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Editor of Who Gave The Order: The History of a People’s Movement, Chibueze Darlington Anuonye, believes that 20 October 2020 stands as an indictment of the Nigerian conscience and urges Nigerians to remember that day: ‘What happened at the Lekki Toll Gate could be described as a country waging war a
Editor of Who Gave The Order: The History of a People’s Movement, Chibueze Darlington Anuonye, believes that 20 October 2020 stands as an indictment of the Nigerian conscience and urges Nigerians to remember that day: ‘What happened at the Lekki Toll Gate could be described as a country waging war against its citizens.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What kinds of books did you read growing up?
I was eight when I found my mother’s copy of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child on a shelf in our store and read it. I didn’t fully understand what was happening in the novel, yet I continued reading it till the end. I returned to the book when I was 15. In that second reading I saw the resilient image of Kenyans entangled in foreign and local wars they didn’t ask for. The characters’ sadness, their occasional joy, their strife, their courage and their hope illuminate the travails of African societies under colonial attack. But I was especially moved by Njoroge’s relationship with his mother, this mother and son resembled my mother and me. Maybe this maternal affection explains why I connected with Buchi Emechata’s The Joys of Motherhood at ten. Nnuego’s condition was dreadfully tragic, but her life was meaningful. She said ‘yes’, and said it loudly, when her chi said ‘no’. That’s courage. That’s joy. O, as a child I was nicknamed ‘Eze and the river’, after Michael Crowder and Onuora Nzekwu’s novel, because my name is Chibueze.
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About the Author
is a literary conversationist, editor and writer. He is the curator of Selfies and Signatures: An Afro Anthology of Short Stories, co-editor of Daybreak: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Fiction and editor of the international anthology of writing Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in the Time of Coronavirus, and The Good Teacher. A doctoral student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Anuonye is a recipient of the 2024 Richard Horovitz Professional Development Fund. His works have appeared in World Literature Today, The Rumpus, The Hopkins Review, Isele Magazine, Electric Lit, Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Africa in Dialogue, and elsewhere.
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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