Literature
Razinat Talatu Mohammed?s collection of short stories, A Love Like a Woman?s and Other Stories, published to critical acclaim in 2006, heralds a triumphant entry into the Nigerian literary scene. Indeed, the book demonstrates Razinat?s acuity of vision, depth of creativity and crisp, matured language that is, at once, controlled and resolutely poetic. Her stories (and to certain degree, her poetry) often centred on mundane, everyday happenings, portrayed with equally simple everyday images and concerns, are focalized from women?s perspective without betraying any larger feminist concern.Razinat, who is also a noted poet, was born in 1964 in Maiduguri, Borno State. She has a PhD in African Literature from the University of Maiduguri where she presently teaches. Her thesis is on the phenomenon of women suppressing women in African novels, with particular emphasis on the works of Niwal El-Saadawi and Buchi Emecheta. Her short stories and poems have been published in Vultures in the Air, Let the Dawn Come, Camouflage: The Best of Contemporary Writings from Nigeria, and Pyramids: An Anthology of Poems from Northern Nigeria. Her collection of short stories won the maiden Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA)/Lantern Books Prize for Short Stories while still in manuscript. And her academic writings have been widely published. Razinat is currently working on her first novel and a collection of poems. She has been guest writer/speaker at workshops and seminars involved with the sensitization and mentoring of women in their participation in politics and activities to promote the reproductive rights of women.In this email interview conducted by Ismail Bala of the Department of English and French, Bayero University, Kano, in 2008, Razinat talks about her writings, the challenges of being a writer, especially in Northern Nigeria and the enterprise of criticism and Nigerian Literature generally.
NNW: Let?s start with some biographical information.
Razinat Talaru Muhammed: I was born in Maiduguri to the family of Alhaji. Mohammed Abubakar and Falmata Mohammed. The first of eight children. I was educated at Gwange Primary School, Maiduguri, Federal Government College, Ido-Ani, and the University of Maiduguri.
I?d like to know how you started writing, and why?
I began creating images and writing scripts from my secondary school days at FGC Ido-Ani in Ondo State. Writing poems and short stories began while I was studying English at the University of Maiduguri in the late eighties. I would like to say I have a flair for writing.
How difficult was it for you to get published?
The issue of getting a manuscript published in Nigeria has become a nightmare for young writers. It was the same experience for me. As I talk to you now, my first manuscript is still gathering dust somewhere in a store belonging to Malthouse. The publisher called me once in 2001 and promised to send some galley proof and contract papers, which I am sure, are still in the post.
It seems to me that the focus in your writing is, in a way, on exploring relationship between people.
Well, life itself is all about relationships, and creativity simply, has to explore that from different dimensions.
When you write, do you sketch out a plot for yourself, or do you just start and see where it leads?
I sketch out a plot at the on-set; somehow, the plots often take control and execute themselves. I am always amazed at the points when the story ?begs? to take charge of the events in the work. It is a wonderful feeling.
So what is the impulse to write?
From the desire to add yet another voice to the multitude. And perhaps to, specifically, give expression to the way of life of the people of my community; the North-East region of this country.
How far is your writing from your own experience?
They are far enough. I am comfortable with both male and female protagonists that I create.
I wonder why you chose the short story form and whether you felt that that was something that came naturally or did you have to force it into that form?
The short story thrills me a lot. I like the fact that I compress ideas into a page and create tension in the reader, such that he or she wonders at the outcome of some unresolved conflicts.
As one of the few women writers who are using the medium English from Northern Nigeria, do you feel a special responsibility to be an ambassador for your culture?
Naturally, the essence of writing for me, in the first place, stems from the desire to expound the way of life and highlight the realities of the many cultures of the people of the North- East as a whole.
Which writer or writers inspired you?
The power in the pens of writers such as Nawal El-Saadawi, and Buchi Emecheta, Isabel Allande, Fay Weldon, Alice Walker and our own Zaynab Alkali have greatly moved me. I have great respect for the master artisan, late Sidney Sheldon.
How do you incorporate oral tradition into your writings?
Whenever appropriate I make recourse into the rich reservoir of oral tradition by recollecting or asking elders to explain phenomenon that I am not able to reconcile with today?s happenings.
Do you ever wish that you were not "charged" with this seemingly agonizing responsibility to write?
Not for once have I had reasons to regret being a writer. Although writing can be a tiring and lonesome preoccupation, it gives me great pleasure to delve into the minds of prototype people.
Are writers different from other people?
No they are not. There are writers that are party going just as any other person of other professions. In the same vein, there are eccentric people in other professions as can be found among writers.
Some people have complained that the current climate of criticism of African Literature has not, in many ways, matched the creative outputs. What do you think account for this?
I think it is due to poor reading culture that has engulfed the nation as a whole. We are all busy writing stories and forgetting to examine the qualities of the already published ones. To be a good critic one needs to be a very good reader capable of projecting arguments to their logical conclusions.
What was the most crucial period of your life as a writer and critic?
As a writer, the most crucial period has been when I lost a full-length manuscript to a computer mishap. I had not developed the habit of saving every document on discs. It was a very trying period for me because I had the mind to forget about computers altogether. You see, I had to take a decision to begin the book again and to persevere and master the use of computers. As a critic, I think that my anti-feminist stance, that women are their own problem is crucial to my life as a critic.
The label "woman" and "writer", what do these mean to you?
Precisely what they stand for. Woman for the female sex and writer for the person that takes interest in writing. If placed together, it will mean, the woman who involves herself with the art of writing.
Is a Northern Nigerian woman writer, in your view, different from her colleagues elsewhere, say from those in the Southern part?
No, she is not any different from her Southern female counterparts. There could be differences only in their style of writing in addition to the different cultures that they obviously most portray in their works.
What is the unique contribution of women to African Literature and literary scholarship?
Well, women have contributed significantly in the re-definition of the image of the female character in the works of early male writers. Women writers can now come up with female protagonists that contribute to the lives of people in their communities. Examples abound in works like The Descendants by Alkali and El-Saadawi?s Searching and many more like them. In the area of literary scholarship, names like Catherine Acholonu?s scholarly text Motherism: A Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie?s Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations and many more, are good examples of the unique contributions of women to African Literature.
Would you like to explain your writing process? Is writing stories in a way the same as writing criticism?
No, writing stories come naturally unlike criticism that requires a great deal of articulation. This is so because it is not easy to fault a work or proffer a line of argument without merit.
Could you say something about your collection of short stories, A Love Like a Woman?s and other Stories?
It is a collection of eleven stories of varied themes. Some of the themes provide insight into the issue of women oppressing of women. I must add that it was not a deliberate manipulation to reflect this point.
How long did the whole work take you to write?
A period of say, six years, because I did not write continuously back then.
There is a circle of exciting young (and not so young) writers in Nigeria at present, could you tell us something about this community (of which you are very much, a part of)?
Every country certainly has these groups of writers. In Nigeria, we have more young writers today, although I cannot say that they are getting their works off their writing tables. It is, however, good to know that in spite of the unfavourable conditions that the writer in this country is faced by, some good works still emerge. In the light of the existing difficulties faced by the Nigerian writer, Teju Cole in his book, Every Day is for the Thief laments the courage of the Nigerian writer.
It appears that the fact that you studied and currently teaching (African) Literature prepared you for a conscious manipulation (if the phrase is permitted) of your writing towards the larger women question, towards the concern of feminism; could you comment on that in relation to your writing career?
Not really, although one cannot altogether divorce one?s intellect from one?s creation, I can say that my stories assume their natural ambience in fiction.
Do you consider the present direction and attitude (and even in a displaced way, temperament) in the criticism of African Literature as relevant?
It is unfortunate that African critics, most often, get carried away from their primary goals of examining texts logically and delve into personalised criticism that are irrelevant to the text in focus. Often, one reads criticisms that are mere personal responses to creative works as if the writer had intended to fault their lives one way or the other.
In what way did the Maiduguri experience contribute to your "growth" as a writer? By Maiduguri experience, I mean that University of Maiduguri has been known to have a number of established writers who taught there, such as Zaynab Alkali, Tanure Ojaide, Syl Cheney-Coker, etc; how has the presence or refutation of such authors helped you grow as a writer?
I most say that I have been very fortunate to have been taught by Tanure Ojaide and Zaynab Alkali. Syl Cheney-Coker especially added colour to the cream of lecturers that we had then. I think that those of us who were lucky to be under their tutelage really have cause to be thankful to them.
African women writings have been often read solely and in my opinion narrowly within the context of what one critic calls "representational problematic" in which the text becomes simply and uncharacteristically the very image of a given reality. And when this reading is done (as it is always done) interpretation, the whole gamut of meaning remained "trapped", so to speak, in mere descriptions and/or analyses which only bring about the "normative knowledge" of such writings. Could you comment on this?
That is the problem with most readers of women?s works. Most think that a woman is not capable of writing outside the "representational problematic" which to them, always spells the "reality" of all women. I want to say that such austere reading should begin to give way to a more pragmatic outlook of a world of possibilities where the image of women in African women?s writings do not provide the much expected "normative" ideals.
And what is your opinion to the effect that the most desirable (perhaps even politically correct) reading of African women?s writing is one which is done within a feminist framework?
You know that when some people have little or nothing to say, they tend to hide behind feminism simply because a work of art is written by a woman. I think feminism has become a large masquerade that provides cover for many bad dancers; by this, I mean that many so-called critics hide under the cover of feminism and all they seem to be doing is classifying every work written by a woman as feminist work. It is really getting out of hand. I think that there are other parts to the lives of women (even in African Literature) other than woman fighting to get free of man?s holds.
Many critics (both male and female) have severely criticised the narrow purview of feminist literary analysis, since, the argument goes, what feminist reading does or relies on is to introduce gender as the all-important category in literary analysis; and it is assumed that this would enable the critic to see representations in texts as mediated and determined by sexual difference, aesthetic and political assumptions which also affect gender. What is your take on this controversial proposition?
In literary analysis, proper identification of gender roles can go a long way in ending the narrow purview as you put it.
Are you ever bothered that the cultural references in your stories would limit its audience?
No, rather, I think it would attract a wider readership. We crave to read works from Mexico, Brazil, etc because we want to know about them. It is the same with our own works.
In one of your critical essays on the Egyptian writer, Nawal El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, you perceptively offered a radically divergent standpoint, one which is different from that of the conventional feminist discourse by outlining the thesis that oppression of the girl-child within the Egyptian society (and indeed within the larger African society) is a direct outcome of the girl-child?s upbringing at home. Could you expatiate on this a little more?
Well, from my study of that book, it became obvious that the girl child suffers a devastating childhood due to her relationship with her mother at home.
In your doctoral dissertation you sought to carry out an intra-gender study of oppression suffered by women as portrayed in women text, what informed this concern?
It became increasingly obvious to me that all the texts studied portray a common demeanour in the female characters; especially, the works of El-Saadawi and Emecheta. I then thought it was necessary to examine in details the reasons why all the female characters persistently abhor their relationship with other female characters ranging from the mother, sister, mother in-law and so forth.
Still on your essay on El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor you wrote: Nawal El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor convincingly proves that, in as much as there is the wider current of patriarchy in which men are portrayed in literature as "subjects" and women as "others" or "objects", there is a narrower, more subtle supporting undercurrent of matriarchal subversion that runs in society and is reflected in the works of African women writers like El-Saadawi and others. What informed this assertion, do you still hold on to this?
The finding of that study informs that imperative conclusion, and yes, I still strongly hold on to the notion.
What do you think of the short story these days, either those written in Nigeria or generally?
The shorter narrative is increasingly becoming more popular than it had been say some twenty years ago. If you go on the Internet, you will find more calls for entries for the short story than for a full-length novel.
The fiery, controversial young critic, E. E. Sule of Nasarawa State University is of the view that female writings in Nigeria and indeed in Africa are self-identifying; because, he argues, their themes easily betray their feministic goals. What is your position on this?
That same story again. The first mistake that a critic makes when he has to examine a text whose author is a woman is to tag it feminist. Such over generalisation, beclouds any good intention that the critic may stitch into his/her criticism. What for instance, is "self identifying" in Alkali?s The Initiates? You see, often, women write about other themes but most of our critics would scratch and search through gabs and lines to hinge such women?s works to feminism.
Many critics have strongly argued that women writers often sacrifice artistry and aesthetics simply for carrying over the feminist theme. How do you respond to this supposedly clichéd criticism?
It certainly has become a cliché. As mentioned before, critics who hope to catch attention by merely mentioning feminism need to research further into other equally exciting literary theories.
Some writers (Ben Okri, for instance) would object to any suggestion about their childhood appearing in their writings, arguing that childhood being a complex manipulations of memory that only fiction can provide and safely account for. Have you ever been tempted to recreate certain facets of your childhood in your stories?
No, but I could do so in the future.
Finally what are your plans for the future in terms of your writing and criticism?
My plans cannot depart from the current trend. I am primarily a lecturer who must research extensively while at the same time, creating time to pursue writing, which I want to see as my first hobby.
(c) Published in the 7th March, 2009 edition of New Nigerian newspapers.
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Literature
The challenges of being a writer - Razinat (interview)
Razinat Talatu Mohammed?s collection of short stories, A Love Like a Woman?s and Other Stories, published to critical acclaim in 2006, heralds a triumphant entry into the Nigerian literary scene. Indeed, the book demonstrates Razinat?s acuity of vision, depth of creativity and crisp, matured language that is, at once, controlled and resolutely poetic. Her stories (and to certain degree, her poetry) often centred on mundane, everyday happenings, portrayed with equally simple everyday images and concerns, are focalized from women?s perspective without betraying any larger feminist concern.Razinat, who is also a noted poet, was born in 1964 in Maiduguri, Borno State. She has a PhD in African Literature from the University of Maiduguri where she presently teaches. Her thesis is on the phenomenon of women suppressing women in African novels, with particular emphasis on the works of Niwal El-Saadawi and Buchi Emecheta. Her short stories and poems have been published in Vultures in the Air, Let the Dawn Come, Camouflage: The Best of Contemporary Writings from Nigeria, and Pyramids: An Anthology of Poems from Northern Nigeria. Her collection of short stories won the maiden Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA)/Lantern Books Prize for Short Stories while still in manuscript. And her academic writings have been widely published. Razinat is currently working on her first novel and a collection of poems. She has been guest writer/speaker at workshops and seminars involved with the sensitization and mentoring of women in their participation in politics and activities to promote the reproductive rights of women.In this email interview conducted by Ismail Bala of the Department of English and French, Bayero University, Kano, in 2008, Razinat talks about her writings, the challenges of being a writer, especially in Northern Nigeria and the enterprise of criticism and Nigerian Literature generally.NNW: Let?s start with some biographical information.
Razinat Talaru Muhammed: I was born in Maiduguri to the family of Alhaji. Mohammed Abubakar and Falmata Mohammed. The first of eight children. I was educated at Gwange Primary School, Maiduguri, Federal Government College, Ido-Ani, and the University of Maiduguri.
I?d like to know how you started writing, and why?
I began creating images and writing scripts from my secondary school days at FGC Ido-Ani in Ondo State. Writing poems and short stories began while I was studying English at the University of Maiduguri in the late eighties. I would like to say I have a flair for writing.
How difficult was it for you to get published?
The issue of getting a manuscript published in Nigeria has become a nightmare for young writers. It was the same experience for me. As I talk to you now, my first manuscript is still gathering dust somewhere in a store belonging to Malthouse. The publisher called me once in 2001 and promised to send some galley proof and contract papers, which I am sure, are still in the post.
It seems to me that the focus in your writing is, in a way, on exploring relationship between people.
Well, life itself is all about relationships, and creativity simply, has to explore that from different dimensions.
When you write, do you sketch out a plot for yourself, or do you just start and see where it leads?
I sketch out a plot at the on-set; somehow, the plots often take control and execute themselves. I am always amazed at the points when the story ?begs? to take charge of the events in the work. It is a wonderful feeling.
So what is the impulse to write?
From the desire to add yet another voice to the multitude. And perhaps to, specifically, give expression to the way of life of the people of my community; the North-East region of this country.
How far is your writing from your own experience?
They are far enough. I am comfortable with both male and female protagonists that I create.
I wonder why you chose the short story form and whether you felt that that was something that came naturally or did you have to force it into that form?
The short story thrills me a lot. I like the fact that I compress ideas into a page and create tension in the reader, such that he or she wonders at the outcome of some unresolved conflicts.
As one of the few women writers who are using the medium English from Northern Nigeria, do you feel a special responsibility to be an ambassador for your culture?
Naturally, the essence of writing for me, in the first place, stems from the desire to expound the way of life and highlight the realities of the many cultures of the people of the North- East as a whole.
Which writer or writers inspired you?
The power in the pens of writers such as Nawal El-Saadawi, and Buchi Emecheta, Isabel Allande, Fay Weldon, Alice Walker and our own Zaynab Alkali have greatly moved me. I have great respect for the master artisan, late Sidney Sheldon.
How do you incorporate oral tradition into your writings?
Whenever appropriate I make recourse into the rich reservoir of oral tradition by recollecting or asking elders to explain phenomenon that I am not able to reconcile with today?s happenings.
Do you ever wish that you were not "charged" with this seemingly agonizing responsibility to write?
Not for once have I had reasons to regret being a writer. Although writing can be a tiring and lonesome preoccupation, it gives me great pleasure to delve into the minds of prototype people.
Are writers different from other people?
No they are not. There are writers that are party going just as any other person of other professions. In the same vein, there are eccentric people in other professions as can be found among writers.
Some people have complained that the current climate of criticism of African Literature has not, in many ways, matched the creative outputs. What do you think account for this?
I think it is due to poor reading culture that has engulfed the nation as a whole. We are all busy writing stories and forgetting to examine the qualities of the already published ones. To be a good critic one needs to be a very good reader capable of projecting arguments to their logical conclusions.
What was the most crucial period of your life as a writer and critic?
As a writer, the most crucial period has been when I lost a full-length manuscript to a computer mishap. I had not developed the habit of saving every document on discs. It was a very trying period for me because I had the mind to forget about computers altogether. You see, I had to take a decision to begin the book again and to persevere and master the use of computers. As a critic, I think that my anti-feminist stance, that women are their own problem is crucial to my life as a critic.
The label "woman" and "writer", what do these mean to you?
Precisely what they stand for. Woman for the female sex and writer for the person that takes interest in writing. If placed together, it will mean, the woman who involves herself with the art of writing.
Is a Northern Nigerian woman writer, in your view, different from her colleagues elsewhere, say from those in the Southern part?
No, she is not any different from her Southern female counterparts. There could be differences only in their style of writing in addition to the different cultures that they obviously most portray in their works.
What is the unique contribution of women to African Literature and literary scholarship?
Well, women have contributed significantly in the re-definition of the image of the female character in the works of early male writers. Women writers can now come up with female protagonists that contribute to the lives of people in their communities. Examples abound in works like The Descendants by Alkali and El-Saadawi?s Searching and many more like them. In the area of literary scholarship, names like Catherine Acholonu?s scholarly text Motherism: A Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie?s Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations and many more, are good examples of the unique contributions of women to African Literature.
Would you like to explain your writing process? Is writing stories in a way the same as writing criticism?
No, writing stories come naturally unlike criticism that requires a great deal of articulation. This is so because it is not easy to fault a work or proffer a line of argument without merit.
Could you say something about your collection of short stories, A Love Like a Woman?s and other Stories?
It is a collection of eleven stories of varied themes. Some of the themes provide insight into the issue of women oppressing of women. I must add that it was not a deliberate manipulation to reflect this point.
How long did the whole work take you to write?
A period of say, six years, because I did not write continuously back then.
There is a circle of exciting young (and not so young) writers in Nigeria at present, could you tell us something about this community (of which you are very much, a part of)?
Every country certainly has these groups of writers. In Nigeria, we have more young writers today, although I cannot say that they are getting their works off their writing tables. It is, however, good to know that in spite of the unfavourable conditions that the writer in this country is faced by, some good works still emerge. In the light of the existing difficulties faced by the Nigerian writer, Teju Cole in his book, Every Day is for the Thief laments the courage of the Nigerian writer.
It appears that the fact that you studied and currently teaching (African) Literature prepared you for a conscious manipulation (if the phrase is permitted) of your writing towards the larger women question, towards the concern of feminism; could you comment on that in relation to your writing career?
Not really, although one cannot altogether divorce one?s intellect from one?s creation, I can say that my stories assume their natural ambience in fiction.
Do you consider the present direction and attitude (and even in a displaced way, temperament) in the criticism of African Literature as relevant?
It is unfortunate that African critics, most often, get carried away from their primary goals of examining texts logically and delve into personalised criticism that are irrelevant to the text in focus. Often, one reads criticisms that are mere personal responses to creative works as if the writer had intended to fault their lives one way or the other.
In what way did the Maiduguri experience contribute to your "growth" as a writer? By Maiduguri experience, I mean that University of Maiduguri has been known to have a number of established writers who taught there, such as Zaynab Alkali, Tanure Ojaide, Syl Cheney-Coker, etc; how has the presence or refutation of such authors helped you grow as a writer?
I most say that I have been very fortunate to have been taught by Tanure Ojaide and Zaynab Alkali. Syl Cheney-Coker especially added colour to the cream of lecturers that we had then. I think that those of us who were lucky to be under their tutelage really have cause to be thankful to them.
African women writings have been often read solely and in my opinion narrowly within the context of what one critic calls "representational problematic" in which the text becomes simply and uncharacteristically the very image of a given reality. And when this reading is done (as it is always done) interpretation, the whole gamut of meaning remained "trapped", so to speak, in mere descriptions and/or analyses which only bring about the "normative knowledge" of such writings. Could you comment on this?
That is the problem with most readers of women?s works. Most think that a woman is not capable of writing outside the "representational problematic" which to them, always spells the "reality" of all women. I want to say that such austere reading should begin to give way to a more pragmatic outlook of a world of possibilities where the image of women in African women?s writings do not provide the much expected "normative" ideals.
And what is your opinion to the effect that the most desirable (perhaps even politically correct) reading of African women?s writing is one which is done within a feminist framework?
You know that when some people have little or nothing to say, they tend to hide behind feminism simply because a work of art is written by a woman. I think feminism has become a large masquerade that provides cover for many bad dancers; by this, I mean that many so-called critics hide under the cover of feminism and all they seem to be doing is classifying every work written by a woman as feminist work. It is really getting out of hand. I think that there are other parts to the lives of women (even in African Literature) other than woman fighting to get free of man?s holds.
Many critics (both male and female) have severely criticised the narrow purview of feminist literary analysis, since, the argument goes, what feminist reading does or relies on is to introduce gender as the all-important category in literary analysis; and it is assumed that this would enable the critic to see representations in texts as mediated and determined by sexual difference, aesthetic and political assumptions which also affect gender. What is your take on this controversial proposition?
In literary analysis, proper identification of gender roles can go a long way in ending the narrow purview as you put it.
Are you ever bothered that the cultural references in your stories would limit its audience?
No, rather, I think it would attract a wider readership. We crave to read works from Mexico, Brazil, etc because we want to know about them. It is the same with our own works.
In one of your critical essays on the Egyptian writer, Nawal El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, you perceptively offered a radically divergent standpoint, one which is different from that of the conventional feminist discourse by outlining the thesis that oppression of the girl-child within the Egyptian society (and indeed within the larger African society) is a direct outcome of the girl-child?s upbringing at home. Could you expatiate on this a little more?
Well, from my study of that book, it became obvious that the girl child suffers a devastating childhood due to her relationship with her mother at home.
In your doctoral dissertation you sought to carry out an intra-gender study of oppression suffered by women as portrayed in women text, what informed this concern?
It became increasingly obvious to me that all the texts studied portray a common demeanour in the female characters; especially, the works of El-Saadawi and Emecheta. I then thought it was necessary to examine in details the reasons why all the female characters persistently abhor their relationship with other female characters ranging from the mother, sister, mother in-law and so forth.
Still on your essay on El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor you wrote: Nawal El-Saadawi?s Memoirs of a Woman Doctor convincingly proves that, in as much as there is the wider current of patriarchy in which men are portrayed in literature as "subjects" and women as "others" or "objects", there is a narrower, more subtle supporting undercurrent of matriarchal subversion that runs in society and is reflected in the works of African women writers like El-Saadawi and others. What informed this assertion, do you still hold on to this?
The finding of that study informs that imperative conclusion, and yes, I still strongly hold on to the notion.
What do you think of the short story these days, either those written in Nigeria or generally?
The shorter narrative is increasingly becoming more popular than it had been say some twenty years ago. If you go on the Internet, you will find more calls for entries for the short story than for a full-length novel.
The fiery, controversial young critic, E. E. Sule of Nasarawa State University is of the view that female writings in Nigeria and indeed in Africa are self-identifying; because, he argues, their themes easily betray their feministic goals. What is your position on this?
That same story again. The first mistake that a critic makes when he has to examine a text whose author is a woman is to tag it feminist. Such over generalisation, beclouds any good intention that the critic may stitch into his/her criticism. What for instance, is "self identifying" in Alkali?s The Initiates? You see, often, women write about other themes but most of our critics would scratch and search through gabs and lines to hinge such women?s works to feminism.
Many critics have strongly argued that women writers often sacrifice artistry and aesthetics simply for carrying over the feminist theme. How do you respond to this supposedly clichéd criticism?
It certainly has become a cliché. As mentioned before, critics who hope to catch attention by merely mentioning feminism need to research further into other equally exciting literary theories.
Some writers (Ben Okri, for instance) would object to any suggestion about their childhood appearing in their writings, arguing that childhood being a complex manipulations of memory that only fiction can provide and safely account for. Have you ever been tempted to recreate certain facets of your childhood in your stories?
No, but I could do so in the future.
Finally what are your plans for the future in terms of your writing and criticism?
My plans cannot depart from the current trend. I am primarily a lecturer who must research extensively while at the same time, creating time to pursue writing, which I want to see as my first hobby.
(c) Published in the 7th March, 2009 edition of New Nigerian newspapers.
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?I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.? If you were a woman living during the 19th century, there were very few options available other than get married at a young age, popping out babies at a steady rate, taking...
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AS part of the regular interactive sessions for its students, the Department of English and Drama, Faculty of Arts, Kaduna State University, Kaduna, hosted Zaynab Alkali, last week. Zaynab is the first Northern Nigerian woman novelist in English language...
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Maryam Ali Ali, Financial Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, could be described as a literary activist not just for being a regular face in literary events, but for her views on literature, particularly female writing, as revealed...
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Binta S. Mohammed, who passed on 4th May, 2009, is a notable poet and novelist and a lecturer in the Department of English at Bayero University, Kano. She had an interesting interview session with Muhammad Kabir Yusuf last year. Here are excerpts from...
- Sefi Atta: 'i Don?t Think Every Literary Work Should Be Didactic' (interview)
Sefi Atta, who recently won the literary prize endowed in honour of the first African literary Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, for her novel, Everything Good Will Come, was born in Lagos, educated in Lagos and England and currently teaches at Meridian...