In Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story”, she discovers the U.S. perspective of Africans as “incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, unable to speak for themselves waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner”, a mindset widely portrayed through western literature. In Helon Habila’s African novel Oil on Water, however, we gain a new perspective on the relationship between westerners and Africans, or to put it frankly, wealthy, White people and the collateral damage around oil sites. Fiction as a genre allows us to conduct thought experiments, build connections, and read literature with a critical mind. It also allows readers to enter an imaginary world or into the mind of people with completely different backgrounds than their own. Sadly the perspectives and descriptions in Oil on Water directly reflect a reality that many people, especially Americans, cannot fathom or only think of distantly. I rarely think of where exactly the oil we use comes from and its destructive impacts on both local landscape and the humans who live there.
Nnedi Okorafor also claims that “science fiction is one of the most effective forms of political writing” and revolves around the question of “what if” in her TED Talk “Sci-Fi Stories that Imagine a Future Africa”. Habila tackles not an imagined “what if”, but a current, real-life narrative through the incredibly descriptive scenes of oil damage as Zaq and Rufus attempt to navigate the black water. From the dead animals to the foul stench of the swamp, Rufus even says the village “looked like a setting for a sci-fi movie” (37). This novel, a necessary exposé of oil extraction, uses fiction to enlighten a greater audience on the reality and gravity of the situation for modern day Africans.
Habila, Helon. Oil on Water. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
