Unraveling the Thread of Tradition: Between History and Memory in Melatu Okorie's "If George Could Talk"

Abstract

Unraveling the Thread of Tradition:Between History and Memory in Melatu Okorie's "If George Could Talk" Sara Martín-Ruiz (bio) melatu okorie is a nigerian-born, Irish-based author who had to endure the harsh reality of the Direct Provision system firsthand as an asylum-seeker in Ireland. In her short story "If George Could Talk," she presents a female narrator, Jumi, who finds herself doomed to a liminal existence, from her coming-of-age ritual in Nigeria to her eventual arrival in Ireland as an asylum-seeker, never actually fitting in.1 The only thing that remains with her throughout this process is the George, a traditional Nigerian cloth that figuratively reflects her family story as well as the history of a transnational, colonial past, the consequences of which are still very much felt in the present. In the short story, the George becomes a metaphor for Jumi's inability to ascribe meaning to her own life, a dilemma that reaches its climax when she and her children become asylum-seekers in Ireland. Hence, a constant attempt to understand what the George signifies takes place throughout the story, as the narrator tries to make sense of the different circumstances she has to face. Clothing has a history of being read as a signifier for alienation. Eleonora Chiavetta, in discussing the fiction of female migrant authors, argues that "Clothes are a way to externalize the internalized conflict of the families, and later on . . . express the internalized exile of the character."2 Ketu H. Katrak uses the term "internalized exile" to describe a process by which, as a consequence [End Page 40] of a (post)colonial experience, the racialized female body becomes disconnected from itself and the subject lacks agency.3 A similar reading of the George can be undertaken in "If George Could Talk." On the one hand, it is used as a means to externalize certain suppressed aspects of Jumi's past, such as her great-grandfather's involvement in slave trading or her mother's death after giving birth to her. On the other hand, it expresses Jumi's own internalized exile. Jumi is anxious from the first moment she puts on the George for her Umu-Ogbo ceremony, suggesting unease with the traditional female roles she is being asked to accept. Later, the George expresses the disorientation of her exile from Nigeria as she confronts her asylum-seeker status in Ireland. In this article, I argue that the George acts as a kind of objective correlative of Jumi's prior alienation in Nigeria and, later, her increasing sense of insecurity under Direct Provision in Ireland.4 Daniel Miller, in his seminal work on material culture, has highlighted the active agency of objects in our human processes of self-creation: far from being passive, material objects partake in the creation and re-creation of our individual and group identities.5 In Okorie's story, the George is an active agent in the creation of a traditional Igbo female identity. Jumi clearly values it as a memento of her mother and of the matrilineal channels of care that were disrupted at her mother's death. However, this signification has been made possible only by disavowing its connections to the slave trade. Here, the George acquires the status of a "commodity fetish" in the Marxian sense.6 It becomes a symbol of traditional Igbo femininity precisely by being stripped of its capitalist, colonial conditions of production. The disconnection between the factual past of the George, as a British colonial element, and its matrilineal transmission, as a symbol of traditional Igbo womanliness, can be explained through a process of adaptation, specifically, as argued by Aleida Assmann, a transformation of history into memory.7 Assmann notes two important dimensions of individual and collective memory: "interaction with other individuals and interaction with external signs and symbols."8 Hence, through the protagonist's interaction with her female elders, as well as [End Page 41] with the George itself, its colonial history is transformed, adapted in some ways, into a memory of female tradition. Furthermore, Jan Assmann points out the connection between collective memory and cultural identity, which strengthens the importance of the...