I sort of thought it was a sad commentary on the region of the world where I come from that you could throw a war literally anywhere in West Africa, and it can stick.Īnd so it's not that, but it's also because the book is more about the interior spiritual life of this child and how we, as people, are able to recuperate our humanity in sort of the most difficult circumstances. And there'd been countless wars in that one little region, like the areas (unintelligible). I was born just as the Nigeria Biafran Civil War was beginning. ABANI: It's meant to be not nation-specific. MARTIN: Is there any particular conflict in mind that you are setting this story in, or is it meant to be not nation-specific? So the idea was that their vocal chords were cut so that they couldn't scream and startle the others and destroy valuable assets, as it were. Well, when I was doing some research on mine diffusers - and this was sort of across the globe in different places - I came across this little notation somewhere that someone had made that sometimes these kids - that when they would be diffusing the mines, some of them would accidentally set off a mine, and in the explosion, they would scream and startle the other kids who would shatter through minefield. MARTIN: He is no longer able to speak, and the circumstances why which he is not able to speak, I think, would you like to say why? So that's recuperating his humanity through this journey. One is sort of that immediate physical journey, and then there's another spiritual and emotional journey of memory. And so, really, the novella is his journey to reunite with his platoon, but the novella - I don't call it a novel - works on two levels. And in the novel, he's been separated from his platoon. And his job with the rest of his platoon, who are all about the same age, is to go through all the territory that the enemy have been over to locate and diffuse land mines. ABANI: Well, yeah, My Luck is a young 15-year-old mine diffuser.
MARTIN: …something that you might feel is very precious.
There are so many twists to the plot I don't want to give away…
It's a story about a 15-year-old child soldier named My Luck who is mute, his vocal chords having been cut. Professor CHRIS ABANI (Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside Author, "Song for Night"): No, thank you, Michel. He joins us from NPR West in Culver City, California. His newest book, a novella, is called "Song for Night." It tells the story of a child soldier. Abani has won critical acclaim for his fearless rendering of the lives of young men and women caught up in the awful circumstances caused by war and desperate poverty. Joining me now is Nigerian author Chris Abani. Now, a story about another young person caught up in war. We just heard from Jacob Massaquoi, who told us about his experiences as a young man during Liberia's long civil war.
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