Bookshelf Interview with Olumide Popoola

© Guardian Woman, https://guardian.ng/guardian-woman/olumide-popoola-i-bring-wild-rich-imagination-to-life/

Olumide Popoola is a London-based Nigerian German writer and speaker. Her full-length novel When we Speak of Nothing was published in the UK and Nigeria in 2017 (Cassava Republic Press). Her publications also include critical essays, hybrid pieces and poetry. The scope of her work concerns critical investigation into the ‘in-between’ of culture, language and public space where a, sometimes uncomfortable, look at complexity is needed.

See her in conversation during Manchester Literature Festival on Monday 8th October at 7pm at Waterstones Deansgate.

At Manchester Literature Festival, you will be in conversation with other rising literary stars - Elaine Castillo and Michael Donkor - exploring the question ‘Where do you find home?’ Can you explain how this idea feeds into your novel When We Speak of Nothing?

It’s such a fitting concept to When We speak of Nothing! The protagonist Karl finds a surrogate family with his best friend Abu’s family. Then there is Karl’s social worker who also has legal guardianship. In Nigeria, where Karl travels to, a distant relative takes an instant liking to him, as well as the cook of the eatery at the bottom of this relative’s block of flats. In the book, ‘home’ is redefined outside of place, and outside of the nuclear family. Instead it’s a network of loving, loyal, supportive people who are there when needed, who see you for who you are, who have patience to let you be. The idea of home as a place is always fraught for people from marginalised backgrounds. London is Karl’s and Abu’s home, yet, depending on the level of right-wing upsurge, London is also the place where they are singled out as target, simply because of skin colour and age.

You have said that it was the young people you were working with, in London, that inspired you to start writing this book; what was it about them, in particular, that influenced its genesis?

I very much loved how the young men conducted themselves. There was something so tender, sincere but also cool and proper about their interactions. There seemed to be a code of conduct or rituals; how one said hello, how one looked after another. I wanted to explore that, find out the sort of hidden side of young, urban, Black and Brown masculinity that is often missed out when we hear about “the Youth”.

Focusing on some of your male characters, I’m interested to find out a bit more about the Nigerian deity Eshu and how this figure informed your creation of the novel’s transgender protagonist?

Eshu is the Yoruba god of the crossroads. He is often described as a trickster god but this limits what he stands for. Eshu’s principles are often described as the chaos and trickiness of exchange that forces new connections, which in turn creates new worlds, new meanings or approaches. He bears the opportunity for revolt. Eshu asks us to continuously redefine and challenge rigid structures, authority and orthodoxy. Eshu’s trickery should reveal, on some level, those elements that have not (yet) been accounted for, which have so far been disregarded, and prove a philosophical point. He has been called an androgynous deity by various scholars. Scholar Ulli Beier contextualises Eshu as a possibility for productive opposites and paradoxes:

“Esu is not only a potent man, he is simultaneously an attractive woman… The fact that Esu can be represented either as male or female illustrates a basic component of his personality that can express itself in innumerable opposites and paradoxes. At the same time, it symbolizes a basic principle of Yoruba wisdom. In the Yoruba world view nothing is final, nothing exclusive; everything is in a continuous state of flow; every image is subject to change; any symbol is subject to constant new interpretations.” (Beier, U. and Ogundele, W. [editors]. The Hunter Thinks the Monkey is Not Wise.: Selected Essays. Bayreuth African Studies: 2001, p.31).

If we look at Eshu the idea of gender fluidity is present. Trans expression can be viewed thus from within the Yoruba mythological worldview.

We’d love you to now share your top five books for the bookshelf.

Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector (1977)

Lispector was a Brazilian writer, but her family moved to Ukraine following the atrocities that plagued the country during the First World War. The political subject matter of this novel deals with the problems facing rural Northeast Brazil verses the urban Southeast, however on a more intimate level the female protagonist offers a commentary on the struggles facing uneducated women in a sexist society. I love the freedom of Lispector’s voice in Hour of the Star; the narrator’s existential musings are delivered in a casual and tangential way, but there is still a powerful story. I love experimental writing that play with language, voice and structure, and Lispector was renowned for her innovation, which is displayed superbly in this text.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde (1982)

I read this book in one sitting when I was 16. It gave me a sense of belonging. It is Lorde’s autobiography or “biomythology” – a genre she coined herself, combining history, biography and myth.

Blues in SchwarzWeiss - May Ayim (1995)

This is the first collection of poetry by the late Afro-German poet May Ayim. It was very important for me as a young person because it was the first collection by a Afro-German that I encountered and held in my hands. It signified recognition, being seen, which also means existing in the world. I have always loved Ayim’s playfulness with words (even prior to the collection coming out) and her stage presence and performance. She was a creative role model for me, especially when I was doing spoken word, which I did for many years prior to writing prose fiction.

Harare North - Brian Chikwava (2004)

Brian is a Zimbabwean author, and this book re-imagines that, after a decade of emigration, Zimbabweans now refer to London as ‘Harare North’. What I love, in particular, about this book is the narrative voice. I love the language Chikwava created to match the protagonist’s journey because there is so much in the register and tone of that voice that tells us about the migrant experience, the protagonist’s mental state and similar.

Poem About My Rights - June Jordan (1980)

I have been returning to this poem for the last 20 years, since I have known it. It is fierce and current, clear and poetic. I love, the rhythm, the voice, the analogies.

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

me

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life