My novel was a beast to write – Chinelo Okparanta

Bookshelf: You recently made it to the finals of the Etisalat literary awards. How did it feel getting that far?Chinelo Okparanta: I was very excited. The great thing about Etisalat is that it gets a thousand copies of our books out to the reading public. I’m a fan of any initiative that promotes reading and […]

Bookshelf: You recently made it to the finals of the Etisalat literary awards. How did it feel getting that far?
Chinelo Okparanta: I was very excited. The great thing about Etisalat is that it gets a thousand copies of our books out to the reading public. I’m a fan of any initiative that promotes reading and general awareness of literature.
Bookshelf: Were you disappointed you didn’t win?
Okparanta: I feel myself a winner all the same. We are winners, all of us.
Bookshelf: Could you tell us about the book, ‘Happiness like water’ which made it to the finals?
Okparanta: It’s a book about men and women longing for happiness within their given societies, but more especially within their individual lives. I wrote the collection during a time in my life when I was immersed heavily in thoughts about certain humanistic topics, some of which were personal to me or to those around me. In addition, during that time, as I often am, I was deeply interested in current events, both local and global. Somehow, all of these preoccupations came together and formed the stories that appear in ‘Happiness, Like Water.’
Bookshelf: Which writers have inspired you to take up the art and why?
Okparanta: So many! Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, MariamaBâ, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Voltaire, Antoine de St. Exupéry, Maupassant, Duras, Ishiguro, McEwan, Kate O’Brien, Alice Munro, Lahiri, Hosseini, Danticat, Marilynne Robinson, Ha Jin, Garcia Lorca, and many, many more.
I am moved by writers who have something important to say, something that has a visceral sort of significance for the world at large.  
Bookshelf: So far, which of your works do you consider your most challenging and why?
Okparanta: My novel was a beast to write. It’s a rather simple novel now when I look back at it. But it’s remarkable how much effort simple things sometimes take.
Bookshelf: What kind of influence has growing up in Port Harcourt had on your writing?
Okparanta: I enjoy going back in my mind to my childhood. As the majority of my childhood was in Port Harcourt, it follows that I write often about the place.
Bookshelf: How much do the stories of the characters Ada, in ‘Runs Girl,’ Alare in ‘Benji’ and Nnenna in ‘America’ reflect young ladies their ages in Nigeria?
Okparanta: It seems to me that those stories very much reflect young ladies of those ages living in Nigeria and elsewhere. I’ve travelled quite a bit, and very often some young lady in the audience raises her hand and when I call on her, she tells me that what I have written is almost exactly her experience of these things. I was just in Uganda for the Uganda International Conference, and a young lady at Makerere University raised her hand and said exactly this of the story ‘Runs Girl.’ I often get these comments, and not just in African countries.
Bookshelf: Do you think Nnenna’s and Gloria’s relationship may be a distraction from the central theme of ‘America’?
Okparanta: It seems to me that their relationship is the central theme. In my opinion, it is the grounding force of the story. Without it, the narrative would cease to exist in any cohesive fashion.
It does not elude me that certain people are rather eager to cast aside-to reject-the part of the story that pertains to the love between these two women. Perhaps their eagerness to reject this aspect of the story is out of a sort of discomfort surrounding the so-called “taboo” topic of homosexuality. But to cast aside the narrative of the love between the two women-that is, to try to read the story without that very essential love story-would be like trying to eat the hollow shell of an egg, without everything within. Imagine eating just the shell-not the egg white, not the yolk!
By my lights, between two consenting adults, love is love is love. And, love always makes for a good story.
Bookshelf: Why do you describe ‘Benji’ as a universal story?
Okparanta: Because whether consciously or subconsciously, men and women all over the world exploit each other every day for the sake of money and/or sex, and/or etc; and because men and women all over the world find ways to forgive or to live with, and/or to move on from the exploitation.
Bookshelf: Almost all your main characters have Igbo names. Any particular reason?
Okparanta: Not every single one of my characters has Igbo names. Off the top of my head, I can tell you that I have a character named Zion in one story, and in my novel, a character named Amina. Sure, many of my characters have Igbo names. I imagine it is for the same reasons that many of Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters have Indian names, or for the same reason that many of KhaledHosseini’s characters have Afghan names, or that many of Ha Jin’s characters have Chinese names, or that many of Chimamanda Adichie’s characters have Igbo names. Not to say that Igboland is a country.
Bookshelf: What’s on your mind when you decide to write a piece?
Okparanta: I write out of a real and deeply felt desire to understand why humans behave the way they do. I come up with reasons via possible scenarios. I attempt to arrive at a sort of understanding via my fiction.
Bookshelf: Do you imagine you’d be writing non-fictional works?
Okparanta: I have written and published some brief essays. I might write more lengthy ones one day. Anything is possible.
Bookshelf: What are you working on at the moment?
Okparanta: A new novel.
Bookshelf: Could you give us some insights into it?
Okparanta: It’s a novel about Nigeria, about ethnic divisions, about the Bible and religion, about romantic love and family love, about coping with illusions as with disillusionment. It’s also a novel about the difficulty of being true to oneself even-or, especially-when the stakes are high.
Parts of it were inspired by my mother’s stories about the Nigeria-Biafra war (she grew up during the war, lived through it). Also, there are some sprinklings of the folktales she used to tell me and my siblings when we were children. But the novel as a whole was inspired by life and by imagination.
Bookshelf: What were your aspirations growing up?
Okparanta: To be happy and no longer afraid.
Bookshelf: Is writing all you do or you have a regular job?
Okparanta: I teach fiction to graduate students at a university here in the States.
Bookshelf: Which of your works have been the well-received and what do you think is responsible for that?
Okparanta: I’m not sure. Hopefully, it will be my upcoming novel, due out on September 22nd of this year, 2015. And hopefully, the one after it will be even more well-received, and so on and so forth.
Bookshelf: What do you consider your most treasured achievement yet?
Okparanta: Just being alive and surrounded by my mother and siblings, my adorable little nephew, my extended family, my friends, and everywhere these days, love.