AFTER AN INTERVIEW I GAVE TO THE GUARDIAN IN 2009, in which I stated what I thought was an uncontroversial proposition, namely that I really dislike the term ‘African writer’ as I see myself as just me, I received some rather frightening emails. Let’s just say there are a lot of people out there who seem to derive their sense of worth from how people completely unrelated to them see themselves. A friend told me that quite a few posters on the Nigerian literary list-serve, Krazitivity, were up in arms because they thought that I was rejecting my black African Nubianess. And all the while I have been queuing before the ‘African Passports’ counters at Oliver Tambo airport and getting my hair braided in Stall 90 at Kenyatta market in Nairobi! I even, as a declaration of my deep-felt Nubiosity, named my son Kush – if I had a daughter, she would be called Egypt, then I could proudly say my children are named after the old African kingdom of Egypt and Kush. Or not.
Anyway, after the initial emails, I tuned out of the whole thing and privately swore that the next time anyone asked me about this, I would respond by quoting all of Jabberwocky.
But that was then. As part of an application for a fellowship that is hugely important to me, I have in the last two days been compiling a huge dossier of my reviews and published profiles and have been, gasp, Googling myself. By the way, I am not one of those writers who claims they do not read reviews – I read them, I love them, and I respect people who take time to read and write honestly and with sincerity. I have, however, for the last twelve months or so, stopped reading anything to do with An Elegy for Easterly. And as I did not read much around the whole African Writer thing, today was the first time that I read the short comment [linked] from Nigerian philosopher and writer, Chielozona Eze, which I found on Pambazuka.
I am deeply grateful to Chielo. He has very simply, but eloquently, captured exactly what it is that I meant. If I accept his division of writers on the continent into Achebeans and Soyinkans, I would definitely agree with him that I write in the Soyinkan tradition. I am honestly not interested in writing for the edification and education of the West. Nor do I write to correct historical wrongs. Just as there are stereotypes about Africans, there are stereotypes about Asians, about South Americans, heck, about any group if you come to think of it. To stereotype is human. If I set up my ambition as the correcting of what Chimamanda Adichie calls the ‘single story’, I would go demented.
There are writers who have chosen to take on this burden. I read them, I cheer them on, I celebrate them. But that is not how I see myself or my writing. I do not want always to be writing back or answering back. It would mean that I am forever responding to agendas set by others. Instead of telling others what plants they should not grow in their gardens, I want to cultivate my own little plot, plant the things I love, and watch them grow. I want to write stories that mean something to me, and hang the West. Hang Zimbabwe too. Hang tyranny, including the tyranny of the loudest voiced ones. Hang censorship, hang any kind of silencing. I want to write about anything that takes my interest, with no agenda other than to write it well.
Before I became a writer, I was a roving, curious Afropolitan (I so love that term), rooted in my continent but inspired by the world. I love people, I love travel, I love ideas, I love discovering inspiration in the most unexpected places. This was my life before I became a writer, and it is still my life today. So I write the way I live: taking in everything that inspires, discarding everything that does not. My name is Petina Gappah. I am a Soyinkan. And a million other things besides.
– Petina Gappah
This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author. Petina’s blog can be found via www.petinagappah.blogspot.com
About Petina Gappah
Petina Gappah is winner of the Guardian First Book Award and author of An Elegy for Easterly (short story collection).
