#365DaysOfBookOclock: Tweetchat with Ukamaka Olisakwe
By: Mazeed Mukhtar
Exactly a month ago on our Twitter handle, we had an enthralling conversation with Ukamaka Olisakwe, the widely-published author of Eyes of a Goddess (2012) and Ogadinma (2020).
The tweetchat was an anniversary episode of the #bookoclocktweetchat — our monthly series where we invite authors or scholars and engage them in issues related to Literature.
In the tweetchat our co-founder Uchenna Emelife anchored, Ukamaka led us through the bridge that Ogadinma is to the past, its incubation, and the conception of her characters. She made quick stops to broach societal ills, mental health and advise budding creatives.
Do well to catch up on what you missed with this recap.
Can you briefly take us through the writing process of Ogadinma? The writing duration and if you had a complete picture of the story when you started out.
Ukamaka: Thank you! The idea started as a sketch; I had come across a tweet from a man who said something in the line of ‘young women of nowadays are too impatient. Our mothers knew how to keep a home. They stayed in their marriages, no matter what.’ And that struck me as interesting. It became clear that we often choose the past we want to remember. We strip certain stories of their complexities and flattened entire histories into simplistic and/or romantic delusions, just to suit our bias.
So, I thought: here, now, is a good story to confront. I come from a community where the median marriageable age for girls was 15. I know women who suffered in those marriages, who fled, who abandoned their kids and chose themselves; these stories we don’t like to talk about. So, I told myself, here’s a sociological task you can take on. The first draft took about a month to complete, and then the revisions took a year or so to finish.
I find the character of Aunty Ngozi the most bizarre. All of what she did to Ogadinma didn't come from a place of hatred, but then it makes me wonder why she couldn't see that Ogadinma was hurting. Can you say something about her?
Ukamaka: Ah, that woman. I like flawed characters; perfect people are Lipton without milk or sugar. You'll be surprised that some of my fave characters in OGADINMA are those readers hate, not even my protagonist. However, a caveat: I draw a line at child abuse, animal abuse, etc.
Back to complicated people: they are interesting. Those we dismiss as bad/wicked, selfish/rude, the so-called princesses or patriarchy, like Aunty Ngozi. She is a composite of the women I knew, who loved their daughters and dangerously protected/defended the patriarchy.
I like characters that make me peel layers off a surface and ask deeper questions: Why did they choose to defend a system that segregate them, a culture that describes them as the ‘one who squats to pee’? These women are our umuada/aunts/sisters/mothers. They are interesting.
I think that by showing their complexities, we begin to understand our conditioning. The system is cyclical. We regurgitate/perform the same harmful lifestyle handed down to us by our parents. The likes of Aunty Ngozi did not fall from a tree.
Suggested Read: #BookoclockTweetchat With Oyinkan Braithwaite
How do you feel knowing that the issues you treated in your novel that's supposed to be signature to 80s Nigeria; issues like sexual and gender based violence, religious violence, corruption and bad governance are still today's reality?
Ukamaka: I still can’t tell how I feel, but I am glad we now have access to platforms, like Twitter, that allows room for a polyphony of stories. The media or our community elders can no longer filter certain stories for the public’s consumption. Take the Baba Ijesha case. I wondered what would have happened if Princess didn’t take to social media to scream that story, if that horror happened during OGADINMA’s time. See the elements defending him? They would have shut that story down and ennobled yet another abuser.
I guess I am just thankful for the times, this era; social media.
Still on the themes, is there a particular reason you chose the 80s as the setting of Ogadinma? It could be set in real time and still have nothing taken away from the story. Why was it the 80s?
Ukamaka: I think I hinted that earlier. I chose the 80s because it was at that time that my mother and her sisters, most women of their generation, got married. OGADINMA is a tribute to them. I collected their stories and pieced together a narrative that would not only centre them in the text, but also capture the political and cultural atmosphere of the time.
President Buhari was the military dictator in OGADINMA's time. Now, more than 35 years later, we are enduring even worse economic, religious, and political persecutions. The tumult is still on macro and micro levels. It is as if Nigerians went to bed in 1985 and woke in 2021 to more fires, stewing in the same pot and under the same regime.
A reader about your work said it reminded him to not set himself on fire just to keep others warm and that couldn't be more apt. What do you think triggers that dangerous selflessness as in Ogadinma where you begin to put every other person's comfort before yours? and how can one realise that they're burning for others' warmth?
Ukamaka: I think it comes from how we, especially women, were raised: we put other people’s needs first, their feelings, their community’s, their church, what everyone else thinks, etc., before our mental health.
What feedback have you gotten about Ogadinma that left you really proud that you wrote it and put it out there?
Ukamaka: My mother loved it! It was important that she liked the idea and the story, especially since I talk about her a lot in my work. So, yeah, that made me feel a lot more accomplished and proud of myself.
What's your advice to budding creatives out there looking to make names for themselves in the literary world like you have?
Ukamaka: My answer is cliched, still: read everything, read across genres; ‘read’ music, TV series, comics, how-to manuals, religious texts, scholarly texts, critical texts. Ask questions. Collect tiny stories from people in your community. Back in Aba, I walked around with a diary and I collected the most hilarious cuss-words/phrases. Read gossip blogs. Nigerians are chaotic. We talk the way we write. Borrow what you can. Cast Instablog9ja followers, etc., as minor characters in your stories. We are so wild.
Watch movies/TV. Recently, I discovered a quirky genre of British and South African TV series and got lost in that hole. I don’t ever want to emerge from it. Read, then, listen. I talk too much, but I remind myself all the time to listen. It pays; it has improved my writing.
You may also like: #BookoclockTweetchat with Zainab Abdulrasheed
So your lead character grew up in Kano, just like you did, do you share any other similarity with Ogadinma?
Ukamaka: Oh, yes. And delicious ones, too. The scenes where she visited Lagos for the first time? How awestruck she was by the sights and sounds? That was me. I moved to Lagos in 1999, after completing my secondary school, and I felt like a kid in a fancy park.
Also, her anxieties with spaghetti and Maltina? Story of my life. I grew out of them much later. I guess we insert bits of ourselves into our inventions, so that they become real people. That way, we remind ourselves that we are characterizing real people.
______________________________________
If you enjoyed reading this, please follow our Twitter handle for future episodes of our literary tweetchat.
