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"Gods of Noonday"... Brilliant memoir by a daughter of medical missionaries growing up in Nigeria through colonialism, independence, and civil war – 'Time is only the river of memory.' Best Creative Non-Fiction Book of 2003. -- MaximsNews.com, News Network for the International Community.
SEBA Book Award Nominee, Creative Non-Fiction, 2004
-- Ranked # 2 by the Independent Booksellers of America for University Press Books in 2003.
National
Public Radio, Book of the
Week, The
Spoken Word,
interview aired February 2004.
Elaine Neil Orr at the Ethiope River, Nigeria
Interview with author, Elaine Neil Orr, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Truly
learned, incredibly fascinating, Elaine Orr's Gods of Noonday melts the
Atlantic divide.” Toyin Falola,
Nelson Mandela Professor of African Studies, University of Texas
“The
thoughtfulness of ‘Gods of Noonday’ toward its subjects and Orr's lush
writing style make it one of this year's outstanding nonfiction books."
-- The Courier-Journal/Louisville, KY
“Poignant,
funny, and often excruciating, . . . but it is her description of the people,
especially the Yoruba and the many places that…come most alive." The
Tennessean/Nashville,
TN
"It's hard not to think of Doris Lessing while reading Elaine Neil Orr's Gods of Noonday. Like Lessing, Orr owes her essence to Africa." Pam Kingsbury, Southern Scribe
Order on-line below.
Excerpts from
On the River
“Always I was
stunned to see that any earthly thing could be so constantly new, so fresh, so
gorgeous as the Ethiope [River].
Nothing you could tell me about Jehovah was equal to the proof of
divinity provided by the mere existence of so lovely a river. And so I worshiped it.”
***
“David and I loved to cross the river against
the current, pull ourselves up on a tree on the opposite shore, and launch
ourselves with a rope swing out over the water.
Occasionally a boy from Abraka would join us – though we
might not speak – and he would climb farther up the tree that we did, and rather
than swing out on the rope, he would dive straight down into the water. We might have said to him: Brother, like the lizard that fell
from the top of the iroko tree without hurting itself, you deserve
praise….”
***
“Sometimes during the Christmas season, the British would
visit “our” landing, but they ignored our river etiquette. The men were loud and wore very brief
swimming suits. Not only that,
their stomachs were large as beach balls.
They wore gaudy gold wristwatches and drank beer and said Bloody this and
Bloody that. I can’t even remember
the women; there was no room for them in my vision after I had taken in those
men. Always I thought of the
British in Nigeria as foreigners, whereas we Southern Baptist Americans
belonged.”
***
“At that moment I was whole, amazed at the
beauty of the river, its greenery and sand like small compounds underwater, its
brilliant sleek fish with the electric colors of blue and yellow and
orange. I have never felt less
alone than I did then, in the river, headed upstream. Just above my head, a canopy of
over-hanging trees, perhaps a family of monkeys, red-capped mangabeys, watching
my movement, those swift noisy foragers who love the oil palm nut.”
***
“I experienced my first orgasm in the Ethiope, lying
on an inner-tube in a small inlet where the current pressed gently against my
body. It felt as if a spirit were
stirring between my legs and then there flowered between them a feeling as red
and frilled and elegant as the flower of a gloriosa lily.”
***
“In my life now I distain most American
waters. Pools are lethargic and
smell of chloride. Lakes are opaque
and dusky. The ocean is boisterous
and threatening. Still the beaches
of the Atlantic are my favorite place in America because from there you look out
over the ocean knowing this water touches the shores of West Africa. O blessed water! O lucky shores!”
***
In America
“Anyone who thinks MK [Missionary Kids] life is about the
trauma of landing in Africa without prior knowledge of culture and country
doesn’t know anything about MK life.
West Africa will take you in. The trauma is coming to America, which will
not. It was an American songster
who asked how it feels to be without a home. To be on your own. Like a rolling stone.”
***
Elaine Neil Orr (r.) with older sister, Becky, making the trans-Atlantic journey on the African Patriot in cow-girl outfits !
“I never regretted departing the U.S., not once, not even a little bit. America was like a dress you try on at a store, thinking it looks nice on you or it would in a certain light. But when you get home, you realize it is wrong; it won’t do at all.
So you sip punch and talk lightheartedly with other girls at the refreshment table – the servers – and you laugh too much. And finally you slip out, knowing that nothing can be worse than when the best you can hope for is that no one noticed you, not even your parents.”
***
“In a dream, I am at the river but the water
is not cold and the current is too tame.
I swim upstream and am just reaching out for a branch to hold me when the
current increases and I am sent downriver.
Suddenly everything is unnatural. Police officers patrol the shore. The
river becomes narrower rather than wider.
And then the shores are concrete and all the foliage is cut down. The river is merely a channel now. I flow with it into an American city
where the channel divides into four smaller ones, all paved with concrete. I try to head back upstream but even
after trying every channel I cannot find the way back to the river as it
was: unhindered, cold, wide, and
green.”
***
“After the coup, a pogrom burned against Easterners in the North. A story emerges of a woman arriving back in her village holding only her child’s severed head. Her hands will not let it go. She caresses the cheeks and pats down the eyelids. I do not know if the story was a fact or a metaphor or both.”
***
“After a short ride, the vehicle stopped and all three men
were ordered down a footpath into the bush. When they come to a stream, they are too
weak to cross so they are carried.
Finally, they are commanded to run farther down the path and they hear
the shots as they are falling.
I know the landscape along the road outside of Ibadan and I know it was the rainy season. I can see this scene more vividly than I would like: Ironsi’s large body stripped, the broken places on his skin as if he has been painted, his ears still soft and perfect but his eyes swollen shut, his feet surprised by the coolness of the ground, the foliage from the trees swatting against his battling arms, his backward glance at his attackers, his relief when finally they fired.”
***
“Near the end of the year, Rebecca’s father showed up one day, packed her few things, and stowed her away. Perhaps he had to leave the country because of the war. I don’t know. We Baptists weren’t going anywhere. But I saw Rebecca get into that official-looking van with USAID standing upright across the side and she cruised down the circular drive just like that without leaving a forwarding address or even a fingerprint.”
***
“One night that summer, my father called me to come
outside. When I did, he was looking
up at the sky with his glasses on and his tilted back and he informed me that
the first men had landed on the moon and we should look up at the sky and so we
did. Of course, it looked no
different for having been recently colonized. I could not see the American flag.
But the next day many Nigerians from the hospital and from
town came by to salute us on our moon landing; they came as they often did, not
riding their bikes but walking beside them.
There was also the man in Biafra, however, who asked an
American why it was that his country could put a man on the moon but could not
get food to hungry people in the East.
‘Why is that?’ he wanted to know.”
***
“And so the Biafran War is my Vietnam, the war that shaped
my youth, the war I saw in sudden absences and read of in the headlines, the war
I witnessed in burned-out vehicles by the road, the war that made JoEllen a
refugee and gave me names I will carry forever: Gowon and Ojukwu, Ore and Uli.”
***
“The war killed two million civilians and over one hundred
thousand soldiers and thousands died after the war was over; many more were
wounded.”
***
“I began high school in Decatur, Georgia.”
“In Decatur I became aware of racial tension in our high
school, something I had never encountered before. In fact, it was in Decatur that I first
saw ‘black’ people.”
“I overheard my sister talking with our mother about
visiting the grave of Martin Luther King Jr., and somehow it became clear to me
that during our last tour in Nigeria, he had been killed.”
***
“Time is only the river of memory.”
“Such a separation creates a sharp division in your soul.”
“When someone speaks to you about some issue of the
day, you stammer and call yourself
back over highways and rivers and paths but your return is listless and
insincere.
You never turn to the present entirely. Doing so would be a betrayal.”
Elaine Neil Orr (2003)
Elaine Neil Orr was born in Nigeria in 1954,
the daughter of American missionaries. At four-year intervals, her family came
to the U.S. on leave but otherwise she grew up on compounds in Nigerian towns,
leaving the country at age sixteen.
She is an award-winning
teacher and professor of English at North Carolina State University and has been
the recipient of grants by the NEH, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Orr is also the author of two scholarly books and numerous essays in such
journals as The Missouri Review, Modern Language Quarterly, The Louisville
Review, and Southern Cultures.
She has one son, Joel, and lives in Raleigh, N.C., with
her husband, Andy.
Elaine Neil Orr, elaine@social.chass.ncsu.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To order Gods
of Noonday on-line, please visit Amazon.com
Or University
of Virginia Press: www.upress.virginia.edu/books/orr.html
For more complete
information about the book and the author, please visit: http://www.elaineneilorr.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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MAX STAMPER & ASSOCIATES
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