10 African Writers and the Books That Made Them Become Writers

First Draft

Photo Collage from Original Book Covers by Ijapa O / THE REPUBLIC.

the REPUBLIC INTERVIEWS / FIRST DRAFT

10 African Writers and the Books That Made Them Become Writers

In our latest First Draft interview, we asked ten African writers, including Fatima Bala and Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, about the books that inspired them to become writers. Here’s what they told us.
First Draft

Photo Collage from Original Book Covers by Ijapa O / THE REPUBLIC.

the REPUBLIC INTERVIEWS / FIRST DRAFT

10 African Writers and the Books That Made Them Become Writers

In our latest First Draft interview, we asked ten African writers, including Fatima Bala and Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, about the books that inspired them to become writers. Here’s what they told us.

Writers are, first and foremost, readers. That is how they become, and remain, writers. But beyond understanding this in a general sense, we wanted to get more up close and personal, to discover the specific books that sparked some African writers’ desire and determination to become writers themselves. The books that moved writers so much that it pushed them from mere consumers to producers of literature.

In our First Draft column at The Republic, we asked writers about the books that inspired them to become writers. These writers shared why and how books such as The Kite Runner and Half of a Yellow Sun inspired them to tell stories. Additionally, we learnt that while books are indisputably central to a writer’s formation, many writers also draw inspiration from other forms of art. Nana Sule, for instance, was inspired to become a writer by movies, newspapers and oral stories told by her father. Ama Asantewa Diaka found inspiration in a standalone poem. By asking these writers about the books that inspired them to write, we have found that if the factors are right, just about anything can make a writer.

Here are ten African writers and the books that inspired them to become writers.

LOLA AKINMADE ÅKERSTRÖM

I have always loved writing fiction through my pre-teens and teenage years, but it was reading D. H. Lawrence in college that made me want to explore power dynamics and sensuality in my writing. I loved the way he laced words and built a heightened sense of drama within his prose. He could easily dedicate four to five pages describing the tension between two people sitting on opposite sides of the room—one knitting, the other reading—not talking to each other. Read Åkerström’s full interview here.

FATIMA BALA

It was a book I didn’t like because of its depiction of Arewa girls. I didn’t have the energy to rant about it so I wrote about the girls I could relate to. Read Bala’s full interview here.

A. IGONI BARRET

Probably the naughty Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe. Or maybe Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore, a cloyingly sweet historical romance that made me weep with bliss too many times. Another favourite from my pre-writing years was the infamous Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrencewhich slurped my heart like a milkshake. Read Barrett’s full interview here.

AMA ASANTEWA DIAKA

I don’t think a singular book did that, but there is a poem that made me want to be a writer! ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ by Wallace Stevens. Read Diaka’s full interview here.

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HAMZA KOUDRI

It is hard to pinpoint a single book. Again, for me, the fascination has always been more with storytelling and character arcs than with the writing per se. But there are always books with that you connect at an emotional level so much that you have the urge to drop everything and get working on a story. Those, for me, include Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Follet and Sansom always do that for me, too. Read Koudri’s full interview here.

WAYÉTU MOORE

Black Boy by Richard Wright. Read Moore’s full interview here.

MUKOMA WA NGŨGĨ

My father, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, is a writer. I grew up watching him write. As a child, I would buy newspapers for him and deliver endless cups of tea while he worked and wrote in his home office. So, I have always written. I think the question ought to be: which writers do I envy as a writer myself, just for the sheer breadth of their imaginations? Writers like Jennifer Makumbi, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, Ben Okri, Can Themba, and poets such as Arthur Nortje and Hart Crane. But if I had to name one novel that truly stopped me in my tracks, it would be Butler’s Kindred. There was something about the imagination, the beauty of it, even as it grappled with slavery and racism in the United States. Read wa Ngũgĩ’s full interview here.

ONYI NWABINELI

Probably Maximus Mouse by Brian Ogden. It was a kid’s book I read probably about 150 times when I was a child. I actually started writing my own Maximus Mouse fan fiction based on that book. I knew—and so did my parents—from then that writing was in my future. Read Nwabineli’s full interview here.

ANI KAYODE SOMTOCHUKWU

It was not a book, but a poem. ‘Myopia’ by Sly Cheney Coker. It spoke to me in a way that made me feel important, a part of history. The boulevards of this country really are railway tracks in my heart. A train of anguish does run on them. I like to think of my writing as an expression of love for the African people, a commitment to our capacity for justice and liberty, an insistence on dreaming our freedom as an inevitable eventuality. I want to be an incendiary bomb. And I know that stories have that power. Read Somtochukwu’s full interview here.

NANA SULE

It was not a book, actually. For me, writing has always felt inevitable. I think no matter how you ran the simulation of my life, I would have somehow end up a writer. At least, unless you removed the constant variables: my parents. My mum taught me to read and write really early, and my dad filled our lives with stories, movies, TV shows and newspapers. He had me summarizing newspaper articles and writing out full episodes of shows he had missed, instead of having me narrate them to him verbally. I would sit and write it all down. So, in a way, it wasn’t just books that shaped me, it was my parents, it was movies, it was newspapers. Read Sule’s full interview here

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