Folarin on Religion and African Heritage

Last Tuesday night, Nigerian American writer Tope Folarin gave a talk at the Harvard Book Store about his award-winning short story “Miracle.” Harvard holds a special place in Folarin’s heart—“Miracle” was first published in the 109th issue of Transition, a publication of Harvard’s Hutchins Center that addresses diaspora and other racial issues. A year after its initial publication, “Miracle” won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing, an award given annually for a short story by an African writer. Dressed in a crimson-colored sweater, light-washed blue jeans, and a pair of black-rimmed rectangular glasses, however, Folarin seemed more like an eager student. “I’m a literary hustler,” he said to the audience. This unassuming and earnest quality yielded Folarin, a graduate of Morehouse College who also studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, a powerful sincerity as he discussed “Miracle” and his own personal story.

Folarin, a former employee of Google’s Public Policy team, began by reading the opening of “Miracle.” The excerpt delved into the delicate balance between faith and identity for an African immigrant family. They are desperate for a miracle, whether from jobs, good grades, green cards, or American passports, and they have come to a renowned pastor for help. Folarin’s rich voice was sincere and poignant, as if he himself was a character in the story. Folarin ended the reading as the protagonist begins to question the pastor’s ability to grant a miracle: “We haven’t yet received what we came here for.”

The doubt at the end of the reading served as a perfect segue to Folarin’s personal struggles with Christianity as a child of an immigrant family. Labelling “Miracle” a spiritual autobiography, he went onto discuss his evolving relationship with Christianity ever since he grew up under an extremely religious father. “My father was so religious that when we were in Utah, he was scared that we were being corrupted. He cut us off from society,” Folarin said. When he left for college, Folarin said, he ran into a massive crisis of faith. He realized that his father was Christian because of his upbringing, which had been largely shaped by British colonization. Christianity, Folarin said, was essentially a worldview that had been forced upon him.

At the same time, Folarin spoke about how Christianity was, in his view, a sociopolitical entity. “What [immigrant families] are asserting is that they are the chosen people—that they’re more righteous than the corrupt Americans around them, that they’re doing Christianity better than white people,” Folarin said. “Every group of disenfranchised people can assume that they’re [the chosen people] and derive power.” Folarin’s crises was only resolved when he realized that faith had to be earned, not inherited.

After a thorough discussion of his struggles with faith and identity, Folarin opened up the talk to questions from the audience. Many of the questions addressed his identity as an African writer, to which Folarin responded with a personal anecdote of memorizing 2Pac and wearing Michael Jackson shirts to be “more African.” But he maintained a serious tone as he said that he eventually became sick of constantly questioning who he was. “All I care about is being a good writer,” he said.

He also addressed the hurdles that he had to confront before becoming a writer. Joking about himself as a nerd who read a lot in high school, he revealed how he had to ignore his desire to be creative and write because of his father, who wanted him to pursue a job with a stable income like a doctor or lawyer. He only overcame this hurdle of “enduring desire to please my father with my unquenchable desire to create something” when he won the Caine Prize.

Folarin ended the discussion with dialogue around the Caine Prize and the future of African writing. He defended the prize as important, especially when it can celebrate the less-heard voices of the African diaspora. And Folarin seems to be just doing that in “Miracle”—insisting that the issues of faith that children of immigrant families face be heard.