“It’s all closing down,” she said. “For the first two years, I followed the instructions on the seed packets and laid down crops every two weeks. And then I realised I didn’t want to live off lettuce. And every day, there was a new battle with the slugs and the snails, sometimes other people. My neighbour planted an apple tree last year.”
Miss Lynn turned to tell the story into his eyes.
“She didn’t think she would get anything at all. But even though the tree didn’t come up to so . . .”
She used the basket to indicate her hip.
“. . . she sees these little things, like ping-pong balls starting to show up on the branches. And she gets all excited, like she’s expecting a child. So she starts coming by, checking every day, but she’s not quite sure when they’re ready. She picks a couple and they’re sour, not ripe. Then she looks at another one, and as she’s examining it, a small worm crawls out and shakes its head at her. She gets all frightened and throws it in the compost. And then the tree gets some sort of fungus or bug or something and it takes time to sort it out. Finally, there’s just one apple left. If she could have found a snake to put in the branches to guard it, she would have done so.”
Jacob rested his basket on the ground. “So what happened?”
“What do you expect? She came here one morning and the thing’s gone.”
Miss Lynn headed off again. Jacob stood still, thinking.
“Miss Lynn?”
She carried on walking, her stick stamping circles in the earth.
“Miss Lynn?”
She still didn’t turn around.
“Lynette!”
“Yes!”
He slipped in front of her, barring the path ahead. “Miss Lynn, how did that apple taste?”
She stared back at him. “Jacob, it tasted like temptation itself.”
Lesley Lokko
A Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic and novelist, she says: “I live almost simultaneously in Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh.” Her books include the edited collection White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (2000), Saffron Skies (2005), Bitter Chocolate (2008), Rich Girl, Poor Girl (2009), One Secret Summer (2010), A Private Affair (2011), Sundowners (2012), An Absolute Deception (2012), Little White Lies (2013) and The Last Debutante (2017). She is Associate Professor and Head of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.
“No more than three, please!”
As someone who occupies two quite distinct careers simultaneously—architect and novelist—I worry about the effects of one discipline on the other. After nearly twenty years I’ve found it more productive to think about the word “worry” in its secondary meaning, “to discover or solve something by persistent thought.” To allow architecture to “worry” fiction, and vice versa.
I should say that I’m an academic architect (although I have built buildings), so the distance between the two disciplines is perhaps not quite so vast. Much of teaching is story-telling, constructing narratives, leading by example. I often begin my teaching year with this instruction to my students (quoting Steven Covey): “Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
Of course, one’s history is always intimately tied to one’s imagination, but in the case of Africa, the weight of history is heavier than almost anywhere else. The artist’s burden is to push against that weight, not be smothered by it. I’m writing this in South Africa, where I currently live and where the weight of history is different to where I’m from, which is Ghana, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence in 1957, some seven years before I was born. In her wonderful collection of essays Writing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (2003), Toni Morrison makes the point that “writers are readers before they become writers.” In my case it’s certainly true, and relevant to what I write is what I read.
My father was among the first cohorts of young Ghanaians sent overseas to study in the years after independence. He went on a government scholarship to St Andrew’s University, returning some ten years later with a Scots wife and baby daughter. He took up a position as an army surgeon, posted to military bases around the country, and three more children followed, but Ghana’s economy collapsed in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and by the time I was seven or eight and of reading age, there wasn’t a functioning bookshop in the country. On Saturday mornings, I drove with my father to the elegant Legon University Bookshop, only to find the shelves bare.
Salvation came in an unlikely form. For almost a decade, between 1972 and 1981, a network of parents, uncles and aunts banded together to bring back from their travels books for each other’s children. An invitation to an overseas conference meant a suitcase full of novels shared among the fifty or sixty families who made up our universe. We child readers had no say in what was brought back, the upside being that we have some of the widest reading tastes I know. One aunt brought back nothing but Mills & Boon. Another would only purchase Penguins. We took what we were given gratefully. It was the blockbusters that had me hooked. Harold Robbins. Leon Uris. Arthur Hailey. Frederick Forsyth. Curiously, the authors were mostly male, their books seeming to combine two essentials: sex and history.
When I was seventeen, a Scots poet I met on a kibbutz gave me two books that changed my life forever. The opening line of July’s People by Nadine Gordimer goes: “You like to have some cup of tea?” It was the first time I ever saw African-accented English in print. It gives me goosebumps to remember it. The second book was Toni Morrison’s Sula, and on the inside leaf he scribbled: “her strangeness, her craving for the other half of her equation, her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor . . .” He never explained what he meant by the dedication, but the words “other half of her equation” were powerful enough to make me seek out other works by Morrison; and she and Gordimer make up the lasting parentheses of my reading life.
Shortly afterwards, at boarding-school in England, I half-heartedly studied the classics, from Shakespeare to Trollope to Hardy, aware that the world(s) they described seemed to have nothing to do with mine.
An attempt in my mid-twenties to write my own Mills & Boon met with swift rejection, and I turned to architecture instead. But in my final year at architecture school I met someone who set my life on a course that would lead to both architecture and writing, but also—and perhaps more importantly—back to Africa. It was 1992. The UK was in the grip of a recession and we came 6,000 miles to southern Africa to find work. Namibia had gained independence in 1990 and was testing the boundaries and limits of its new-found freedom, and South Africa was gearing up for hers. We occupied quite an odd position: black and African, clearly, but European, too, on account of education and our London adult-student lives. We found ourselves at the centre of a dynamic between black and white: interlopers on the one hand, interlocutors on the other. I wrote a diary at night as a way of processing the encounters.
After eighteen months in southern Africa, we returned to London and I embarked on my Master’s in architecture. To support myself through my studies, I worked as a temporary secretary during the holidays. One Easter, on my way to work in the City, I picked up a copy of Time Out, the weekly entertainment guide, and on the cover, in bold script, was the headline: “How to Write a Blockbuster!”
The article was wittily tongue-in-cheek. “A is for the ‘arrogant male’; B is for the ‘beautiful girl’, M is for ‘money—lots of it’”, and so on. I read it from cover to cover, an idea forming.
That night I began the laborious task of turning my diaries into a blockbuster.
Two years and 200,000 words later, I began hawking it around publishers. In spring 2004, my first novel, Sundowners, was published and went on to sell 100,000 copies in thirteen languages. Of the many conversations between author, agent, editor and marketing director, one in particular stands out. It went something like this:
“Er, the thing is we don’t want to be too prominent about it.”
�
�About what?”
“Well, who you are.”
“How so?”
“Well, what we don’t want is to wind up putting you in the Black Interest section.”
“What does that mean?”
“Three hundred copies sold if you’re lucky.”
“So what do you propose?”
“Let’s play it down. The whole ‘race’ thing.”
In 2005, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina published a controversial essay, “How To Write About Africa”. With its uneasy combination of laugh-out-loud satire and biting sarcasm, it offers tips: “Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Congo’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’ . . . After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa’s most important people. Do not offend them . . .” Frustrated by the narrow bandwidth of tropes defining the African literary landscape, Wainaina turned each cliché on its head, establishing himself in the process as one of the continent’s sharpest critical voices.
In the eleven novels I have published since 2004, I return to locales I know intimately: Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya . . . At the heart of each is a cross-cultural, cross-racial relationship played out against the backdrop of well-known cities (London, New York, Paris, Berlin), lesser-known cities (Kuala Lumpur, Accra, Djibouti) and a few cities that sit somewhere between, popular in the Western imagination (Johannesburg, Cape Town, Singapore). There are many themes familiar to readers of “women’s fiction”, a broad, all-encompassing term—sex, power, relationships, family, secrets, fashion—into which “other” themes are woven: race, identity, history, politics. At first, I fancied myself a genre-buster, breaking out of the traditional mould by merging Africa and chick lit. It’s fair to say that for the majority of my readers Africa remains exotic in a “safari-kind-of-way”. Most love the detail, the colours, the descriptions of places they may never visit; few seem to notice that one or other of the characters is black. At one level, of course, it’s heartening and proves me, not Wainaina, wrong. I began writing fiction with a half-formed intention to write a different kind of African into being: cosmopolitan, multicultural, modern, avant-garde, only to find that he/she already existed. Readers identified with the kinds of African characters I mistakenly believed I had invented. The revelation was not the readers; it was the industry.
In the mid-’90s, publishers were seeking to establish new categories that presumably would open up new sales “routes”. Two of those, “faux-lit” and “bonkbusters”, came closest to becoming literary movements in their own right and it was into the latter category that my books fell. Covers were always pretty, generally pink. A lonely girl in a sarong, walking down a deserted beach. Lettering was curled, gold, titles held ambiguous portent . . . hints of betrayals, by-gone days. One Secret Summer. A Private Affair. An Absolute Deception. Bitter Chocolate. The only title I ever chose, Sundowners, was intended to reference Gordimer’s 2001 quote, “the sun has gone down on the last of the British Empire in Africa”, though my publishers were firm: “It’s a cocktail.” Two conversations stand out, as uncomfortable for them as for me. The first had to do with plot:
“It’s simple. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl again . . .”
The second was exceptionally clear:
“It’s not personal, of course . . . I wouldn’t mind . . . but you’re going to have to limit the number. The characters . . . We’ve had a little chat and . . . well, we think the best thing is to put a limit on it.’
“Limit on what?”
“Africans. The African characters. There’s just too many. It’s hard for your readers to . . . connect. So what we thought is, we’d keep to three. No more than three, please.”
In J.M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello, published in 1999, the protagonist, a white South African novelist, says:
The English novel is written in the first place by English people for English people. That’s what makes it the English novel. The Russian novel is written by Russians, for Russians. But the African novel is not written by Africans, for Africans. African novelists may write about Africa, about African experiences, but they seem to me to be glancing over their shoulder all the time they write, at the foreigners who will read them. Whether they like it or not, they have accepted the role of interpreter, interpreting Africa to their readers. Yet how can you explore a world in all its depths if at the same time you are having to explain it to outsiders?
The relationship between intimacy (the solitary act of reading) and performance (the communal aspects of oral traditions) is one we continue to grapple with in Africa today. Coetzee is right: it is impossible to act simultaneously as interpreter and investigator.
Fast-forward to 2017. African literature, as it’s called, is riding high. The roll-call is impressive: Chimamanda Adichie; Teju Cole, Aminatta Forna, Petina Gappah, Taiye Selasi, NoViolet Bulawayo . . . One must ask if the commercial category “African Writers” is equally a creative one. Scottish-born Aminatta Forna wonders why her novel, The Hired Man, set in Croatia, is in the “African” section of bookshops, alongside Teju Cole’s Open City, which takes place largely in Manhattan. Chinua Achebe reflected that the famous June 1962 conference of African writers at Makerere University attempted and failed “to define African literature satisfactorily. Was it literature produced in Africa, or about Africa? Could African literature be on any subject, or must it have an African theme?” As Ben Okri has written, “I am a writer who works very hard to sing from all the things that affect him. Literature doesn’t have a country.”
It may not, but publishers certainly do. The tensions over classification are exacerbated by the fact that much African literature is published outside Africa, for audiences that may include Africans, but not exclusively, with everyone having a view on what it should be, what it should say, who can write it and who may read it. Yet the confusion and contestation are liberating. The “real” question is whether current and aspiring African writers will invent forms of their own.
At the recent inaugural Africa Architecture Awards, in the closing statement of the programme my words were: “Speak up, speak out, speak back.” They’ve been variously interpreted as a “final call to arms” but their truth is simpler and more direct. Speak up: Experiment. Innovate. Invent. Speak out. Truthfully. Authentically. Confidently. Speak back: Cheekily. Irreverently. Playfully.
That’s African literature. Or architecture. And probably no different for creativity anywhere.
Karen Lord
A Barbadian author and research consultant, she is best known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut) and was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. She is the author of the science fiction duology The Best of All Possible Worlds (2013) and The Galaxy Game (2014), and the editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean (2016).
Cities of the Sun
The minister’s secretary leaned forward and said, “We need a story.”
The historian blinked. “Ah. Propaganda.”
The secretary drew back. “Why would you say that?” he demanded, but his indignant stare shifted for a fraction of a second as if distracted by a slight and unexpected prick of shame.
The historian looked away, gazing instead at the pictures that bloomed and faded on the windows in a persuasive, soothing cycle. Faces, earnest faces of earnest people, asking to lead or to be allowed to continue leading. Words, slogans really, full-scale ideologies and intentions condensed to a glance-sized moment. It was a very festival of decoration, enhanced by the occasional glint and glitter as the solar cells in the windowpanes adjusted with minute
efficiency to capture the sun’s rays. Not unexpected in a ministry office, but these days she would see the same at the train stop, the fish market, anywhere that had walls and a large audience.
“What would you like to tell the people?” the historian asked kindly.
The secretary leaned forward again, but with caution, only halfway. “Tell them how we got here, and tell them where we’re going—”
“And how you’ll take us there? Your manifesto?” She chuckled at his annoyed expression. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit of a cynic these days. You want me to present our history, and our future . . . in a package like this.” She waved a hand to the political messages—translucent, unobtrusive, yet insistent.
“If you can,” the secretary replied stiffly. He stood, gave her a nod of stern farewell, and that was the end of the meeting.
The historian walked out into the daylight and paused to bask in the dappled glory of Heroes Square. Trees, natural and enhanced, filtered the sun with hungry leaves and eased the reflected brightness of the glass towers of a modern city. People moved within the innards of each building, dark pulses of collective life in constant motion, as hungry as the leaves and as numerous. What kind of retelling would move those crowds of singular souls from follow-foot compliance to fullness of choice?
“I can try,” said the historian to herself.
They say I should tell it like it happened, so that the facts aren’t forgotten, and the cities can rise again. I say no. If we want people to walk this path again, we have to tell more than facts. We must tell truths, root-deep, tree-tall testaments to understanding, because who knows who will build the cities, what they will be built of, where they will be constructed? Impossible to know in this present, impossible to know anything but the why. I will tell you this—this is why you must build the cities, and the why will bring forth the how, and the how will call to whomever can wield the power and the grace and the mercy of a steward.
New Daughters of Africa Page 49