Et Tu, Brother?

The One with Enyeribe Ibegwam — On Brotherhood and Literature

I first met Enyeribe in 2009 while we were undertaking a compulsory paramilitary training called the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Jigawa State, located in northern Nigeria. We became fast friends and managed to keep in touch since then, albeit sporadically.

Enyeribe Ibegwam was brought up in Lagos, Nigeria but now resides in the US. A writer, he has been awarded a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He has received grants from the Vermont Studio Center and The Elizabeth George Foundation. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in PEN America Best Debut Stories 2019, Prairie Schooner, The Southampton Review, and The Georgia Review. He’s a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

It was while in the US that Enyeribe was first labeled as a “Black man.” New to the culture of solidarity among Black people in the US, he found it strange when he got nods and looks from other Black people who expected him to reciprocate their gestures and call them “brother” too. Coming from Nigeria, where everyone was Black, there had…