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Academic and author of Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions, Omolola Ogunyemi, wanted her debut novel to capture the ways in which the lives of Nigerian women have changed over several generations: ‘I was always intrigued by stories of how things used to be, especially when I found out that my grandmother’s older sister was once married to a woman who couldn’t have children of her own, and that this was once a perfectly acceptable part of the culture in her region of what is now Nigeria.’
My mom was a literature professor at the University of Ibadan focusing on African and African-American literature, so we had tons of books around the house.
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About the Author
was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. A finalist for the 2009 PEN/Studzinski Award, her stories have been published in New Writing from Africa 2009, Ploughshares, and mentioned in The Best American Short Stories 2018. She graduated from Barnard and UPenn with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science. Omolola is a Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles, where she teaches and conducts research on using biomedical informatics to reduce health disparities. Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions is her first book.
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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