num_pages: 240
description: Powerful and transcendent  Chigozie Obioma Both epic and intimate Margo JeffersonA deeply moving lyrical journey through the authors 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 nationIn 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 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. Its a story about the birth of an artist about writing itself as an act both healing and political even dangerous. And its a story about family history and legacy and all the questions the dead leave unanswered. How much of the authors 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.
language: English
title: I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History
publisher: Algonquin Books