“A Pandemic on a Pandemic”: Tanure Ojaide’s Poetry, Racism and Corona Virus-19 Pandemic

Cato Laurencin and Joanne M. Walter (2021) opine that Racism and Covid-19 represent “a Pandemic on a Pandemic for Blacks.” This assertion is most apt for Tanure Ojaide’s vision of racism in Corona Virus period in Narrow Escapes: A Poetic Diary of the Coronavirus Pandemic (2021). This paper uses the Critical analytical approach in investigating Ojaide’s repugnance against and response to racism during corona virus pandemic period in Narrow Escapes. It posits that Ojaide envisions racism as more rabid than corona virus pandemic in his poetry. This vision is demonstrable in six sub-themes; namely i) George Floyd’s killing and centuries-long global racism, ii) Racism virus more rabid than corona virus pandemic; iii) Colourless protest against racism; iv) Africa, corona virus pandemic and racist stereotyping; v) Global police brutality; vi) White’s individual freedom and the Others in Covid 19 Period. It concludes that though the health and social crises of the corona virus pandemic impacted deep physical and psychological scars, Ojaide’s poems on racism are leveraged from descent into emotionalism through apt use of poetic devices of metaphor, simile, allusion, satire etc to convey meaning, and repetition, parallelism, contrast, refrain etc, for poetic structure and rhythm.

Keywords: Corona Virus Literature Pandemic Racism

Author

• Effiok Bassey Uwatt
  Department of English
  University of Abuja