The safest space for me was the basketball court, among the school’s all-white, all-Irish basketball team. The school was drowning in racism, the scope and fever of which was only matched by ignorance. I quickly discovered I was the only African boy in the entire student body. I played enthusiastically for the three years I spent in London before I moved to Ireland. Those powers would mean I’d never miss a shot, and the ball would swish smoothly through the hoop. I’d wake up to Nigeria’s cloudless sky, take in its borderless-ness and believe, just like Storm, I could reach into it.īack on the courts in London, I’d will latent mutant genes to unlock my abilities and manifest as I shot the ball. Years before, in boarding school in Nigeria, at night by flashlight, I’d read the Marvel comics smuggled between dormitories like sacred contraband and dream of their epic battles. I had no skills whatsoever but believed in the possibility of genetic mutation-that I could achieve the impossible and defy the laws of physics, just like the X-Men. I figured the only way I could be in her eye-line was to be the one with the ball. When I was 12 years old, my family and I moved to London, and I started playing basketball because a girl I was enamored with loved the sport. The story is huge, mammoth, but it began in a much simpler, humbler way. It mixes Yoruba with Greek Mythology, basketball urban-lore with spiritual belief, and Homeric aesthetic with sporting hysteria. The story starts on a grassy patchy basketball court in South-West Nigeria and ends with the complete obliteration of Mount Olympus. Demi, her son, is an athlete, and the father is Zeus. However, in my poem, “Modupe,” the mother is a mortal woman.
It explores the extensive lengths to which a mother goes to protect her son from his abusive father-an unfortunately ubiquitous global occurrence. The Half-God of Rainfall is a many-layered thing and has been described as an epic revenge fantasy on love and basketball, a meditation on power and patriarchy, a black feminist response to the #MeToo movement, Nigeria’s answer to Marvel’s Avengers, and a feature film waiting to happen.Ī friend described it as “a love-letter to lone parenting,” and it is also definitely that. In the following essay, author Inua Ellams reflects on his experience writing the book, which is available for purchase through our online bookstore. From the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic story and a lyrical exploration of pride, power, and female revenge.