Nigerian queer liberation activist and author of And Then He Sang a Lullaby, Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, describes his writing as an expression of love for the African people: ‘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.’
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?
James Hardly Chase novels, because there was always a classmate with a new one to lend. Why You Act the Way You Do by Tim LaHaye, because I found it in my mother’s divider. Nani Boi titles, those were ₦150 apiece when I was in secondary school. The Rosicrucian Digest, because my father owned a collection for a reason I still don’t know. I also read poems and novel excerpts in English comprehension textbooks. My parents barely had enough to pay for all our required schoolbooks and so had little to spare on extra-curricular ones. So, anything I could find, I read.
If your life so far was a series of texts, which text (fiction or non-fiction) represents you at this moment?
I struggle to think of any book, fiction or non-fiction, that fits my life at this moment. I am not lost but I am not sure where I am, only of the direction in which I am headed. Until a few years ago, I thought I would be a biomedical scientist. I moved states to pursue that career path. And now, I am such a different person with very different priorities. Even my familial relationships are in a state of flux, some getting stronger, some ceasing to exist. I am becoming surer of who I am, the sort of life I want to live, what society I want to see. I am sure there are books that attempt to capture this experience, but none come to mind in a way that feel representative.
What’s the last thing you read and disagreed with?
That would be an article in Discovery Magazine titled ‘Dire Wolf De-Extinction Breeds Both Hope and Uncertainty’. In it, Matt James, the chief officer of colossal biosciences speaks to the company’s so called de-extinction of the dire wolf, claiming that the technology presents ‘opportunities to help recover populations at scale in places where they should be reintroduced responsibly in a way that can be focused on coexistence.’ At the heart of that argument is an intentional delusion about what is causing our loss of biodiversity. Till today, there is a refusal by natural scientists to reckon with the legacies of colonization and the present realities of capitalist production. As we speak, CO2 levels are still on the rise. The capitalist system has pushed our world into a sixth mass extinction event and is wreaking havoc across the globe, particularly in the global south. Indigenous communities are being displaced and made into climate refugees and more than 42,000 species are currently at risk of extinction due to human activity. Yet there is money—millions of dollars—to de-extinct species that disappeared thousands of years ago. To incubate the illusion that one day we can repair our biodiversity by ‘reintroducing responsibly’, when we have not even stopped the current onslaught corporations have unleashed on our ecosystem. At the heart of ‘de-extinction’ science is the hubris of western colonization which thinks it can destroy the natural world for profit and then repair it in a lab.
In the same vein, they are still trying to find a technological solution to climate change, even though the science clearly states we are on borrowed time. They will try to tame the sun with an obscenely expensive reactor before they concede the destructive, unsustainable nature of the capitalist system.
Until a few years ago, I thought I would be a biomedical scientist. And now, I am such a different person with very different priorities. I am becoming surer of who I am, the sort of life I want to live, what society I want to see.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
I don’t have a writing process. I cannot stick to anything because nothing works on a regular basis. Mostly, I edit as I write because I need to read some of what I have written to get back into the zone of writing that particular piece. And some editing always happens there, perhaps even a change in plot direction or point of view, who knows? I do not plot beforehand, so I am also getting to know my characters as I write them. Because of this, I write something extra each read through.
What was your process for writing your debut novel, And Then He Sang a Lullaby?
For And Then He Sang a Lullaby, I drafted before editing. I had no choice. I did not own a laptop at the time. I wrote the first draft in an 80-leaf notebook. I did not plot at all. I think for the entirety of the first draft, every chapter was in August’s perspective. The chapters on Segun’s childhood are not in the first draft.
I also typed out most of the novel myself. After writing it, I could not afford to have it typed. I still did not have a laptop, so I made do with my phone—an Itel it1406. That process was basically a rewrite, with a better knowledge of my characters and their stories. It helped me realize the importance of depicting Segun’s childhood, and it was at that time that I separated the points of view of the two main characters.
And Then He Sang a Lullaby is ‘a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way.’ What inspired this story?
I wrote And Then He Sang a Lullaby while doing an internship. I was working for a hospital in Port Harcourt as a laboratory assistant. It was the first time in more than two years that I did not have to be in fight or flight mode almost every weekday. I had not realized how agitated my nervous system was. My queer activism in university came with a steeper cost than I had stopped to take account of. I was mocked openly, mobbed twice by cultists and threatened too many times to count. In Port Harcourt, my maternal uncle threatened to strip me naked and whip me with a machete if I did not stop ‘what I was doing’. So, I was interested in exploring queerness as openly declared, not just as perceived. It is a story that is personal to me in more ways than one. I was still wrecked with grief after losing my own mother two years before. I did not necessarily think I was writing about myself at the time—a lot of that was unconscious. Other than that, the story unfolded as I went.
Which book or author had the most influence on your approach to writing it?
I struggle to name any book or author that had such an influence on me. At the time, I was simply a biology student that wrote fiction. I could not even afford data, let alone novels. Had never attended any literary workshop or festival. I did not know anything about writing other than the story I had in me that needed release. I do owe some gratitude to African literary magazines that publish queer narratives and have no paywall. I cannot remember any story in particular but reading them did have an encouraging effect on me.
My queer activism in university came with a steeper cost than I had stopped to take account of. I was mocked openly, mobbed twice by cultists and threatened too many times to count.
The novel won the 2024 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. What’s one thing about readers’ reactions to And Then He Sang a Lullaby that surprised you?
One feedback that I enjoyed though found surprising was that And Then He Sang a Lullaby was so Nigerian. So ‘unapologetically Nigerian’ one reviewer put it. That is the biggest compliment I could get. I am grateful to have had Roxane Gay as my first (US) publisher. The first editorial meeting we had, she said the same thing, how raw, how Nigerian the story was. She told me that she wanted to work with me to polish the story into its best possible version without trying to water it down for a western audience. To that end, I had a lot of editorial freedom. I did not have to fight, even though I was very much prepared to.
What is the most meaningful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Write that story you want to read but have not seen. Writing can be such a gruelling, demanding and private—if not isolating—experience. Writing a story you really want to see but haven’t is a good sustaining strategy. Because if you do not write it, nobody will.
And what’s the first book you read that made you think you wanted to be a writer?
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.
Do you enjoy rereading books? If so, which book have you reread the most, and why?
No, I do not like rereading books. In fact, I have a big problem with reading because of unaddressed Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder symptoms. I need novelty to help me fight my distraction. If I have read it once, it is unlikely that I will enjoy reading it again. That said, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of The Oppressed is a really good exception, as I have read it at least once each year since I first read it years ago. My mother was a teacher, and I have always thought teaching to be such a noble profession (forgive the cliché). But it was Pedagogy of the Oppressed that made me see how central ideology is to education, how oppressive and dehumanizing our current banking model of education is, and what a humane and humanizing alternative might look like. I think everyone needs to read that book at least once.
What book (from Africa) do you feel has not yet received the attention it deserves?
Festus Iyayi’s bibliography. I especially love The Contract and think it is such a Nigerian novel.
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.
Which three books from/on Nigeria should everyone be reading at this moment?
African Sexualities: A Reader, edited by Sylvia Tamale; Problems of Socialism: the Nigeria Challenge by Eddie Madunagu; and On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe.
Who are the Nigerian authors you’re most excited about today (and why?)
Akwaeke Emezi, because they display such versatility and invention in their work. I am always excited for their next book, and it is always something beautiful, fascinating and new.
What’s the last great book someone recommended to you?
Decolonization and Afro-feminism by Sylvia Tamale.
What’s a book on your bookshelf that might catch people by surprise?
Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Time by Leonardo Boff.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
Not a topic but I have been playing with short prose that experiments with form. In ‘The Sorrow and the Pity’, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Hope Prize, I experiment with democratizing the narrator’s voice. In ‘The Left Hand and The Heart’, forthcoming in Transition Magazine, it is the plot structure and the Igbo oral tradition I deploy in ways that are new and exciting to me.
And what topic do you wish more authors were writing about these days?
Queer friendship. I want more plots about queer friendship. If we really want happy endings, that is where they are at.
I want more plots about queer friendship. If we really want happy endings, that is where they are at.
What are you currently working on?
A second novel that explores gender alienation, fatherhood/sonship, exile and the struggle of Nigerian students to oust the military from power.
Question from Musih Tedji Xaviere: Do you think fiction writers have a way of seeing the future?
I do not think any future currently exists to be seen. Whichever one will come to be will depend on the actions we take today. In that way, writers have the important obligation of imagining and telling the future that must be achieved, the future we must fight for today. How beautiful, how liberating, that literature does not have to be bound by the realisms of the current zeitgeist. We can reach for new emotional latitudes, dream that which is yet to exist, connect with each other through our shared yearning for community and love. We can not only pose the question of what future should exist, we can also attempt an answer.
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft
A lot has been said about African literature and ‘poverty porn’. What role do you see for African writers in the struggle against economic oppression in Africa?
Who should we interview next?
Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi⎈
We want to hear what you think about this interview. Submit a letter to the editors by writing to editors@republic.com.ng.
