Nigerian writer, A. Igoni Barrett, is working on a new novel that picks up Furo Wariboko’s story four years after the events in his critically acclaimed debut, Blackass: ‘My forthcoming novel, Whyteface, haunted me for about eight years, though without my conscious awareness. It was only when I sat down to face the writing that I realized I’d been collecting, throughout those anxious years, all the bits and pieces I needed to exorcise myself.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I read as many Mills & Boon romances as Enid Blyton mysteries, along with the usual mix of European fairy tales and African folk tales. The Pacesetters series of novels, James Hadley Chase and John D. Macdonald thrillers—and many Nigerian children’s titles that were popular in the 80s and 90s but are now forgotten, like the Obobo story series by Naiwu Osahon. My late grandfather’s multi-volume set of Collier’s Encyclopaedia, which filled an entire bookshelf in my grandma’s parlour, was my favourite escapist portal.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
Percival Everett’s Erasure changed my mind about the viability of the story-within-a-story as a modern fictional device.
What is the last book/text you disagreed with, and why?
I don’t remember books I don’t enjoy, except for the rare case of a book so irritating it sticks with you. I tend to not disagree with books that give me pleasure, even if their ideas seem outlandish. The suspension of disbelief is crucial to learning how others think.
Fail better, or fail worse, but keep on failing for as long as it takes to finish writing the goddamned book.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
A mix of both. I edit obsessively as I write, but I also rewrite the first draft once I know where the story’s headed. And then I edit again and again, polishing the words until my dreams are soaked in ink. All of this happens before I show the work to anyone.
Your debut novel, Blackass, was published in 2015. What was your process for writing this book?
My process ten years ago was not much different from now. Find an idea that fires me up and then burn myself out trying to pin it down. Fail better, or fail worse, but keep on failing for as long as it takes to finish writing the goddamned book.
In Blackass, Furo Wariboko—born and bred in Lagos—wakes up on the morning of his job interview to discover he has turned into a white man. What’s one thing you dread waking up as?
An oga-at-the-top, a vain emperor strutting bare-assed through the simpering crowd.
What is the most interesting thing you’ve read or learnt about race?
Many years ago in Ibadan, when I was about seventeen, I heard a radio documentary on the BBC World Service about the strange case of an European man who saw himself as Chinese because he had been adopted by locals and raised for decades in a secluded part of China after his white missionary parents died in his infancy. When this orphan was finally discovered by European explorers, he rejected his fellow whites as intruders from a strange land and refused to abandon his eastern family for the bright lights of western capitals. My adolescent mind learnt from that radio story that race was more about nurture than nature, because how we see ourselves reflected in the caring faces around us is more fundamental to our sense of belonging than any skin colour or hair texture. Race is centuries of tribalism, just like the poodle and the rottweiler are only separated by man’s unnatural selection of physical traits. That European had become Chinese because he was raised that way. And yet, in the fishbowl called Nigeria, in spite of our jingoistic platitudes over our shared national traumas, we are always Yoruba or Igbo or something else, because our oppressors won’t let us become Nigerian, whatever Frankenstein that may be.
What idea about race do you keep returning to, and why does it continue to stay with you? Here’s a brief quote about race from my forthcoming book: ‘Whiteness is the exclusion of everything but one; blackness, the inclusion of everything but one.’ Tools of exclusion can be co-opted for inclusion, in the same way that blackness, in much of today’s world, has expanded to include the descendants of all manner of mixed unions. That’s one idea I keep returning to, and it is much bigger than race.
Looking back, what’s one thing you might revise/do differently if you were to write Blackass again?
Looking back, I would change nothing about the past. But hopping back through an Octavia Butler-esque time warp to the year I wrote Blackass, I would warn my social media-stalking self to abandon Twitter long before a billionaire X’ed it.
And what’s one thing about the reception to the novel that surprised you?
That it wasn’t ignored by readers and reviewers and even sold enough copies to earn back its modest advance, which was a pleasant surprise to this two-book short story writer.
I’d like to read stories from the point-of-view of chickens and rats. They know our desires as completely as we can imagine.
Before Blackass, you published two short story collections: From Caves of Rotten Teeth (2005) and Love Is Power, or Something Like That (2013). In what ways is writing a novel different from writing a short story collection?
One demands stamina, the other acumen. Knowing when to sprint or jog is a question every fiction writer must answer for themselves.
As a seasoned writer, what is the worst piece of writing advice you’ve ever encountered? Whatever it was, I’d rather not pass it on.
What’s the first book you read that made you think you wanted to be a writer?
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. Lawrence, which slurped my heart like a milkshake.
What’s a book on your bookshelf that might catch people by surprise?
What’s the point of a bookshelf that doesn’t stack surprises?
What three books should everyone read on Port Harcourt and/or the Niger Delta?
Read The Voice by Gabriel Okara for its poetic grasp and mythic reach. Pick up Jowhor Ile’s And After Many Days for the tender cruelty of the novel’s unfolding, a Port Harcourt specialty. Elechi Amadi’s war diary, Sunset in Biafra, is a lucid introduction to the Niger Delta’s long-time antipathy to Biafran separatism.
What’s the last great book someone recommended to you?
Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem. No question about that. I probably would never have heard about this mind-bending novel without its passionate championing by the musician Funsho Ogundipe, to whom I’m grateful for intuiting what I needed to read. Living in Lagos has its perks, and meeting perceptive readers is very much one of them.
You can only read one book for the rest of your life. It’s:
A huge book of many stories, almost biblical in scope, but without the preachiness. Think The Arabian Nights.
Which three books from/on the Nigeria should everyone be reading at this moment?
I’m not arrogant enough to presume I know what everyone should be reading in France or Britain or China, much less in a country as diverse as Nigeria.
Who are the Nigerian authors you’re most excited about today (and why?)
I recently read an essay on Nigerian Londoners and football titled ‘Innit Innit Boys and Super Eagles: How Nigerian Londoners Found Their Identity Through Football’ by Aniefiok Ekpoudom. It has stayed with me for its robust language and psychological astuteness. Another voice that commands attention is Pwaangulongii Dauod, who writes with an uncommon lyrical power.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
I’m trying to read up on feminist theory in a systematic way, to fill in the gaps of my Nigerian public school education, but I’m not making much progress. Aluta continua.
And what topic do you wish more authors were writing about these days?
I’d like to read stories from the point-of-view of chickens and rats. They know our desires as completely as we can imagine.
Here’s a brief quote about race from my forthcoming book: ‘Whiteness is the exclusion of everything but one; blackness, the inclusion of everything but one.
What are you currently working on?
I am working on a novel titled Whyteface. It picks up Furo Wariboko’s story four years after the events in Blackass.
Question from Wayétu Moore: What story has haunted you for years, and how have you carried it?
My forthcoming novel Whyteface haunted me for about eight years, though without my conscious awareness. It was only when I sat down to face the writing that I realized I’d been collecting, throughout those anxious years, all the bits and pieces I needed to exorcise myself.
Who do you think we should interview next?
Okwiri Oduor, because she weaves church steeples and dung beetles into a sentence with such devilish grace⎈
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