For the second installment of this year’s International Reading Series, City of Asylum welcomes Emmanuel Iduma for a reading of his latest memoir. The story follows Emmanuel as he returns to Nigeria to seek out the truth of his uncle who disappeared during the Nigerian Civil War. On his journey, Emmanuel reconnects with relatives and traverses cities, scouring both memories and monuments to fill the blank spaces neglected by history. It is a story of grief and loss, of political reckoning, and of navigating life when so much of what has shaped it has become intangible.

Curator Note: "Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma’s debut book, A Stranger’s Pose, was a remarkable blend of travelogue, musings, poetry, and photography; a voyage around various African cities—from Dakar to Douala, Khartoum to Casablanca—filtered through Emmanuel’s rare and perceptive gaze. His new work, I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance and History, explores a deeper and more personal vision of his own country and the intimate legacies of the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s."

– Anderson Tepper, City of Asylum Advisory Board Member & Curator of International Literature

You can purchase your own copy of Emmanuel’s book, I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

Emmanuel Iduma, born in 1989, is a writer who trained as a lawyer in Nigeria. He is the author of the travelogue A Stranger’s Pose (Cassava Republic Press, 2018), which was longlisted for the 2019 Ondaatje Prize. He has written for Granta, n+1, The New York Review of Books, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Aperture, Guernica, and others, and he has received many grants and awards, including the Windham-Campbell Prize. Emmanuel has an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York City and taught there for several years before moving to Lagos, Nigeria.

International Reading Series: Accessing the Unknowable with Emmanuel Iduma