Miraculous Adjectives

Miracle was written by Tope Folarin who was born in Ogden, Utah and grew up in Utah and Texas. He is a graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He currently works with Google.

The story is an excerpt from a work in progress.

Miracle is a story of hope, of keeping up appearances and saving face. It is the story of the problems faced by Nigerian immigrants in America.

The whole story takes place in a church and is centered on an elderly, blind Nigerian preacher/ miracle worker and a young Nigerian boy who is seeking for a miracle.

Folarin captured the mood of the congregants perfectly, which is a mix of hopefulness and hopelessness. His take of the church and attendants was dry eyed and non-sentimental. Describing the reason why most of the congregants were in that church that day, Folarin used short, crisp sentences, which allows the reader to feel the unexpressed desperation which must have filled the church.

“We have come from all over North Texas to see him ... We own his books, his tapes, his
holy water, his anointing oil. We know that he is an instrument of God’s will, and we have come because we need … jobs. We need good grades. We need green cards. We need American passports…”

Running beneath the story unfolding in the church is the protagonist’s history, the mother who abandoned her family, his uneasy relationship with his Nigerian father who raised him and his brother as Americans.

“We need our parents to understand that we are Americans. We need our children to understand they are Nigerians.”

As well written as this story is, it is not without flaws, first of which is the author's inability to decide whether he’s writing from a First Person point of view or an Omnipresent angle. The protagonist not only uses the first person but was also able to see into the heads of everybody present as he used ‘we’ a lot (maybe it's the royal ‘we’).



“We search our hearts for the seedlings of doubt that reside there. Many of us have to cut through thickets of doubt before we can find our own hearts again.”

There were long descriptions of every occurrence, which would have been taken care of in a few simple sentences. In fact the whole story can be summed up in three paragraphs but for the (as far as I’m concerned) unnecessary use of adjectives.

“Once there, he raises both of his hands then lowers them slightly. He raises his chin and says let us pray.”

I also worried a bit about this sentence “My lids slap open, and I see the same fog as before.” Because it beggars the question, what lids? And if they are eyelids, do they slap?

In a bid to make beautiful sentences Folarin ended up with this gem “The disembodied heads are swelling with unreleased joy.” Which left me open-mouthed with amazement, (you’ll all notice that my writing is improving).

This is a story that was written carefully and with a lot of thought, I found reading the story a bit tedious because of the long descriptions, even the climax fell flat because he had given the game away while describing the boy’s encounter with the old preacher.

But then you stumble on sentences like this once in a while and, for a second, understand why the story is on the shortlist. “His prayer is so insistent, so sincere, that his words emerge from the dark chrysalis of his mouth as bright, fluttering prophesies.”

On the other hand, you wonder when the Caine Prize judges will stop choosing stories that seek to bore you to death and reinforce the image of blacks as an overly religious, miserable lot.