Ukamaka Olisakwe is the founder of Isele Magazine and the author of Ogadimma which won the SpringNG women’s prize for fiction 2020. Her debut novel Eyes of the Goddess was published in 2012. In 2014, she was chosen as one of 39 sub-saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40 and showcased in the Africa39 project. Her short story “This is How I Remember it,” was published in the Anthology Africa39: New Writing From Africa South of the Sajara (Edited y Ellah Allfrey). Her Latest offering Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name will be published on May 16, 2023. The editor discusses her works, philosophy and general thoughts on writing, in general and African writing in particular. 

The Editor: Have you always felt, since your first publication in Sentinel Nigeria, that you were doing well as a writer? Or was there a particular validating incident that cemented your faith in your craft? 

Ukamaka Olisakwe: Every work I put out challenges the next work that follows it. And for this reason, I never feel like I am doing well. I am constantly nervous about that next work, worrying about what I am doing on the language level, on the structural level, forever anxious because I am not your typical confident writer. But then, I am surrounded by kind people who give me all the support and encouragement I need. They point out the things I do well, the things I should do better, and other important books I should put my writing in conversation with. And that means the whole world to me. I guess that is my own definition of “doing well.”  

The Editor: Ogadinma is about a teen wife and you married as a teenager. Did you ever worry that people would say that some parts of your life and experiences as a teen wife were shown in the character of Ogadinma? 

Ukamaka Olisakwe: People are always going to draw conclusions about my work. They often point to the similarities between my characters and myself, like our place of birth, the city we grew up in, and the political situations of our childhood and that is okay. I set my stories in familiar places, like my city of birth in Kano State, where I lived some of my best and worst memories. I like to populate that world with my invention so that my stories will ring true. I also borrow inspiration from my community; especially the women I grew up with, whose lives were complex and beautiful. Ogadinma mirrors some of those realities. The novel is a love letter to my community, and I am proud of the feat she achieved at the end of that story. I think she is the bravest woman I have ever written. I am not that brave. 

The Editor: You insist, in your conversation with Shallow Tales Review, that feminism is not new within the African space; how would you rate its progress within the current reality of African women, living in the African Space?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: To rate something, you must hold it up against a metric you consider the standard. So, if you ask me to rate the progress we’ve made, you then must present me with a standard, which sadly, doesn’t exist. There has never been a perfect society for women, not in the past, and definitely not today. The United States, for example, is fast becoming one of the worst places to live as a woman, not to talk of existing as a black woman. Medical racism is rife in that country. Black women are at higher risk of dying during childbirth. Abortions laws are being repealed, and there is a push to even punish women who have miscarriages. Religion is fast taking a stronghold in that country, and men are at the helm, lauding their power over women, deciding what a woman must do with her body and how she must wear it. That is the United States for you, which championed the modern feminist heroics we cite in our literature. That used to be a kind of metric. Now, it is almost in shambles. The progress we may have made as a people is our activism on social media. With those tools, we are able to organise, to speak out, to tell our stories, to call out inequality and abuse, to challenge those who would have silenced us. We are talking, and this is important. This, in its way, is progress. 

The Editor: Isele and Ogadinma were birthed the same year. Would you say that one influenced the other? Did the coming into being of Isele influence the kind of strength you gave to Ogadinma’s character? Or, did Ogadinma’s strength influence you as Isele got ready to be launched?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: Isele’s first outing was in 2013, when I hosted the spoken word contest in collaboration with Saraba Magazine. So, it preceded Ogadinma, which I began writing in 2017. I am proud of both feats. With Isele, I am paying tribute to my late grandmother, who was a performance artist and a singer. Ogadinma, on the other hand, is my attempt at documenting an important story for my community, a reminder of where we used to be, so that we will never forget why we must do better. 

The Editor: Considering that quite a number of your works center on the theme of womanhood/womanness, do you think it advisable for budding writers to have a niche they particularly explore in their writing journey? Do you worry that such thematic preoccupation might overshadow their craft in any way? 

Ukamaka Olisakwe: I would rather speak for myself. I have had many people disagree with my thematic interest because, according to them, it is like pigeonholing oneself in a field, never breaking away from it, and becoming limited by it. What they forget or ignore is that I chose a research interest and have decided to stick with it. This is what speaks to me; this is where I come alive; this is where I am at my best; this is my life. This choice was influenced by my own experiences. And coming from a community where women don’t usually talk about such topics like postpartum complications, postpartum depression, motherhood, womanhood, etc., I thought it would be an interesting research field I could spend my life working on. So, for new writers, I would say: do what speaks to you. Do what makes you come alive. If delving into multiple fields works the magic for you, then, hell yes! 

The Editor: It’s an exciting time for African Literature, besides the plethora of exciting young writers coming onto the scene, there are a good number of literary Magazines doing great things within the African Space at the moment. Isele Magazine is a great example, with its rich blend of contributors. What do you think these magazines mean for literature in Africa?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: It is the freedom to tell our stories the way we want and to have our stories edited by people who are familiar with our cultures and histories, people who are part of us and who won’t italicise our languages or insist that we write in “standard” Englishes (American and British). With our own magazines, we are playing with worlds and language. We can do what we want and when we want them, and this is so liberating. At Isele Magazine, we recently published our Reborn Issues, which features works that blur the boundaries between the real and the speculative, writers who reimagined folktales with new twists, poems that did pleasantly wild things with structure. And our editors loved each accepted work. We edited passionately with the writers, and according to how each writer wanted their work to be presented. This is important. This is what collaboration should be in the arts, and not a power dynamic where western editors treat you as though they are superior, as though they are doing you a favour when they accept your work for publication.

The Editor: You recently created a number of prizes for works published in Isele Magazine. You have also won a few accolades yourself including the most recent, The SpringNG Women Authors Prize for Ogadimma. In your interview with SpringNG, you insist that the Isele prize initiative is geared towards “celebrating contributors to the magazine, writers who trust the magazine with their works,” yet one wonders what a prize really means for the writer. What do you think is the place of awards and recognition especially for budding writers?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: I think every writer deserve to be appreciated. They deserve to be awarded prizes, grants, funding, residencies. They deserve to be recognized for their effort and their contribution to society, in the way we recognize artisans and musicians, actors and filmmakers, people who dedicate their lives to their craft, who shape our communities with their work, who document our histories and enrich our archives with their inventions so that the coming generation can look back or dig up information about how we lived. And so, yes, if these prizes and grants, etc., can serve as an extra incentive to budding writers, then, yes. We already are struggling through the economic impacts of our wars and the pandemic. Writers, young writers especially, need all the financial and material help they can get to survive these harsh times.

The Editor: You once remarked that “our literature is deeply oral”. In what way do you think this orality plays out in Contemporary African Literature?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: I recently completed a manuscript whose first chapter reads like the story my late grandmother told us as children. There is a style to that kind of narration; the teller paints deeply immersive worlds and you are on the sidelines, listening to these worlds as they unfold. 

Most MFA programs like to regurgitate the western canon that says you must show and don’t tell. Our oral forms both show and tell our stories, and I am glad I mimicked that in my new work.  Another writer who does this brilliantly is Lesley Nneka Arimah, as she did in her short story, “Who Will Greet You At Home.” She begins by showing us this world of women where babies are sewed by hands. Somewhere in the middle of that story, she introduces a tale about “hair children,” and this part, though short, completely falls back into our oral forms, showing us an important cog in the wheel that spins the entire story. I thought it was powerful.

The Editor: Back to Ogadinma, will you say that Tobe’s numerous misfortunes and illness are your own way of fighting patriarchy and exerting revenge for Ogadinma and perhaps for every other woman going through abuse out there?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: Writing the story itself is a fight against the patriarchy. There is so much silence where I come from. We talk about what happened to people like Ogadinma in whispers. 

We expect a certain kind of loyalty to our community, which includes sealing our lips so that we do not make our community look bad. By this, we don’t make the men look bad. We don’t make the women who enable the men look bad. Ogadinma resists such expectations because it is important to talk about these things that shape our community from the family level.

The Editor: This question is an overburdened one, but we do have to ask, what advice do you have for young writers? 

Ukamaka Olisakwe: To read across genres. This is the best writing advice I’ve received: to read not only works in my primary field of interest (literary fiction), but other works, too. Read music. 

Read romance. Read thrillers. Read crime fiction. Read manuals. Read everything you can lay your hands on; you might learn a thing or two from them that could help with your plot, your language, your rhythm, your structure, even what you do on a thematic level.

The Editor: Ogadimma won the SpringNG Women Authors Prize 2021, we say a hearty congratulations to you!

Ukamaka Olisakwe: Thank you so much!