(Un)continuity in African Literature: Facebook Memoir and Suicide as Excape in Akachi's Sixteen Notes on How to End a Life

Facebook nonfictional creative of Chukwuemeka Akachidiscontinues and continues our perception of autobiography in the twenty first century. Depression is a clinical condition if not diagnosed on time, could lead to suicide. This paper, through application of Psychoanalytic and Trauma theories, observes that suicide is a product ofaccumulated memories that find meaning in individual memory, resulting in self-help. This paper observes that, mental illness is influenced by self-perception of Akachi’smemory in relation to his identity: economic, cultural and socio-political being as received by others and self. It submits that suicide is a burden of memory, which either makes the individual or gradually leads the individual to end the self, thereby ending the sufferings. My findings show that social media space, through re-domestication of the space and experience, provides the space for continuous imagining of self and accounts for immediate and remote causes of trauma, as it is illustrated in Akachi’s Facebook page. Chukwuemeka Akachi’s constant posting aboutdepression on his Facebook page and his Sixteen Notes On How To End A Life, which was written by him few monthsbefore the author committed suicide, is instructive on the emergent form of social media autobiography. This paper concludes that memory is identity creation and the defining characteristic of Facebook autobiography and thesustenance of self in the material world.

Keywords: Trauma, Memory, Self, Depression, Suicide, Social Media, Literature