Learning Calabar: Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria

This book represents a close engagement with vulnerable populations in the city of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria. Following the traditions of Clifford Geertz’ thick description, Elliot Eisner’s arts-based research, and Laurel Richardson’s poetic inquiry, Learning Calabar weaves prose and poetry in a hybrid form that evokes the everyday lives of gate keepers, grounds keepers, taxi drivers, cooks, and children with whom the author interacted during a Fulbright year. From the stance of a participant-observer, it traces her learning of history and the evolution of her understanding as she lived, along with her neighbors, in the chaos of governmental failure, extended power outages, and dysfunctional systems, aware that her privilege offered protections not afforded to her neighbors. This work opens doors to a long sweep of Nigerian history, while keeping a laser eye on people living now in the aftermath of that history, which is both culturally rich and politically torn. Written from the viewpoint of a learner, this book will be of interest to learners of West African history, cultural anthropology, ethnography, women’s studies, cross cultural studies, and poetic inquiry. Its vibrant voice and poetic renderings also make it accessible and engaging for general audiences.

Table of Contents:
My Finger Inquires of the Map—Where? – Learning Calabar I – The Calabar Acrostics – Learning Calabar II – The Ekorinim Suite – A Place Called Biafra – Everything Depends Upon – The Children of Ekorinim – Mary Okoi’s Garden – Notes – Acknowledgments – Further Reading – Useful Websites – Catalog of the Acrostics – Index – Postscript.

About the Author :
Anne McCrary Sullivan was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Calabar in Nigeria. She has an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College, a PhD in English education from the University of Florida, and is Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies at National Louis University.

Review :
“In Learning Calabar: Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria, Anne McCrary Sullivan’s prose contains elements of the poetic and poems tell a good story. Her emphasis on being a learner in Calabar is crucial to understanding what it means for a white non-African to live in an African country. Above all, Sullivan communicates the respect and love she felt for the people of Calabar, particularly children and neighbors in the compound where she lived.” —Ann Folwell Standard, Bodies in a Broken World: Women Novelists of Color and the Politics of Medicine “Here is a work grown from the deep-going pleasures of learning. Like one of the gardens that nourished the visiting American and her neighbors in Calabar, Nigeria, sprouts and shapes and colors find new embodiment in the poet-naturalist’s eye and in her language, which opens the place, its people, and its hard history to us. In its textures and sounds, Sullivan’s inventive essays and poem-acrostics yield rich and memorable invitations to knowing.” —Deena Linett, What Winter Means and Translucent When Fired “With keen ethnographic observations, Sullivan teaches us about the human cost of political machinations through the use of poetry as witness and aesthetic response. These poems do more than instruct, though. You will want to spend some time with this gorgeous collection getting to know the Nigerians in Calabar through Sullivan’s strong poetic voice.” —Sandra L. Faulkner, Poetic Inquiry as Social Justice and Political Response and Poetic Inquiry: Craft, Method and Practice “Learning Calabar is a wonderful tribute to the people and place of Calabar, a major port for the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1600s to 1840, and the first capital of Nigeria, until 1906. In poetry and prose, with an open mind and an attitude of solidarity, Sullivan bears witness to the struggles and triumphs of her contemporary Calabar neighbors. The long poem ‘Mary Okoi’s Garden’ creates a striking portrait of working class ‘women’s power’ in a West African context.” —Ivor Miller, Calabar on the Cross River: Historical and Cultural Studies and Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba