A. Igoni Barrett’s novel Blackass opens with the lines, “Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep.” Readers familiar with the works of Franz Kafka can note the similarities between this line and the opening of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Like Kafka’s novella, Furo Wariboko wakes up to find that his body has changed into something else overnight. Furo realises, “He was white – full oyibo, no doubt about it.” He sneaks out of his parent’s house and lights out for his new life in this different skin. Despite the job that he is able to obtain, and despite meeting a girl named Syreeta, Furo learns at the end of the novel’s first section that his ass is still black.
Including the opening section, the novel is divided into six sections. They deal with Furo’s story of a black-man-now-white in Lagos, yet to varying degrees. Barrett introduces in the second section a writer named “Igoni”. He is interested in Furo’s story after reading about his disappearance from Furo’s sister’s tweets. Igoni, as the name suggests, seems to be a character based on Barrett, the writer. As Michael Schaub notes, the two share lines are nearly identical to the words Barrett spoke in an interview. Igoni, the character, transitions into a woman during the course of the book, and she, like Furo, faces challenges that movements into the world of another human being inevitably bring forth. The character Igoni notes, “Despite the snake that still tethered me to the past, I was more than man, interrupted.” Lines like these, rich with potential readings, fill the novel.
Two readings pop into my mind. For one, there’s the obvious phallic symbol of the snake. That she cannot change this part of her body would grant a similar sentiment to the ass that Furo cannot change in that the private that you sit on cannot be removed from what is viewed by the public. Then there’s the Eden view of the snake that might relate to one reading the text as an ‘African’ rewriting of Kafka’s European-orientated text. Here, one could argue that if the female body had not always been corrupted by the patriarchal forces tied to the colonial encounter, then she might have been more able to live a freer present life. Both, I’m sure, will grant nuanced readings of the text. Yet, at least to me, a novel whose central questions seem pointed towards other ways of knowing calls for a different approach to such symbolism.
Igbo phrases fill the text, so perhaps a reading can be conducted on the connection between sexually ambiguous deities whose iconography is often associated with snakes. Nmuo Mmiri or Nne Mmiri might be an appropriate figure because of her association with snakes and her role in the Igbo universe. Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu notes that prayers to her are followed by the phrase “ka uzo anyi buru uzo mmiri”, meaning “may our journey follow the path of the stream” as she is the one who “guides people to exotic lands”. I cannot claim expertise in Igbo mythology. Still, there seems to be evidence in the text to suggest a connection.
Furo first meets Igoni, the character, at a coffee shop in a mall. Igoni offers to buy Furo coffee at a store where the “majority of the table were occupied by oyibas.” He associates this with why he had never stepped foot in a place “too exclusive for someone unemployed.” Whiteness, here, is connected with employment. Though regulations in Nigeria do not stipulate being white as necessary for employment, social baggage carried from the racism embedded in forces like colonialism means that this is still too often the case. That Furo can gain employment after waking white merely confirms the presence of racist discourses.
Yet the novel presents the unique challenges of living as an oyiba in Nigeria. For instance, Furo is often unable to hail a taxi. When he can, he is charged exorbitant fees. This points to how contemporary Nigeria is still driven by racial discourses that rely on assumptions of the other. Just because Furo now has white skin does not mean he is any more qualified for the job, as much as it does not mean he has the wealth to afford expensive taxis.
The complicated sentiments that are attached via race from birth are seen in the statement, “No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.” Race is that which the world projects onto the skin of the body from birth, regardless of the person. Yet, as something which affects all humans, the question as to why the world, made of racialised individuals, remains.
An answer to such a question is challenging to anyone, so rather than answer why, Barrett seems to suggest a way of life. The text notes that “it is easier to be than to become.” Suppose racial and gender stereotypes become your daily experiences from the body that you live in. In that case, it is not because of some innate part of your body but because of who society has made you become.
Reading Blackass as a take on Kafka’s The Metamorphoses becomes a bit more complicated than rewriting. This is not just because Kafka’s text is always already that which is being written, but also because promoting a reading where Kafka’s text does not exist is fruitful. Reading texts as being their own way of becoming – maybe with a colonial rewriting and maybe with precolonial mythology – and not that which becomes overwhelmed by a reader’s own weight, so that it crushes the potential of both the text and the critic, seems best for a novel like Blackass. Reading the text as being all it can be without having it become satire or social commentary would still be a reading of a text profoundly mythical and insightful or whatever it might be that being human with this text is.
Interested in more review? Consider reading the following:
Kris Van der Bijl 
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