Varied Identities In Chris Abani's Graceland

This article seeks to demonstrate how Chris Abani has created fragmented self and identities through the structure of his novel GraceLand (2004). Both the structure of the novel and the multiple urban spaces involve the reader with the displacement and the search for the identity of the characters. Furthermore, the present essay would point out that globalization in Nigeria has led to the economic exploitation of the poor and has caused the commodification of the body of the local Nigerians. The novel GraceLand is about the life of the protagonist Elvis between the late 1970s and the early 1980s in Afikpo and Lagos. In this novel, the reader is confronted with global concerns such as the abuse of power, poverty, child abuse, and organ trafficking
According to Nnodim, GraceLand depicts that people have a dialectical relationship with multiple and fragmented spaces and they gave meaning and shape to each other (322). Through the description of the ghetto of Maroko and also the city of Lagos, Abani gives the reader the image of poverty, death, decay, and despair. Moreover, the novel gives a multidimensional perspective of Nigeria when Elvis talks about the city of Lagos as “half slum, half paradise. How could a place be so ugly and violent yet beautiful at the same time?” (Abani 7). For the first time in his life, Elvis was confronted with the vulgarity of urban life and the harsh reality of poverty:
The people who didn’t live in Lagos only saw postcards of skyscrapers, sweeping flyovers, beaches and hotels. And those who did, when they returned to their ancestral small towns at Christmas, wore designer clothes and threw money around. They breezed in, lived an expensive whirlwind life, and then left after a couple of weeks, to go back to their ghetto lives. (Abani
Redemption, who worked as a local dealer, never had a proper education and was hardly ever at school. He believed in order to become a millionaire one should “think like a millionaire” (Abani 54). To Elvis, “it sometimes seemed like Redemption knew everyone, heard everything and could produce anything, for a price” (Abani 25). Elvis loved Redemption like a brother he never had. He was the one who encouraged Elvis to leave the school and to follow his dreams. Redemption also wanted to leave for the United States. Once he told Elvis that “States is de place where dreams come true, not like dis Lagos dat betray your dreams” (Abani 26). Redemption also found different jobs for Elvis and made him involved in drug and organ