Dream Maker Review: Good Counsel, Just Buried

In Dream Maker, Sammy Hassan, one of Nigeria’s most celebrated spoken-word poets, takes readers into the kingdom established by the Biblical King Solomon. There, through the character of an elderly teacher named Baba, students who attend The School of Wisdom are instructed in how to become successful adults. The secret, he tells prize student Da and his peers, is relatively simple: Be humane, hard-working, respectful, creative, and principled.

Unfortunately, Baba does not stop there and his heavy-handed message is often sexist and glib. Nonetheless, there are some nuggets of inspiration scattered throughout.

For example, Hassan writes that “the secret to fulfilling any dream is to stop—to desist, to capture the dream in a frame and to begin to work to make that dream come true…Imagination is prelude to reality. …Before you live the dream, you create the dream.” What’s more, he cautions readers to be somewhat wary of others; after all, he writes “not every relationship is profitable or purposeful.”

Knowing what you want and going after it is, of course, sound advice. Likewise, urging people to take risks, cut losses, and act deliberately are wise calls. But even if one is able to do these things, success is never assured and Hassan pays no attention to real-life obstacles—war, famine, drought, racism, sexism, homophobia, among them—that frequently get in the way of realizing goals and fulfilling potential.

This makes Dream Maker less effective than it might be. That said, if the novel is supplemented by other materials, or a lecture that addresses the book’s deficits, it may be able to inspire youth to envision bigger and better lives for themselves and their loved ones. [Nonetheless, be warned that the deficits include the author’s wildly essentialist—and maybe even delusional–notions about women as “the fair sex.” Among his chestnuts: “A woman who knows a man is lying will still fall in love with him because he is pleasuring her with the fantasy of the stories he is telling. It doesn’t have to make sense as long as it is fantastic.” How he came to that conclusion is anybody’s guess and leaves me shaking my head in both disgust and amusement.]

All told, Dream Maker needs to be read with a finely-honed critical eye. Still, while much of the book is simplistic or downright wrong, there is enough good counsel buried in the chaff to make it of limited use to high school-aged readers.

Dream Maker: A Fable by Sammy Sage Hassan, Hot Coffee Publishing Ltd., 2013.