This week in the Début Fiction issue, Uwem Akpan publishes his story, “An Ex-Mas Feast.” Here, with the magazine’s deputy fiction editor, Cressida Leyshon, Akpan discusses his writing and his career so far.
CRESSIDA LEYSHON: Your story, “An Ex-Mas Feast,” is about a family living on the street in Nairobi, Kenya. When did you first start thinking about these characters and the world that they inhabit?
UWEM AKPAN: When I went to study theology in Nairobi, in 2000, I was just taken by the phenomenon of street kids. I’d never seen anything like it before. I wanted to meet them. So I used to visit the City Centre to watch them some Saturdays, following them from a distance, afraid because they can be wild. I did not know Kiswahili, so that was a barrier, too. I wasn’t thinking of writing then. I was just fascinated and amazed at the endurance I saw in them—how they moved as a group, how they sniffed glue, how they robbed people, how the rest of society regarded them. By 2002, I had started asking myself, What would it feel like to grow up as a street kid or in a street family? I started talking with the bunch of kids around Adams Arcade, which was near my school. These kids were not very wild, because they still went back to their homes in the slums in the evening. There was one kid, Richard, who was their leader. I started calling him Dick. He had some English, and was very respected by the others. If I wanted to give them money, the whole bunch would ask me to give it to Dick, because they knew he would not cheat them. He would talk with me and ask me about Nigeria. I don’t know how he managed to be so nice, unlike his friends. After the Christmas holiday of 2000, he disappeared. I started asking questions. Some of his friends told me that maybe he had gone to the city to become a real street kid. I really thought I would run into him someday in the city. But I never did. I kept hoping that he would keep his gentleness even in the very wild gangs of the City Centre.
Did you do much research when you were working on the story? How important do you think research is? Is it enough to imagine the situation that a boy like Jigana, the eight-year-old narrator of the story, would be in, or did you feel that you needed a more tangible sense of his daily reality?
Research is important. But normally I start writing the story first. Imagination first. I wanted to write about a street family because I thought it would be more challenging, since I had not seen a street family before, only street kids. Research comes at some later point. Otherwise, it gets in the way. Once I begin to know what the story is, then I can think of specific things, like what glue is called on the streets, or what landmarks of a place to invoke. So I first had to decide that I wanted the reader to see this family as it’s coming apart. I had to make key decisions—narrator, past or present tense, et cetera—first, before research. It was scary, because I still felt I did not know enough about Kenya to attempt this story. When I started showing this to my Kenyan friends, and they liked it, I gained more confidence. Binyavanga Wainaina, a writer and editor who runs Kwani? magazine in Nairobi, suggested to me that I should write the dialogue in street language instead of the middle-class English I was using. He changed some of the dialogue into street language for me. I was very touched by his encouragement.
You’re working on a collection of stories about children in various countries in Africa. Can you talk a little about the other stories? Why do you want to write about a number of African countries rather than one or two—for example, Nigeria, where you grew up, or Kenya, where you studied for three years?
I would like to see a book about how children are faring in these endless conflicts in Africa. I would like to really know how kids are dealing with the genocide in Darfur. What is the torment like for a child who went through the tsunami? I would like to get into the head of a kid soldier in Sierra Leone. It is scary and painful. And the world is not looking. I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet. I have had the chance to study and to travel a bit. I really hope I can visit these places and do good research, so that the stories can be truly those of the people I am trying to write about. I want their voices heard, their faces seen.
From the age of twenty-two, you’ve moved back and forth between Africa and North America for your education. Could you talk about why you wanted to study in America, and how you found your first years in the country?
I came to America for the first time when my Jesuit superiors sent me to Nebraska to study at Campion House, a Jesuit scholastic community attached to Creighton University. I came with another Nigerian. Before then, we had spent a year studying humanities in Nigeria. My three years of humanities studies have been, I believe, my best years in the long formation of a Jesuit priest. We went on to do two years of philosophy at Gonzaga University. It was very difficult to adjust to life here initially. But the Jesuits in Omaha were very good to me. I made lots of friends, who all helped me to adjust. The people were kind and warm.
Do you find it easy to move between the two continents, or does it take time to adjust to life in each place again?
No matter what you hear about America or Africa, it is always a different, more complex thing to arrive there. The rhythm of life here is different from that of Nigeria. I really liked the efficiency and accessibility of things here, the educational opportunities. And I was touched by the beauty and tolerance it has taken to fashion America. But, for instance, the thing about old people staying in “homes” away from home blew my mind. As did how little Americans know or want to know about life elsewhere.
It is a great thing to be able to move back and forth. I get to see my friends. There’s also the challenge of remaining faithful to my roots. Now each time I return to Ikot Akpan Eda, my home, I ask my parents and old people a lot of questions. I am more interested in my Annang culture now than I was before I started coming here. I am always interested in listening to old people in my village. Everybody knows everybody, and people tell tall stories. After Mass on Sunday, people sit together outside the church and share fresh palm wine. One of my mother’s cousins used to come around to our home to tell us stories he made up about different people in the village. He seemed to have a license to change any story into whatever he wanted. My granddad, who helped bring Catholicism to my village, became a polygamist at one point and later came back to monogamy. So I have many uncles and aunties. My father and all his brothers live in one big compound. My mother’s place is not far off.
When did you decide that you wanted to be a fiction writer?
It began as a joke in 1998. The Nigerian Guardian rejected a couple of nonfiction articles I had sent them. It was funny, because I had published some op-ed articles there after secondary school. Now, armed with a university degree, I could not even get in! When I looked at their Saturday paper, I noticed that they had a place for fiction. So I decided to give it a try. It worked. So I started writing furiously for them. The quality of my stories was not very good, but I could raise the readers’ adrenaline. So I was happy to be serialized for eleven consecutive Saturdays. Before then, I had written poems, and I even wrote a play—at my mother’s behest—which I had no guts to stage, when I was seventeen or so. My English teacher, Father Gerry McIntyre, really made a difference in my writing life. Some of the things he used to tell me are beginning to come true.
You’re now getting an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Michigan, after which you’ll move to Zimbabwe, in 2006. Why did you want to study writing in an American program? Has it changed the way you approach your work?
I knew my writing could be better. I had nowhere to turn. It seems all the established writers from my country live in Europe or America. I needed to learn the craft. I had a secret wish that if I went into an M.F.A. program, I would have the time to write. I wanted to meet with writers, and M.F.A. programs have the money and prestige to attract established writers. Otherwise, you won’t meet these people. It is a platform for apprenticeship.
I looked at the rankings on the Internet, and decided which schools to apply to. Having gone to college here, I pretty much knew what to expect. But, I must say, I made the right choice in coming to Michigan. This has been my first experience of workshops. The group is very close-knit; the teachers are always there for us. I don’t know how they do it, because they are also novelists and poets and parents. They always have time to read our stuff and offer a shoulder to the broken-hearted. I like my classmates.
Have you set much of your fiction in the United States?
I have not set any of my fiction in the U.S. __. __. __. __Not yet. I feel that you guys have tons of writers “discovering” the American experience for you. I feel that the situation of Africa is very urgent and we need more people to help us see the complexity of our lives. Ben Okri has said that rich African literature means rich world literature. Having said that, it would be great to set some of my fiction in this country. A lot of African refugees are coming to America now. So that could be where to begin.
What do you read, mostly?
The stories I find in the Bible keep surprising me. All the crimes are already committed in Genesis, yet God stays with the ones who committed them. I read extensively, though ever since I started writing, my reading speed has gone down considerably.
You joined the Society of Jesus in 1990 and were ordained as a priest in 2003. Do you find that your religious vocation and your desire to write complement each other, or have the two ever felt like competing desires or vocations?
I like to be a priest; I like to be a writer. Both give me energy. “Gaudium et Spes,” a key Vatican II document, makes it very clear that the joys and anguish of the world are the joys and anguish of the Church. The Jesuits have a rich tradition of writing and involvement in social issues. That said, yes, sometimes it is difficult. Learning to write while in the seminary was very brutal. I had to try to do all the things a seminarian should do before 11 p.m.—after that the community computers were free. James Wesley Harris, a former classmate at Creighton University, finally changed things for me. He sent me my first laptop. __. __. __. __My hope is that I maintain a balance between my priesthood and my writing.
Is your faith important to you when you’re writing? What role, if any, do you think it should play in your fiction?
Since it is not something I can put away, my faith is important to me. I hope I am able to reveal the compassion of God in the faces of the people I write about. I think fiction has a way of doing this without being doctrinaire about it.
In the story you have published in The New Yorker this week, two of the main characters, Jigana and his sister Maisha, live in a harsh world. Do you think that they’ll survive?
My continent is in distress and has been since the beginning of slavery. Leadership is a big problem. My hope is that things will change in Africa. Europe fought endlessly with itself in past centuries; now they have a European Union, not just in name, like the African Union. I hope that someday all the stupid wars on the African continent will end. I am amazed at the endurance of people, whether in Asia or Latin America or Africa, caught up in harsh situations.
What do you do when you want to forget about everything?
(Laughs.) A priest has no way of forgetting about everything! I like to watch good soccer on TV. Take long, slow drives. Read. Visit with people.
