The runner’s the disciple of travel,
Ambassador from determination;
All the wars a runner fights are civil,
The self-turned challenge, the primal agitation.
We tritely say that running signs the human
Spirit, community of close-stepping pack,
Second wind as individual omen,
We measure with matched morals on the track.

You’ve surely seen all the fanfare on TNB lately about The Beautiful Anthology (TNB Books, June 2012), a collection of essays, stories and some poetry on the topic of beauty. Thanks to the tireless efforts of editor Elizabeth Collins the book has emerged as a very beautiful physical object full of diverse, witty, engaging pieces. There has already been a fair bit written about the essays in this volume, but given my whole-hearted insistence that poetry is the queen of all forms of writing, I decided a look at Erato’s hand on the book is in order.

On St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday significant to engineers in the USA, I wrote about the prominence of that profession within my family. It so happens that I’ve had occasion to expand upon that on another holiday. I’ve never really been big on Father’s Day, despite having four children of my own, but on the usual phone call to my father we got to talking about his background in electron microscopy.  He was not only a pioneer applying it to materials engineering, but also involved in education, looking to produce the next generation in his field, particularly from Nigeria.

We’re off work early, eyeing up the clouds,
Our children dancing sun-maker magic twist,
Blowing to whip wind to mist-shifting brisk.
Science and history are the idle chatter here:
From Cook’s transit sketches to what future
Space colony might carry Boulder’s gist
By the next match for this event on Earth.
The soul of Boulder funnels to the Fiske.

From a Nigerian-American on Memorial Day to my father, veteran officer, Biafran Infantry and my father-in-law, veteran, U.S. Navy (served in Vietnam). They and others like them, then and now, are the reason I have myself never had to experience the horrors of war.

There are no voices over ordered rows of stone,
Visitors silent over silent hosts,
And, dotted nationwide at work or recreation,
The quiet few who lend voice to comrade ghosts.
No more than honest pride at our acclaim
That they went to serve when we called their name.

I met Abbie Grotke a few years ago when my company Zepheira started work for the U.S. Library of Congress to produce the web application that has become Viewshare. I was immediately struck by her sideline, collecting classic advice books and writing articles which apply material from those books for modern enquirers, and also by the phenomenon that’s emerged from that sideline, which will become clear in this interview.

I mark you archetypes:
Clean-cut fame slut
And earnest, humming wakeboard boy,
All American, what puritan joy!
And please and thankee
No hanky-panky
Do praise the Lord
No Betty Ford
‘Cause I’ve seen the seventies
And heaven, please!
It’s getting dark
And Noah’s Ark
Has got to be coming round
‘Cause that roaring sound
In the western sky
Is the fire next time,

“Family Feelings” is a collaborative blend of poetry and play reading that combines the work of this week’s TNB-featured poet John Foy (and others) and playwright A. R. Gurney. “Family Feelings” pays tribute to those relationships we know best, or least! Using scenes from Gurney’s Cocktail Hour – an appeal to gain Father’s approval for the staging of his son’s play – and selected poems by John Foy and others, the performance weaves together poems and script in counterpoint so that, through echoes and associative logic, they get to the psychic truth of unspoken family feelings.

Indian Café, 108th St. and Broadway (NYC), Sunday, January 22, 2012, at 4:00 p.m.

Readers include poet John Foy, and actors Cordis Heard, Mark Hofmaier, and Burt Edwards. Works in the reading include:

• The Cocktail Hour, by A. R. Gurney
• This Be the Verse, by Philip Larkin
• Alcohol, by Franz Wright
• High Windows, by Philip Larkin
• Night Heron, by John Foy
• from Essay on Psychiatrists, XIII, by Robert Pinsky
• Male Sexual Disorder, by John Foy
• from Essay on Psychiatrists, XVI, by Robert Pinsky
• from The Attic, by Derek Mahon
• Servant Boy, by Seamus Heaney
• Victim, by John Foy
• Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, by Robert Frost
• Wall Street, by John Foy
• Don’t tase me bro, by John Foy
• The Bank, by John Foy
• OK Chris, by John Foy
• Headless Barbie Commission, by John Foy
• from Four Quartets, East Coker, by T. S. Eliot
• Paterfamilias, by John Foy
• Come live with me, by John Foy
• Cost, by John Foy
• Room, by John Foy

A year ago I interviewed Tyler Chin-Tanner, creator of the indie graphic novel  American Terrorist, recently released at the New York Comic Con, and now available through a choice of outlets.

There has of course been excitement of other sorts, also breaking through in The Big Apple. Some of the scenes of the “Occupy” protests bear a striking resemblance to the fictional events of American Terrorist.  I recently re-connected with Tyler to get his thoughts on the matter, and he shared some fascinating illustrations of the connection between his fiction and live current events.

Tyler Chin-Tanner: When I first began writing the American Terrorist graphic novel over four years ago I felt as if it was a fairly topical story in terms of its take on current American politics and where we were headed. But now, at the time of its release, even I find myself amazed at just how relevant it is in terms of its similarities to the mass protests of the Occupy movement.

The theme of the graphic novel happens to be one of the central tenets of Occupy Wall Street (OWS); that in a democracy, it is the responsibility of the people to stand together as a majority and hold their government accountable.

Even the way the characters in American Terrorist get their message out to the people is very similar to the way news of Occupy Wall Street spread around the country. They use the Internet and social media to circumvent a biased and ineffective mainstream media.

And while searching for information on the movement online and looking through the photos, I couldn’t help but draw a connection between a lot of what I was seeing and many of the images in the American Terrorist graphic novel.

Here are some examples:

 

 

 

Now, I don’t mean to claim that my graphic novel had anything to do with the inception of the movement or that it’s in any way responsible for inspiring or predicting this mass uprising. I wrote American Terrorist on a topic that I felt strongly about and followed the arcs of my characters in a way that made logical and psychological sense given their circumstances in the post-9/11 climate. I wrote it out of my own sense of frustration with what the military, medical, and corporate industrial complexes have done to this country and with how our constitutional right to express dissent has been surreptitiously
criminalized. And that’s exactly what the Occupy movement is all about – a lot of people feeling the same way as I did when I wrote American Terrorist.

It seems as if this connection is catching on with many of the people connected to Occupy Wall Street. At the release of American Terrorist at NY Comic Con 2011, a woman who bought a copy for herself mentioned that she would also like to donate a copy to the OWS public library. I gave her an extra copy so she could do just that and she sent me this picture when she dropped it off:

 

 

I followed up a few weeks later by going down to OWS myself and donating 3 more copies in order to give more protestors the chance to read it. But in the wee hours of yesterday morning, the NYPD destroyed the People’s Library, throwing all its books into dumpsters during their raid on Zuccotti Park. Books and the ideas within them are clearly so powerful that they pose a direct threat to the powers that be and the 1% they are privileging. But, as many of the OWS protestors have been saying, “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.” The People’s Library has already been reestablished. We will donate more copies of American Terrorist for the brave men and women who are sticking it out. When they read it, I hope they realize that even though American Terrorist was written well before OWS ever got started, it was people like them who inspired the story.

 

I

We mad fly; we
Dream dry; we
Scribble drunk; we
Fake the funk; we
Keeps it real; we
Sly conceal; we
Royal hall; we
Southern drawl; we
Bleed tears; we
Clink cheers; we
Fling curves; we
Gnaw nerves; we
Break it down; we
Class clown; we
Write raw; we
Down by law.

II

[Yo Jam Master Jay, Drop that old school beat!]

2 years ago a friend of mine
Asked me to peep this site online
So I hit the browser and read away
The site’s been fresh to this very day
She had a word with Brad and I’m sure ’nuff glad
Dude set me up and I tried my luck
Soon Josie dropped by, and Sheree dropped by
I was instant friends with some solid gems
I met the dialogue derringer JMB
And the cinema cinderella Kimberly
There was Nick Belardes and Jennifer White,
My later crime partner putting verse on the site.
So before you knew it I was going legit,
Dawn Corrigan thought I’d make a useful fit
She was breaking ground for poetry
‘Cause we were spreading our wings in version three
So Rich and Milo completed the team
And we were publishing poems in a steady stream.
One day Kimberly invited me to NYC
And I jetted for my first TNBLE
I met Will and Kristen and other guests
And for the first time in person the charming hostess.
AWP came to Denver town
So TNB Colorado laid it down
We got organized and knew the time like Movado
Thanks to Erika, Megan, and Hector Bravado
Met Tom and Gina and Alex Chee
Ben Loory, Jennifer and Aaron Dietz.

I found the multimedia magic of the Wendy clan
When she submitted her work I was an instant fan
I’ve recruited her since on the poetry tip
And we got the fam together on a London trip.
Then came good news from the TPAC crew
Not five, nor four, not three but two!
So we hung with Simon and Zara sweet
Colorado-style bonding at the nature retreat
Which is how I met Richard Cox and Slade Ham
After the Comedy club with his buddy Sam.
When the bell tolled calling back Quenby Moone
We had a bittersweet reunion of the Boulder commune
We caught David Wills after a flight from hell
And J Evinson with a killer book to sell.
We come to TNB for what we create
Then lay down law from state to state
And so many good friends I haven’t even seen
Like Greggie O or Ma Zion Irene
And I could go on and on name-checking stars
But I’m about to run clean out of bars
So here’s a shot out to the whole TNB crew
I’m looking forward to the day when I meet you!

I’ll get one thing out of the way first of all, to address whose in the know, and as a point of interest for those who aren’t. “Akata” is to some a pretty nasty word. It’s Nigerian Pidgin deriving from the Yoruba for bush civet cat, and is used as an epithet for Americans of African descent. Some people claim it’s not derogatory in intent, but I don’t really buy that given the context in which I hear it used most of the time. It certainly leaves an offensive taste in the mouth of many Nigerians, especially in diaspora. Yeah, taboo language sometimes marks the most superficially surprising vectors. Nnedi Okorafor, author of the recent fantasy novel Akata Witch (Viking, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4), is well aware of the controversy she courts with its title. It takes an extraordinary book to put such an abrasive first impression into the background, and in short, I think Nnedi has well accomplished this.

The “akata” of the story is Sunny, an albino who moved back from the U.S.A. to Nigeria with her family. You can see where the “akata” bit comes in, and the “witch” bit starts with her albinism. Traditionally in much of Nigeria albinos are believed to have special connections to the magical world. Luckily it’s nothing like in parts of Uganda where albinos have found themselves victims of involuntary amputation by despicable bush doctors, but it’s certainly another stick for cruel children to use on another, which provides the springboard for Nnedi’s story. In conflicts with one particular schoolmate from the popular set, Sunny gets called “stupid, pale-faced akata witch” and “akata criminal,” which is really hair-raising abuse, but it goes with Nnedi’s characteristic refusal to pull punches. Sunny’s troubles lead her into friendship with a couple of other outsiders, among whom she soon discovers that she is one of a group of people with a strong affinity for real magic, for juju as it’s called in Nigeria. These Leopard people, as they’re called, live in a secret, shadow world within our own. They can be found all over the world, but Akata Witch concerns itself with a community living near Sunny in southeastern Nigeria. Sunny’s early companions, later joined by another recent arrival from the U.S. emerge as a close-knit Leopard group, an “oha coven,” thrust together into the resulting adventures.

You can immediately tell the different approach to magic taken in the story. While most ideas of magic in Western culture tend towards the aetherial, with an eye towards the sky, Nnedi’s ideas follow the West African tendency to look earthward. Juju and thus the magic of Akata Witch is distinctly earthy, tied to land, and closely aligned to empirical boundaries of nature. Earth is everywhere, from the literally breathtaking initiation into Leopard society to the mechanism by which masquerade spirits emerge through anthills. Masquerade spirits are another anchor to traditional West African culture, and are central forces to events of the story.  Overall, as the “Leopard” term emphasizes, the world of Akata Witch tips its hat generously to the Ekpe (“leopard”) societies of Efik origin, which heavily influenced the neighboring Igbo, and vice versa. Nsibidi, the ancient writing system of the Efik and Igbo, which eventually became the secret writing system of the Ekpe and other secret societies, factors crucially in the book, as one of Sunny’s special abilities is the ability to understand this magical writing. You can see Nsibidi symbols sprinkled about on the cover of Akata Witch, including a few symbols shared with the Northern Igbo uli system of ritual ideographs.

In the novel morality is bound up in nature’s utter mysteries, while being much more complex that human concepts of natural law would suppose. Knowledge is traditionally considered superior to material wealth in Leopard society, and this is manifested in chittim, metal tokens that fall mysteriously from the sky whenever one has learned or accomplished something important in juju, and which serve as currency. Even Leopard society is not immune to corruption, though, and much moral tension comes from Leopard people who have become attached to material wealth and worldly power. Truth among Leopard people is represented at its extreme by the idea of one’s spirit face, a dual representation which feels like the Igbo concept of chi, a personal god of each individual; The spirit face comes with its own appearance, powers and personality, and is only to be called forth in special cases because such utter exposure of one’s true being is considered embarrassing. Traits that are considered flaws among ordinary people tend to be touchstones of power and virtue among Leopard people, such as Sunny’s albinism, which in the Leopard world gives her the ability to easily slip into the spirit world. Her companion Orlu has dyslexia, which in juju terms translates into the ability of reversal, of undoing even the most powerful juju.  Another moral anchor in the story is in how magical spells cast by a Leopard person leave echoes on that person. The golden rule comes with its own magical enforcement.

If you read my interview with Nnedi here on TNB you’ll know just how richly she stirs in language as pepper in the stew. She embroiders all corners of her tale with that easy, polyglot humor that I’ve always associated so strongly with Nigerians. Igbo, Efik and even Pidgin English serve important roles in the practicing of juju, and Leopard people need to master several languages in order to progress in their abilities. At the same time she gradually expands the boundaries of ideas within the tale, starting with Sunny’s school and home, initiation into local Leopard society in which Sunny is a “free agent,” i.e. one whose parents are not Leopard people and who have not brought her up in their secret world. Sunny and her companions first explore the immediate community of Leopard Knocks, under the tutelage of Anatov, a Black American who relocated to Nigeria, one of the local elders of Leopard society. Anatov soon has them meeting other elders, including Taiwo and Kehinde (traditional Yoruba names given to twins) in Leopard Knocks, and the nearby Night Forest, for which trip they take the funky train.  This same conveyance later expands their world further in a trip to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, to a Leopard festival at the iconic Zuma rock, which has always been considered magical and a meeting place for juju practitioners in real-life Nigeria. The funky train, festooned with Christian slogans and symbols in the overwhelmingly Christian Nigeria East is driven by a character called Jesus’ General and as he puts it: “na hybrid vehicle. A little fuel, a lot of juju, and plenty plenty of God’s will.” but as they get to the predominantly Muslim Nigerian North the symbols on the bus magically turn into Islamic slogans. This easy continuum of competing foreign religions and indigenous beliefs and customs underscores the humanist essence of the story.

Once the adventurers get to the Zuma Rock festival, they meet many other groups, including rivals; they purchase a juju knife for Sunny, a basic implement of the Leopard art, take in a grand wrestling match, one of whose participants has the wonderful name “Miknistic;” and Sunny even gets to play in a good old fashioned soccer match in which juju is forbidden, but throughout which crackle social prejudices and rivalries of regular and Leopard society. This expansion of her world continues to the climax where her group faces an evil with worldwide consequences.  This climactic struggle stems from a menace worked through the story of children being kidnapped, killed and even mutilated by the shrouded character of Black Hat Otokoto, the sort of peril that I always remember resonating in whispers and rumors during my childhood in Nigeria. Probably no more so than, say, the idea of sexual predators among Western children, but in Nigeria, it was always rumor and reality of black magician predators that carried sway, and this is expanded upon in Akata Witch.

The novel continues Nnedi’s style of writing that can be classified as Young Adult without stinting in pleasure for older readers. She has always used her storyteller’s instinct to blend worldwide traditions with entirely alien conceptions while narrating expansive adventures that never lose their grounding and accessibility. She has surpassed herself in Akata Witch by bringing to life for readers of all backgrounds so many fascinating cultural facets that would be obscure to Westerners and even Easterners.  If you have read any of her other novels, including the highly acclaimed and award-winning Who Fears Death, topic of my previous interview, you’ll appreciate glimpses of her recurring themes, including the spiritual wilderness, and even a mention, in a meeting of the council of African Leopard elders, of Ginen, the world of Zahrah the Windseeker that also looms large in The Shadow Speaker.

What I personally love best about the novel is how well it plays on the confusion of identities that affect so many Nigerians, especially those who’ve split time between Nigeria and the U.S. or Europe as children. I certainly remember returning from America to Nigeria at the age of ten, after seven years abroad, and encountering hostility and ridicule as an outsider, feeling as if I didn’t really belong on any of the three continents I’d called home at one time or another, and finding my way mostly in the company of fellow misfits. Akata Witch integrates these experiences neatly into a greater framework, ultimately grounding itself in the age-old storyline clash between earnest goodness and utter evil. Reading the book is a transporting experience but with a good deal of shocks and jolts that bring the narrative suddenly near at hand. I suspect I gained much particular enjoyment from the familiar flashes of tradition and language, but I suspect other less familiar readers would enjoy the same bits as flashes of exotic wonder without losing the story. No less an august commentator than Ursula K. Le Guin said ”There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics.”  If you want a fresh take on novels about children immersed in a magical world, in a colorful and engaging setting, I highly recommend Akata Witch.

They come from bars and frat houses,
Chins sporting the last chug’s dregs;
They’ve shut down the POTUS block
Down lawn chairs! Time to tap the kegs!

“Na na na! Hey hey hey! Goodbye!”
Caught in the unstoppered ear—
Perspective fails the sloppy street
It’s just one terrorist’s career!

What giant wheels when Brezhnev sent
Red troops into Afghanistan;
House of Saud and CIA,
Tipped shots to Charlie Wilson’s plan.

“Ding dong the wicked bitch is dead”
Oops! Trampled on the Stars & Stripes—
Flag civics fail the sloppy street
But even vengeance needs wet wipes.

World trade center, USS Cole,
The East African embassies:
Leading up to 9/11,
Murder fashioned by degrees.

“USA! USA! USA!”
Says middle-finger myna bird—
Imagination fails slop street
So back to context-free absurd.

London struck on 7/7,
So many perished in Iraq
(The mission somehow redirected
Till the Vulcans doubled back).

“Na na na! Hey hey hey! Goodbye!”
Caught in the unstoppered ear—
Perspective fails the sloppy street
It’s just one terrorist’s career!

The Taliban rump skulks the hills,
Bully Jihad ducks fury-drones;
How many innocents lie still
Where whitewash hides their spartan bones?

“Ding dong the wicked bitch is dead”
Oops! Trampled on the Stars & Stripes—
Flag civics fail the sloppy street
But even vengeance needs wet wipes.

How many of our soldiers lost
To snipers, maimed by IEDs?
How many workers at Ground Zero
Victims of mystery disease?

“USA! USA! USA!”
Says middle-finger myna bird—
Imagination fails slop street;
So back to context-free absurd.

Al Quaeda loosing dogs of war
In faraway Nigeria;
So many dreams of peace dissolved
On fronts some deem inferior.

“Na na na! Hey hey hey! Goodbye!”
Caught in the unstoppered ear—
Perspective fails the sloppy street
It’s just one terrorist’s career!

So much sludge under the bridge
We stand aloof and watch it fail,
Our petulance only revealed
Wherever petrol goes on sale.

“Ding dong the wicked bitch is dead”
Oops! Trampled on the Stars & Stripes—
Flag civics fail the sloppy street
But even vengeance needs wet wipes.

What intrigue in the Cairo polls?
Who’s quaffing from the Arab Spring?
Who’s paused to moon in pampered awe
When princess donned a silly ring?

“USA! USA! USA!”
Says middle-finger myna bird—
Imagination fails slop street
So back to context-free absurd.

How many at the white house gates
Have given half the world a thought?
Seems leisure of vainglory class
Will always find the glory spot.

Earth Day blessings, 2011
Elu anughi, Ala ga anu.—If the heavens don’t hear, the Earth will hear. (From an Igbo proverb)

If all the skies were sewers
If breezes made us gag
If flocking birds were charnel herds
What would our lungs for swag?

If all the seas were petrol
And all fresh water slops
If all the fish thrashed feverish
What sap for veins and crops?

If every storm’s potential
Were parboiled troposphere
If hurricanes swept all our planes
What home could persevere?

If all the ice were ocean
Fresh gems in tidal crown
If deep marine stole all the scene
What husbandry would drown?

If all wild beasts were slaughtered
All livestock engineered
If feed were chemic seed
Would we evolve upon the weird?

If all our wealth turns garbage
If all our pleasures rot
If waste divides swell algae tides
What mutants lie begot?

If all the trees were severed
All bushes put to flame
If smoking shoots served us for fruits
Would all accept the blame?

If all our vision’s shallow
And all our cares a sieve
If market gains short all our brains
How shall our children live?

Can’t believe I stayed asleep to give
Honey slope après ski GPS,
Real life need-to-piss bringing the cock-block;
Her black greek letter accent fading fast
With harem eyes under bright bluebird skies
To duller daybreak wink of bluing chalk…
Damn! I planned to smash that like Thor’s hammer.
The ferry over cream slides cruel to dock.

Other vessels cruel in other ways—
White water raft on hag ride flipped awake,
Convulsions at the temple from the shock;
I fight paralytic memories
Of climax vertigo, of virgin dread
Crowding the close-pressed black about the clock,
Reach for her soothing eyes across false worlds
For ferry over cream tied cruel at dock.

I lean to tail end fishing through the fresh—
Like every lazy early season’s flight—
Fall eating death cookie of mermaid rock…
Is she still thick like syrup at the lodge?
Got her off-piste avalanche probe right here.
I rise tripod to crowing of the cock
Slowly shedding sticky dream residue
As ferry over cream slides cruel to dock.

I’ve long trumpeted (most recently in “50 Observations on 50 years of Nigeria, part 3″) the marvelous efflorescence of young Nigerian writers, and especially Nigerian women writers, both in Nigeria and in diaspora. I’m not much of a reader of novels, but I waste no time getting stuck into any new work by Adichie, Oyeyemi or Okorafor. Nnedi Okorafor is the author of the novels Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature) and The Shadow Speaker (winner of the CBS Parallax Award), and the children’s book, Long Juju Man (winner of the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa). Her latest novel, Who Fears Death (DAW Books), was released in June. Her forthcoming novel, Akata Witch (Penguin Books/Viking Press), is scheduled for release in 2011. Nnedi was also a finalist for the Andre Norton Award (The Shadow Speaker), the Essence Magazine Literary Award (The Shadow Speaker), the Kindred and Parallax Awards (Zahrah) and the Golden Duck Award (Zahrah and The Shadow Speaker). Nnedi is working with Disney to produce a chapter book in the Disney Fairies series, tentatively titled Iridessa and the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog.

Nigerians generally thrive in bubbling calabash of language stew. It’s a country with dozens of major languages, and hundreds of minor ones, where almost everyone speaks one or more indigenous languages as well as Nigerian Pidgin English, and many speak Standard Nigerian English as well. It’s a country with a large diaspora whose children soak in language from all over the world. As a reader I find that a lot of this linguistic energy makes its way into Nigerian writing, and when the writing turns to the fantastical, the result can be magic upon magic. I found this to be the case with Nnedi’s most recent novel, Who Fears Death. The sumptuous mélange of language captivated me, and inspired me to interview the author.

You are certainly a trendsetter in African literature. Have you had any indication that your style and genre of writing might be growing among Nigerian readers?

I hear from many Nigerians who have read Zahrah (especially since it’s the only one of my novels published in Nigeria). I even got an email from a young man who was born dada¹. He said that reading Zahrah the Windseeker “changed his life” (He’d always viewed being dada as a negative thing because that’s how his family viewed it).

Some of my essays on African SF and Fantasy also seemed to have sparked some general chatter about amongst Nigerians. Also, there is an anthology called Lagos 2060 that will be published by DADA book in 2011 (I’m supposed to help with the final selection process). It is a collection of science fiction short stories set in Lagos fifty years from now. I like to think that what I’ve been doing helped to inspire this anthology.

In another interview, you wrote: “I didn’t feel like people from my own ethnic group being annoyed with me for not writing only about them or with any group saying “Well you got this little detail wrong, etc.” I hope you take my questions about how the realities of Nigeria informed your fantastical vision in the spirit of genuine curiosity, but more importantly, I’m wondering if you’ve had experiences of writing about Igbos and having critics focus wrongly on peccadilloes.

I take no offense at all. There are aspects of [my 2010 novel] Who Fears Death where it was VERY important that I got things right. It’s not “inaccurate” per se. It’s looking through a distorted mirror. And I want people to understand that. I want people to use their imaginations a bit while staying grounded in reality. This may sound contradictory but it is not.

Your description for the art of a true sorcerer, “bricoleur” really struck me as a perfect expression for the sort of magical practices common in Southern Nigeria. I’m curious if you remember how that characterization came to you.

I started writing Who Fears Death while I was in the throes of my PhD program. I was reading some literary theory (by Claude Lévi-Strauss) when I came across the term. My twisted mind shifted it to a magical concept. As you said, it just made sense.

I was struck by your use of the idea of twins as bringing luck to a town, which of course is the opposite of traditional attitudes in southeastern Nigeria (including among traditional Igbos) where twins were considered a curse.

I wanted to flip that traditional idea of twins being evil in Igbo culture. Plus in Yoruba culture, twins are a blessing. Plus the Yoruba have the highest instances of twins in the world². I was playing with many things when I brought twins into the story.

Several times you mention the characters playing a game of Warri, and considering the folks I’ve known from that town, I been imagining it as a bout of the dozens, with each participant trying to best each other with a “yo mama” joke. Clearly you meant to leave the actual game to the reader’s imagination, but I’m curious whether you imagine Warri as a game with props (i.e. as a card game) or otherwise (e.g. like charades or thumb-wrestling).

Warri is an actual game; it’s old and originated in Africa³. See here. It has many names. I purposely used the Caribbean name of it because I like to complicate things. . And yes, to describe the game would have taken too much time. It’s one of many terms in the novel where I hoped the reader would google if she or he felt the need to.

Clearly the setting is outside current ethnic distributions but were you conscious of the ethnicities you ascribed to the names of characters? For example, while the names of most are not obviously Hausa/Fulani, they definitely have that sound, while the protagonist’s name, Onyesonwu, is such a clear bell of an Igbo name (the reason for which is hinted at in one particularly keen passage). I did also notice that the names of ancient and mysterious things often come from Igbo in your book (“enuigwe”, “mmuo”, “Ani”)

I took names from all over Africa, not just Nigeria. Sudanese, Tanzania, oh, I can’t even remember all the places I took from. When it came to the magical system in the novel, that was mostly Igbo, thus the names are Igbo.

This question is a grab bag. I love languages and words, and I love how you seem to have drawn so richly from sounds of words across Nigeria, and beyond. As you say in the interview I quoted earlier, “Still, the novel IS true to a LOT of real traditions, cultures, etc. I just combined a lot of them.” A few of the names and expressions you used struck me right away, and I’m curious if there are any thoughts behind them, or what impressions they made on you that led you to adapt them. “Banza” (Hausa for “bastard” and a classification of the Hausa City-States). “ewu” (Igbo for “goat”), “yeye” (Yoruba expression for “worthless”), “ogasse” (seems based on “oga,” the Pidgin for “sir”), “alusi” (Igbo deities), “ifunanya” (Igbo for “love,” along the lines of Greek “erotas”), “ta!” (as a harsh warning, deriving from Hausa), “kwenu” (iconic Igbo interjection used at meetings of the people). And any thoughts about Igbo words such as “ifunanya” and “kwenu” which are almost impossible to translate.

Wow, you caught them all! I’m impressed, but not surprised since it’s you. Yes, “banza” means “bastard”. That was on purpose. It is the town where one of the novel’s central characters gives birth to her children while she is unmarried. It is also a place where a culture has sprung up despite its origins.

When my sisters and I visited Nigeria as kids, in the village, the children there would call us “ewu”. We didn’t know what it meant but the way they said it, well, we knew it was an insult. To this day whenever I hear the word, it feels like a terrible word to me (mind you, I also have a fascination with goats…the eyes!). So when I was writing Who Fears Death, that naturally became the word used for children of rape like Onyesonwu. The sound of it (and personal baggage it carried for me) felt right.

“Yeye”, that was me being quietly obnoxious. “Yeye” can mean “worthless” or “useless”. These girls are having their clitorises cut off. It is treated like it is worthless. Plus, I like the sound of the word as opposed to “vagina” or some of the more vulgar terms.

“Ogasse” came from the Igbo term “Oga”. The Red People speak with a lot of S’s in their language, so this was an evolution of the term in their culture.

And the rest of the terms you’ve mentioned, your definitions are spot on. One man who studied Igbo told me that ifunanya is the closest word the Igbo language has to love but it is not a direct translation. There is no word for “ifunanya” in English. I took that idea and ran with it.

Do you find yourself hoping that readers such as me, who have the experience with the Nigerian soundscape to appreciate this rich use of languages pick up on it, or do you treat it as a bit of quiet-as-kept secret sauce for developing a rich, fantastical vocabulary in your writing.

Both. I very much hope that Nigerians (or those deeply familiar with Nigerian culture) will pick up on all of this. However, at the same time, for those who won’t, I just hope that it’ll add that African element to the genre of fantasy that is sorely needed. I’d love to see someone else to use my enhanced concept of “ifunanya” in his or her work.

I notice that in your use of Igbo, sometimes it’s more northern dialects, and sometimes southern. My hometown is southern Igbo, but my children tend to have northern Igbo names (which sometimes brings slight disapproval from other southern Igbos), because there seemed so much more richness from which to pull names. Any thoughts on how the different dialects of Igbo strike you?

People from different dialects are always teaching me Igbo. So I get it all mixed up. That’s a HUGE part of why it’s been so difficult for me to learn Igbo. All this comes out in my work. It may drive people nuts but a lot of things I do drive people nuts, so I’m not losing any hair over it.

You refer back to Zahrah with a reference to The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide, which I’ve always found one of your most fascinating inventions, and one which you tend to slip into many of your stories. Was it a particularly early and thus cherished idea of yours.

The field guide was indeed an early idea. It was inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the fact that as a kid I had many fields guides that I loved.

The Greeny Jungle Field Guide is information. An infinite amount of information. It is very very sturdy. And it’s written in a voice that I enjoy slipping into. You’ll see it show up in more of my future works.

I laughed aloud when I read the bit where you referred to motor scooters in towns as “okada”. Nice touch. Did you know that slang for motorcycle taxis was taken from an old, no-frills commercial Nigerian airline that was popular in the 80s?

No. That’s some good information. I’d always wondered. I just know okada very well. My cousin almost died on one, I see people almost die on them all the time in Nigeria, the streets are flooded with them there, they annoy me, but they make sense (in a country that has been corrupted by oil, ironically fuel/gasoline can often be scarce. So an okada is logical…sort of). I had to throw that term into my novel. I hear they’ve been banned in Lagos. That’s interesting.

You sprinkled a few mentions to one of my favorite fantasy novels, Amos Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard, in your story. Any words on his work, and how it might have influenced you?

I didn’t find Tutuola until I was fairly established as a writer. However, when I did, I was delighted. This was early African fantasy (despite the controversy about his poor English and the fact that he was writing folktales). In Who Fears Death, Tutuola’s stories have become part of the religion/history. The Palm Wine Drinkard is part of the Great Book. I believe this is how religious narratives begin, with great stories.

In Who Fears Death the concept of the spirit world, as “wilderness” is key. It reminds me of Amos Tutuola’s bush of ghosts, or the world of the Abiku spirit in Helen Oyeyemi’s Icarus Girl. Clearly the idea of a spirit world that’s a thin veil over our own is a natural one to Nigerians. How has this idea crystallized in your consciousness?

Traditional Igbo belief insists that the spirit world rules the physical world, NOT the other way around. This makes much more sense to me. Who Fears Death is, in many ways, a reflection of my own spiritual beliefs.

How would you describe a masquerade to a foreigner? Would you focus on the physical show or on the mystical implications?

Both. But I’d start with the mystical aspect first because that is the base. The masquerade comes through the termite mounds into the physical world. Then it manifests as what we see.⁴

Have actual memories of experiences with masquerades inspired any of your stories?

Simple answer: Oh my goodness, YES!! I blogged about this here (“Never Unmask a Masquerade”).

I often tell people about the complexity of Igbo culture in its combination of empowerment of women with marginalization of women. How do you deal with this dichotomy in your profession and work?

I insist on being myself. I am strong-minded and independent. I do not draw my self-worth from a man (not to say I don’t like men…heh I think they’re great). I am creative. I am interested in the old Igbo ways. I am an agnostic. I am not a Christian. I respect my elders. I have a deep near irrational reverence for education. I don’t normally drink alcohol, but I’ll take a sip of palm wine. I’m comfortable around people who speak loudly. I can cook Nigerian dishes, but do NOT assume I will cook for you because you are a Nigerian man. I enjoy cooking. I am a mother, but even my daughter knows that I am equally a writer and a professor, too.

If you are familiar with Igbos, you would look at all I’ve just listed and understand that some of what I am is (culturally) VERY un-Igbo and some

of what I am is Igbo. So be it. It’s ok. Oh, and let me add that blood is blood. No matter what I do, I am an Igbo.

I have been very pleased at the number of great young Nigerian writers emerging internationally. What contemporary Nigerian writers do you enjoy?

All of them. There are many and they are all great. I’m not copping out at all. I’m serious. Whenever I need a book that I will like, many times it’s merely a matter of finding a Nigerian author. Atta, Adichie, Iweala, Abani, Habilon, Akpan, Azuah, Imasuen, Oyeyemi, the list is long.

Your books have gone from Zahrah, clearly in the young adult genre, to Shadow Speaker, a little less so, to Who Fears Death, clearly for the mature reader, and of course a children’s book, Long Juju Man in there as well. What drew you originally to YA, and what do you think encourages you to such diversity of age audience?

I love a good story. I’m not concerned with the category. I will read YA or adult as long as it’s a good story. The same goes for my writing. I write. If the main character happens to be young, so be it. If the main character is old, same response. I really don’t differentiate between the two. That is my publishers’ and book distributors’ job.

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Black & white and color drawings of Arro-yo the windseeker by Ross Campbell.

Drawing of Nnedi Okorafor by Gbolahan Adams

Following footnotes by Uche Ogbuji.

¹ Dada, more casually a Yoruba name for curly-haired baby girls, is also a mystic tradition with echoes across southern Nigeria of babies born with natural dreadlocks. They are considered sacred messengers, and inviolate, but as you can imagine, that can have a somewhat alienating effect on a child. Some Nigerians, especially in post-colonial times have, as Nnedi mentions, have come to view dada children in a less positive light.

² There has been much speculation and even some scientific enquiry into whether the extraordinarily high twin rate in Southern Nigeria is caused by the staple diet of yams (proper yams, i.e. Dioscorea, and not sweet potatoes, which are strangely called yams in the US). The town with the highest incidence of twins in the world is Igbo-Ora (a Yoruba town, despite the name), near Lagos. See: “The Land Of Twins” or “Nigeria boasts world’s twin capital”.

³ As my question indicates, I was not aware of this name for a game with which I’m of course very familiar. I’ve always called it by its Igbo names, Okwe or Nchorokoto, or the Yoruba name, Ayo. Interesting to learn how far this game, which shares elements with Backgammon, and at least in Nigeria is traditionally considered an analogue of the cosmos, has spread beyond West Africa.

⁴ I also discuss masquerades, and include a few videos, in “50 Observations on 50 years of Nigeria, part 3.”