Chidima Anekwe is an emerging writer hailing from the old coastal town of Stratford, CT. She is a recent graduate from Yale University with a B.A. in English Language & Literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. For her work, she has received support from the SAEF Grant and the DuPuy Prize, and has been nominated for a MacNelly Award for Literary Arts. She writes to explore new postcolonial poetics and Black feminist existentialisms within contemporary American girlhood, usually with a satirical bent. She has read for The Yale Review and edited for DOWN, a BIPOC-centered webzine, among others. She is currently based in CT and gaining experience in NY.
Biafra Song
I’m in Connecticut and weeping for a place I hadn’t known the name of until too few years ago. My parents kept Biafra like a secret love child. They cared for her but worried she’d disturb the peace in the family. She did. Now their legitimate daughter has become too angry to return home. Eziokwu, the Wikipedia articles made my eyes see red. I won’t go back to Igboland until it’s Biafra again. I want it to be Biafra again. I am a child again, closing my eyes tight during a family party I didn’t wish to attend, hoping that when I open them once more I’ll find I’ve been carried home in my feigned slumber. I am lazy. I am impotent. They are protesting again, in Kaduna and Zamfara. The news is reporting three have died. Human rights groups report a dozen have been killed. A post on my Twitter feed: 50 murdered in cold blood. I believe the Tweet and I see red again. Britain created this and they’re pleased with what they’ve done. They harvest the oil money and make us kill each other. Of course Independence was a lie. They couldn’t even let us have Biafra. But the Igbo genocide did not take my grandparents and I won’t take this fact for granted. And so I promised myself to sing the song of Biafra, out of principle. Or maybe out of spite. I can no longer tell the difference between the two. I ordered a Biafran flag off Amazon and hung it in my room. Then I hated myself for it. Jeff’s company repulses me and I don’t believe in flags now and I didn’t believe in flags when I ordered it either. Or nationalism. Or maybe nationalism is alright when it is that of a postcolonial nation. I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now either. I don’t think I like tribalism. I wonder if it must be the solution. I wonder if I will only ever wonder. I used to want to be an academic of some sort, so people would have to call me doctor and I wouldn’t have to go to medical school for it because I hate the sight of blood. And my parents would say ezigbo nwa and parade me around the family party and everyone would laugh and agree how educated Igbos are. I read the Chimamanda book about Biafra and there were academics that would all sit around a nicely furnished living room and eat and drink and talk politics and theorize revolution. I found myself resenting these characters. They needed to leave the house. Now I don’t want to be an academic anymore. But I haven’t left the house. I hate the sight of blood. They don’t have Igbo on Duolingo and they didn’t offer it at my college like they did Yoruba and so I’m trying to have my mother teach me twenty-odd years too late. My mother tongue. I always liked that phrase. My mother. Whose language I did not learn as a child because I wanted to be more like the people who drew the borders they knew would condemn my people to death. Make us run away to their safe havens just to be spit in the face. But I will spit out the lies spoonfed to me by that Berlin-bred project and make myself sick till it’s all out. It doesn’t take much effort. Now all I ever feel is sick. I hate the sight of blood.
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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
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