Why my novel focuses on reverse migration – Chukwudi Eze

Chukwudi Eze is an architect who graduated with triple-honours and a Phi-Beta-Kappa from Vasar College, received the William Kinne Award during his Master’s Degree from Columbia University, New York and recently studied creative writing at the University of Toronto. His new book, The Return of Half-something, is a novel that follows the life of a […]

Chukwudi Eze is an architect who graduated with triple-honours and a Phi-Beta-Kappa from Vasar College, received the William Kinne Award during his Master’s Degree from Columbia University, New York and recently studied creative writing at the University of Toronto. His new book, The Return of Half-something, is a novel that follows the life of a Nigerian-American lawyer as he traces his roots. It was recently shortlisted for the ANA Prose Prize. In this interview, the author talks about his novel, literature and environmental issues and how architecture and writing are connected.

Your book just came out. It’s not the first but apparently it is the most difficult. How was the process of writing the book and how did you feel when you received the copies of the published version?

I think I felt relieved when I received the copies of the finished version. The work has been on for a while and I was determined to do as much as I could to excel in it. Before now I’ve written about four books, but I had never studied the craft of writing as a discipline. So I took time out to study creative writing at the University of Toronto. I got to learn about the mechanics of the writing craft, issues of POV, point of view and stuffs like that, and all kinds of little things that I think makes writing professional. So I think this environment infuses a kind of rigorous intellectualism into my writing, which has never happened until now.

The book centres on the relationship between a Nigerian American and a Jewish woman. Why did you feel this was an important thing to write about?

Because these issues are real. It’s a growing problem, a few years ago, about 5 years ago, a Canadian immigrant from Pakistan killed his wife and his daughter, because his daughter was dating a Christian. As I am speaking to you right now, I have a friend who is dating a Jewish girl and you have this conflict. The world is a global village, especially in a mixed school, in a university, we now have this convergence of people from different parts of the world, so people are having their love mates from different parts of the world and it brings with it some form of problem. The world is gradually becoming a big village so these conflicts are arising. I just felt it will be a pertinent thing to discuss them and hopefully do so in a way that it gives a beautiful resolution and probably hope to the young ones that are entangled to win over this kind of problem. It’s a big problem in Toronto, New York, Paris and those metropolitan cities.

An interesting aspect of your story is that your protagonist is biracial and is struggling with his own identity issues before going into this relationship with a Jew, who are not known to marry outside of their group. What brought about this intricate connection?

That is the problem we are facing today, when you live in New York, Toronto, California, Paris, it’s a dominant issue. Obama himself is an example, the kind of conflict Emmanuel [the hero] faced, he wasn’t accepted. In the western world they called them Vulcan, in reference to Spark from Star Trek. They call them half this or half that, they are half-something which is where the title is derived from. The tragedy of the whole thing is that when it goes to Africa, they won’t even be accepted. Again the good part of this is that he was fortunate to have a father who prepared him. There is a place where he said the half-somethings own tomorrow. So it is just going to be a phase in human evolution, but tomorrow belongs to them, that was how he encouraged himself

You have raised children outside Nigeria and you know how important it is for children to be properly grounded in terms of identity. How difficult is it to situate your children in a different place and keep the connection with home?

Well, I went to America when I was about 17/18 as a young student, and I did my university in the US. It was our mother that made us understand we will not be allowed to marry foreigners and because we loved her, and our father died while we were little kids, we complied. After our education, we all came back home to get married. So I made sure the kids went to day school, studied the Nigerian languages, they could cook. By the time they left the Nigerian shore, because they started while we were here, they all went to school in Nigeria, secondary school, primary school, so they could speak Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and speak pidgin English, and had friends so by the time they left for the West, they were solidly grounded in our tradition, our ways of life. You should be your kids’ best friends, when you are their best friend they can relate with you and chat with you. You should still be able to discipline your kids and be their best friend.

Emmanuel’s fate is very closely interlinked with that of his father’s community here in Nigeria, and at some point he has to come back to resolve some major issue in the community. How important was it for you, for a character to come back to later truth.

Well, here I was able to solve two problems. I believe we need to return and develop our country otherwise, the Chinese will take it over. When you go to the Delta, and see the level of pollution, you will weep. This is exactly what happened to my character. And he wrote a poem on the strength of what he saw. The dark tears/No green foliage of any kind/no fish that lives/wasteland like Hiroshima’s aerial landscape. So I took the excellent work of my friend, Bishop Kuka is doing situated the story within that context. My story is not about the Niger Delta but it’s an imaginary kingdom called Umuati. I call the book faction. They are stories that happened to different people in different places and different time, which I have brought together to create a whole new narrative.

For me one of the interesting things about the book is that it evolves from a love story where a boy meets a girl, they fall in love, encounter obstacles and then it becomes something completely different, he becomes an environmental activist at some point. How did you make this transition from love story to a story about activism and environmental pollution?

Well, I was aided by the fact the father had a prophetic word for him. So after his marriage, he really didn’t give a damn about his father’s prophesy, he focuses on his pursuit of the love of his life, but then there is a massive oil spill, he came to an epiphany, like a self discovery and realizing that he just really has to do something. And of course you know his father and mother have passed on in strange circumstances. There was this nightmare he kept having, strange things in his dream, “return or die”, so he felt he was compelled to. When the oil spill happens, it provided for him a reason to reconnect. He didn’t intend to come back as a king, he just wants to help them and feel good about it, the thing became deeper.

One other thing I am curious about is that you had to go through this creative writing program, and all of that to write this book, you have had influences and inspirations before that, what are these influences and inspirations?

My family background and upbringing, the fact that people should not define you. You should push back on discrimination, and this part of me that comes in is after the civil war, when we got to Lagos, Ebenezer Babatope was my class teacher, and they came up with this policy in 1970, by the time we got to Lagos, the war ended around January, by then we had to take Yoruba, and for us coming out of Biafra without anything, we needed scholarship and if I took the Yoruba course, I knew I was going to get zero. It might impact on the scholarship I was hoping to get. So I decided to study very hard, I refused to be deterred, I got zero in Yoruba but I went on to score 100 percent in maths, so by the time it was averaged, I came first place. So you can see I refused to be defined, as a matter of fact, that part of me refused to be defined and that part of me showed up in the book. Even when the girl [in the book] is saying are you crazy, you know I am Jewish and you are a black guy, it is impossible, Emmanuel said he had no such limiting words in his lexicon. The family I come from, we believe you can be everything you want to be, as long as the lord himself wants you, and you should not allow yourself to be defined by people.

One of the things that is strongly emphasized in the book is a sense of social responsibility which Emmanuel’s father imbibes in him and left him with a prophecy. Why did you feel like this was something you needed to emphasize?

Because it is me. And I think more than anything else, we need it, especially in this country. This is a great country and an author has the right to be an activist, so we just have to be responsible.

This country is so great, so blessed, and yet look at what is happening in Jos. The energy we have to build is being wasted to divide people and becomes a white elephant cast in stone. We ought to be at the vanguard of the black race. Instead of our rightful place among the committee of nations, we are now a laughing stock. All we need is to be responsible, let there be equity, let there be justice, let us take care of the poor and the weak and this country will become everything that it could be.

Now speaking about the immigrant experience, the trend has been to speak of the people leaving their country for another one and how they assimilate. At the point we meet your character Emmanuel, he lives in the US where he was born but at a point he becomes a reverse immigrant, coming back to his fatherland. Was it something you deliberately wanted to focus on?

Absolutely. Today in Canada, the Igbo’s are building one of the biggest cultural centers. We have that in Atlanta and the Yoruba’s also, the Nigerian communities are now worried. The immigrant that went to the West now desire more than anything to have their offspring reconnect back to their family. It’s a kind of nostalgic feeling and the challenge is the young ones aren’t really cool about it, so as I am speaking to you right now, we have a resurgence of cultural issues in teaching of the language. I think the one in Toronto would be the first Igbo school, where you can learn Igbo tradition. As an architect,  I was invited to see what I can do before I left Canada. The issue of diasporans wanting their offspring to reconnect is big. My children are lawyers and doctors and I want them to come home and do their youth service. This is a big issue with the diaspora parent who left this country in the 7os, 80’s,90’s that had the desire that their offspring will get more connected with their own country and contribute towards the development of their own country.

You are a famous architect, and have just completed a course in creative writing. What similarities would you say are there between architecture and crafting a story?

A lot! I think the writer is an architect. The only difference is that instead of using bricks to build an architectural edifice, he uses words to build the super structure of his architectural object. I will say there is so much relationship between architecture for me and writing.

One of the focuses as you have mention is environmental pollution, to what extent do you think literature can advocate for a cleaner environment?

A lot! In fact I am looking forward to this book being made into a film and I will like where people see the scene where Emmanuel also known as Ikemefuna, when it got to this landscape, and saw what he called black tears, I want to see that in film, I want to see people react to what they see, and I know it will impact on people. I think I was a little bit passionate when writing those part because have been to see these places, and it is so sad, and that is why the irresponsibility of leadership comes in. Look at when the oil spill happened in America, the oil company was compelled to solve the problem.

Why do you think there seems to be a double standard in dealing with oil spillages and environmental issues in Nigeria?

Corruption. That is the answer to the question. Corruption and irresponsible leadership. We who have travelled, have seen the best of the best, ought to come back and show it, but our bane in this country is irresponsible leadership enabled by corruption. I think in that one sentence is the source of what we are facing.

Why did you have to create an entirely fictional kingdom, Umuati, which if you look at it closely is very Igbotic. Why did you feel you have to create this fictional space for a that is very relevant to contemporary Nigeria?

You see, while I don’t want the story to be localized, I wanted the freedom to express myself. I still have the legitimacy, some grounding in something that I am familiar with, like the use of the proverbs and whatnots, and still speak to reality. It is a cosmopolitan Nigeria. There are Yoruba names, Hausa names. It describes a modern society, going back to tradition, chieftaincy and the selection of the kings, and a lot of very interesting things.