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Nigerian writer and author of Water Baby, Chioma Okereke, is excited to see more Nigerian writers branching out beyond literary fiction: ‘More writers are emerging in genres like historical fiction, romance, science fiction, and beyond.
Nigerian writer and author of Water Baby, Chioma Okereke, is excited to see more Nigerian writers branching out beyond literary fiction: ‘More writers are emerging in genres like historical fiction, romance, science fiction, and beyond. It is encouraging, after so much pigeonholing, that we are finally witnessing more breakthroughs in other genres, which is hopefully inspiring new authors.’
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?
Growing up, I loved reading and being transported through stories, from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis and Enid Blyton’s Famous Five mysteries to the Sweet Valley High books, the Mills & Boons books, and the Jilly Coopers books that were doing the rounds at my boarding school in the United Kingdom. I also read the classics: Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, the Brontë sisters.
I remember discovering the school library and coming across Mildred D. Taylor’s Let the Circle Be Unbroken and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Those books had a profound effect on me, even though they were set in the United States. I was very impacted by the fact that their protagonists resembled me more than those in the books I had previously been ingesting at the time. It led me to read many books by African American authors, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston, which deepened my love of literature. Around that same time, the African Heinemann Writers Series opened my world to extraordinary African authors like Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nadine Gordimer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and J. P. Clark.
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About the Author
is a Nigerian writer. Her debut novel, Bitter Leaf, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her latest novel, Water Baby, is a coming-of-age-story set in the real settlement of Makoko, Lagos. Okereke has set up Makoko Pearls to raise funds for the inhabitants of Makoko. Get involved at makokopearls.org.
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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