The
initial announcement that Purple Hibiscus, the debut novel by
young Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, had been
short-listed for the prestigious British literary prize, the Orange
Award, worth 30, 000 pounds (about N 6 million) along side
award-winning writers, delighted Nigerians across the world. She was
yet another example of the abundance of literary talents in the
country, literary enthusiasts affirmed. This was to be further
confirmed when the book made the final list of six short-listed books,
including
Oryx and Crake
by
Booker Prize winner, Margaret
Atwood, The Great Fire by US prize-winning Shirley Hazzard,
Gillian Slovo's The Ice Road, The Colour by multiple
prize winner, Rose Tremain, and Small Island by Andrea Levy.
27 year-old US-based
Chimamanda is the daughter of a former deputy vice-chancellor of the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The family once lived in the house
where one of Nigerian best-known writers, Chinua Achebe, also once
lived. She studied medicine in Nsukka before heading for the United
States at 19 to study communication and political science at
Connecticut State University.
Presently, she is attending writing seminars at Johns Hopkins
University, in the US.
A book seller’s website, praised Purple Hibiscus, which
revolves round 15 year-old Kambili, as ‘a stunning debut that captures
the fragile beauty of a young woman's awakening at a time when both
country and family are on the cusp of change.’ The winner of the prize
will be announced in June. She had the following chat with UK-based
Nigerian scholar and writer, Wale Adebanwi, through the net.
Excerpts:
You
seem to be conscious of plugging into a cultural tradition in
Purple Hibiscus. I
mean, you start with “Things began to fall apart…” And then one can
see a no-longer-at-ease paradigm running through the narrative, and
the arrow of God piecing some people, with a few becoming men of the
people. Are you in the course of reproducing Achebe with an eye on
late 20th century and early 21st socio-political
dynamics in
Nigeria?
No, at least not consciously. I am
certain that a different reader may see other paradigms running
through the narrative. The first line is indeed a tribute to (Prof.
Chinua) Achebe, who remains the most important writer for me. But I am
not interested in reproducing him, or anyone else. I am interested,
rather, in writing about Nigerian issues in a way that acknowledges my
influences and yet remains entirely mine.
One gets, at best, a very soft irritation with Kambili’s father’s
religiosity in the narrative. By over-representing this religiosity,
are you offering a critique of the understated socio-religious
fundamentalism that hides behind many of the so-called “God-fearing”
public figures in Nigeria?
I
don’t think his religiosity is over-represented. Or if it seen as
being over-represented, then perhaps that is the point; he is, after
all, a fanatical believer. Neither do I think that the religious
fundamentalism in Nigeria is understated. I think it is troublingly
overt. More so because religion in Nigeria has become insular,
self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-congratulatory. Churches spring up
day after day while corruption thrives as much as ever and God becomes
the watchman standing behind you while you seek your self-interest at
all cost. God loves you more than others. God wants you to be rich.
God wants you to buy that new car. That sort of rhetoric probably has
a lot to do with the state of our economy and the experience of living
in a place of scarce resources but it is self-defeating. There will
never be social cohesion or social consciousness. We will all never be
rich. Even morality – I mean that simple idea of right and wrong where
‘wrong’ is judged by whether or not your action hurts another person –
will not exist. Kambili’s father, for all of his fundamentalism, at
least has a sense of social consciousness that is expansive and
proactive and USEFUL, so while his character may be seen as a critique
of fundamentalism, the God-fearing public in Nigeria can learn a bit
from him as well.
I look at the social condition of Kambili’s aunt as a mirror of the
crisis of higher education in Nigeria. A university lecturer long
overdue for senior lecturer-ship cannot afford milk! Is this the
future?
The
hope, of course, is that it isn’t. But it may well be, if we continue
to neglect higher education and build a university for each village in
order to sate political egos and then use interesting words like
‘autonomy’ to insist that these universities pull funding from thin
air. I had a wonderful childhood in the university town of Nsukka, my
parents retired as dedicated and passionate university people and so,
naturally, I feel very strongly about the rapid decline of higher
education.
Your story mirrors the multi-layered and multi-faceted decadence in
Nigeria, but you seem to side-step what the future holds in stock. Two
issues. One, is it that you don’t want to be a prophet (whether of
doom or gloom)? Two, do you think literature - as Seamus Heaney wishes
for poetry – can be ‘strong enough to help’?
I have no wish to be a prophet of any
kind. I am interested in reflecting my own version of reality and more
so in the past and present than in the future. I am not familiar with
the Seamus Heaney quote. But I suppose I do wish that literature can
be strong enough to help. But help in what way? If literature can
affect the way one person thinks, then perhaps it has helped.
On the heels of my last question, you try in this book to tell the
terrifying story of Nigeria in a very subtle way. Does the telling
heal you too, as an individual who lived under those terror-regimes
and who also has to carry that increasingly burdensome Nigerian -
identity around the world?
I
am ambivalent about this idea of writing only as therapy, because if
so I might as well just write in a private journal. I don’t claim to
write just for myself. That said, the Nigerian identity is burdensome,
what with the suspicion at airports and being told you can’t pay with
a credit card for Nigerian-related things, and the total lack of
dignity we encounter at embassies and things of that sort, but I have
never wished that I had a different identity. Instead what I have
wished – and what I often insist on in my life and in my writing – is
that my identity be treated as having a different – and much lighter –
baggage.
What are you trying to say with the physical possibilities between
Kambili, an adorable young girl and the boyish Catholic priest? Are
you, as a secular Catholic - if you could be called that -
deconstructing the religious order? Or is this a statement of the
impossibility of a-sexual life?
I think celibacy is a plausible choice.
However, I am not convinced that it is a necessary requirement for the
catholic priesthood. I question this even more in the context of
African Catholicism where there is incredible hypocrisy on this
subject.
Still, I don’t think I’m deconstructing
the priesthood at all, I don’t quite feel equipped to do that. For
all its faults and hypocrisies – and there are quite a few – there is
much to admire in the Catholic priesthood. I think that the boyish
catholic priest is simply a human being, one who does not claim
perfection of any sort, who is clearly running the race just like any
other member of his congregation and who is not beyond or above human
desires. As for the physical possibilities between him and Kambili, I
think that your questions in itself is telling – it shows that we
persist in seeing priests as incapable of any physicality. That, of
course, is simply untrue. The possibilities, then, are no different
from the possibilities between any two characters in fiction.
I’m not sure what secular Catholic
means. I AM Catholic. It is an identity that, although I didn’t have
much of a choice in, I have since taken ownership of. I am very much a
Vatican II enthusiast, and think that the Church should make some more
changes on its stance on a number of issues. Still, there is much I
admire and love in the church, the rich rituals, the traditions, the
commitment that some orders have to social justice and scholarship as
well as the sort of outward-looking faith that holds to some of vision
of a fairer world.
In some sections of your narrative, you seem to be reproducing the
Nigerian stereotypes: A Yoruba is editor of a crusading newspaper,
Hausa man is the gatekeeper and the Igbo are all Catholics – except
the ‘heathen’ Papa. How do you respond to this?
I don’t agree at all that a Yoruba as
editor of a crusading newspaper is a stereotype. Clearly, Ade Coker is
loosely modelled after Dele Giwa, whose death moved me very much, but
I’m not sure that qualifies it as a stereotype. The Igbo are not all
Catholic in the book, or Kambili’s father would not be so disparaging
of Pentecostalists in Enugu. That said, I am not a believer in
‘explaining’ my fiction and respect that people will read different
things into one book. I think that there is a thin line between
literary requirements and the need for authenticity in depicting a
particular time and place. I am more interested in authenticity. For
me, stereotyping becomes a problem when it is on the character-level,
so that it is Kambili’s mother who I have recently thought to be close
to a stereotype, as the rather familiar Battered Woman.
It is interesting how you handle the
‘banality of evil’ in this story, re-telling what would seem to be the
stories of the killings of Dele Giwa, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Alfred Rewane.
But, at the end of your narrative, it is unclear what triumphs. Evil
or good? The tyrant dies and the symbol of democratic freedom,
Kambili’s father, is also killed, even though he had stopped
publishing his crusading newspaper. Are you deliberately
problematizing (human) consequences?
I don’t need to deliberately
problematize them. They are already problematic, aren’t they?
I love the metaphor of aku, but I wonder
if it is not a dangerous metaphor in the context of social change.
After aku flies, it will still fall to the toad and you only have to
wait till the evening when the aku would lose its wings and fall down.
The evening may not always come, and if it comes at all, it does not
come for everybody. While the aku flies, millions of lives are being
destroyed. When will evening come?
That will be left to the literary
theorists. I wrote that scene out of a sense of nostalgia and nothing
else. I wanted to capture the sense of rain-drenched innocence I
remember so well from my childhood. There was no intended metaphor.
On the question of exile broached in the narrative, is this the
option? Or, is there another option for the thoroughly disillusioned
and repressed such as the university lecturer, Aunty Ifeoma?
Aunty Ifeoma leaves because she is left
with no choice. Whether that should be read as a general statement is,
of course, debatable. I think each person’s condition and context is
different and I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about
exile.
You can be very romantic in a somewhat
off-handed way, Chimamanda. Your character, Kambili, says that the
priest is the one ‘whose voice dictated my dreams’. Is there such a
person in real life for you? Is someone using his maleness well with
you rather than wasting it like the Catholic father in your story?
“Using his maleness well?” Ha. That is
an oddly interesting expression that begs for deconstruction! I don’t
like to talk about my personal life, Wale. I think that my world view,
on the whole, is a romanticized one, in the sense that I am constantly
wishing that the world were safer, kinder, fairer, more honest.
What would you do with the £30,000 Orange prize if you get it? Would
you, like Kambili, give a chunk of it to charity?
Kambili
didn’t win a prize. She simply gave away part of a large inheritance.
As for the Orange Prize, ‘if’ is the operative word. Let’s wait and
see, although I have to say that while being on the shortlist has been
very good for my novel, I have always hoped for the opportunity to
reach higher with each successive book.
What is in the horizon? What's your
outlook in life?
In addition to waving a magic wand and
changing the world? Writing.
Interview by: Wale Adebanwi
