SOURCE: “Organic Metaphor in Two Novels by Nuruddin Farah,” in World Literature Today, Vol. 72, No. 4, Autumn, 1998, pp. 775–80.

Splintered into multiple possibles, Somalia—the Farah reference par excellence—is difficult to recount in its unity or totality at the present time.¹ The narrator or singer, the scholar, and even the reader find themselves compelled to cut up their object of study and to opt for certain modalities of writing and/or reading. One possible reading is the study of the processes of fictionalization of Somalia's referential history. （By history I mean current events as much as the long-term History of the region.） The reader is endlessly impressed by a perpetual metaphorization of everything that stems from abstraction, to such an extent that one could establish a physiognomy of Nuruddin Farah's fiction. This physiognomy, which some would call the narrative's physique, strikes me as having a double function: it is at once a means of knowledge and a narrative form.

One can, of course, point out that Farah is not the only writer to use organic metaphors. The practice runs throughout the new postcolonial literatures. One could mention in passing that Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka, Le pacte de sang （The Blood Pact） by the ex-Zairean Pius Ngandu Nkashama, L'odeur du père （The Father's Scent） by the Zairean novelist and philosopher V. Y. Mudimbe, or still yet La blessure du nom propre （The Wound of the Proper Name） by the Moroccan Abdelkébir Khatibi all evoke clearly enough this figure of style. The theme of bodily or psychic maladies—a theme dear to the colonial imagination, one must recall—has sustained a good number of postcolonial works characterized by their mimeticism. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Léon-Gontran Damas, Jacques-Stephan Alexis, and Cheikh Hamidou Kane have all taken up the theme of illness both as a mimetic reaction and as a humanist affirmation, a theme which some members of the newer generations of writers seem to hold in great contempt at the moment, in order to proclaim loudly their aspirations to autonomy, their right to “opacity,” as Edouard Glissant would say. For the Antillean writers （francophone and anglophone, for example）, it was and still is a matter of expressing one's revolt, one's refusal of assimilation. It has been noted, at least in the instance of the first generation of writers, that there is a tendency to regurgitate what one had forcibly or willingly ingested. Aimé Césaire declared that “Martinican poetry will be cannibalistic or will not be at all.” In the case of this great poet, the organic metaphor of rejection, of vomiting up the poison that the French language represented, is doubled by another metaphor, a telluric one: that of volcanic eruption.

The most interesting approach, however, will be to analyze how Farah appropriates, reinterprets, and extends this resolutely classic metaphor. Moreover, the organic metaphor is, quite significantly, the paradigm chosen by Africanist political scientists like Jean-François Bayart （1989） or the editorial team of the journal Politique Africaine.² This latter group has set up an entire theoretical edifice inspired by the organic metaphor and which emphasizes the notion of predation. The historian of the French Revolution and film critic Antoine de Baecque has also opted for this metaphor as a theoretical paradigm, all the while reminding us of the great developments in clinical anatomy at the end of the eighteenth century.³ It is the organic metaphor that enables the expression, through an extremely rich cluster of analogical correspondences, of the transfers of power and wealth. The organic metaphor is thus a thematic grid or, to use an old rhetorical term, a topic.

In addition, the body is a very rich concept （perhaps too rich） that is used with great frequency. Consequently, the term's polysemia and the density of the metaphorical network that results from it force us to weave an interpretive web as tight as possible in order not to sweep up the entire ocean of bodily representations in our wicker trap. To this end, we will choose an object or an organ, however insignificant it may be, which will allow a commentary or, better still, a wealth of interpretations. I hope that by diving in in this way, we will avoid the “horizontal” quest for unified meaning; my intention, in other words, is to renounce any pretense to a totality.

Elsewhere, I have already examined the subject of spatial metaphors, which form the sacred core of Farah's fourth novel, Sardines.⁴ I am therefore proposing a multipart analysis here, beginning with a reading of Close Sesame focused on an organ （the eye） and a metaphor （ocular effraction or intrusion: an unfocused lens, the darkroom）. The final movement of a trilogy orchestrated by Farah, this work corresponds manifestly to the novelistic discourse's retreat into private scenes and stages. Certainly, the other two novels in the trilogy （Sweet and Sour Milk and Sardines） take place to a large extent within familial and private space, but Close Sesame displays introspective space （in all senses of the term） more extensively, as both the chapter divisions and the title itself seem to suggest. The twelve years spent in colonial prisons （“A Door in the Darkness”）, the years of postcolonial exclusion and foreclosure （“With the Portcullis Down”）, the asthma, absence, depression, and, finally, impotence due to Deeriye's old age all participate in the discursive retreat to private space—the protagonist's most personal refuge.

The first page of the novel introduces the reader into the old man's consciousness as he wakes up one morning, and the opening chapter allows us to read his first prayer, the details of his ablutions, and the substance of his intimate and pious reveries. This ocular effraction combines with another effraction, that of pulmonary occlusion. Deeriye's lungs contract and narrow, impeding his respiration; they diminish in volume, and without recourse to a product that dilates his windpipe, he will suffocate. This pulmonary occlusion affects his entire body, which in turn contracts as well （“His face: his lungs”; 80）. Deeriye sinks into depression and catatonia, a total retreat into himself. He curls up into a ball and no longer speaks or moves. There is no more corporal expression. Fortunately, the narrator has prepared a very personal and spiritual place for him where only his wife Nadiifa-the-Pure can reach him. Blessed are the characters who, like Deeriye, can take refuge in faith and draw from it true comfort, real dignity, and a coherent system of meaning!

This retreat is rendered by sensory images, most often visual ones. While it is true that Close Sesame is less abundant in metaphors and images than Farah's two preceding novels, there is a crepuscular light （“the light of the setting sun”; 15） that gives it the feel of the end of the world. This dusky light runs throughout the novel, from the moment Deeriye wakes up until his death. It continues even then, and we find it again in the prison cell's dreary light and the room itself, as well as in the sepia tone of the old photographs. Deeriye's heroic symphony at the end of the novel is not an attempt to reconquer space （the social arena which his reputation could open for him）, but rather the leaving of “The Key under the Mat by the Door,” the last move of a permanent retreat. The recurrent theme of old age sends us back to Deeriye's final breath and concomitantly to the last hurrah of the dictatorship, as well as, on another level, to the last word—“One last word” （CS, 208）—of the trilogy.

If the voice （here, the words proffered whose meaning is not immediately grasped） is the materialization of the body of Khaliif-the-Mad, a likable though somewhat redundant character, the eye is the medium of predilection for Deeriye. As proof, on the very few occasions when he leaves his room, it is only to go stroll about Mogadishu as a photographer （“he would have liked to be … either an urbanist or a photographer”; 87）. The mayor compares his city to a body （“The Mayor talked of Mogadiscio metaphorically as a body”） that only, Deeriye adds, children and the elderly cannot manage to master: “Only children or the very old could not reach all parts of their bodies.” Let it be added in passing that the city of Mogadiscio always functions as an “actant” in its own right, with its own life, genealogy, personality, feelings, worries, et cetera.

If we take up where the narrator leaves off and continue to draw out these organic metaphors which run through the human body as through the city, we will be tempted to replace “young upstarts” with “young upstairs,” since these parvenus are now among the upper crust. The visual presence of Deeriye is surrounded by materialized or dream voices, such as Khaliif-the-Mad （hardly in the Shakespearean tradition of fools）, Deeriye's deceased wife Nadiifa, and his grandson Samawade, as well as the voice of the Prophet Mohammed by way of the Koran, or, just as significantly, that of Sayyid Mohammed Abdulle Hassan, whose poem “Death of Corfield” Deeriye frequently listens to on cassette. The discursive retreat to private spaces in the case of Deeriye coincides with the opening or inauguration of another stage, that of spiritual coherence. Yet another example of ocular effraction, the twilight colors are not exclusively （and profoundly） the colors of apocalypse or death but belong rather to a serene climate as well, a world where Islamic values are the principal vectors, where the lyrical beauty of the prayers coincides with each action inhabited and motivated by the sacred, and where death, far from being absent, is accepted and even tranquilly received. However, with the death of Deeriye, who fails to reconcile the two antinomic elements of the gun and the rosary, an entire world, with its way of living, of being, and of dying, is extinguished.⁵ I am tempted to call crepuscular light the color of nostalgia—in part the author's nostalgia in exile （like Deeriye in prison） but especially “the nostalgia of a totalizing vision impossible to recover.”⁶

If eyes can guide the reader in Close Sesame and open the door to possible interpretations, then breasts and corporal secretions can offer an interpretive grid for Sweet and Sour Milk. In both instances, it is a question of seeking out parts of the body and then attempting to fit Farah's text into a preestablished speculative frame. I have followed the lead of his titles, which are, in a certain sense, signifiers par excellence. （Roland Barthes deems the proper name the prince of signifiers.）⁷ I plan to pursue this avenue in a future study devoted to the place of onomastics in Farah's work, but until then, I have taken the liberty of shifting the problematic and designating the title as the prince of signifiers, at least within the metaphorical field established by Farah.

It is well known that for the ancient Greeks, physical well-being depended on a proper equilibrium among the body's four humors （black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood）. Women were classified as “cold” beings, except during certain “hot” periods in which, to put it another way, they were considered as dangerous creatures or in danger themselves. A full-fledged economy of fluids was born of these reflections, with the bodily humors related by analogy to the elements of the cosmos with which they shared such attributes as heat and cold, dryness and humidity. These prior beliefs are deeply rooted in today's cultures, and the novels coming out of multicultural regions carry forward such beliefs （beliefs which, to be brief, originated in the Greco-Roman imagination） and wed them to other, equally ancient tenets. Examining Farah's texts can be of considerable interest for those working on the marriage （or parataxis） of different imaginations, which is why it seems useful to us to go so far back in time.

Among bodily secretions, milk holds an important place in human beliefs and cultures. It is the most frequently mentioned in the nomenclature of secretions, followed by menstrual blood and sperm: “First beverage and first food, a substance in which all others exist in a potential state, milk is naturally a symbol of abundance and of fertility, as well as of knowledge.”⁸ Milk is the only substance which is both food and drink, but it is also—especially, even—one of the most ambiguous symbols. This ambiguity is not a problem for the author of Maps; quite the contrary, in fact.

By analogy and successive juxtapositions, Farah builds his metaphorical network around the symbol of milk and, by extension, the organ that produces it, the breast. At times discursive and dialectic, at others nondiscursive and poetic, his thinking is not always easy to follow. I will try to flush out the invariables. The title Sweet and Sour Milk is not an idiosyncratic expression revealing an ambivalent, personal obsession. Rather, I believe that it is rooted at the intersection of several literary traditions and merits several readings, some concomitant, some divergent. The title could easily be a reference to a proverb, words of Somali wisdom. I should also point out the harmless fact that camel's milk is bittersweet. Moreover, there are numerous sayings, children's rhymes, and proverbial phrases sprinkled throughout Farah's texts. These expressions are part of an initiatory, cognitive process, a logos where contraries are united in a single term. Somali poets prefer to play on variations of a limited number of poetic elements to constrain their metaphors rather than indulging in an administration of their resources that increases them exponentially. The images are customarily derived from the given context: “Imagery in the miniature poem is usually universally understood in Somalia （like rain and milk） or can be determined from context.”⁹ In the case of the titles that interest us here, Farah, like any good Somali poet, plays on the ambiguities of the esthetic units: “An image can carry a double or hidden message. … This device is common enough in Somali poetry” （Johnson, 37）. Milk is an important and recurrent symbol in Somali poetry, an emanation of a pastoral and nomadic society. The first wish one makes for an individual who is undertaking a trip into the hostile spaces of the hinterland is “Nabad iyo caano” （May you come upon peace and milk!）. Caano （milk） is an indispensable element for nomads, as the following fragment suggests: “Xadday Dhudi caano ii dhibtooy / Intaan dhamo sow ma dhaafeen?” Johnson's translation renders this phrase as “If Dhudi gives me milk, and / I drink [therefore], how can I leave her?” （Johnson, 34）. I should point out that Dhudi, a panegyric name for a young woman which translates as “The Tall-and-Slender-Tree,” is the incarnation of physical beauty. Somalis have taken to defining themselves as the “people of milk”; moreover, the name Somali comes from the injunction “So Maal” （Go milk!）. One begins to see that Sweet and Sour Milk refers to an imagery that is doubtless simple but not simplistic. This title is a double-faced medallion, Eros and Thanatos united. This melding works by the grace of an organ: the breast. Sigmund Freud illustrated this mammary relation with a concise formulation, calling it “the place where love and hunger meet.”¹⁰

Symbol of protection and measure, the breast is the feminine attribute par excellence. In Farah's novel we find another variation in the symbolism of the breast: the breast of Abraham, where Soyaan comes seeking the peace and rest of the righteous. The figures of Qumman and Ladan are angels entrusted with easing Soyaan's agony. This agony is provoked by his having absorbed a mysterious substance, poisoned yogurt perhaps. Once again, in maintaining the mystery of the substance—is it an aliment, a beverage, or an injection?—Farah plays on the symbolic ambiguity of milk: lait-miel （honey-milk） can turn out to be lait-fiel （bile-milk）. With this, a whole string of images suddenly pop up to support the “bile-milk” thesis. The unsettling bivalence of milk culminates with the extremely subtle transformation of the protective mother into the castrating mother. The arrival of Soyaan's suckling brother, his twin Loyaan, does not cure his agony. Honey-milk and bile-milk are fused and confused in the gustatory palette established by Farah to such an extent that the perverted milk tastes like blood, with a dry foretaste: “She [Qumman] wet her mouth, she let her lips receive the caress of the breeze, and then moistened them again … this conversation would help snap the umbilicus of their link faster” （79）. This passage is not without an echo of the terrible deflowering of Ebla in From a Crooked Rib: “She closed her eyes … and tasted the sour sweat which dripped into her mouth. She bled a great deal” （99）. At the end of Sweet and Sour Milk nothing is known with any certainty, and the reader must, like Ladan （“To Ladan, Soyaan was the braille of her otherwise unguided vision”; 17）, seek a hypersensory guide.

Before concluding this study, I would like to turn to a poet—an extralucid guide, perhaps?—who sums up beautifully all the ambiguity of milky secretions and productions in a single phrase: “Ambrosia and poison, sweet honey, a bitter liqueur made to nourish the child or kill the mother” （Victor Hugo）. Farah shows us, by means of a dialectical reversal or metaphorical transfer, that milk can also kill the child, whether it nourish the mother or not. It would not be overstating our case to say that metaphors are often ahead of their era's critical attempts to grasp literary history. Metaphors are in constant movement and thus avoid becoming grounded on the perilous reefs of reification.

Let us turn briefly once again to the title of Farah's second novel, A Naked Needle, which will provide us with both the organ and the metaphor for this section of our study. The body part selected here is the skin or epidermis, with the appropriate metaphorical equivalent being tissue. This metaphor can be drawn upon in individual and collective modes, and thus the tissue in question will be individual or, more often, that of the community. After all, is not Koschin an isolated needle trying vainly to gather up the already fraying national fabric? Though some critics are no doubt seduced by a sort of psychoanalytic reductionism in which the title is seen as determined by the insignificant phallus of a Koschin, this needle is the inverse of a Wilson Harris spider, for example, completely absorbed by its spinning and the figure of the spiral. Koschin is most definitely not an arachnoid figure; on the contrary, he is a cerebral one, a weaver of abstract notions and a fencer of words. From this perspective, he is paradoxically enough a typically Somali character for whom everything is a pretext to discussions, digressions, and verbal libations. A Naked Needle displays a single day's worth of meandering promenades through Mogadiscio, like a Somali Stephen Dedalus. Koschin is also the weaver Penelope, awaiting the return of Nancy-Ulysses. I am not just pulling this weaving metaphor out of thin air, since it originates in an explicit statement （in the book's epigraph） of the author's own intentions: “The needle that stitches the clothes of people remains naked itself. （An Arabic proverb）.” The novelistic project itself takes into consideration this weaving to the extent that the novel is a superimposition, an interweaving, of many languages, references, and styles. The six movements which make up the plot of this novel are fragments intertwined with more or less ease. The translator and critic Françoise Balogun has also noted this metaphor, comparing the writing of A Naked Needle to the process of weaving: “The action unfolds around a character who grows richer as the narrative thread develops.”¹¹ This work contains several pages that draw on the days when the author still lived in his native country, as the following declaration of his identity shows: “There is my country, there are my people, my values. There is the Revolution to which I am loyal. There is ME” （prologue）. This introduction belies the initial warning contained in the statement “No real characters where none is intended. No true incidents where none is mentioned.”

On the level of the Somali cultural substratum, the polysemic notion of toll has a primary signifier which can be translated without difficulty as “tissue” and, by extension, as “family, clan, or even tribe.” The underlying signified refers to the body, the bodily envelope bound up with its blood relatives. Moreover, this is the same term Farah used in the title of his only novel written in Somali, Tollow Waa Talee Ma. The image of the notion of toll which shows through most typically is that of a group confined to a hostile space and huddling together.¹² Ali Moussa Iyé speaks of a “closing of ranks” （158）, which, though it presupposes an exemplary solidarity, also implies a promiscuity impeding the full radiance of individual bodies through their skin's sensitivity.¹³ The motto exemplifying this sociopolitical reality is a model of succinctness: Toll waa tollan, “the community forms an indestructible fabric” （Iyé）. Here the metaphor is in fact an exemplification: the expression “communal fabric” passes from English to French and Somali with neither alteration nor loss of meaning. One should recall that the Greek term metaphor, the Latin translatis, and the French transfert （transfer, transference） or transport （transport, transportation） are equivalent. The Somali term toll was without doubt a very powerful affective image prior to its demise, its reduction to a mere verbal cliché.

Once can thus read space within the novel as a canvas, a tissue, a most sensitive epidermis. In a text on the intimate geography of cities intended as an introduction to his book La forme d'une ville （Paris, José Corti, 1985）, Julien Gracq writes: “The shape of a city changes faster than the hearts of mortals.” Koschin, geographer and poet, has his finger on the pulse of Mogadiscio: “Come, Nancy, please come, and let us together discover the calamity, the er … eternity of this city that has a divinity of its own kind” （90）. In so doing, Farah, through Koschin, undertakes an essay on the remanence of the traits of the Somali capital. Farah's only novel written in Somalia, A Naked Needle owed it to itself to describe the city, section by section, building by building. Each portion of the city has its wrinkles and its distinctive texture, and Koschin's commentaries allow him to put his two cents in. The novel is a tissue of commentaries: at times it is love that has the upper hand （“I love it, I adore it [Somalia]”; 167）; at others, revolt wins out （“Everything is a mess. I can't bring myself to participate in a mess such as this”; 39）. At still other moments, irony and sarcasm come to the fore: “Somalia is the Elysian field where even the dead demand their dividends” （65–66）.

British critics have often established a tie between Koschin and Stephen Dedalus, but few have revealed the ineffable influence Joyce has exerted on Farah. The baroque tendency of Farah's writing doubtless finds its source, at least in part, in Joyce's work. Along the same lines, one expects the African writer to be moving, feverish, or impassioned, and one does not anticipate finding in his works the cold, detached humor to which Koschin and some of Mongo Beti's young heroes have accustomed us. It is as if humor were the privilege of a few latitudes alone. To hear certain critics or scholars tell it, the humor present in the Euro-American heritage （from the comedies of the later Shakespeare up to … a given New York Jewish writer, by way of Georges Courteline or Milan Kundera） would be a luxury item for those coming from the tristes tropiques.

If Somali authoritarianism is a text—and one can read it as such without straying too far from the thinking of its author, who compares it on some occasions to poorly worked farces and on others to theater in adoration of an omnipotent satyr—then this text is the narrative of a body, a thousand bodies, a still-victimized “population-body” （un peuple-corps） and a still-colossal “State-body” （Etat-corps）.¹⁴ Farah's text is indisputably a tale of bruises, with the author keeping tally of the wounds.¹⁵ The bodies have been put to sleep or chloroformed by fear and the absence of a doxa, or sliced up by the dictator's thugs. Exile and extraterritoriality remain the only ways out for many.

The conception of the novel as closure, as a finished product and expression of a reality given or known in advance, is completely foreign to Farah's way of thinking. Farah weaves an extremely intricate, multiform web, in the tradition of the best postcolonial writers: “The post-colonial text is always a complex and hybridized formation.”¹⁶ Ultimately, I hope that this brief analysis has provided an occasion to combine an extracultural critical eye with the intracultural eye of a critical insider.

Notes

1. As the ironies of politics would have it, Somalia in 1991 officially broke up into two states （perhaps more?）. The schema of unity imported from Europe—it would be more accurate to speak of a “graft”—has failed miserably in Somalia and in many other African states （Ethiopia, Zaire, Sudan, Angola, Liberia, et cetera）, a failure which African writers have described ad nauseam. The model that one could sketch of the Somali horizon （at the very least） would be an aggregate of small states, relatively independent, hostile, and/or complementary. Is it the coming of the age of rhizome politics? It would take a genius to know for certain! In any case, future generations of scholars will need to reformulate their orientations, since the monolithic model, misguided in its unitary vision and the product of nationalist paradigms, is no longer operative. It will perhaps be more judicious to no longer consider “Somalia” as a national entity but rather as a cultural area consisting of “Somalias,” of Somaliphone groups and still others as well.

2. Jean-François Bayart, L'état en Afrique: La politique du ventre, Paris, Fayard, 1989.

3. Antoine de Baecque, Le corps et l'histoire: Les métaphores face à l'événement politique 1770–1880, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1993.

4. Abdourahman A. Waberi, “Poétique de l'Espace et Politique dans la fiction de Nuruddin Farah,” memoir of DEA （3d cycle）, Université de Dijon, 1993, 180 pages.

5. I would first like to point out that these two attributes, emblems in the strict sense of insignia, belong to two quite distinct social groups in the larger cultural and political tradition: the wadaad （men of religion） and the waranleh （men of war or, literally, spear-bearers）. The distinction between these groups is still meaningful enough that oral literature attests to it. I. M. Lewis comments, “This dichotomy reflects the political and social realities of a traditionally strife-ridden society, with religious specialists mediating between feuding warrior clans, as well as, of course, between men and God” （I. M. Lewis, “Islam in Somalia,” in Somalia in Word and Image, ed. Katherine Loughran, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1974, p. 139）. Why call attention to these remarks? Deeriye is, on the one hand, a living example of this tradition, and a good part of Close Sesame exemplifies the content of the above citation, whereas, on the other hand, Farah has made use, consciously or unconsciously, of this dichotomy in adapting and enriching it a great deal, a bit like Wole Soyinka revisiting the orisha of the Yoruba pantheon. The small child Yaacin is the paradigm of the gunmen, warlords, and other Mad Max figures of today. Once again Farah shows himself to be a true visionary. Cf. Ali A. Juimale, “Of Poets and Sheikhs.”

6. Jacqueline Bardolph, “L'évolution de l'écriture dans la trilogie de Nuruddin Farah: Variations sur le thème d'une dictature africaine,” Nouvelles du Sud, 6–7 （1987）, p. 90.

7. Roland Barthes, “Analyse textuelle d'un conte d'Edgar Poe,” in Sémiotique narrative et textuelle, Paris, Larousse, 1974.

8. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionnaire des symboles, Paris, Laffont, 1982, p. 556.

9. John W. Johnson, Heellooy Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern Somali Poetry, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1974, pp. 36–37. Waberi notes that the miniature poem is a traditional Somali genre.

10. Cited in Angela Carter, La femme sadienne, tr. Françoise Cartano, Paris, Veyrier, 1979, p. 246.

11. Françoise Balogun, “Promenade à travers les romans de Nuruddin Farah,” Présence Africaine, 145 （1988）, p. 160.

12. “The reason why there is this clannishness in Somali politics is because traditional nomadic hamlets in Somalia are physically separated by great distances” （Nuruddin Farah, “Why I Write,” Third World Quarterly, 10:4 [1988], p. 177）.

13. Ali Moussa Iyé, Le verdict de l'arbre: Le Xeer Issa. Etude d'une démocratie pastorale, Dubai, n.p., 1990, p. 158.

14. From a scientific point of view, the concept of authoritarianism seems more appropriate than that of totalitarianism.

15. Jean-Pierre Durix demonstrates this quite convincingly in one of the very first studies on Farah's work in French: “Nuruddin Farah ou l'énigme de la liberté,” Afrique Littéraire, 67 （1983）, pp. 69–77.

16. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature, London, Routledge, 1989, p. 110.

Additional coverage of Farah's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Black Literature Criticism, Vol. 2; Black Writers, Vols. 2, 3; Contemporary Authors, Vol. 106; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 81; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 125; and DISCovering Authors Modules: Multicultural.