Translocation narratives, travelogues and memoir in “The Radio”
BY MUCHIRA GACHENGE
As a voracious reader interacting with authors and the contexts of their works, you will certainly agree that it is a literary exercise in futility to attempt to completely vanish a writer from their works in an attempt to achieve objectivity. Like a biological child that bears its parents’ DNA as permanent mark of identity and relationship to its source, a writer’s output bears prints of their convictions, elements of their lived or be-lived experiences, and characteristics of their persuasions on a given subject matter. This is the truth that I’m confronted with when I finally get to read Gil Ndi-Shang’s recently published short story anthology, “The Radio and Other Stories”.
The 254-page collection consists of ten neat stories, all told from the second person point of view, “you”, which also means that we do not get to find out the actual name of the protagonist. What we do instead, is experience the transformation of the character from a young boy born in the rural village in the Anglo-Francophone split Cameroon, in a working family, to a foreign student in the far land of Germany.
Gil provides insights into the lived experiences of the character in the stories, whose sole purpose is derived from the ambition to be great- which greatness is not explicitly defined but we learn about it. The protagonist desires to study, excel in school, get a career, and live a life devoid of realities of people fighting for simply existing in diverse linguistic realities. The protagonist, who comes off as determined to transform not just for his own sake, but also for the sake of his close-knit family, gives the stories a deep sense of community. Through him, the reader is able to see why the people around us, the experiences we share, the memories we make together, the gifts we offer each other: all matter in our lifetime.
The story from which the title of the anthology derives, “The Radio” significantly uses the metaphor of a radio to blur physical distance and amplify memories. Of the things the protagonist unpacks upon arriving in his apartment in Bavarian hometown, in Germany as a newcomer and a student is a radio. Listening to news about the events back home gives the narrator a replenished sense of nostalgia, while at the same time, affording them the opportunity to stay connected with realities thousands of miles away.
Essentially, while telling the story of translocation, the author reveals the part of technology that melts physical distance and gives it redefined meaning. But more important is the fact that the radio is a giving from home. It means more than just a piece of electronic, but a gift through which human memories he holds dear between him and his family are represented.
With flashback and foreshadowing as the key stylistic techniques, the reader is able to peek into the past life of the protagonist, the present and see the communal aspect of life: where success is collectively celebrated and challenges equally addressed together. This nostalgia is experienced in the stories including The Books, The Bell and The Church.
Reading through the stories, and knowing a bit of who Gil, the author, is, it is impossible to categorize the anthology as entirely fictional. It reads more as a travelogue, a fictionalized memoir and narrative about translocation. In essence, the author, who hails from Cameroon and now lives and works in Germany, is an integral element to the verisimilitude of the anthology. I enjoyed it.
