In Conversation

This week we spoke to Chika Unigwe about her latest novel, her writing process, and the invaluable piece of advice she received from Buchi Emecheta.

Interviewed by Nancy Adimora.

(No spoilers, we promise)

NA: Take us back to where it all started. How did the girl from Enugu settle on becoming a writer?

CU: Wow, this question has so many layers to it. I’ll start by saying that my parents were very much into books. Growing up, all I had to say was that I wanted to read a book and the book was bought, no questions asked. In primary school I remember a classmate of mine bringing an American magazine to class. It was called Highlights for Children, and she lent it to me to read but she wouldn’t let me take it home because she was very precious about it. It was full of stories, drawings and poems by children, and I really wanted a copy of my own so I asked my father and he immediately subscribed my younger sister and I to the magazine. So for many years, maybe up until my first year in secondary school, we had Highlights for Children shipped from the US to Enugu. I re-subscribed when I eventually had kids of my own…

NA: It still exists?

CU: It still exists! And I’m so glad it does because it gave me a sense of validation as a reader, and reassured me that the stories I wanted to read were important. But beyond that particular magazine, I was just a voracious reader. I’m the 6th of 7 children so I had older siblings who studied literature at school and when they got books they didn't want to read they would ask me to quickly read it and give them a summary. I loved doing that! They all had different tastes in what they read for pleasure so I read Mills & Boon, I read James Hadley Chase, I read Sidney Sheldon, I read Chinua Achebe, I read everything. But I didn’t really think about writing until I was in Primary 2. One of my classmates was the daughter of Flora Nwapa…

NA: Wooooow!

CU: I know. I can’t remember how many times she came to our class, but I have this vivid memory of her coming in for a meeting with our teacher, and she had all these children’s books from her publishing house. She handed out the books to us to keep us busy while she talked to our teacher, and I just remember thinking “I want to be like this woman, I want to be like Amede's mother.”

I don't know if I've ever told this story before, but when I was in secondary school, I wrote a novel over the school holidays and I called Flora Nwapa’s office because I wanted her to publish it. She was very kind and generous, she listened to me and she eventually told me to bring the manuscript to her office and promised to take a look at it. But at that time I was too young to enter cabs and the driver never had time to take me to her office, so I never took the manuscript in the end. I'm sure it wasn't any good, but I really appreciate her generosity and the validation she gave me. She didn't say I was too young to write, she invited me to her office, and she was the first person outside of my parents to validate my dream.

I say ‘outside of my parents’ because I got a lot of validation from my parents. I remember being in the village and telling my father that I wanted to write a book. We were in Osumenyi, hours away from the closest city, and I have no idea how he did it, but he went out and sourced the typewriter for me. He got me sheets to type with, he got me a stapler, he got me everything I needed. Up until now, it still stuns me.

NA: That’s such a heartwarming story and it’s really refreshing to hear that your parents supported you from the very start.

CU: They’re the best. I still have a journal that my mother gave when I was maybe nine years old. I’d write poems and stories in it and they would read every single thing. I'm sure I was a very annoying kid, but I was never made to feel that my writing was inconsequential. My father is 93 in June and he still gets excited about new projects I’m working on. He wants to know all the details. His eyesight is failing, but it doesn't matter to him. He’ll hold the book and he’ll read it, no matter how difficult it is, he’ll still read it.

NA: I absolutely love that. And do you rememeber when you started to think about writing as a potential career?

CU: When I was in university, I published a collection of poems. I’m so embarrassed to even think about it now but that’s when I started to think about writing more seriously. But even before then, when I was much younger, I used to go to this club for kids. I forget what it's called now but they would have these Saturday clubs where they’d teach us stuff like baking and we’d watch all these documentaries. One day they showed us this documentary of this Nigerian woman who was living in the UK, raising five kids and having such a hard life, but also writing and being really successful at it. That’s how Buchi Emecheta became the second person I wanted to be like, after Flora Nwapa. Hearing her story, gave me early insight into the hard work that really goes into becoming a published author.

After my initial self-publishing attempt, I got married to my husband, and we moved to Belgium. During my first year in Belgium, I had terrible panic attacks. I was in this place where nothing I knew mattered, I didn't even know the language, and so I felt very much like an outsider. One of the things that sort of anchored me was BBC Radio because they had these weekly productions of stories from around the world. I decided to write a short story, I sent it to them, and to my surprise they broadcasted it. That was my first paid gig and it made me realise that a writing career could be worth considering.

I kept writing and eventually one of my short stories was submitted to the Caine Prize. I think sometimes we underestimate the power of the Caine Prize and the influence it had and probably still has on the careers of African writers who have absolutely no idea how to start. When my story was shortlisted I met Ellah Wakatama for the first time, and met David Godwin, who eventually became my first agent. I met other African writers who are still my friends today — Brian Chikwava, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Doreen Baingana, Parselelelo Kantai. Helen Habila was there too as he had won the previous year. So I met all of these African writers I probably would never have met otherwise, but I also met people in the industry that I had no idea how to even begin to contact. It was just so incredible and it showed me how the industry worked. And for somebody writing in Belgium, in a country where I felt so isolated, this community was so important.

One of the things that Nick Elam (the first administrator of the Caine Prize) did was introduce us to Buchi Emecheta. 

NA: Oh my gosh, what a beautiful full circle moment!

CU: Exactly. So we had a lunch date with Buchi Emecheta and she sat in on some of our press interviews. She was the first person to tell me as an African writer, to not be embarrassed to see my writing as more than a hobby. Because up until then, I was almost embarrassed and ashamed to say I was writing for of money. She sat in on one of our interviews where one of the journalists had asked us why we wrote and all of us said we were just passionate about writing and I think one of us must have referred to it as a hobby. As soon as the journalist left, she tore into us. She said, “If you're writing, if you want this to be a career, you have to want to make money out of it. Especially for you, young women, I'm talking to you.” She pointed out that the journalist that had been asking us questions was also making money from their writing, and then she told us her life story. She said, “I've bought homes because of my writing and I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to say that. The way you treat your writing is the way others are going to treat it. If you treat it like a hobby, they will treat it like a hobby.” I’ve never forgotten that.

NA: That’s incredible advice that you’ve clearly taken on board. But despite all the amazing things you’ve achieved in your career since then, in a recent Brittle Paper interview you said that you're still an incredibly anxious writer, lacking in confidence. Do you have any thoughts on why you still feel like this?

CU: Jeez, I wish I knew. I just can't help it because every book is a new story - you're showing yourself to new people, and you're never going to be universally liked. I also feel like I've still got a lot to learn, you know, just in terms of writing. I'm far from perfect and I still see myself as a student rather than a master who knows it all – that’s probably where the anxiety creeps in.

NA: Well I’m glad you were able to push past the anxiety to write your latest book, The Middle Daughter. In your own words, what is this book about and what’s the story behind it?

CU: So the framing is very important to me, because it meant that I didn't have to worry about what the story was about, I just had to worry about how to tell it. So the framing is that it's a retelling of the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone. And if you know the myth, you kind of already know the story. Hades snatches Persephone from the earth and drags her into the underworld with him - a man takes a woman, just because he can. The commonality amongst the different retellings of this story is that there is almost a whitewashing of both the abduction, and also what I consider to be sexual assault. Even when some versions do acknowledge the rape, Persephone is usually complicit in some way. In some versions she eventually falls in love with Hades and lives happily with him - she's never completely free of Hades. So I knew that in writing this novel that I wanted a different ending. I wanted to right the wrong. The challenge was in how to translate this Greek myth into a contemporary Nigerian story, in a way that makes sense and tackles all the things that have been haunting me for years.

That was the first aspect of it, the second aspect was that I had a friend who told me a story about one of her formal classmates who got into the sort of abusive relationship that my protagonist Nani gets into with Ephraim. I don't know what's happened to her, but I’ve been rooting for that woman ever since and so I guess this book is also my attempt at righting the wrong done to her.

I’m usually not a planner when it comes to my writing, but with this book I sort of always knew where I was going to go. This novel was my way of getting justice.

NA: I guess that’s the beauty of fiction - it’s not just about reflecting the world as you see it, but you can imagine what an ideal world and outcome would be. So once you set out with a clear plan and a clear vision of what you wanted to achieve with this story, how did you begin? What did the writing process look like?  

CU: So the very first draft of this novel I wrote many years ago. I took out time and went on a residency in Germany for about six weeks. I wrote every day because I always like to get the first draft out as quickly as possible, and then I can go back and rewrite. I tend to write very early in the morning, so I'd wake up around 3am or… 

NA: 3am?! 

CU: Yes! Because at that time of the morning the postman isn't at the door, my friend’s aren’t asking if I want to go out for coffee, there are no phone calls, nobody's in the kitchen making noise, and nobody's desperate to tell you something they've just heard. So I wake up at 3am and I try to give myself daily word counts of at least 1000 words a day, so I know that in 40 days, I’d have 40,000 words and in 60 days I’d have 60,000 words, which is what I usually aim for with a first draft.

If I get up early to write at 3am, it means that by 6am I can go back to bed, and then by 9am I'm ready for my morning to start. If I need to do any more writing, I can find more time during the day, but I've already got the bulk of the writing out of the way.

NA: That’s such a great process, thank you for sharing. And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

CU: Always assume knowledge. That’s something I got from my editor Ellah Wakatama. When I was working on On Black Sisters' Street, I was going into a very deep explanation of something and during a phone call with Ellah she said “Chika, always assume knowledge.”

It was great advice because when you assume knowledge, it gives you the freedom to write as truthfully and as freely as possible. When you're over-explaining yourself, and questioning what the readers will or won’t get, you’re effectively censoring yourself, and readers can always tell when you're spoon-feeding them.

Chika Unigwe is Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia College and the author of several celebrated works of fiction including On Black Sisters’ Street, which won the NLNG Prize for Literature, and the short story collection Better Never Than Late. The Middle Daughter is her latest novel.