Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Writing for Young People
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

The Voices in Our Heads: Polyvocality, Power & Nnedi’s Lagoon

December 24, 2015/in Blog / Francisco McCurry

When we speak or write, our voice is not the only one being (re)produced. It is a mutant composite of your mom blasting Rocio Durcal at 7 a.m. to announce it’s cleaning day, all day; of your pops saying Boiya, you think you smart when you finally gathered the courage to challenge his authority; of your crew saying stop being such a bitch and go talk to her when you was a young drunk at the bar; of your body trying to activate experiences beyond immeasurable skies over tract homes; of even your mind when it tries to walk amongst the intellectual redwoods of Cedric Robinson and Michael Foucault. You and your voice are not you, you are many: people and things . . .

Yet, in fiction (and most creative arts), the artist generally tries to gather all that personal and historical DNA, and mask it inside the “default” singular voice. This tendency usually results not only in a point-of-view that leans towards (or staggers out of) a dominant First World—straight, white, male, Christian—gaze, but a voice that tends to reanimate the marginalities and silences that people want to resist when facing social, political, and aesthetic borders. Our first impulse is to acculturate, not resist. WSCP hegemony is not only theory; it is real and difficult terrain to work through, personally and aesthetically.  

I offer an author and book we can look to: a bright star in a constellation emerging against not only old guard ideas around narrative, characters, and content, but the singular point of view. Nnedi Okorafor’s third adult novel Lagoon is a high-minded sci-fi fantasy drama that replaces singular/univocality with the power of polyvocality: the practice that many points-of-view and ideas can coexist to shape and drive a narrative. Sure, our bookshelves and the academic canon celebrate the traditional gawds of polyvocality, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, but Nnedi rides a giant wave all her own.

Lagoon imageWithin Lagoon’s tight yet expansive 293 pages, Nnedi does so much to move literary desire and language outside of the normative imaginary: the story takes place outside of America’s borders in Lagos, Nigeria; women and men occupy equal space in the trajectory of the protagonist(s) struggle and resolution; the world is populated only by African bodies; the words characters speak do not privilege “the King’s English,” while slang / creole vernacular blooms easily alongside it; the celestial beings that come to Earth are not there solely to colonize; and sex and sexuality are constantly represented as fluid.

Those elements alone could be and have been explored in movies, television shows, books, and music, but together in Okorafor’s novel they create a narrative body that is biomorphic in style and content. When building a scene where one of the four heroes is a child protecting his siblings from vile family members, she writes:

Edgar sat on the small porch watching them come. Their cars and SUVs pulled up and they waited. Gathering like ants preparing to haul away a dead spider. Ants never sleep. Ants are relentless. And ants know the scent of opportunity and do not hesitate to follow its trail.

In Lagoon, the tale of an alien invasion and its human defenders, the real world and local mythos, the human and animal experience, all coil into each other to build its vision.

Okorafor’s vision is greatly aided by using the tool of close-third omniscience to create a fictive world where the pages have a cyclical feel rather than a linear one. Readers can see and feel the conflict in Lagos through the eyes of the four main protagonists, or by one of the extraterrestrial organisms in the sea, or a deaf-mute boy, or a spider before it’s crushed on the road, or a part-time secretary / part-time prostitute, or a cross-dressing leftist militant, or, finally, by a mutated bat before it’s obliterated by a plane. By the end, the book reveals itself to be about the consciousness of a city and its future possibilities. In many ways, Lagoon is a textual experience of moments before the Afrofuture actualizes.

Lagoon is not an exploration of bourgeois angst, millennial despair, the travesties of the third world, the poverty of Africa, the criminality of Nigeria, or about a single diven chosen-hero destined to save the world. It’s about being woke to the possibilities of science, hope, and political resistance. When we understand power as the relationship between racial, economic, gendered, and sexual forces, Okorafor’s literary work is the embodiment of creative-social justice. In its pages, we get a nuanced critique of Christianity, explorations of how patriarchy is expressed and confronted, complex representations of the LGBTQ community, a survey of non-American Blackness, and the will to fight and embrace desire. She and the book are active in resisting typical or normative formations of social and narrative bodies. That is power.

Obviously, creating a polyvocal text is not easy, nor is it the only route to explore when attempting to generate a text that aims to gives voice to bodies and communities either pushed to the periphery or erased by the core centers of technological and industrial advances. I would even bet that most mentors encourage writers to master the illusion of the singular point-of-view first. Yet, polyvocality is a critical tool to access when thinking through how narrative bodies and fictionalized worlds should not reproduce the redundant and unimaginative language of our collective American (and beyond-American) stories. It is one that asks and searches for viewpoints beyond the already-trod narrow path.

Many artists are doing this critical work. Oscar Wao, through the stylized narrative prism of Yunior De Las Casas, is polyvocal; Long Division, through the laptop cipher of Baize’s search and reconstruction of her family history, is polyvocal; Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, with Esch’s seemingly “locked-in” first person point-of-view, is polyvocal by the way she obsessively speaks of the bodies and actions of her family and community; The Wire was televised polyvocality; even Kanye West, when he credits every writer and producer who helps him make one song, to the ire of old guard malcontents, is engaging in polyvocality.

Yet, Okorafor’s Lagoon quintessentially embodies polyvocality, because many narrative bodies, human and otherwise, speak through the story’s arc. It feels like Nnedi Okorafor swallowed the whole damn world, focused her energies on Nigeria, and said okay, let’s really explore our position in the intergalactic space waves. Her version of polyvocality jars readers from the everyday expectations of normative POV, and pushes against the lies of WSCP’s creative endeavors. It lets the reader swim in a vast, clear ocean with the many.

FranciscoFrancisco McCurry is a decolonizing native traveling the space ways of planet air, bold and broke. He is working on a novel called Lucha Libre in America and holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. He pays bills working in education and knows Wu-Tang is Forever.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/francisco.png 710 720 Francisco McCurry https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Francisco McCurry2015-12-24 12:39:232022-02-10 09:47:23The Voices in Our Heads: Polyvocality, Power & Nnedi’s Lagoon

Friday Lunch Archive

  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Into the Linguistic Rabbit Hole

May 5, 2023/in Midnight Snack / paparouna
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/alexander-grey-IDxuUey3M5E-unsplash-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 paparouna https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png paparouna2023-05-05 23:55:022023-05-05 20:13:45Into the Linguistic Rabbit Hole

Dancing into Detachment

April 7, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Robert Kirwin
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IMG_8449-scaled.jpg 2560 1920 Robert Kirwin https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Robert Kirwin2023-04-07 23:50:412023-04-07 18:13:12Dancing into Detachment

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ECD45731-BD0A-4144-9DDE-DBE45519C4A6.jpeg 2461 1882 Michaela Emerson https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michaela Emerson2023-03-03 23:45:542023-03-04 00:06:21Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

More Midnight Snacks »

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

LitDish: Ten Questions With Isabel Quintero

May 26, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Interviewed by Gail Vannelli
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Isabel_Quintero-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Interviewed by Gail Vannelli https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Interviewed by Gail Vannelli2023-05-26 10:16:252023-05-26 10:16:25LitDish: Ten Questions With Isabel Quintero

Chop Day

May 19, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Hannah Felt Garner
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Headshot_HFGarner.jpg 770 794 Hannah Felt Garner https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Hannah Felt Garner2023-05-19 11:48:052023-05-18 22:19:17Chop Day

Litdish: Ten Questions With David A. Robertson

April 28, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Interviewed by Gail Vannelli
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/7722CAC2-6115-409D-A317-A768C6903639.jpeg 2018 2038 Interviewed by Gail Vannelli https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Interviewed by Gail Vannelli2023-04-28 10:13:482023-04-28 10:13:48Litdish: Ten Questions With David A. Robertson

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instalunchticket on twitter
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2021 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top