Protected: A Nigerian Man Wakes Up White and Voyages Into the Heart of Whiteness

Almost exactly a decade ago, Graywolf published Blackass, an impish, painfully funny novel by the Nigerian writer A Igoni Barrett, in which a young man named Furo Wariboko wakes up one morning to find that he has transformed into a white man. Except for his ass. His life changes as a result, and the novel, a rich portrait of Lagos, follows him as he finds a job, new friends, and a new name (Frank Whyte). Whyteface, while very much its own story, checks in on Furo/Frank four years later. 

This excerpt from Whyteface starts with Frank heading off on his first-ever trip outside of Nigeria. He is embarking on a European vacation—a voyage into the heart of whiteness, you might say. He visits Amsterdam, Oslo, and Milan. Hijinks ensue. In Oslo, he intervenes when a charismatic Kenyan writer is the victim of a racist taxi driver. Frank becomes entranced by the writer, Binja, (and those who had the good fortune to encounter Binyavanga Wainaina at a reading might spot an inspiration here) who helps Frank see what it means to be African in a new way. In between these episodes is a series of interstitial chapters that tell the almost fabulistic story of the Wariboko clan, beginning in the 19th century, when Christianity begins to supplant indigenous Nigerian (before it was Nigeria) traditions and rituals.

Like Blackass, and like all great satires, Whyteface is a comic novel with moral purpose. Barrett ably extends and deepens the themes he began to explore in Blackass and, through this madcap vacation story, finds a way to discuss the inevitability of migration and the perverse way the “First World” views the rest of the world.

When we asked Igoni about how these books relate, he told us: “I think of this book as a last attempt at a first impression. For Blackass and Whyteface are in essence the same story, told from different angles.” Because Frank is now in a place where his skin does not seem to “stand out,” he is vexed to discover that “whiteness was the exclusion of everything but one, blackness the inclusion of everything but one.” 

Enter Frank.

– Ethan Nosowsky
Editorial Director, Graywolf Press