‘Literature Is One of Our Most Powerful Archival Machines’

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 in a household without bookshelves, so books were not my first form of reading. It was music: the smooth, guitar-layered swing of juju from Kayode Fashola, King Sunny Adé, Ebenezer Obey and Oladunni Decency; the slow, gravelly vocals and drum cycles of apala of Haruna Ishola, Yusuf Olatunji, Nosiru Atunwon and Batile Alake; the fast, percussive antiphony of fuji from Ayinde Barrister, Ayinla Kollington and Salawa Abeni; William Onyeabor’s synth-driven, hypnotic Nigerian funk with steady grooves; and, later, the currents of African American 70s soul music. Music was my first form of reading: an education in cadence, philosophy and worldview. Their lyrics offered language, metaphor, social critique, poetic insult and wit. It was where reflection and criticality began for me, and where I cultivated an inner life of enquiry. Books came later.

Outside of school reading, I moved on to things like Enid Blyton, the Pacesetters series and other books by Nigerian authors whose names I don’t remember now. But the book that marked me most as a child was Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard. I first encountered it without a cover. I read it not knowing its author or title, and it terrified and thrilled me in equal measure. Years later, when I encountered Tutuola again, I recognized the book immediately. That was my first conscious recognition of authorship, and I went on to devour everything he wrote.

That feeling would return when I encountered Bessie Head and Toni Morrison. They both shaped me profoundly—in language, in interiority, and in the understanding that literature could hold complexity and terror, beauty and thought.

You describe yourself as a ‘Yoruba vegan’. What does that mean in practice? Is there a Nigerian vegan dish that feels like home to you?

I describe myself as a Yoruba vegan because I do not see veganism as foreign to that identity. Long before veganism became codified as a Western lifestyle category and before colonial economies reorganized land, labour and appetite, many Yoruba and African food cultures were predominantly plant-based. Animal protein was occasional, often ceremonial, not the industrialized excess that now defines our modern consumption. Now animal protein has become quotidian and compulsory, plant-based diet positioned as a fad. 

My favourite dish is àmàlà with gbẹ̀gìrì and ewédú. There is something grounding about the delicious interplay between salt and umami that satiates the senses. The dark comforting earthiness of àmàlà, combined with the silky, almost architectural texture of ewédú, and the soft, velvety depth of gbẹ̀gìrì, returns me home or, to borrow from Alice Walker, to the temple of my familiar. What I also love about it is its quiet, unfussy completeness. It already contains everything required for balance and sustenance: fibre, protein, micronutrients, texture. Our ancestors understood nutrition long before it was renamed science. Nothing is excessive. Nothing is ornamental. It is intelligent food and I love it!

I don’t eat àmàlà often, but when I do, I am alive to every nuance of the taste. I am reminded that nourishment does not have to be complicated. It can be intelligent, ancestral and visually satisfying without excess. That, to me, is what being a Yoruba vegan means: eating in continuity with memory and returning to a non-excessive relationship with the earth and with other lives. Finally, understanding nourishment as commitment and responsibility.