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Novelist, Chinelo Okparanta’s debut novel was gentle. Her next one will be unflinching: ‘Where Under the Udala Trees was gentle in its hopefulness for a changing world, Harry Sylvester Bird is a much fiercer critique—of race relations, of white-on-black power dynamics, of outright racism and lingering colonialist mentalities, of race-related microaggressions, of the historically biased white Western gaze in literature, of white Western exoticization of Africa, etc.’
It takes me a while to think about and fully digest what I’ve read. Sometimes, years. For many things, I’m still thinking.
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About the Author
is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Happiness, Like Water, Under the Udala Trees, and the forthcoming novel, Harry Sylvester Bird.
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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