“It is not hard to return to Lagos from Nebraska’s flatlands—all I must do is walk.” It is impossible, of course, to make this daring journey on foot, and what Olufunke Ogundimu does exceptionally well is imagining a world that allows for this kind of movement, attesting to the urgency of reflection and confronting what we leave untouched in the dark. The boundaries of time and space are blurred, and one is seamlessly transposed from one country to another, past to present, old to new, while memory becomes a conduit to relive, question, and examine the interpersonal dynamics of one’s existence. In this story Olufunke considers what it means to leave one’s home, to survive in a new country amid fears and uncertainties, cultural shock and isolation, and the lingering and fervent sense of detachment and homesickness. Employing a braided structure and rain as a motif, she presents a world flooded with acute observations, emotional sensitivities, an unspoken longing, and an intense awareness of the human condition. It is jarring, fiercely vivid in its imagery, and surprising with its shifts in consciousness and how it loops together fragments of fiction and the autobiographical. Its meandering meditations do not eclipse the undercurrent of pain, the cultural and political commentary, and the precision and sincerity with which she writes. Reading this, my thoughts turned readily to what I know of Olufunke’s writings—stories set in Nigeria with the context of African culture and history looming large on every page—and what a leap she makes with this fresh piece. “Dead Man’s Run” is the first story she’s written that engages immigration and the matter of foreignness since her arrival in the United States in 2015. Beyond her curiosity and inventiveness in this artistic direction, what I find utterly compelling is her courage to treat the subject in such a riveting juxtaposition to her life before, to open herself to its complexities, and to deftly weave in her own witnessing and observations. One can easily get suspended in the writing, which is delightfully strange, unencumbered, and whimsical. Open-hearted and evocative, this story offers a rendering of the ghosts of one’s past, the mapping of childhood memories, and the layers of a self that awaken, navigate, and embrace the full force of change.
Dead Man’s Run
One of the ghosts I walk with is me. It lives the life I left in Lagos and continues to thrive as if I did not leave. This is the woman I see in my eyes when I stare at my face in the mirror, and when I let my eyes cry, my image of her blurs, and my vision of her life washes out of my mind, and it becomes a flood, then rain, before disassembling into water droplets. I wake up late; I have no reason to wake up early. Even at 10 a.m. the temperature has risen only a few degrees. The snow outside my window is gray and muddy and filled with holes made by many booted feet. I close my eyes again and invite sleep to come. It does not come. In cold, frigid Nebraska, the other ghosts I walk with are the ones I grew up with. They are flat—two-dimensional. I draw them with form but without depth. Their form comes from what I know—depth is too much work, and I do not want to find regret in them. But I seek these ghosts because they allow me to return home outside of time.
