The Opposite House: A Novel (Hardcover)

· Hardcover: 288 pages
· Publisher: Nan A. Talese (June 19, 2007)
· Language: English

Helen Oyeyemi may become the female Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, because of her depth as confirmed by the previews of her latest novel The Opposite House: A Novel (Hardcover) .

Book Description

In a dazzling follow-up to The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity.
Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja is a singer, in love with Aaron, pregnant, and haunted by what she calls “her Cuba.” Growing up in London, she has struggled to negotiate her history and the sense that speaking Spanish or English made her less of a black girl. But she is unable to find herself in the Ewe, Igbo, or Akum of her roots. It seems all that’s left is silence.
Meanwhile distance from Cuba has only deepened Maja’s mother faith in Santeria —the fusion of Catholicism and Western African Yoruba religion—but it also divides the family as her father rails against his wife’s superstitions and the lost dreams of the Castro revolution.
On the other side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, a Santeria emissary, lives in a somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya is troubled by the ease with which her fellow emissaries have disguised themselves behind the personas of saints and by her inability to recognize them.
Lyrical and intensely moving, The Opposite House: A Novel (Hardcover) is about the disquiet that follows us across places and languages, a feeling passed down from mother and father to son and daughter.

You should also check out her plays in Juniper's Whitening and Victimese (Methuen Drama) (Paperback)

· Paperback: 73 pages
· Publisher: Methuen Publishing (September 2005)
· Language: English


About the Author
HELEN OYEYEMI was born in Nigeria in 1984 and has lived in London from the age of four. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel, The Icarus Girl, which she wrote before her nineteenth birthday; The Icarus Girl was short-listed for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Helen Oyeyemi graduated from Cambridge University in 2006.

Interesting. Yicob wake up!

wow i loved icarus gal look forward to this book.

Helen Oyeyemi is the kind of role model for Nigerian girls. But most of them know Rihanna and Beyonce more than they know about this young heroine of our literary world.

Our TV reality shows should invite Helen Oyeyemi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Diana Evans, Sefi Atta and the other young geniuses to inspire the millions of young Nigerians.

I want a TV reality show where housemates can be challenged to read two to three titles of Nigerian novels by any of the above authors and then meet with them to discuss their books.

We know how to be copycats of American and British pop culture.
But we fail to be copycats of their intellectual and scientific passions.

Another young Nigerian, Folake Dosu is among the most extra ordinary young people in America, but no Nigerian TV, radio or print media has celebrated her even after I reported her news online. But Nigerian TV stations and companies are promoting erotic Hip-Hop competitions in Nigerian secondary schools, colleges and universities.
This shows how clueless most of our leaders and followers are.
Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).

Helen Oyeyemi's depth is awesome. She is going to be a great writer. A universal writer.
Our female Wole Soyinka.

Cant wait to lay my hands on the book-where can i get it frm?

how is she a role model when she says she isnt even african?

The magic of myths
Cultural confusion lives in 'Opposite House'

By CONNIE OGLE
First published: Sunday, July 8, 2007

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria and raised in England, and she has
explored cultural dissonance in two vividly impressionistic novels
that dabble in Yoruba mythology and Western horror. But at the moment,
the 23-year-old Cambridge grad is excited about another location: New
York City, where she's moving in August to start work on her MFA in
creative writing at Columbia University.

"I can't wait," she enthuses from her flat in London. "I like the city
so much. It's such a wild mix! All the neighborhoods and everything.
It feels like being anywhere but in one specific place at the same
time, if you know what I mean."


We do , well, sort of. But seeking a place that feels like home is
business as usual for Oyeyemi, a literary phenom who left Nigeria at
4, grew up on a council estate in a London suburb and, while studying
for her A levels, wrote "The Icarus Girl" about a child haunted by a
devilish, invisible doppelganger.

Oyeyemi revisits the themes of cultural confusion in the complex,
challenging and utterly thrilling "The Opposite House" (Nan A. Talese;
288 pages; $23.95), which links the stories of pregnant Cuban
immigrant Maja and the Santeria emissary Yemaya Saramagua.

Yemaya lives in the somewherehouse, a magical construct with one door
to Lagos and another to London. "I was completely obsessed with the
somewherehouse," Oyeyemi admits, adding that she found the goddess
much easier to write about than the reality-grounded Maja, whose
search for identity as a black, Cuban Londoner shapes the book.

Oyeyemi is quick to laugh at the idea that identifying with a powerful
entity reveals something personal. Like Maja, though, she faces
generational clashes with her parents, whose backgrounds are so
divergent from hers.

"I don't identify as African, and obviously that's upsetting to them.
It's really alarming sometimes. I will say things, and they will look
at me and think, 'What is she talking about?"'

:Q: How has your writing changed as you've grown?

A: I've become aware of the way my favorite books and writers
influenced what I wrote. With "The Icarus Girl" I was putting down
words and telling a story about what was going to happen next. I had
this breathless sort of "Then this happened, and then this happened."
In "The Opposite House" I was trying to become more of a stylist. I
was really thinking how I was putting sentences together. It was much
harder, because I'd left the story completely up to the characters.
, I felt as if I didn't know Maja at all. I'd have to think hard
about her; it was good to get to the goddess. I wrote both narratives
separately, the goddess one first and then the Maja story and hoped
they would be two stories about the same thing in the end.

Q: What fascinates you about myths?

A: I just think in myth the most real things happen. I kind of live my
life always expecting something strange and bizarre to happen. I was
brought up on a lot of these stories that always reinforced that there
was another world below or above or beside the world we live in.

Q: You've been quoted as saying multiculturalism in Europe is "a load
of bollocks." Why do you think that?

A: If anyone says "multicultural" to me I cringe automatically. Maybe
there is a multicultural London, but I haven't seen it. , Things get
really ugly, especially if you don't have much money, like at the
council estate I grew up on. People reject similarities and stay with
their own. , And stuff like that makes me worry English people are
complacent about how accepting they are. At least America accepts that
there are fractures.

Connie Ogle writes for The Miami Herald.

obong:

how is she a role model when she says she isnt even african?

She did not say she is not African, she said she does not identify as African. Which generally means that her thinking, behaviours, manners, attitude, way of looking at life/things is different from the way Africans generally do.

She does not identify herself as an African, yet she explores the themes of spiritism and mythology in her novels, beliefs that are deeply ingrained in the African society. And SMC is defending the writer that she meant that her "way of looking at life/things is different from the way Africans generally do.". What a bundle of contradiction!

must a role model be African?

I do agree with Ndipe about the divergent theme of her writings which obviously contradict her naysay.

how is she a role model when she says she isnt even african?

did she really say that?

n-gauge she did not say that.
she said this:

"I don't identify as African, and obviously that's upsetting to them.
It's really alarming sometimes. I will say things, and they will look
at me and think, 'What is she talking about?"'

obong drew a fallacious conclusion.
I've highlighted some key terms from that quote.

Ndipe:

She does not identify herself as an African, yet she explores the themes of spiritism and mythology in her novels, beliefs that are deeply ingrained in the African society. And SMC is defending the writer that she meant that her "way of looking at life/things is different from the way Africans generally do.". What a bundle of contradiction!

How is it a bundle of contradictions? Many non-Africans have explored and written about African myths, legends, customs, history e.t.c. The fact that she does not Identify as African does not mean she has no knowledge of or interest in her roots, and to suggest that if a person is not African (or even if we take the wrong interpretation offered by Obong and assume that Oyeyemi or any person retracts/denies their African heritage/roots), it will be either hypocritical or contradictory to their identity/ nationality for them to write about Africa, beggars belief.

How many non-africans have written on the subject of mythology in Africa, apart from Africans, sociologists, and perhaps, AA?

Ndipe:

How many non-africans have written on the subject of mythology in Africa, apart from Africans, sociologists, and perhaps, AA?

I cannot pretend that I know everyone who has written on subjects that are related to Africa whether they are African or non-African. I'm sure that you don't know either, so don't you start.

And by the way, I was not "defending" Oyeyemi. I was merely stating the obvious that Obong had mis-quoted her. I do not believe she needs any defending as she can choose to be whatever she likes. It is a free country and a free world.

SMC, it's not a free world o . freedom is a term used very loosely.

And by the way, I was not "defending" Oyeyemi. I was merely stating the obvious that Obong had mis-quoted her. I do not believe she needs any defending as she can choose to be whatever she likes. It is a free country and a free world.

i didnt quote her. i placed her words there for all to see. the woman plunders africans myths and history to give her writing exotica, but does not even identify with us despite being born in africa, having an african name and looking african. thats not a role model i want for my daughter, abeg.

she is free to do a she pleases, but let's call a spade a spade. they girl is lost.

did she really say that?

unfortunately she did. read the article above

SMC:

How is it a bundle of contradictions? Many non-Africans have explored and written about African myths, legends, customs, history e.t.c. The fact that she does not Identify as African does not mean she has no knowledge of or interest in her roots, and to suggest that if a person is not African (or even if we take the wrong interpretation offered by Obong and assume that Oyeyemi or any person retracts/denies their African heritage/roots), it will be either hypocritical or contradictory to their identity/ nationality for them to write about Africa, beggars belief.

how valid are her fictional approximations of the african spiritual/mythological experience if she does not identify as African? she sounds both hypocritical and contradictory to me.

She does identify as African but she just doesn't know it?

obong:

how is she a role model when she says she isnt even african?

She never said that. Period!

ziddy:

how valid are her fictional approximations of the african spiritual/mythological experience if she does not identify as African? she sounds both hypocritical and contradictory to me.

Like I said before, you do not have to be African to write about anything African. There is no contradiction in that. Soon you'll tell me that Ibo people cannot write about Yoruba topics and vice versa.

@ SMC the operative word here is identify. the meaning of that term African has been stretched too thin in today's global village for us to simply take it at face value.

this lady helen oyeyemi probably carries more than one passport and has had problems fitting-into the very ENglish society that moulded her into what she is today, if i understand the latter part of that news article correctly.

she's quite confused!

She is not confused, she is just running away from her roots. She was born in Nigeria, has an African name and her novels have an element of mythology in it. Yet disassociates herself from the continent. How can you defend her? Not me, not that I care in the first place. To think that Nigerians back home would look upto her as a "Nigerian writer", only to realize that this writer does not identify with them. Me, I have dual nationalities and term myself as a Nigerian-American. I cant deny one over the other.

Frankly I don't see anything alarming in what she said.

She was probably implying that she doesn't do as Africans do, hence the example of her relationship with her parents.

But the fact that she is promoted as a Nigerian writer says a lot I think.

''I speak with a british accent, I am british. I am not African, Africa is not developed''.
Thats what she meant. BULLSHIT.

That she is touted as a Nigerian writer is different from a person who actually regards themselves as a Nigerian writer.

But the fact that she is promoted as a Nigerian writer says a lot I think.
this is the biggest issue i have with our curent publishing regime. we have these british publishers telling us who is our on writer, even when the writer doesnt identify with us. i think we have a place for writers in the diaspora, but we should not fool ourselves into accepting them as the true voice of nigeria. should i ever become published i'd like it to be known the influence of the west and nigeria on me and not be marketed as an exotic nigerian writer

So, who has read the novel, "The opposite house"?

Ndipe:

So, who has read the novel, "The opposite house"?

I haven't read it, but it seems likely to be a good read (going by Orinkila and Obong's posts). What I don't get, however, is why we have to start arguing whenever the issue of a "non-African" writer of "African" stories come up; does it really matter if Oyeyemi is African (or, if you prefer, Nigerian) or not? If it's a question of promoting African culture, then we should applaud works that celebrate black heritage; the writer mustn't necessarily be African by decent. After all, several black African-born footballers have won the European footballer of the year (I'm a fan of the English premier league, by the way) and nobody complained, so why cry foul when the table is reversed?

Personally, I don't care two straws if Oyeyemi is made a symbol of African literature, her statements not withstanding; it'd probably spur us home-grown writers to do greater deeds - you know, snatch the baton from her.

Seffi Atta, yes. Chimamanda, yes. Helen Oyeyemi? I have tried to read that her book as many times as my fingers can count but I can't seem to get myself past the first 20 pages. I'm not going to be buying this Opposite house.

Good for her, publishing 2 books at her age but her book was B-O-R-I-N-G!