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Growing up in Canada, author of ‘Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys Of Motherhood: A Precursor To Contemporary Nigerian Feminist Texts?’, Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph, used to feel inauthentic as a Nigerian writer: ‘Unlike my parents I didn’t grow up deep in Yorùbá land and I don’t speak the language as well as I could. I’ve consequently always had this apprehension about being read as inauthentic and performative.’
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About the Author
is a Nigerian living in the diaspora whose work and activism circles the axis of borders and bodies, the diaspora and the postcolonial, sexuality and gender, race and religion.
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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