Faith in the City

Page 29 March–April 2008 Faith in the City Tiphanie Yanique The Virgin of Flames Chris Abani Penguin http://www.penguin.com 304 pages; paper, $14.00 If you love Catholic iconography, this is a book for you. If you’re just curious about Catholic iconography, this is a book for you. If you hate all that Catholic crap, this is a book for you. If you’re not into the blood, the body, the Virgin, the guilt… well, you should try. It makes for great literature. The Virgin of Flames is ChrisAbani’s most recent novel. Set in LosAngeles, it is as much about the city as it is about the characters. We see the city during the main character’s various pilgrimages—from Starbucks to Thai Elvis. The city of angels seems oddly ghostlike in its urbanity…and speaking of angels, Gabriel himself makes an appearance—most often in the form of a pigeon. That Gabriel, the great messenger angel, appears in the form of the most common urban bird is a metaphor for the blending of new urban and ancient sacred that the novel is taking on. The book is full of delicious and twisted Catholic imagery. Black, an artist, is sexually attracted to the Virgin Mary, and he’s seen his own devoutly Catholic mother masturbating. There are rosaries, Joyful Mysteries, Jesus dolls, and devotees of the Virgin de Guadeloupe. The novel also makes metaphoric use of other beliefs and devotions—there’s the former Jew, the Igbo Mami-Wata, the Muslim Fatima, and a spattering of psychics. There’s RayRay ’s devotion to illegal drugs, Bomboy’s need for money, and Black’s obsession with a transvestite stripper. The novel is framed in part by fires that are flaring up around L.A. and causing a rain of ashes. The ashes are mistaken for actual rain and even for snow—the latter being a miracle in L.A. The novel might be best described as a cross between a Gabriel García Márquez short story (those are so much weirder than his novels) and “Tuffy.” Add some Robert Antoni to the mix. This is simplification, of course,but TheVirginofFlames isn’treallyacomplex novel. Its structure is simple and makes heavy use of metaphoric foreshadow to forward the plot—and does so well. The Catholic imagery is everywhere in building the visual and emotional aspects of scene—though it doesn’t read like overkill, even to this former Catechism teacher. It does, however, have an offering of very complex characters. People so broken by their world that it hurts to keep reading, but as readers we want to see them survive because we know that we too are broken. That we too might carry our past around us like chains. The book is full of delicious and twisted Catholic imagery. The character with arguably the most horrific history is Bomboy. As a child in Rwanda, he was forced to chop the arms off of Tutsi women and children . He did it out of fear for his own life. His salve for Black’s problems is “you’re an African,” which is meant to mean that you shouldn’t be so caught up with the horror of the past. You should be working hard today, to make your self.This is what he believes Africans have had to do to survive their difficult histories. He’s a successful businessman inAmerica, whose ironic longing is to return to Rwanda. He resists the complexity of things, and yet he seems the most stable in his own skin. But Bomboy, like the little person Ray-Ray, the transvestite Sweet Girl and the psychic Iggy, are supporting cast. The main character is the artist named Black. Black, whose father was African, had to learn about Africa from books, like any other American kid. He doesn’t feel connected. He doesn’t know who or what he is.And though he’s in his thirties, he is still coming of age. Black is not a loveable protagonist. I was cheering on the smelly old fortuneteller who tells him that he’s “no good.” Of course, he’s not all bad. But he...