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Founder and editor of Open Country Mag, Otosirieze Obi-Young, believes African writers are not credited enough as innovators for their adaptiveness to solving problems on the page: ‘When Damon Galgut flits between the first- and third-person in one sentence in his book, “In a Strange Room”, the ackn
Founder and editor of Open Country Mag, Otosirieze Obi-Young, believes African writers are not credited enough as innovators for their adaptiveness to solving problems on the page: ‘When Damon Galgut flits between the first- and third-person in one sentence in his book, In a Strange Room, the acknowledgement never transcends book reviews into literary culture essays or lists.’
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?
I grew up reading mostly religious books and books on history. My mother had a wide-ranging curiosity about religion and had the holy books, so through her I read the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and bits of the Quran and the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. I reread the first third of the old testament, from Genesis to Second Chronicles; the new testament, from Matthew to Acts of the Apostles; and the deuterocanonical books, especially the Books of the Maccabees. It was the stories that I loved, and looking back, I see how following all those genealogies gave me a sense of order—and now, in my fiction, editing, journalism, and curation, I am ruled by order.
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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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