Actress and author of Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad, Damilare Kuku, thinks criticism is a positive thing: ‘I’m good with criticism because I think it helps you understand what people want and makes you better.’
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 think the first book I read was the Bible. I hadn’t read anything else consciously until I started reading the Bible. I then progressed to reading Enid Blyton’s novels, which I read a lot of. I remember that whenever I did well in something at school, my mom would reward me with another Enid Blyton book, because she knew that I was devouring them at an alarming rate.
Gradually, I also progressed into African fiction as I discovered authors like Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Nawal El Saadawi. My mom had this library that I would just go into and not come out for a very long time. So, I read all kinds of books, but illustrated Bible stories were the first ones I read that actually sunk in. We had these yellow books in school that were full of Bible stories with paintings, and those books, along with Enid Blyton’s novels, were some of the first ones that encouraged my interest in books because I started reading with pictures in my head.
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