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When social justice advocate and author of ‘Decolonizing Human Trafficking’, Oyinkansola Wumkes, writes about human trafficking, she is intentional with her choice of language and imagery: ‘I try my best to avoid reducing survivors to mere flesh, stripping them of their personhood and making them into mere objects of violent and sexual impulses.’
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 owe my appreciation for literature to my mum. She worked in a bank and was away from home for most of the day when my siblings and I were in elementary school, but she made sure to never leave us idle. She bought stacks of books at a time for each of our reading levels and made us read them and narrate the stories to her. My first encounter with reading and getting lost in stories was with Enid Blyton novels. I must have read all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books and remember getting lost in the wide range of fictional genres she produced, from mystery to fairy tales, circus stories, and beyond. I also read a lot of Roald Dahl books, with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being an all-time favourite.
My first encounter with a more ‘serious’ fictional text was a book called Basket of Flowers by Christoph Von Schmid. I must have been eleven years old at the time. Set in Germany over a century ago, it is the story of a 15-year-old girl and her father who faced great persecution and, eventually, the death penalty for a crime they did not commit. The key takeaway from that story was standing your ground in the face of persecution, and not wavering in the truth. This stuck with me over the years and definitely influenced how I interact with the world today, in some ways. I also read a lot of Francine Rivers and Ted Dekker books when I got into senior secondary school.
These books were my companions. They offered a form of solace and adventure that my environment couldn’t at the time.
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About the Author
is a graduate of Political Science from the University of South Florida who advocates for social and economic justice in her professional and personal life.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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