‘How touching murder case inspired my story’
Amara Nicole Okolo is the author of two books, ‘Black Sparkle Romance’ [Ankara Press] and her most recent work, a collection of short stories that seeks to map the emotions of men and how these affect women, has just been published by Parresia Books. In
of Man’,
From ‘Black sparkle Romance’ to ‘Son of man’, this transition from romance to literary fiction, how did it happen?
I don’t really think I planned it because before ‘Black Sparkle’ was published, Azafi and Richard [both of Parresia Books] had already reached out to me. I actually reached out to Richard on Facebook. I got a book from Emmanuel Iduma’s from Parresia and I also found out about Richard online and I was trying to tell him that I found out about Emmanuel Iduma’s book and it is an amazing book and we became friends on Facebook. I told him I also write and I sent him one of my stories. And then he said this is actually something he could work with and then he contacted Azafi, this was when I was still editing ‘Black Sparkle Romance’. I just got the contract a few months before then. It was not really like a transition, they all came at the same time. I had to put in myself into ‘Son of Man’. ‘Black Sparkle Romance’ came out like an experiment. I was trying to write different genres, it was something I was playing around with. The first draft was horrible. With ‘Son of Man’, I was more matured, I wasn’t experimenting, I knew I wanted to write something like that because it was something that had been at the back of my mind even when I was a child.
So was there a different mindset when you were writing your romance novel ?
Yes, When I write romance, I take it serious but I feel like I play with words, play with characters, I let them do things, I let them be themselves. Love is very complex, to be honest. It’s all about love and emotions and the things you experience when falling in love. Everyone falls in love differently. So it’s fun writing about it and trying to play around with characters. Then with literary fiction, I tend to have a very protective mama bear kind of attitude with my characters. I feel them alive I want to make them, ‘Son clothe them because most of the time, I feel like those characters are not even humans to me, they feel like they are different emotions in me that I portray as humans. It’s more personal like they are my kids and I am trying to keep them to myself, to comfort them.
So you’re saying writing literary fiction is more emotionally tasking than writing romance?
Yes. I can write romance in two weeks. I can even leave it and watch TV and come back and continue. It’s not like it’s very easy but it’s just like I’m doing an art project. But then if I’m writing literary fiction it’s just like I’m studying for math, which I hate. So when I’m writing literary fiction, I can be sleeping and wake up and just start writing. The pattern is very different. It just happens. I’ve written in a bus. I’ve written something when I was in a bank. I just wrote at the back of the teller. It comes to me and I feel like if I let it go at that point I may never get it back.
With ‘Son of Man’ for instance, which of the stories was more emotionally draining for you?
The second story, [The Machete of Retribution], about the farmer and his son. And then the last story about the youth corps member and the married lady he fell in love with [That Fine Madness]. The second one, I felt connected to it because it was something that happened in Abia State when I was a teenager. It was probably the first time I was in a court room without even making up my mind that I was going to be a lawyer. It was a well-known case in Abia State at that time. A farmer killed some nurses because of his son. The hospital is actually still there in Abia State, Umuahia. Back then they had horrible nurses. They valued human life like they would insects. So if people died and nobody came to claim them, they left them [the corpses] out in the bush. So you come to the morgue around there and you see termite hills and you think it’s just a termite hills but they are bodies. This man lost his only son because of the negligence of the nurses, who felt he wasn’t bringing the money. After his son died, the man killed the nurses. People came to the court room, there was really no space then and I and my mum and aunt went. That was how I had first-hand information.
When I was writing the story I just wanted to imagine what happened back then. From the accounts they gave in court I was just trying to imagine. So I was connected maybe because I was a child and later in life I became a lawyer. What happened that day, it still stays in my memory. From the countenance of the man, you could see a man who had come to the point where he didn’t really care anymore what happened to him. For someone to boldly ask for death at that point...
What happened to him eventually?
We didn’t go back. We really don’t know if he was sentenced.
To what extent would you say reality has affected the way you craft your fiction?
A lot. Most of my stories in one way or the other are experiences. I’ve had or someone else had. I haven’t really written most of the cases that people have come to talk to me about. Because of lawyer/client confidentiality, and even if I have to, it’s to take out most of the facts. You will find out that people get comfortable telling you things than telling any other person. Sometimes it’s like a burden for you. You can’t keep it to yourself. In one way or the other, write about it or let some of them go because some of them are very heavy, some of them you can’t keep them to yourself.
So being a lawyer has given you access to stories?
Yes, because even when I was a child, I kept running away from writing reality, even now I find it very difficult to write about my life and to write about things that I have faced.
Why?
I don’t know. I can write about some but going back to the point when I was a child, it is very difficult. I have tried but it’s not coming.
Do you think it will be something that you will explore in the future?
For three years now I have been trying to write something about that time but I just can’t. I feel like now I’m trying to ease myself into getting there by writing about other people’s experiences and some certain experiences I can feel comfortable writing about now. But going back to that time, I find it difficult. I know that one day I’ll get there .I hope I get there.
So you’re actually looking forward to writing about it?
Yes I am.
Why do you feel it’s important to share these experiences?
I feel like if I don’t write about it, even though I have painted some things from memories, I feel that I have to write it for me to let go of certain emotions. I feel writing about it would bring out something that is still there that hasn’t gone out yet. Although when I think about it, I even have to tear up the painting. I painted just a little bit. I feel like writing about it, in a way it would console me too.
In writing your stories, you used a very interesting technique. You allocated the stories to shoes, to a machete, to different things, what were you trying to achieve?
When I was a child, I was my own playmate. I basically played with everything and I gave them personalities, even broom sticks. I cut them out and imagined them to be men or women or babies. Sometimes I built houses and stuff. I was a very imaginative child so
when I was writing the book, I wanted to go back to that time when I made inanimate things come alive and then see if those things can actually tell the story better. If they were living, how would they tell the story? To kind of leave the character, because I feel their emotional pain, and then give something else that point of view to look at it from that perspective. And that thing has to be something that is attached to that person. That was why I did that. I just tried to connect it.
Was it particularly difficult because there are instances where these characters that are inanimate somehow are not present on the scene when some things happen. Was it a difficult technique to wrap your head around?
Yes, it was, especially the second story with the machete. I also had to remind myself that he can’t be carrying his son and also hold the machete to the hospital. That would be awkward. It was difficult. Sometimes I would want to say if he was holding the machete and he was carrying the son to the hospital. Maybe the nurses would have been nicer. They’ll look at it like he is armed and dangerous. But then I wanted to now leave that perspective and focus on him and his son and that moment where he was terrified that he could lose his son. So I didn’t want to confuse the reader and I also did not want to confuse myself so I had to detach both of them and then got to that point when you have to make your decision.
In one of the stories, you talked about military rule and its attendant issues. You belonging to this generation, was military rule something you felt you connected to?
Yes . I remember in 1997, when we just moved to Umuahia, I and my mum, we were in a bus, we were going to the market and there was this man who kept talking about Abacha and how things were so difficult and they were suffering, how things were bad. Nobody said anything in the bus. And then when he came down, a man asked him if he wanted to disappear. I was a child then. I could see that people were not talking about the government, even journalists. I was a child. I was a very observant as a child. I knew what was going on. We just heard stories. We knew some things like that were happening.
In writing the short story collection, what informed the choices of stories that you put in to the collection?
I wanted to write about the emotional aspect of men, especially African, Nigeria men. I wanted to look at it in that way, how they express their emotions which sometimes they definitely do not, but I wanted to look at it in that way. Till now I really don’t know why because hardly have I seen some who do so and I also actually noticed that men show their emotions in different ways. Sometimes through silence or indifference . Just being quiet. I wanted to write a story and see if I could understand that, I still don’t know if I understand.
The trend has been for women to write about women, what prompted you to write about men, what was the special interest in men?
Maybe because of my environment and people who were around me. I just couldn’t understand and I always asked questions because I try to understand why a certain thing is this way. And probably because I saw firsthand how sometimes if men don’t express that emotion, they channel it negatively towards something or someone. I wanted to understand why won’t it be better if you really show that emotion now than leave it for months and years and finally find a way to channel it through something else. I think that was the main reason why I focused on men because women, when we are going through something, we either cry or talk about it but men tend to close up and they keep it to themselves but most times they never let it go and then it goes on and on. It was more like research . I was trying to theorize it.
Concerning what some readers might see as the passivity of the women in your work, what do you have to say? Was it deliberate that women should play this kind of roles?
It wasn’t like I intended that but I think it is because when I write I try to let the stories tell themselves. Sometimes when I start writing, I know where I am going then along the line, the story just diverts and goes somewhere else. And I really don’t think I intended it happening that way but maybe because of the fact that you know, as you are writing, you want to put a little bit of you in your work or directly or indirectly put them in. You consciously even put them in and I think it is because of where I am coming from, where these men don’t really show their emotions and then on the long run, it affects the women, maybe that’s why it was that way.
How did writing come to you?
It came to me when I was 8 years, ten months, I can never forget. I was sitting at our dining table and my dad had just finished a very long morning devotion. We were all hungry and I was illustrating something and I just felt ‘oh maybe I should just add words to this.’ I started drawing as a child. So I just started writing and my mum came around and was like what is that? You shouldn’t be writing on that paper. Let me get some papers and then staple them for you and then you do your work. She was very supportive. I illustrated and then I wrote and later on I wrote my very first book ‘The Fate of Ngozi’ and she has kept that till date. It’s something that just came, I never really planned it, I was more into arts, painting, drawing and playing with imaginary things but the writing just came from my drawing. Looking at the drawing, I felt like they actually looked like they wanted to say something so let me just give them a voice. Then when I started taking writing seriously, was probably with ‘Black Sparkle Romance,’ when I got the first contract. That was when I felt like this is something I could do.
How did you feel getting that contract?
I felt really good. I thought it was a joke at first because I had been getting so many rejections when I was just sending out stuffs to Kalahari Review and they reject me. And of course I would be rejected after all, it wasn’t all that good. So when Chinelo [editor of Ankara Press] sent me the email and said you have been accepted, send me the rest of the manuscript, I reread the manuscript and I knew it wasn’t all that amazing . I think it now gave me responsibility to start writing and see how far this goes. To be honest, sometimes, I think I was lucky enough because even now, sometimes I go back to my writing and I am like it is not all that amazing to me but the fact that people tell me how they really feel comfortable when they are reading my writing, that its very simple, that it is something you can understand and connect with, it makes me feel happy so I feel like I am on the right path.
Two books down. Is there a third one in the works?
I hope there is. I’m still trying to find a story somewhere. There are so many stories in my head but for now, aside the story I wrote about my recent experience, someone told me a story and I wrote that and sent it out and people have really liked it. I am also writing something about my family and one of my relations who died in the Biafran War and his bones have only just been found. His bones were actually found December, 2016.
How were they found?
Behind my grandfather’s house. He was killed, they were leaving when they bombed the bridge and then nobody knew where he was, they buried him but nobody knew exactly where he had he buried.
Who buried him?
My uncle’s kinsmen. It’s an expanse of land with palm trees and shrubs, they knew he was there but they didn’t know exactly where. He was a very young boy when he died. So they recently found him and of course they reburied him. They just showed me the grave. I have not found a comfortable place to write about it and my uncle said that I should write about it as a writer so I am trying to write about it. I think that is the only plan now. It’s not a novel but I know I will get there some day.