"Powerful and transcendent" --Chigozie Obioma
"Both epic and intimate" --Margo Jefferson
A deeply moving, lyrical journey through the author's homeland of
Nigeria, in search of the truth about his disappeared uncle and the
history of a war that shaped him, his family, and a nation
In inimitable, rhythmic prose, the author and winner of the prestigious
Windham-Campbell Prize Emmanuel Iduma tells the story of his return to
Nigeria, where he grew up, after years of living in New York. He
traveled home with an elusive mission: to learn the fate of his uncle
Emmanuel, his namesake, who disappeared in the Nigerian Civil War in the
late 1960s. A conflict that left so many families broken, the war
remains at the margins of the history books, almost taboo to discuss. To
find answers, Iduma stopped in city after city throughout the former
Biafra region, reconnecting with relatives dear and distant to probe
their memories, prowling university libraries to furtively photocopy
illicit books, and visiting half-abandoned monuments along the highway.
Perhaps, he realized, if he could understand how his father grieved the
loss of a brother in the war, he might learn how to grieve his late
father in turn.
His is also the story of countless families across the country and
across the world who will never have answers or proper funerals for
their loved ones. It's a story about the birth of an artist, about
writing itself as an act both healing and political, even dangerous. And
it's a story about family history and legacy, and all the questions the
dead leave unanswered. How much of the author's identity is wrapped up
in this inheritance? And what does it mean to return home, when the
people who define it are gone?
Equal parts memoir, national history, and political reckoning, I Am
Still With You is a profoundly personal story of collective loss and
making peace with the unknowable.
