‘I Want My Writing to Sound on Paper How It Sounds in My Head and Heart’ Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein’s First Draft
Academic and author of The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice, Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein, tends to pay less attention to books that fail to enhance her work: ‘I would leave behind any book that denies the diverse richness of African perspectives and various forms of Blackness, that relegates Christianity to Western forms, and that tries to suffocate the poetic and its expressive reach.’
Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, An African Feminist Manifesto. Buy the issue here.
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?
As someone who identifies as Nigerian-American, growing up in the US, I loved reading American mystery books! There was something about the problem-solving inclinations, the cleverness, and the attention to detail in these books that resonated with who I was: someone who was always trying to solve something about my own life or about what was happening in the life (internal and external) of another. Though I felt pressure to read classic literature such as Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, the Illiad, or any and all Shakespeare in order to be considered a ‘proper’ student of English, I could never convince myself to engage books, literature, and poetry that did not first draw me to itself. In my teenage years, I also felt compelled to read books about Black girls, books that even if I did not understand them completely, I could sense were important to my development, such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
In your earliest days as a theology student, what books were foundational to your study and research?
I entered divinity school knowing that I had questions about the Christian faith, especially from my identity as Nigerian-American. Exposure to womanist theological, ethical, and biblical scholarship from voices such as Delores S. Williams (Sisters in the Wilderness), Emilie Townes (Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil), Katie Geneva Cannon (Katie’s Canon), Kelly Brown Douglas (Sexuality and the Black Church), M. Shawn Copeland (Enfleshing Freedom), and Renita Weems (Just a Sister Away) literally changed my life and perspective. Black liberation theology also opened my eyes! James Hal Cone’s works (A Black Theology of Liberation; God of the Oppressed; The Cross and the Lynching Tree) gripped me and did not let me go.
Late in my divinity school education was when I was recommended the work of Ghanaian women’s theologian, Mercy Amba Oduyoye. She inevitably became the subject of my first book. It was in her work—I first met her through her 1995 book, Daughters of Anowa, and found myself reading and re-reading her critical work, Introduction to African Women’s Theology, constantly—that I saw how I could bridge my Nigerian and American identity within my scholastic interests.
In my teenage years, I also felt compelled to read books about Black girls, books that even if I did not understand them completely, I could sense were important to my development.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
Reading Nayyirah Waheed’s newest creation, a multibook, Stream Black Books, has inspired me to contemplate Blackness, spirituality, creative inheritances, cultural beliefs together, and towards what directions they can push areas like Christian theology and ethics. I am convinced that Christian theology in the West must take various Black spiritual expressions and forms seriously in order to best understand its own history and legacy. Waheed’s creation invites this exploration and much, much more! Stream Black Books (actively) shatters my understanding of who I thought could be my theological conversation partners and expands my view of the divine.
What is the last book/text you disagreed with, and why?
Honestly, any Christian theological or ethical work, especially if Western or Western-adjacent, that tries to universalize rigid and harmful claims and ideas without considering the multiplicity of cultures, and frankly, Christianities that stem from them, will likely not be helpful in any work that I aim to do.
What was your process for writing your book, The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice?
To write The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye, I read everything Aunty Mercy wrote that I could access—from her books to her chapter contributions to her long and short articles. I also attended or watched talks and lectures she offered at various conferences. I had to let her voice be the primary one talking about her life and theological perspective. I further gathered her self-proclaimed stories and read the stories about her from others. I conducted a formal interview with Aunty Mercy and had a few informal conversations with her. In these conversations, I paid attention to the stories she told. Again, for me, her first-person accounts were most critical in writing this book well. I, lastly, read everything I could acquire that other scholars have written about Aunty Mercy to ensure I got the most holistic picture of her life, her reach, and the impact of her work.
Why was it important that you wrote this book?
I wrote this book because no one has written a monograph on Aunty Mercy besides Aunty herself. There are works that honour her, but not one that offers an objective look at her life, her formation, and how they colour how she sees and interacts with the divine. I wanted to offer my theological elder respect as well as converse with her insight and ideas. In my book, I get the honour to do so.
What books did you read while you were working on The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye?
I read Aunty Mercy’s books and books she is featured in, including but not limited to:
Beads and Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa
Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy
The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition, and the Church in Africa
With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology
Who Will Roll the Stone Away: The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women
I entered divinity school knowing that I had questions about the Christian faith, especially from my identity as Nigerian-American.
You’re a professor of Black religious traditions, constructive theology, and ethics. What books do you recommend to students who take your class?
A few books I recommend are:
The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, edited by Katie Geneva Cannon and Anthony Pinn; Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation by Cain Hope Felder; Bitter the Chastening Rod: Africana Biblical Interpretation after Stony the Road We Trod in the Age of BLM, SayHerName, and MeToo, edited by Mitzi Smith, Angela Parker, et. al; Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader, edited by Katie G. Cannon, Emilie Townes, et. al; Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes, edited by Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland; Theology Brewed in an African Pot by A. E. Orobator; Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief by E. Bolaji Idowu; and The Palgrave Handbook of African Social Ethics, edited by Nami Wariboko and Toyin Falola.
Which books about Black religious traditions should everyone have on their bookshelf?
African Traditional Religion: A Definition by E. Bolaji Idowu and A Black Theology of Liberation by James Hal Cone are two of the most important works that immediately come to mind as important to have within Black religious study as highly recognized branches—African Traditional Religion and the (African American) Black Church—of the Black religions.
Who are the young African authors and scholars you’re most excited about today (and why?)
I think Nigerian science fiction and fantasy writers and African-descended poets are doing incredible work! Three women who come to mind are Tomi Adeyemi, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ijeoma Umebinyuo. These women drawing attention to West African women’s circumstances but also the shape of their imagination will always be a draw to me. African women who imagine worlds can create change.
2023 was both devastating and lovely. Personal losses will forever colour 2023 in my heart’s memory, but so will the love and care I was gifted.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days? (Please include the names of articles and books, if possible)
My favourite thing to write about is ‘Black Theopoetics’, a term that I have coined and a discourse that I am actively fashioning where I explore how theopoetics (a genre of Christian theological discourse that expressively does God-talk and creatively explores and uncovers aspects of the divine) is done from a Black perspective. I consider my work Black Theopoetic work, so I am currently teaching a class on Black Theopoetics, continuing to write as a Black theopoetician, and will be putting words to the discourse of Black Theopoetics soon.
I am currently reading theology and theory that concern the Black diaspora. Areas that can stand to be further explored like affect theory and Blackness as well as sexuality and Blackness are in my purview right now. I love engaging with beautiful writing that is in touch with reality’s complexities; so, I have most recently read Biko Mandela Gray’s Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject. But I will always be indebted to the giants in the fields in which I study and am constantly curious including but not limited to: Katie Geneva Cannon, Delores S. Williams, Emilie M. Townes, Kelly Brown Douglas, Renita Weems, Esther Acolatse, Willie James Jennings, Brian Bantum, Keri Day, Eboni Marshall Turman, Tracey Hucks, and Jacob Olupona.
What’s the best book you read in 2023?
My honest response to the best book I have read in 2023 is a book I have had the honour of co-editing that is forthcoming in 2024. The work is called Theopoetics in Color: Embodied Approaches in Theological Discourse. Re-reading the chapters before the book’s publication, it has dawned on me that my co-editor and I have curated a beautiful, distinct work that will keep pushing conversations in theopoetics forward. I am incredibly proud to be the book’s progenitor and to have had a hand in its emergence. This book is unique because it is the only theopoetics book that contains solely ethnically and racially minoritized scholastic voices (in a scholastic area full of white voices).
What book or text are you looking forward to reading in 2024?
At this present moment I cannot wait to dig into Jennifer Susanne Leath’s Black, Quare, and then to Where: Theories of Justice and Black Sexual Ethics. But I also wait in anticipation to engage the forthcoming or newly released books of my colleagues: Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones (Blackness and sexuality), Sheila Otieno (African feminist epistemologies), Georgette Ledgister (African feminist theologies and ethics), James Howard Hill (Blackness, sound theory, and affect), Tamisha Tyler (womanist theopoetics and science fiction), Tiffany U. Trent (Blackness, theatre, and liberation), Lakisha Lockhart-Rusch (womanism and play), Elyse Ambrose (Black queer ethics), and Courtney Bryant (womanism and sexuality) in the near future.
A writing goal I have for this year is to finish my second monograph (The Care Book), but to do so in the writing style that feels most comfortable to me.
And what’s a writing goal you have for the new year? Are there specific genres or styles you want to explore in your writing in 2024?
A writing goal I have for this year is to finish my second monograph (The Care Book), but to do so in the writing style that feels most comfortable to me. I consider my writing style theopoetic where the poetic and the prose are indiscernible—but most importantly, where I am exploring themes about the divine in everything I am saying. I want my writing to sound on paper how it sounds in my head and heart, so being true to this form of articulation is what I want to commit to.
You get to leave a book behind in 2023. What book is it?
I do not tend to read or pay much attention to books that will not enhance me or my work. Hence, in 2023, I would leave behind any book that denies the diverse richness of African perspectives and various forms of Blackness, that relegates Christianity to Western forms, and that tries to suffocate the poetic and its expressive reach. These books (and their ideas), I have no interest in.
And which author are you excited to read for the first time in 2024?
I am excited to read books that matter to me and that expand how I name and do my work in theology and ethics—be it literature, poetry, theology, ethics, theory, short stories, any and every form. Whoever is doing it, I will surely become a fan of!
What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on my second monograph, The Care Book. It is a book on a theological ethic of care—what care is, where it comes from, and how it is connected to the divine. How one cares and what one cares about has always been a charged topic across time. In The Care Book, I want to theopoetically explore how care is inherent in our divine creation and divine intention of living.
In your most literary way, how would you summarize the 2023 you had?
2023 was both devastating and lovely. Personal losses will forever colour 2023 in my heart’s memory, but so will the love and care I was gifted. The lesson that 2023 has etched in me is that pain and promise can live in the same space.
I am excited to read books that matter to me and that expand how I name and do my work in theology and ethics.
Question from Fareda Banda: Which book do you think should be translated into other languages and which languages would you prioritize?
I think Nayyirah Waheed’s newly released book, Stream Black Books, should be translated into every language possible! Her groundbreaking books salt. and Nejma already made it around the world when they were first released, so I don’t see why Stream Black Books couldn’t either.
I want to see Stream Black Books translated into as many Black African languages on the African continent as possible! Personally, I would love to see it in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ga, Twi, Wolof, Mandinka, Swahili, Fante, Xhosa, Zulu, and Swazi. But again, every person on the continent and in the Black diaspora globally, should have the opportunity to read it in whatever language they speak—so again, every language!
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft.
Why do you write the way you write?⎈
*Correction: An earlier version of this interview had misspelled Okorafor as Okafor. This typo has been corrected.
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