‘I Wanted to See if I Could Pull Off Writing an Interdisciplinary Book’

First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.

Our questions are italicized.

I grew up during the Zimbabwean liberation struggle. The country was under sanctions and books were in short supply. For many of my generation, our only exposure was to Enid Blyton whose Malory Towers Series about a girls’ boarding school, I devoured. Mine was the generation of sagas—Lace, Thorn Birds, as well as Mills and Boon novels and, whisper it, Barbara Cartland’s novels.

I would be lying if I gave an answer to this. Law books were in short supply due to the cost and not having access to foreign currency. To my eternal shame, we breached copyright and photocopied the key texts. I am sorry for my past infractions, but needs must. That said, I have continued to be part of the problem-publishing books that are beyond the reach of many. I will try to ensure that any future book is open access so free to download. I will have to find a funder first!

It didn’t change my mind as such, but I found Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Black and Female challenging, stimulating and thought provoking.

Hmm. Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s In Dependence is a great read-so evocative. Mind you she had not written it when I went. Also, something on imposter syndrome so that I did not spend most of my first year thinking that I had been admitted by mistake.

Finally, nothing prepared me for seeing the Zimbabwe bird on top of Rhodes house and the wooden staircase carved with Zimbabwe birds inside. That threw me emotionally. I don’t know if there is a book for that. That said, I loved Oxford and had the best time both socially and academically. I was treated with warmth, kindness and support.

It is not a disagreement as such. While I admire his writing, J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace discomfited me. Disgrace, which won the prestigious Booker Prize, is set in South Africa and tells the story of the rape of a white woman on her father’s farm. I guess it reminded me of sitting in the library reading Native Affairs Department Annuals warning white men about Black men’s propensity for raping or coveting white women during the colonial era. (The Black Peril). I know others say it is a political allegory. A welcome gift was Fiona Snyckers’ Lacuna, which is in conversation with Disgrace. It helped me to make better sense of my ambivalent response to Disgrace. Painting with a feminist brush and an understanding of intersectionality, Snyckers, both centres the story of the woman who was raped while also explicitly engaging issues of gender, race and class. Coetzee comes in for some teasing. I think the two should be read as companion pieces.

Process—ooh that’s a question for a real author, not me. If truth be told, the book is an accident. I just started writing one day after reflecting on the various media accounts that I had read about people dying in transit. I was moved by the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed from her collection, Salt—which had been given to me (by Marcelle Akita) as a gift after my father died. Two poems stood out: Lands and Immigrant. Initially, it was to be an article, but it kept growing. The pioneering work of Kenyan legal academic, Ambreena Manji, and her reading of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God within an African legal pluralist tradition was stimulating. I was also blown away by Kenji Yoshino’s book on Shakespeare and Justice, and in particular the chapter on Othello which he uses to highlight aspects of the O. J. Simpson trial. Theoretically, I was inspired by Iranian Sharam Khosravi whose book, ‘Illegal’ Traveller, details his journey from Iran to Sweden where he was finally given asylum and citizenship. He interviews people who are involved in migration, including a fascinating smuggler called Amir.

I wrote it because I needed to show my employers what I had been doing with my time and their money. No, seriously, I wanted to respond to what I saw as the erasure of the voices of the people at the centre of debates about migration, focusing on people coming from our continent. Rarely did one get a sense of their/our complexity and humanity. I also resented the ahistorical approach of many western media outlets and governments who seemed to forget our inter-connected histories. More positively, writing the book also gave me the opportunity to read many wonderful books which touched on issues of migration by African and diasporic writers. This was a real treat and a good incentive.

Well, I suppose I wanted to explore the refugee/migration issue from the perspective of one whose people were being dehumanized. I was also curious about whether literature could reach places or invoke emotions such as empathy, that law and policy did not seem to be doing. On a personal level, I wanted to see if I could pull off writing an interdisciplinary book. The book also has numerous inspirations:

Former barrister Ellen Wiles captured the legal challenges faced by those seeking asylum really well in her 2017 novel, The Invisible Crowd. Chike Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street was so evocative and helped to frame my thinking about trafficking. I ended up focusing the chapter about women and trafficking on women from Edo State. The section on the exploitation of domestic workers relied on Zadie Smith’s 2013 novella, The Embassy of Cambodia and the powerful autobiography, Slave, written by Mende Nazer about her exploitation by a Sudanese diplomat—diplomats are overrepresented in complaints about exploitation of domestic workers. On a more cheerful note, I loved Cameroonian Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016) and the portrayal of the many schemes that people use to migrate. My favourite character is the resourceful Nigerian lawyer Bubakar.

In addition to the sources cited in question 8 above…

Well, this year I have had the incredible privilege and honour to chair the Caine Prize for African Writing. I had long been a fan of the Caine Prize and my book referenced many previously shortlisted/winning writers. From my fellow Zimbabwean, No Violet Bulawayo, whose ‘Hitting Budapest’ went on to frame the early part of her Booker Prize shortlisted best seller, We Need New Names (2014), the second part of which dealt with the experiences of international students and those without papers in the USA. I also used Uganda’s Monica Arac de Neyo whose ‘Jambula Tree’, a lesbian love story, challenged stereotypes as did Kenyan Cherrie Kandie’s ‘Sew My Mouth’. Caine Prize finalists and prize winners have written about contemporary issues including trafficking of girls and domestic servitude such as ‘It Takes a Village Some Say’ by Cameroonian Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti. Epaphrus Osondu, the author of the collection, Voices of America (2010), won with his story ‘Waiting’, written from the perspective of a child in a refugee camp. The work of novelists who have won the Caine Prize including Segun Afolabi, ‘Monday Morning’ in A Life Elsewhere (2006), Brian Chikwava who went on to write Harare North (2010) and Helon Habila, Travelers (2019) proved insightful and funny. The arc of my book on migration and the treatment of asylum seekers relies on Ethiopian Meron Hadero’s 2019 shortlisted story, ‘The Wall’, which reminds us that the architects of walls—legal or metaphorical—forget, ‘whichever side you’re on, it’s shadow is cast on you.’  They have all gone on to have stellar careers. Hadero, who, incidentally, is a Yale trained lawyer, went on to win the Caine Prize in 2021 and has just published a collection of her stories, A Down Home Meal for these Difficult Times.