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Author of ‘Remembering Kampala’, Carey Baraka, says the most common misconception about East African literature is that South Sudanese author and critic, Taban Lo Liyong, called the region a literary desert: ‘It is funny that East African writers continue to write against Lo Liyong, insisting that h
Author of ‘Remembering Kampala’, Carey Baraka, says the most common misconception about East African literature is that South Sudanese author and critic, Taban Lo Liyong, called the region a literary desert: ‘It is funny that East African writers continue to write against Lo Liyong, insisting that he is wrong, when what people are fighting doesn’t actually exist.’
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?
My mother was a high school teacher, and I spent a lot of time at her school’s library. That it was a high school library meant that I got to read a lot of things above my reading level—essentially the African Writers Series (AWS). I was obsessed with Peter Abrahams. I read and reread Mine Boy so many times, despairing at the fact that Eliza wanted the things of white people even though she loved Xuma. Then there were Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, inevitably, but then also Barbara Kimenye, whose Moses series I devoured. My father subscribed to Readers’ Digest, so I read that, and I liked Harry Potter too, as well as a coterie of white men writers: Robert Ludlum, Jeffery Archer and Dan Brown.
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About the Author
has written for The Guardian, The New York Review of Books and Financial Times.
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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