Interrogating cultural work performance by Linda Masi’s fine dreams

Book Cover and Praise for Fine Dreams. Credit: University of Massachusetts Press

Linda N Masi’’s debut novel, Fine Dreams, was published in March 2024, one month shy of the 10th year since the 2014 abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria. In the novel, which spans 2015 to 2017, with a prologue captured in 2014, Kubra’s mother, Sadau Fatai-Ehis, the administrative vice principal of St. Thomas Memorial School in Kasar Lafiya, is aware of the Chibok girls’ abduction incident. She warns her colleagues about how they must take precautions so that the same fate does not befall the students in their school (chap. 1).

Even though her daughter, Kubra, is dead, Sadau is concerned about the safety of all the other students and of her daughter’s friends—Aquamarine, Grace, Gaddo, and Safiya. But the teenaged girls are not so lucky. The terrorists strike, abduct them from their dormitories and take them to terrorist camps. The general belief is that the government security forces will intervene and rescue the girls. However, the girls soon discover that help is far from coming, but with self-determination and sheer grit, they could escape the ‘dark’ places and reclaim their dreams.

One of the main discourses that dominated Nigeria’s recent past is the abduction of schoolgirls by terrorists, which circulated in the publication of cultural artefacts like newspapers, journals, social media, and non-fiction works such as Isha Sesay’s Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram, Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls, Women and the War on Boko Haram by Hilary Matfess, The Hunt for Boko Haram by Alex Perry and Wolfgang Bauer’s Stolen Girls: Survivors of Boko Haram Tell Their Story.

In Masi’s own words, the novel, Fine Dreams, “participates in the circulation of this discourse in three significant ways: it reflects the major highlights of the main discourse, uniquely examines a much less talked about perspective — the impact of surveillance, or its lack, thereof, in matters of intelligence in the fight against terrorism — and thirdly, it rewrites myth and history by offering new endings for Persephone’s story (per Greek mythology, Hades’ kidnapping of Persephone) in the perspective of Nigerian school girls.”

On the ways Fine Dreams reflects the major tenets of the discourse, the novel mostly engages realism in the sense that the values governing the world created in the work and the real-life values supporting the culture that creates and evokes the system of terror in the Nigerian society are finely interconnected. For example, the character Kadir, Gaddo’s love interest, has his family slaughtered by terrorists and he is then forced to join the group as a teenager because members of his family are moderate in their practice of their Muslim faith as opposed to adopting the radical ideas of the attackers (chap. 5).

Though, in Fine Dreams, Masi deftly introduces a distinctive magic realism perspective in the voice or point of view of the frame character, Kubra’s ghost, in a bid to examine how the outcome of acts of terror, such as the abductions and the death of some in the fire exchanges, reinforces patriarchal ideologies, the divisive nature of extremist leanings on matters of faith, and the dangers of excessive power — especially in a culture that ‘creates’ and ‘enables’ a system of terror. By so doing, Fine Dreams succeeds in offering readers the prospect and ability to notice and interpret the messages they receive from the story that are so much a part of the Nigerian culture in a way that strikes a chord.

In Fine Dreams, the abductors exhibit some level of treachery based on how they go about their attacks. Some of them appear as shadowy figures at night on the fence of the St. Thomas school’s dormitories, others are gabbed in faux Nigerian military uniforms, others are dressed in simple kaftans as they mingle with the common citizenry in marketplaces.

In other words, the attackers adopt diverse means to meld with the general populace or the environment before they suddenly launch attacks on their unsuspecting neighbors. These appearances are commensurate with real life experiences. With the incorporation of a ghost character, Fine Dreams offers the perspective of an invisible ‘surveilling gaze’, which adopts an immersive first-person point of view that captures the heinous actions of the culprits from the plotting stage to the point of execution and beyond.

“I sat there listening to them talk, as I had on the night of my death… ‘She is worried about the safety of the girls,’ said Mama Lakhmi. The man smirked and got up to leave. ‘Farouk,’ said Mama Lakhmi. ‘None of the girls will be killed?’ ‘They will be sent where they are meant to be,’ he said without expression. ‘With their new husbands instead of that stupid school.’ After he left, Mama Lakhmi sat silently and chewed her lower lip. Traitor! I screeched…” (chap. 1).

Unlike Kubra’s ghost that simply captures these acts but is helpless to bring any charges against the culprits, security cameras installed in strategic public spaces can help with the reduction of crime rates since people may likely commit less crimes if they know they are being watched. Also, the evidence of such surveillance cameras can help provide video evidence for law enforcement and serve as a means of accountability on the part of the populace per the employment of facial recognition technology.

Linda N. Masi at a Book Signing Event Organized by Barnes and Noble Booksellers in Lubbock, Texas, on May 11, 2024. PHOTO CREDIT: Iveren Akula

Hence, Fine Dreams contributes to the discourse by delicately suggesting that the lack of engagement of proper surveillance in matters of intelligence in the State’s fight against terror is a failure. Masi seems to opine that adequate and effective strategic surveillance is crucial in this fight and is a measure that can yield greater value in curbing further attacks of terror if properly harnessed.

Per the retelling of myth and history and considering some of the traditional masculine and feminine qualities captured in the novel’s world, just like in real life, the abducted females are snatched away from their families, forced to give up their education and dreams and married off to powerful men against their will. Also, the naivety of the much younger girls is valued for the transformation of the girls into suicide bombers.

However, in Fine Dreams, Masi projects the value of female empowerment and positive masculinity as lived experiences that readers can draw from and reenact in society without contempt. For example, the character Aquamarine is offered as a child bride to one of her abductors, yet she ingeniously escapes that fate, botches a suicide bombing assignment, finds her way back home to her parents and eventually reclaims her dreams on the platform of education—she goes back to school regardless of the shame and trauma associated with her experience (chap. 6, 10).

Also, Masi’s representation of some male security personnel in the story’s world postures them as men who externalise positive masculinity. Sergeant Ono Osas helps Aquamarine defuse the bomb on her suicide vest (chap. 6) and Major Danjuma cares for Kubra’s mother and her little brother when Kubra’s father ‘abandons’ the family (chap. 9).

Masi’s Fine Dreams effectively explores the circulation of power and the motility of personal and group identity by adroitly highlighting the intersection of the novel’s world with the discourses about terrorism and abductions prevalent in Nigeria (and globally) via the perspectives of underrepresented and sometimes ignored voices such as those of abducted schoolgirls, women, children, and the deceased.

Following the trend established in novels with significant characters as ghosts such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Stephen King’s The Shining, Masi decided to assign a first-person point of view to Kubra’s ghost to engage her perspective as a frame for the novel and as an immersive surveilling gaze.

“The goal of this gaze is to function as a tool that speaks to the lack of adequate surveillance measures in matters of intelligence in the fight against terror, and the politics of trauma in the country. For example, surveillance cameras planted in various public spaces, effective digital tracking of phone calls, text messages, interbank money transfers of proven suspects and the political will to bring to justice those who are found wanting are measures, which, if efficiently put in place, can go a long way in curbing terror attacks in the country.”

Masi says, “I was inspired to name the book, Fine Dreams, to take into consideration the storyline about how the characters in the novel fight for their dreams and aspirations in the story’s world.”

Initially, she planned to write a collection of short stories and began with one short story, which was titled, Amina. “I wrote this story in 2015 while I was still in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. This story was part of my MFA application portfolio in 2016 and is now captured as the chapter entitled ‘Gaddo’s Cousin’ in the novel. I workshopped about six chapters of the novel during my MFA programme, and in my first year in my PhD programme in fall 2020.”

After deciding what time-period she wanted to set the novel, Linda had to do some thorough research on the timeline of events, both local and international, to properly situate the story in contemporary world history. For methodology, she says, “I read and consulted newspapers, social media, published non-fictional accounts and works, video recordings/ documentaries. Also, when I was awarded the Summer Graduate Research award by the University of Mississippi graduate school, I was able to travel to Nigeria in the summer of 2019 for research, during which time I visited an Internally Displaced Person’s camp in Abuja and conducted some interviews with some persons as well as interviews with other experts in the field of conflict resolution.”

Fine Dreams went on to win the prestigious Juniper Prize for fiction in 2023. “I was surprised, very thankful and humbled that my novel won a prize, considering that I had submitted the manuscript to seven different novel competitions within the same submission cycle/year,” she says.
Author’s Website: www.lindanmasi.com

For the Omoku, Rivers State-born Linda Nkwoma Masi, the third child in a family of four children born to Mr. Clifford Masi (late) and Mrs. Stella Masi, “the key ingredient I look out for in any story is the emotional impact level and of course how effectively the writing elements such as characterisation, plot, description, setting, style, dialogue, and theme are employed. Does the story take the reader on a satisfying journey, a journey that covers the external and/or internal transformation of the main character(s)? Authenticity is vital, especially when your work involves history or contemporary facts.”

Masi attended Pabod Model Primary School in Port Harcourt, Federal Government College, Wukari, in Taraba State, and Rivers State University (formerly Rivers State University of Science and Technology). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi, and is currently completing a PhD in English, creative writing focus, at Texas Tech University. Some of her works appear in Tupelo Quarterly, Blackberry: A Magazine and elsewhere. She is also the author of a book of poems and a children’s book series.
Author’s Website: www.lindanmasi.com