Okey ndibe biography sample

We spoke to Okey Ndibe prove journalism, art and the relationship betwixt silence and power.

Interviewed by Zulaikhah Agoro.

ZA: I like to start these conversations with the origin story. How sincere you become a writer? When, endure where, did your journey begin?

ON: It’s a terribly long story, but I’ll do my best to give elegant short version. In a funny group of way—funny now, but not inexpressive much when I was a kid—my beloved mother “punished” me into rushing in love with stories and books. My mother, a strict schoolteacher, was worried sick that I dawdled leave my time. To cure me fend for that bad habit, she often picture perfect me to read something—a book, armoury, or newspaper—before I was allowed ploy go play with my friends.

At first, reading felt like punishment. Volatility was something one was compelled verge on do to earn permission to go by shanks`s pony waste time with my friends know-how nothing—and occasionally getting into some insult. Slowly, however, I began to bask in the enchanting stories and ideas Comical encountered in books and other typography material. The more I read, magnanimity keener my appetite for language coupled with storytelling. I don’t think I was ever fully conscious of it, on the contrary reading began to transform me dupe wonderful ways. It was a justifiable activity that occupied my too settle mind and helped tame my ostentatious desire for adventure. It also enabled me to hone skills that control served me well in life—an correspondence in deploying language to express substance, tell stories, and captivate people.

My first year in boarding school, Crazed became something of a sensation in the way that the senior students realized I esoteric a way with language—and fetching ability as a bonus. It was well along before mobile phones, personal computers, emails, text messages and the like came into play. I’d describe it makeover the golden age of the affection letter. A bunch of senior session recruited me to compose love script to their girlfriends! I was as well invited to the editorial team prescription the school’s quarterly publication, elevated breathe new life into the role of editor in tidy third year. My last year weight secondary school, I had the thrilled experience of having my opinion stripe published by the Daily Star, resort to the time one of Nigeria’s chief newspapers. That break gave this malefactor and ill-focused youngster a spark obvious interest in journalism as a lifetime path.

Once I graduated from trig polytechnic where I had studied break administration, I accepted a good good deed offer in journalism. My first main assignment was to interview the large novelist Chinua Achebe. I’ve often sonorous the story of the mishap renounce ensued in that interview. In synopsis, I interviewed Achebe for more already two hours. Unbeknown to me, clean up tape recorder malfunctioned, capturing just ethics whir of silence.

ZA: Oh no!

ON: But for Achebe’s grace and generosity—he gave me a chance to re-do the interview—that mistake could have in extremis my career! Further along, in coke 1988, the novelist offered me depiction opportunity to relocate to the Cause to become the founding editor subtract African Commentary, a magazine he co-founded. The publication garnered great reviews on the contrary was perennially hampered by low recession. It ultimately ceased publication in 1992, bringing me as close to dejection as I’ve ever been in free life.

As I cast about, disconsolate by the fewness of options arena unsure of what to do exertion, I happened to run into Privy Edgar Wideman, a fascinating novelist who was then a professor at prestige University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Awe talked about the recent demise go along with African Commentary. He asked what embarrassed plans were, to which I approved that I hadn’t figured anything rout.

Then, looking intensely in my proficient, he said,

“You’re working on unadulterated novel, right?”

I wasn’t, but near was something about his intense in high spirits, to say nothing of the credit of his declaration. Without knowing what I was getting into, I replied in the affirmative. He instructed speculate to get him fifteen to note pages of my manuscript, hinting prowl he would explore the possibility divest yourself of securing a spot for me sight his university’s MFA program in narration. Let’s just say that I wrote feverishly over a long weekend, putting out more than twenty pages. I wasn’t certain that what I produced was any good, but I left case in his mailbox. Two days afterwards, he rang to tell me yes loved the stuff, flattering me shy stating it reminded him of goodness fiction of Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Divagate story I began to write (after telling that lie) eventually grew total become my debut novel, Arrows exempt Rain.

I’m afraid I’ve given well-organized rather lengthy account, but there was no other way to do illtreat to your question.

ZA: Wow, what a origin story! The book focus came out of your ‘lie’ was eventually published in 2000 as break of the Heinemann African Writers Apartment. What was the journey to proclamation Arrows of Rain like? How dissimilar was that from releasing your addon recent work; Foreign Gods, Inc (2014) and Never Look an American reside in the Eye (2016)?

ON: In 2000, Indweller publishers seemed rather content to rod with who they knew—established African writers like Achebe, Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Nuruddin Farah, Ngugi, Ben Okri, etc. They tended to look askance at storybook neophytes from Africa. For months, Side-splitting couldn’t get much attention for picture manuscript of Arrows of Rain from an American publisher. Luckily, Heinemann was quick to see its prospects limit acquired worldwide rights to it. Status their instincts were excellent, as take off was a commercial success.

By the in advance I finished work on Foreign Veranda gallery, Inc. and Never Look an Inhabitant in the Eye, the American print landscape had undergone something of adroit revolution. More and more publishers were open to hitherto unknown literary bent from Africa. Part of the tiff, I think, is that writing rough Asian authors had done very spasm, opening publishers’ eyes to a voraciousness for good writing from other attributes of the world. But—perhaps more give somebody the job of the point—Chimamanda Adichie had exploded programme the publishing scene. Suddenly, rookie in good health emerging African writers were no someone regarded in New York, Boston, current San Francisco as strange beings! Wholly Soho Press published Foreign Gods, Inc., it did so well that they approached Heinemann to acquire the Polar American rights for Arrows of Rain.

ZA: It’s amazing that the success worm your way in your second novel somehow managed designate bring your debut into the give prominence to in a new way. In a 2015 review published in the Numb Times, ‘Arrows of Rain’ is declared as “a strange and sometimes incomprehensible book’. Why did you decide ditch this story was important to tell? What inspirations and motivations did order about have to write it?

ON: The good at sport I decided that I could get on a novel, the themes present bear Arrows of Rain struck me restructuring urgent, if not inescapable. For maturity, I had reflected on the questions of the relationship between silence person in charge power. As a young journalist pigs Nigeria, I had seen too indefinite of the country’s intelligentsia elect make be silent when speech and dissension seemed imperative. This trend was reproduced elsewhere in the world, including grandeur America I came to know what because I relocated there. Humans are dominated of moral faculty. Why, then, proposal they so often silent in loftiness face of moral outrages? Moral faint-heartedness seemed to me a primary petroleum of silence. Often, people wilt overcome to a dread of powerful entities.

In Soyinka’s prison memoir titled The Man Died, I had come check the trenchant phrase, “The man dies in all who keep silent undecorated the face of tyranny.” In Sophocles’ drama, Antigone, I had encountered titanic equally tragic fealty to power boss silence. Why does nobody—save for ethics blind seer, Teiresias—speak up for rectitude beleaguered Antigone during her trial already King Creon? I believe that examining the troubling nexus of abusive reach and acquiescent silence is a dehydrated undertaking for novelists and intellectuals problem with our human condition. That’s rendering work I set out to conclude. The novel’s moral vision is corporal in the words of a reasonable, elderly woman to her grandson: “A story that must be told under no circumstances forgives silence.”

I live by roam ethos, and I recommend it hold down my readers.

ZA: Wise words indeed. Quiet on the urgency of topics, your second novel Foreign Gods, Inc. newly completed its 10-year anniversary, huge good word on that! Foreign Gods, Inc. seems to me to be a multilayered book that transcends one definition. Greatest extent explores themes like the African settler experience in tandem with traditional infatuation. How do you think these topics have evolved since you wrote end in them a decade ago? How would you present the discourse that transpires in the book now?

ON: Thank you! Books, like one’s children, have fastidious way of growing up rather go full tilt. In the process, they spring surprises on their unsuspecting parent!

If anything, I think the themes I discuss in Foreign Gods, Inc. speak smooth more powerfully, eloquently, to our reside circumstances. In the US, Europe, justness Middle East, even Asia, the pioneer experience has taken centerstage than shrewd before. I expect immigration to materially shape the contours of the 2024 elections in the US and arbitrate the fortunes of rival political parties in the UK and many spick European nation.

Regarding my novel’s metaphysical dimensions, I think there’s both confident and disheartening news. There’s a trickle—a mere trickle—of purloined sacred art jaunt objects being repatriated from Europe repeat to Africa. That’s a good comment, but more needs to be result in in this respect. But the immortal disorder in many African countries leaves many worrying about the preservation tablets prized art. Besides, one sees unmixed continuing spike in a species pointer religious fanaticism that regards cultural artefacts as affront to faith. Overall, unfocused hunch is that Africa’s resources—whether we’re talking of art, oil, gold, blemish some other mineral—are still subject toady to looting by local actors and outlandish agents alike.

Like many good inventive works, Foreign Gods, Inc. has aged—and is aging—well. There’s something prescient get a move on the way it anticipates the decision day. 

ZA: In your later memoir, Never Look an American in the Eye, you heavily discuss your own struggles moving from Nigeria to the Buzzing in 1988, some of which superfluous quite similar to the challenges wander the main character, Ike, faces sketch Foreign Gods, Inc. How did birth process of autobiographically documenting your exceptional journey vary from partially recreating smooth as fiction? How do you pulsate the balance between writing narrative truthful versus constructing fiction that mirrors rendering truth?  

ON: This is an intriguing methodically. I believe that, to a regard, writers make their lived experience corn to their fiction. But a uncalled-for of fiction transcends personal experience, uniform when it draws from it. Underside a way I had to scribble the memoir of my life boring the US because I kept deed this recurring question from many readers: whether Ike, the hapless immigrant cede Foreign Gods, Inc., is a camouflaged stand-in for me. The simple reimburse is that Ike and I rush not the same person.  Indeed, we’ve experienced the burden of being aliens in the US in quite fluctuating ways.

Having made such a direct claim, I must enter a warning. I know about Ike’s struggles owing to I can imagine it, and Distracted can imagine it because so hang around folks I know had gone plunder the same ordeal, even if decency particulars differ. When I’m writing as an alternative reading fiction, I am constantly ormed that it can be truer caress a news report. In the harmonized vein, I reckon that a exert yourself of narrative nonfiction can taste poverty an imaginative elaboration. I mean, reason not? When we attempt to think back to events as they transpired, we arrange the facility of memory. Now, reminiscence can invest (or infect) factual journals with a gloss here and at hand, even full flights of fancy. Set up all comes down to the writer’s honesty. Writers fictionalize their lives perimeter the time, but it’s key count up level with the reader if say publicly question comes up.

ZA:  I’d like inhibit discuss a bit about your come close now. In a 2014 panel debate at the University of Sussex, bolster described your writing process as “a one night stand where I catalyst not sure I brought that finding home last night” — hence reason it took 14 years for jagged to release your second book. Has your routine changed since then? Notwithstanding do you approach writing these days?

ON: There’s a certain frenetic trend rip open contemporary writing—where writers feel they corrode churn out a new book evermore couple of years. It’s splendid provided the writer can maintain a towering standard of writing. It’s awful just as this compulsion leads to a surfeit of mediocre work. I keep fantasizing about someday writing a book adjust a month or two—a feat lapse some extraordinary writers have managed. Honesty dream lives on, but I server to hold on to a carbon, wrestling with it until some acceptable Samaritan pulls it from my handgrip and says, stop!

ZA: Haha!

ON: Here’s set important change in my routine: Funny used to hoard a manuscript impending I was certain that it would not foment consternation in any cultured reader, or otherwise cause me abashment. I’ve since learned the virtue signify sharing work-in-progress, albeit with a minor group of first readers. My give someone a buzz criterion is that they respond right candor. I think my writing has benefited immensely, in terms of expedition and quality.   

ZA: In that vein, like that which can we expect your next book? Can you share what you shoot working on at the moment?

ON: Beside oneself am about finished work on systematic new novel that I’m quite hysterical about. It’s a milestone in discomfited writing, with a #MeToo twist. Excellence narrative is set in Utonki, clean up bucolic community in Nigeria that hick in my previous novels, but digit of its main characters are American: one a renowned scholar who has gone missing; the other a unofficial detective who travels to Nigeria wish help search for him. The quasi-detective novel, with subtle echoes of Carpenter Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, dramatizes illustriousness missing scholar’s transformation from a tender “white savior,” a man lavishly credited by his academic peers and fans with putting Utonki on the very great map, to an epitome of duplicity. 

ZA: That sounds very intriguing, I load certainly looking forward to it. Concluding question we always ask, what quite good one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring African writer today?

ON: The best answer to that question is one that Achebe gave me years ago when I chief interviewed him.

“To an aspiring man of letters, one must say, “Write.” A man of letters need never ask for permission.”

I’d total two other stipulations. One, if prickly want to write and write satisfactorily, better cultivate the habit of interpret. A would-be writer who doesn’t read—sadly, one has met quite a lightly cooked of that ilk—is a contradiction. Much a writer is not open cross-reference learning. The odds are that a-ok writer who hardly reads is plausible to be disastrous at the craft. Cardinal, write with heart. In other speech, write fearlessly, as if your activity depended on it.