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Nigerian writer and author of Not So Terrible People, Nana Sule, says it takes a special kind of grace to find and write about joy as a writer from Africa: ‘I believe writers are very much shaped by the times they live in.
Nigerian writer and author of Not So Terrible People, Nana Sule, says it takes a special kind of grace to find and write about joy as a writer from Africa: ‘I believe writers are very much shaped by the times they live in. Part of our role is to document the world around us, and for many African writers, that means confronting trauma and hardship. It takes a special grace to find and write about joy, honestly.’
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?
Some titles that stand out from those early years include Grace Nma Osifo’s Dizzy Angel, Kola Onadipe’s Ralia the Sugar Girl and The Slave Boy, Cyprian Ekwensi’s Passport of Mallam Ilia, An African Night Entertainment and The Drummer Boy, and Anezi Okoro’s One Week, One Trouble. I read a lot of Lantern and Pacesetter books too. I also read newspapers regularly. In school, we read a number of plays, one of which was Felicia Onyewadume’s Echoes of Hard Times. I also discovered Zainab Alkali and Buchi Emecheta around that time. Somewhere in senior secondary school, my taste shifted toward thrillers. I became obsessed with Mary Higgins Clark, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Patterson, Ken Follett and James Hadley Chase.
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About the Author
is a writer, editor and communications strategist working at the intersections of arts, decolonial knowledge production, gender and environmental justice. She is the author of Not So Terrible People, a collection of short interconnected stories published by Masobe.
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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