Stories of Social Realism, Existentialism and Psychoanalysis: Vaults of Secrets (2020)
Photograph courtesy of TheCable
By Ibrahim Nureni
“Whatever type of reader you are, opening a book with a story that touches a part of your life can be engrossing and comforting. Just because you can relate to the events that happen therein can bring on satisfaction with the writer’s ability to engage the human mind.”
—Olamide Babatunde
It is imperative to begin this review with the above quote which best describes Olukorede S. Yishau, a social realist-writer, journalist, and socio-political contributor, who has used literature as a constant critical vigilance to explore hopes, aspirations, and frustrations, and as a catalytic agent to resist and destroy the super-structural forces militating against the healthy growth and development of the society we live in.
Being a writer—and one who understands the dynamics of Nigerian society—Yishau is gradually becoming an illuminating searchlight in contemporary Nigerian fiction. His first literary and textual appearance is In the Name of Our Father (2018)—a religiously-inclined narrative with an atom of political subjugation. In the Name of Our Father uses the revolutionary potentials of literature to capture the overbearing religious and political realities of the post-modern African world. His writing sees religion and politics as money-laundering enterprises and as a tool of oppressing the poor and gullible minds. Through the eye of a courageous observer and journalist, Justus Omoeko, Yishau reveals that religion and politics are acidic to the development of Nigerian society.
Vaults of Secrets (2020) is Yishau’s latest and sophomore fictional story. It is a collection of ten short stories, each exploring the relationship between man, deceit, and the society. In the era where truth is abhorred and integrity is a vice rather than virtue, Vaults of Secrets stays relevant as we learn from the secrets and mistakes of characters such as Oluwakemi, Mr. Abassima Essien, Aunty Rebecca, and others. Having some elements of social realism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis (“the conscious,” “the unconscious,” and Oedipus complex), Vaults of Secrets charts a vibrant course and it textually articulates the fraudulent, ambivalent, and secretive predisposition of man in post-colonial Nigeria.
The belief that individuals are entirely free and take personal responsibility for their actions and inactions is one of the core tenets of Existentialism—a movement of literature and philosophy. Out of the ten brilliant tales in the collection, the story “The Special Gift” is laced with a number of existentialist perspectives. It subjects itself to the exploration of human existence and lived experiences within the world of absurdism. “The Special Gift” is a tale of secrets, conspiracies, religious hypocrisy, and mistrust unraveling the social decay in contemporary Nigerian society. To wit, the narrator reveals the secret intimacy existing between Mr. Abassima Essien and Idato, his house-help. In this scene, we comprehend Yishau’s ideology of religious hypocrisy as one of the vices in our post-modern society, thus:
When I open the master bedroom’s door, I was not prepared for the sight I beheld. Idato, the house-help, and Mr. Essien were naked. Idato was doing reverse cowgirl and she saw me immediately I entered and shouted “Jesus!” The occasions people invite Jesus to!” (p. 12).
In the same story, the narrator reveals the secret of his brother, who is married to Jane in Cape Town—and yet engaged in sexual intimacy with Oyebola, the woman who “abandoned him when things were rough” (p. 13).
Using a paradoxical title, “My Mother’s Father is my Father” is a literary appellation of the human mind and its complexities. It chronicles Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic leaning ranging from Oedipus complex, dreams, ego, and id, to psychopathology of everyday life. Using fictional characters, the story is a repressed emotion of societal imbalance—the Oedipus complex of this world where a man satisfies his sexual urge by impregnating his own daughter. The story is all about Williams, the narrator, whose mother’s father is, paradoxically, his biological father. Hence, William’s mother was raped by her father in order to consciously or unconsciously quench his emotional impulses and sexual desires.
The concept “superego” is reflected in the life of Williams’ father-grandfather as he is guilty, shameful and feels compelled to seek forgiveness, thus:
When Grandpa spoke, his barely audible voice was broken. All I could hear him say was that he was sorry. He called my mother by name and pleaded with her. He called Grandma by name and begged her. He stressed the fact that I must never know and pleaded with my mother and Grandma to keep me away from the shameful past (p. 29).
Despite many attempts to hide the id—a cauldron laced with seething excitations—from the narrator, Williams finally finds out the truth:
As I walked around the village, tears welled up in my eyes. My young mind was in turmoil. I had grasped the import that there was something shameful about my being. I eventually got tired of the tour and returned home to face the three people in my life who had chosen to make my life a lie” (p. 29).
As a psychoanalytical symbol, Williams continues to see “his father-grandfather” in his dream and this is a clear demarcation between him and his dysfunctional family.
“Otapiapia” belongs to the league of stories that revolves around sexual desire and social realism. The title’s etymology is from the Nigerian lexicon, meaning a locally-made insecticide that is associated with accidental poisoning. The story is all about Aunty Rebecca whose husband, uncle Solagbade, never creates time for the family. As a result, Aunty Rebecca seeks another alternative route to satisfy her sexual urge, thus:
The door creaked open only for her to behold a man and a woman scrambling to cover their nakedness. The woman was her precious Aunty Rebecca, her breasts jiggling like a bell…. ‘You must tell no one what you have just seen. You are a woman, and I am sure you will understand with time that when a woman’s needs are not met, she must find a way around it. My husband is never at home; he has no time for me. He thinks money is all I need, but I need more than that. I need him to be here (p. 65-66).
The story’s denouement has a karma’s view of cheating, as the leading character faces the music, thus: “I drank the otapiapia. I can’t live with AIDS. Take care of yourself” (p. 75). In this vein, Aunty Rebecca is a fictional character, representing a larger number of women experiencing the same issue in our contemporary Nigerian society.
On the whole, Vaults of Secrets is a powerful novel of secret and conscientization at a premium level, a stepping stone to social and revolutionary motifs. The collection of stories is a life cell that uses the elements of social realism, existentialism, psychoanalysis—and with a touch of witticism—to lament the social and political disorder and the secretive state of the world we live in. With this artistic credo, Yishau has made himself a whetstone, aiming to sharpen and remodel the social and political failure of the country, Nigeria.
Ibrahim Nureni lives and writes in a beautiful world; his philosophy is “the sky is big enough for all the birds in the sky not to collide.” He uses arts to soak boredom. When he is not writing, Ibrahim is somewhere in the world with a glass of wine and suya (spicy meat skewer). Follow him on Twitter @Nurenium.
