Christopher Abani

“Chris Abani's poetry resonates with a devastating beauty which cuts through to the heart of human strength.”—Pride Hands Washing Water is Chris Abani's fourth poetry collection—a mischievous book of displacement, exile, ancestry, and subversive humor. The central section, “Buffalo Women,” is a Civil War correspondence between lovers that plays on our assumptions about war, gender, morality, and politics. Sweetest Henri, I know we promised to be honest, one to the other, but your recent missive, though welcome as any epistle from you, filled me with a dread that clung like dampness to wet wood. I am terrified for your immortal soul, dear sweet Henri. This mad war of Lincoln is infecting you with a sickness too depraved to even address. . . Abani's writing is ruthless, at times traumatic, and consistently filled with surprising twists and turns.

Hands Washing Water

Pieter Hugo

Stacy Hardy

Zina Saro-Wiwa

Photographer Pieter Hugo's images offer an look into Nigeria's thriving film industry. The Nigerian film industry is the third largest in the world, after those of the United States and India. Nigerian films often deal with the moral dilemmas facing modern Africans and tell stories familiar to African families - of religion, violence, AIDS, and economic hardship. Pieter Hugo documents the intense and incredibly colorful world of Nollywood from an unusual angle. His images are staged representations of Nigerian film sets, featuring local actors who recreate themes and characters from Nollywood films - young men in military fatigues; witch doctors, healers and saints; hunters with their kill; prostitutes in their rooms. The result is a series of surreal tableaux rooted in local symbolic imagery. Accompanying the photographs are texts by Chris Abani, whose short fiction piece captures the chaos of the filmmaking process, and an essay by Zina Saro-Wiwa on Nollywood's explosive growth and what it means to Nigerians. Presented in a simple and restrained format, Hugo's photographs aims to reveal a little-known phenomenon to a wider Audience.

Christopher Abani

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