Nnamdi Oguike is the author of ‘Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country,’ a collection of twelve short stories set in different parts of the world which has received rave reviews. Just last week, on November 22, he was announced as one of the winners of the Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship. So, he will receive a grant of 18,000 to allow him take a year off to write another book. Also, he was selected as The Missing Slate’s Author of the Month for March 2016 and was a finalist in the 2018 Africa Book Club Short Story Competition. Here, he talks about what he will be working on now that he has won a writing scholarship, his debut book, and more. Excerpts:
Bookshelf: Last week you were announced as one of the winners of the Morland Writing Scholarships? What was your application process like and how confident were you that you will win?
Nnamdi Oguike: To enter for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarships, I was required to submit an excerpt of published writing, a book proposal, proof of my birth in Africa, proof of publication, and my bio. I was also required to indicate how I got to know about the Miles Morland Scholarships. It was an easy online application process made on the MMF website, after which an acknowledgement came from the Foundation via e-mail.
Was I confident that I would win? I am not sure. I do not like competitions. I do not feel cut out for them sometimes, really. Africa has got lots of amazing talents and writers, both established and new. Let’s say I was hopeful. I am always hopeful for my writing. Hopeful that my writing might resonate with one or two of the judges.
Bookshelf: How did you receive news of your win?
Oguike: It was amazing. I was on a bus heading for Accra from Lagos when the email from Mr. Miles Morland came. We were approaching the Badagry-Seme Border, I remember, and the road was very beautiful, and we were all quivering in the bus. The Miles Morland Foundation has always written to me via Mathilda Leigh’s e-mail address, and so as soon as I saw the name Mathilda Leigh on my phone, I was certain that it was the MMF. I grabbed my cheeks, shut my eyes and counted. But when I opened my eyes and read, ‘Dear Nnamdi, Congratulations…’ I knew I had won. Then I was beside myself with happiness, and it was not just happiness. I guess happiness took me back to when I began writing, when nobody knew where I was coming from and where I was going.
Bookshelf: Within the period of twelve months you are expected to work on a fresh manuscript. What do you intend to work on?
Oguike: I am going to be writing a funny and tender novel set in South Africa and Nigeria, that explores the bonds of love and multicultural ties in the midst of xenophobia. I do not want to give away too much until the novel is written.
Bookshelf: Why did you decide to explore xenophobia in your next book?
Oguike: Xenophobia has become perennial in Africa. Different reasons have been given to explain why it keeps happening. Some have blamed the white man for it. Some on simple economics. But as one who advocates one humanity and one Africa, I am always horrified by attacks by Africans against fellow Africans as seen in South Africa, the most recent of which happened last September. It’s been qualified as Afrophobia, in fact, because Europeans or Americans who live in that country do not face the kind of hostilities that black Africans mete out to fellow black Africans. So one cannot afford to not be interested in such a theme for a novel?
Bookshelf: You are expected to submit ten thousand new words every month. What’s your writing schedule usually like and how do you hope to meet up with this new challenge?
Oguike: The good thing about the scholarship is that it will enable me take some time off to write. So, the distractions that come from seeking to make both ends meet may not be there anymore. But I must create the mental space to write. For me, the strategy is to plan the writing into sections and sub-sections and commit to writing no less than my decided minimum per day.
Bookshelf: Generally, how do you juggle your day job with your writing?
Oguike: It has always been a hard task doing this. I always wish to be a full-time writer. I envy such writers. Writing is what I wish I could do and do nothing else. But I have got to be able to stay alive to be able to write. I have got bills to pay. I have got people to take care of. My day job is in a private University where I carry out administrative duties. Weekends are my best days to write. But I make time to write in the morning before work and at night, if I’m not exhausted from the day’s work. It has always been a challenge.
Bookshelf: Your debut book, a collection of short stories titled ‘Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country’ is filled with stories across the African continent and beyond. What inspired the title and your desire to tell stories of people from different nationalities?
Oguike: The stories of humanity inspired me to write that collection. It tends to read like a pageant of characters, names, cultures and situations. It is a celebration of humanity. Leaping from country to country, from South Africa to Madagascar and then to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Libya, Mali, Zimbabwe, the US, Brazil, ‘Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country’ is a pan-African book that I am very pleased to have written. It urges the reader to ignore, for a while, the borders and partitions that break up Africa and realise that there is just one humanity in the world. Not two humanities. Just one. So, the book urges you to not say that the country you are reading about is not your country. It is about you, essentially, and that’s what fiction or literature does to you. It confers citizenship on readers, and kinship too.
Copies of ‘Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country’ are available in major bookstores in Nigeria and Ghana: Ouida Bookstore, Patabah Books, Booksellers Ltd, Adams Pages, Bookville World, Booktique Ghana, and several more. I’m very happy that the book has been well received so far across the African continent.
Bookshelf: What did it take to develop your central characters?
Oguike: It took a candid acknowledgement that we are basically the same humanity, and by that, I mean there is no single way of describing who we are. We are never one thing. We are always mixtures and blends of many things, good, bad, and ugly. Same as countries. I would immerse myself in my characters and hear their voices in my head, and I loved the chatty ones as well as the quiet and pensive ones, and, of course, I carried out research on the cultural uniqueness of my stories for context.
Bookshelf: You explored themes of love, innocence, terrorism and slavery. Would you say you had such an intention from the onset or did these themes take shape as you wrote?
Oguike: My stories start with simple ideas. For instance, a house, a crowded place, or a cute sentence fished out of a good read. It could also be a face discovered in a magazine, a photograph or movie. Sometimes I find photographs from a far-flung place and ask myself: what could happen in a place such as this? If I am fortunate, the characters will start jumping into my head as if they had waited too long for me. If I love their voices, and I often do, I will start writing down their words, and then the themes will start writing themselves naturally. I try to not let themes kill the life of my characters, or the story may read like a public lecture or reportage.
Bookshelf: ‘Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country’ has characters like the South African woman and her children crowding an iron shack in Blikkiesdorp, a Madagascan slum boy who gets a job as a cook in Antananarivo, a shy Sierra Leonean girl who falls in love with a sly fisherman, a Nigerian prophet whose tricks are exposed, a Kenyan couple back in their old ways after confirmation in church, and so on. What did it take for you to weave these stories? What did your research work involve?
Oguike: What did it take to weave the stories? Life. Stories told around the world. Stories I have lived through myself, stories that my father brought from the places we went with him, stories that journalists and historians have told and written about, photographs, videos, the stories of friends who have lived within and outside the country. Curiosity too. I was very curious to explore life in my country as well as in other countries. I have this guiding mantra for my writing: fiction is not really about life in different places, it is about what life does in different places.
It took me time to write the book. Some stories sat around for years before they got finished. Some came easily. Stories are like birth. Some come easy. Some are too painful.
My research was rigorous. I read as much as I could. I googled a lot of stuff. The internet has been to me what Plutarch was to Shakespeare. I assembled photographs of people and places. I immersed myself in them. But I was careful to not let the research kill the book. I have a theory for my research. It is an iceberg. What is seen in the book is just a tip. The bulk of the research material is not seen in the story but supports the story.
Bookshelf: How did you start writing stories, generally?
Oguike: I do not remember precisely how. I just started. I made attempts. The first ones were poor. Some were too melodramatic. The ones that followed had very long sentences. I think Faulkner had a vice-like grip on me, and then I read lots of other stories. I remember I liked Hemmingway a great deal those days. I still do. He helped to prune my sentences, and then I loved Raymond Carver too and Tolstoy. But it was in Maupassant that I really honed my craft. Guy de Maupassant. I have just been exploring Chekov lately. But essentially, I’m a Maupassant man.
Bookshelf: What did it take for you to get published?
Oguike: Years and years of writing and hoping, and then a friend, Bura-Bari Nwilo, persuaded me to send my manuscript to Griots Lounge Publishing. I did, they liked it, and the rest became history.
Bookshelf: If you are at sea for a month, what five books will you prefer to travel with?
Oguike: It must be books that I read when I was younger that I have some sentimental feelings for and those I am never tired of reading and re-reading. ‘Tortilla Flat’ by John Steinbeck, ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri, ‘The Suffrage of Elvira’ by VS Naipaul, ‘Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol’ by Okot p’Bitek, ‘The Colour Purple’ by Alice Walker. Also, ‘Purple Hibiscus’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
