In Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile, Lolá Fábòwálé reminds that language is a living thing that joins and connects even when it speaks of distances.
In the title itself, we see this playing with language and a distinct understanding that words have a power to express even as they also have the power to alienate. Described by the poet in the text’s preface as “a remembrance of and reflections on contrasts of life and living in both her native land (Nigeria) and adopted country, Canada,” Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile marks a journey in search of place, self-actualisation, and the reality of hereness.
As the title suggests, and as the preface alludes to, in the play and contrast of the word “F’Orile,” there is a sense of “country,” “nation,” and “home,” a sense of joining, and also a search for equivalency and a forging of new paths from far-traveled language roots.
In “Section A,” Fábòwálé highlights this sense of contrast and continuation through poems such as “Yetunde” which speak thematically to ideas of reincarnation, but also force English readers to grapple with, see through, understand, and accept the Yoruba language.
In the poem’s cyclical theme of “Mother’s return,” the language used serves as a literal return—as well as spiritual—each time it is spoken and read. These themes of time in relation to the body—to the cultural and language holder—are further echoed in poems such as “Plea to Mama” in which generational time is compressed in the question “what makes an adult of me?”
In “Section B,” the personal and political continue to grow and condense as Fábòwálé addresses key global concerns such as race relations, poverty, homelessness, international development and refugee rights and concerns. Here, again, language has been played with to show both similarity and differences as the poems “Rule of Law (I)” and “Rule of Law (II)” place Nigeria and Canada side-by-side. Using a consistent structural form between both poems, Fábòwálé serves to describe the historical and political differences between both countries, but further, creates a linguistic extension between both nations so that the border separating these histories and concerns is nothing more than a reader’s breath, the time it takes to turn a page. Both Nigeria and Canada are made distinct—both are made into a single poetic place.
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In “Section C,” Fábòwálé moves from vibrant Nigeria, to a merging, to an often-cold Canada, on a trajectory that builds to expose the quiet and often hidden gaps in Canadian culture. In the poem “Let us Remember,” Fábòwálé cleverly and astutely points to the hypocrisy that exists in the myth of Canada’s own ethos and ego. The poet carries the theme of connection here to instead discuss the “unraveling” of the Canadian “united fabric” that comes from interrogating its own domestic responses to racism and the assurance that the country is a joined society.
The anthology ends with the poem “A maple leaf’s seasons and cycles” and specifically, the lines: “Even moribund!/That mash returns/Part of what was, is,/And might be.” Thus, even in the evocation of a point of dying, Fábòwálé refuses to create a closure and instead ends on a cycle of language, story, and meaning, that is set to continue just as the phrase “might be” leaves open the possibility of further possibilities.
As such, while the anthology may be ordered in a linear and Western fashion through the use of the Arabic writing system, through Fábòwálé’s use of language and playing with words, space, and time, Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile serves as a poetic triumph that speaks to concepts far larger than its seemingly ordered contents and structure.
The works evoke foundational language theories such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the Chronotope—a literary form which speaks to space-time and bridges plot, narrated events, and the real world.
Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile is a testament to a creativity that is embedded in the inner linkages with temporality and locality, and where something new and fresh emerges from concrete and specific contexts that demand to be seen as current daily life and which cannot be confined to the past.
Book review
Title: Nostalgia and Tears F’orile
Author: Lola Fabowale
Reviewer: Sarah Perkins
Publisher: Kraftgriots Books Limited
Pagination: 92
