My Eyes Dance

Mark Nwagwu’s My Eyes Dance is a novel of character and a novel of ideas. The character around whom most of the action accretes is Chioma Ijeoma, and the ideas surrounding most of the themes are about African ancestor worship and its attendant idea of totemism.

Chioma, a great grand daughter of Pa Akadike of Okeosisi becomes the carrier of the ancestral genes by receiving an ancestral ‘walking stick’ that has a mind of its own and tries to influence Chioma’s actions at important moments in her life. The totem becomes Chioma’s alter ego, the projection of her life-drive which keeps her in contact with her profession and her society.