting with Sheri, the girl next door, is of great significance, as it marks her transition to an entirely new stage of life. The following conversation between Enitan and Sheri reveals a lot about how children perceive things that would later shape their lives:
“I want to be something like… the president”
“Eh?” “Women are not president”
“Why not”? “Our men won’t stand for it.
Who will cook for your husband”
“He will cook for himself”
“What if he refuses?”
“I’ll drive him away”
“You can’t” she said.
Yes I can. Who wants to marry him anyway?” (p.33)
This conversation later helps in shaping Enitan’s life. Later she becomes aware of the political landscape of Nigeria and how it affects the woman. Sheri is exposed to things higher than her age and that’s why her disapproval of Enitan’s dream of becoming the nation’s president is no surprise. Sheri has been thoroughly brainwashed by the patriarchal influences in her young life.Their association leads to a greater transformation of Enitan from a naïve and ignorant girl into a knowledgeable woman.
Enitan learns about her sexuality from Sheri and begins to grow from this point. In an attempt to find out what Sheri means by sex, Enitan looks at herself: “I dragged my panties placed the mirror between my legs. It looks like a big slug” (p.35). All efforts by Enitan’s mother to stall this relationship with Sheri failed and this makes her father angry with Enitan’s mother. The father therefore asks: “What is this? She can’t make friends anymore” Again he says, “You’re her mother, not her juror” (p.40).
Coincidentally, it is a man(her father) who made Enitan realized that she can be anything she wants to be as well as take charge of her life whatever way she can, hence awaking a revolutionary spirit: “anyone who bullies you beat them up” (p.42). Armed with her father’s instruction, Enitan at the Royal College became wiser and experienced. She met girls from different backgrounds.
“I learned also about women in my country, from Zaria,
Katsina, Kaduna who decorated their skin with henna dye
and lived in purdah; women from Calabar who were fed and
anointed in fattening houses before their weddings; women
who were circumcised. I heard about towns in western Nigeria
where every family had twins because the women ate a lot of
yams, and other towns in northern Nigeria, where every other
family had a crippled child because women married their first
cousins. None of the women seemed real. They were like mammy
water, sirens of the Niger Delta who rose from the creeks to lure
unsuspecting men to death by drowning.” (p.48)
Conversely, all the major male characters in Atta’s novel, but for a few exceptions, display one moral flaw or the other and an imbalanced gender perspective which accounts for their insensitive treatment and denigration of the “other” sex. Even though a man like Barrister Sunny claims that he is for the liberation of women, his treatment of Arinola (his wife) speaks volumes of his genuine position as the story unfolds. Entian herself describes men as “Beaters, cheaters, lazy buggers” (p.237)
There are other issues bordering the stereotypical view of the woman as ascribed by the writer however Atta’s narration of the motherland from the Diaspora brings out the enduring strength of an African woman, specifically, the Nigerian woman. She has not only highlighted the appropriation of social, gender and economic caste as a means of subjugation in contemporary Nigeria, her feminine perspective may be conceived as a betrayal of her natural involvement in gender polemics, nevertheless Atta through this book reveals to the world the beauty of being a woman and accepting womanhood as a gift from God.
