Editor, Ẹ́lọ́hór Ẹ́gbọ́rdí, believes the biggest misconception about African storytelling is that it is inferior to non-African storytelling: ‘No one can tell our stories better than us and on a world stage, we can go toe to toe with the best of them and even surpass them.’
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 don’t have any memory of being taught how to read. For as long as I’ve been conscious of myself as a person, I have loved reading. As a child, I read everything I could lay my hands on. I read old literature texts owned my aunts and uncles from both sides of the family. I also read encyclopaedias, receipts and shopping lists, newspapers, and then I read children’s story books and novels. Some of the books I read: The Trials of Brother Jero by Wole Soyinka, Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare, Zambia Shall Be Free by Kenneth Kaunda, Camara Laye’s The African Child, The Marriage of Anansewa by Efua Sutherland, She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, almost all the books in the Lantern series and an awful lot of Mills and Boon before my teen years. My favourite book from my childhood is Without a Silver Spoon by Eddie Irroh...
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