Dreaming of Ways To Understand You: Bachelorhood, The Search for Love and Lagos Working Class anxieties.
If you want a good collection of short stories to surprise you, engage you, one from which a collection of music from Nigeria could be extracted from, one which carries Lagos and its anxieties like a coattail, one to make you laugh, then you must read Jerry Chiemeke’s Dreaming of Ways To Understand You
Reading Jerry Chiemeke’s debut collection of short stories, Dreaming of Ways To Understand You is the closest I have come in recent years to reading a book whose author I know in person, whom I am sometimes fond enough to call a friend. And it rubbed off on me in a very different way from other books I have read. There is always this tendency of defensiveness in the reading and writing industry where people are asked to critique a writer’s work and not the writer, for obvious and good reasons. But then if we are being honest, there is almost no way to see through a writer’s work without seeing him in them—particularly a work as varied as a collection of short stories mainly informed by experience. The poet alone has the privilege to be cryptic and indecipherable. But a writer who tells stories about people, about characters, tells us all about himself in his stories and it’s characters.
Reading Jerry Chiemeke in Dreaming of Ways To Understand You mostly felt like friend telling me a few dark, a few funny and a few surprising stories about the peculiarities of a young bachelor with a taste for love and life living in Lagos. The collection contained the unusual stories to shock you; and it heralded the stereotypical experiences with which one could relate. There was in many of the stories—a lingering in search for something the characters have not yet attained, particularly the search for love and companionship which is a constant in bachelorhood. The book also brings us in contact with scenes in the chaotic geography that is Lagos and a glimpse of the lifestyle of the populace bordering around the middle-class and working class. The book also explores sexuality—lesbianism in this case—which is a bit unusual for a man. The story is one of the stories I am sure readers of the book will have a lot of opinions on. And bearing witness to a generation of creatives, many of who began to hone their arts on the virtual space, I am struck by a very funny tale in the collection; of a group of creatives who somehow knew themselves, all of whom are caught in a web of their own humor—having individually been a subject of conquest of one woman. And there is Ugborikoko, written fully in pidgin which was initially published by the Johannesburg Review and widely shared and read on social media.
This is a book that is very much in touch with the working class reality of young people of the age, particularly but not limited to those who live in Lagos. It is a collection very original in its conception and written purely without aims to please or pander to western tastes. It is indigenous as it is original. Anybody who reads the book reads stories of an author who has been on the battleground of the Nigerian working class and middle class spheres and knows the intricacies which strings between both divisions. And like an old broom which knows corners, attempts to relay sweeping narratives from the fibres through which it is woven.
The storytelling in Dreaming of Ways To Understand You is simple and very easy to read. At the same time, it contains some poetic sentences which makes you stop and think. Like in every collection of short stories, some stories are better than some. There were parts where I felt like the editors missed a few typos, but they did an amazing job for not editing away the originality of the voice. Jerry Chiemeke is one of the important writers in terms of combining social culture and intellectualism while flirting with poetry. It shows in these stories. It is his most profound body of work yet. Yet, I am dreaming of Ways in which I know he will surpass these stories.
Dear reader, If you want a good collection of short stories to surprise you, engage you, one from which a collection of music from Nigeria could be extracted from, one which carries Lagos and its anxieties like a coattail, one to make you laugh, then you must read Jerry Chiemeke’s Dreaming of Ways To Understand You. It’s a book I have read and love so much.
