Tope Folarin: A Particular Kind of Black Man

By Kemi Seriki

A Story of A Nigerian-American Struggling Between the Worlds of Race, Identity, Assimilation and his Cultural Heritage

Tope Folarin is a First-generation Nigerian American born in Utah to a Yoruba father and Igbo mother. I first came across Folafin’s work in 2013 when I read Miracle, a short story of Nigerians congregants in an evangelical church in Texas as they assembled to witness the healing power of a blind prophet who came from Nigeria to the United States perform Miracle. The story was captivating and so original that it captured the premises of the Nigerian Evangelical church in the United States. As the tale mirrored, Nigerians are praying for Miracle for every challenges that comes their way. “We need miracles”- for jobs, for green cards, for an American passport, new kidneys, new lungs, new limbs, new hearts, for children to listen to their parents and parents to accept that their children are America. After reading Miracle, I was looking forward to reading Folarin’s future work. The Miracle earned Tope Folarin Caine Prize for African Writing. Folarin graduated from Morehouse, and he later went to the University of Oxford, where he received two master’s degrees as a Rhode Scholar.

If you close your eyes to facts, you will learn through accident ~African Proverb

The familiarity of the Core Issues

A Particular Kind of Black Man was published in 2019 as a novel and fiction. Still, according to Folarin, during some of his interviews about the book, he indicated that the story of the main character Tunde Akinola is a partial account of his own life experience. A Particular Kind of Black Man is the story that reflects the life of a Nigerian immigrant young couple whose hopes and dreams were shattered by unanticipated American reality. The book echoes many African immigrants’ experiences as Tunde’s family battles with racism, identity crisis, mental illness, emotional challenges, loneliness, and poverty. Like many African immigrant children who experience loneliness and lack of connection with their blackness, Tunde and his brother were not immune to such experience. Tunde was struggling with his identity and he could not fully develop to his true self due to his family situation. Tunde looks towards his father for guidance and assurance as he struggles with his identity. When Tunde talks to his father about his blackness and his struggle with his identity, father resorted to the usual African immigrant parents’ advice “if I worked hard enough and became successful, people would want to be like me.” In retrospect, how could an immigrant parent with immigrant experience raise a black child in a racially instituted society was the question the Tunde’s father could not answer or provide guidance to his son.

Tunde’s father moved to America with his wife after gaining admission and offered a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Weber State University in Utah. Even though other relatives have moved to America but reside in different states, they wanted a new life and opportunity to engross themselves in American culture. Tunde’s parent assessment of American society came from music and movies they were exposed to in Nigeria. The couple thought they were coming to a country where all races “lived together in love and harmony.” They knew nothing about racial inequality in America and racial segregation in America. Utah was the least racially integrated state in America with a heavily Mormon population.

The book begins with a dreadful passage of an old white woman who, without his parent’s knowledge, accompanied five-year-old Tunde to school daily and extensively queried him about his family. When she departs from him, she says, “Remember, if you are a good boy here on earth, you can serve me in heaven.” These morning meetings was the beginning of Tunde experiencing racial biases, and he was not even aware of it. Tunde was constantly ridiculed by his classmates, who touches his hair and rub his skin to wipe away his color. Tunde asked his father why his hair was kinky, and his brown skin would not wash off. Without awareness of what it is to be black in America, the only advice the father could provide his five-year-old son was to lecture him on the “importance of pride and meaning of self-respect,” a concept that may be difficult for a child of such age to grasp. To further analyze the family’s situation, the father may not have provided emotional support to his son as needed because he was wrestling with his wife’s mental illness and the lack of job opportunities in his field of mechanical engineering. A father with such resilience and an optimistic approach towards life challenges endured setbacks and difficulties, but he never gave up on himself and his family.

Racism is the Burden

Tunde’s father completed his engineering degree, and despite his relentless efforts, he was unable to find a job in his field. He resulted in low paying jobs familiar to many immigrants to provide some forms of financially for his family. He worked as a mechanic, a janitor, street sweeper, a security guard, and at one point, he launched his own business selling Ice cream from the truck. Father hoped that many of these jobs might later provide an opportunity for him to move up the ladder. Still, he ends up disappointed when he was fired without explanation or quit due to biases and racism he experienced. Father could not connect that his lack of job opportunity in his engineering field may have to do with his skin color and African heritage. Father felt that his Nigerian accent might have contributed to his lack of success in finding a job in his field. He determined that his children who do not inherit such a foreign accent would have a better chance of success in America. Father exposes his children to books. Father regularly tells Tunde and his brother to watch television shows in which successful black men such as Bryant Gumbel and Sidney Poitier were featured. These were the black men who were widely accepted by mainstream American society. Tunde studied the mannerism these individuals presented when they are on TV. The title of the book “A particular Kind of Black Man” came from the images of black men on television Tunde and his brother Tayo saw growing up. At the time, Tunde did not know that he was being raised to be a particular kind of a black man who would be accepted by white Americans and a non-threatening well-behaved man. During his formative years and before he went to college, Tunde never have the opportunity to discover what brings him joy, what makes him cry and, most notably, his inner essence. As Tunde gets older, he found such a particular black man was not the man he wants to become.

Mental Illness and the Shattering Family Unit

Father could not have predicted that moving to Utah, where there were no friends and family or a place where no other people of color, could have triggered his wife’s mental illness. After having two children, the mother began to display symptoms of mental illness. Her moods became unpredictable. One moment, she was a nurturing mother, and in another moment, she becomes verbally and physically abusive. Without familiar support and limited financial resources, the mother deteriorated further into schizophrenia. As the mother began to show symptoms of her illness, she became reclusive, hostile, and delusional. Father seems confused and helpless as his wife shows the signs of mental illness. Tunde and his brother were worried about their mother’s unusual behavior, and they turned to a father who appeared confused about the family predicament. Father could not explain the situation to his children, and he resorted to a bland statement by saying, “mom wasn’t feeling like herself, but that everything would soon be OK.”

Without her husband’s knowledge, the mother woke up one morning and told Tunde that she was taking him and his younger brother on an adventure. She parked a few belongings and fled from the only home that was familiar to the children. Mother moved with her children to a family shelter in Salt Lake City with a social services assistant. While at the family shelter, she never could find relief from her demons. The children witnessed several symptoms of mental illness, including depression, inapt emotional reactions, paranoia, confusing thinking process, and suicide attempts. The mother once overdosed with her prescription pills and passed out in front of her children. She abused the children both physically and emotionally as Tunde bears the brunt of the physical abuse. As Tunde recollected, “When she beat me, she would sometimes call me by my father’s name. I didn’t know how to respond, and when I tried to tell her that I wasn’t my father, she beat me harder”. She would say, “stop denying yourself.” Tunde noted that his mother would say this in between slaps. A few months later, Tunde’s father was able to locate his wife and his children. He gains custody of his children, and the mother relocated back to Nigeria. Tunde and his brother were traumatized by all these experiences and after the mother left, the father resumes his fatherly function. There was no discussion about the trauma the family experienced or father conscious of the children’s trauma and how it may negatively affect their emotional ability.

No Back to Ride-On

An African proverb says, “A child on its mother’s back does not care if the journey is long.”

Tunde and his brother had no back to ride on since his mother’s departure, and even when his father remarried and brought the new wife from Nigeria, he continues to wish that his mother was around. Tunde reflected on his relationship with his mother in the novel, but the memory of his mother was tainted. The memory he had about his mother was full of physical and emotional anguish. How can such a child as Tunde, whose desire for his mother’s love, finds a sense of who he was when his memory, which is the source of his foundation, was tarnished? Without the maternal nurturing that he so craves, Tunde finds it challenging to connect with who he is, resulting in a continuous struggle with his identity throughout the novel.

Certain attributes are common in the African parenting style, where parents are emotionally distant to openly discuss the family tragedy, family issues, and emotional struggles with the children. It is done to protect the children’s feelings and welfare, or sometimes, parents may feel children may not understand what the adult is battling. Throughout these ordeals and the family dynamic continue to changes, the father didn’t have a thorough conversation about the family’s emotional struggles. Even though he regularly affirms and expresses his love for his children, the father didn’t communicate any of these challenges with his children. There was no conversation about the mother’s sickness and why she left for Nigeria or the reason father traveled to Nigeria. Father did not have a conversation about his new wife from Nigeria, who moved in with her sons. Tunde devoted his childhood and his young adult life to pursuing an inner connection with himself as he struggles to find peace in the turbulence life he experienced as a child. Although he was born and raised in the United States, he grew up as an immigrant in the country of his birth.

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Conclusion

Folarin brilliantly crafted the story of immigrant parents and the complications that the first generations go through and informing their uniqueness. The book is a short read and, most importantly, engages the reader’s interest to the end. This book is highly recommended for both young readers and adults, and especially, it could be a conversation starter in the African immigrants’ community.