Achieving Representation Through Original Stories: A Dialogue with Somto O. Ihezue

Natalie: From what you have said about creating our own stories, I think of the bigger picture, and that is that we (whether it’s African storytellers, or our educational institutions and sectors) need to be more deliberate in sourcing and thereafter including African stories in the education systems. In doing so, children of today and tomorrow won’t have to think too much about these western narratives, but will have homegrown ones that they can relate to. I am currently working with Paukwa, a Kenyan organisation that is striving to do this by creating animations for kids based on stories of Kenyans with the aim of infusing values such as hard work, kindness, service to others… but also to show that we can have animated characters who look like us.

I appreciate how you have spoken about Chinua Achebe’s work, and what it did for/to you. I have the utmost respect for his mind and his contribution to literature. In how Things Fall Apart influenced you, I am taken back to a conversation I had with a friend recently, where he said that compassion is how we are able to write about people. Then I am reminded of these words by Chilean author Isabel Allende: “Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage towards the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow, meditation.”

As a lover of history and historical fiction, I can tell you that Kintu is one of my favorite books—so feel free to mention it again and again.

Now that we have returned to writing, do you have a process that you follow, or one that works for you? What does the process from the idea of a story to the completion of a first draft look like?

Somto: If there’s a process to this art of ours, it’s one I’m yet to discover. As much as I mark out writing systems, patterns, and cultivate habits in a bid to improve myself, life just gets in the way, halting whatever progress is made. It’s a vicious cycle. So, no, I don’t think I have a process. Certain stories take me months to complete, some take days, while some may never see completion. I like to think I’m still figuring things out, still learning, still understanding what works and what doesn’t. In the last African Writer’s Trust Residency, George Gumikiriza, a past editor of mine, said:

“Among the many lessons, I left with the need to be deliberate with my writing. Stepping out of the bubble of writing only when the muse strikes, but writing even on those days when putting three good sentences together feels a lot harder than jogging up Makerere hill.”

In many ways, his words are ones I resonate with. Regardless of the many obstacles: the mental exhaustion, days I don’t feel like a writer, I borrow time and scribble down words, no matter how few. Perhaps that’s my process.

On the other hand, story ideas are a beautiful thing. They perch in your mind, weaving endless and spectacular scenarios. As a writer, what follows—the task of writing the story—is not all dreamy. The wilder the idea, the more arduous it is to carve into words. Building characters, events, and places around that one singular idea takes a great deal of effort. Sometimes I start a story by writing the end. Other times, the first paragraph does not fit into the story in the long run. That’s the thing about the first draft; it gives you the freedom to be reckless, imperfect, and incomplete. It’s like a window into a world, a guide, a stepping-stone. That in itself has helped form the idea of what a story should be. In stories, those I read and those I write, I do not seek perfection and absoluteness but brilliance, and beauty, in all its many forms.

Natalie: I fully resonate with your mention of perfection and absoluteness in stories you read and write. About two years ago, I enrolled for a novel writing workshop facilitated by Makena Onjerika with the hope of acquiring a better understanding on how to write a novel. I had, up until then (and from time to time still do) toyed with the idea of being/becoming a novelist and I wanted to be ‘perfect’. The interest in—or better yet, the fascination with—having my name on the cover of a physical book was inspired by books that I have read. Books with exquisite prose; books that were captivating, utterly mesmerizing and delightful. I’m talking about books like Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo, to name a few. It’s likely no coincidence that these books are all by African women. But I digress. In Makena’s class, I acquired an understanding of beautiful and brilliant sentences; the ‘I wish I thought of that first’ type of sentences. And I remember seeing these aspects in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which was one of the books we briefly examined.

I also learned—and going back to what George Gumikiriza said—about being deliberate with my writing, making it a daily habit. A little after the workshop, I saw the essence in writing a story for myself, and for my mother who will undoubtedly always read my work. I unlearned the desire to be a perfect writer; rather, that I am and can be one who learns from other writers and who improves through reading.

I wonder, are you part of any writing community in your city or hometown? (please also tell me [about] where you live). I don’t want to be presumptuous with your response, but as a follow-up question, would you say having a writing or literary community has in any way helped you?

Somto: I grew up in Onitsha, a widely famous trade hub in Nigeria and home to Ose Main Market, the largest market in West Africa. In Onitsha, everyone runs a business; parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbours, everyone. In a way, the same was expected of me. Not necessarily the business aspect itself but more the mindset, the “hustle” culture, an expectation that demanded I align myself with something sustainable, substantial, and practical. Writing did not fit seamlessly into these categories and though my home rewarded creativity, I wasn’t a child anymore; I no longer had the freedom of falling as I now had responsibilities.

For the longest time, I was pretty much on my own with writing. In secondary school, we were grouped into classes based on occupations. You were either a medical doctor, an engineer, an accountant, or a lawyer. There wasn’t room for others, definitely no room for writers. I think about that process all the time, and all the dreams it might have ruined. It was in the “medical” class, while failing at chemistry, that I found my first community. I don’t know if one person counts as a community but with them, I found a shared sense of belonging. I happened to be classmates with Innocent Chizaram Ilo, winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Regional Prize for Africa, and in our shared passion for literature and Scrabble, I found a community. From debating novels to talking about places we wanted to see, people we needed to be, I found a space where I could just… be. Our many discussions, and gossip and laughter, have taken home, forever, in a corner of my being. Eight years later, our little community, transcending time and space, still stands.

Before I got into the university, I remember telling my mother I wanted to study creative writing and she said,

“You are a man, you can’t be a writer, your family would starve.”