I have an obsession with things that are forbidden—when I stumble across things that interest me and I am told I cannot research that. It started with the masquerades . . . When I was asked about them I was told I was not allowed to know anything about them because I am female. That’s where the curiosity began.

– Nnedi Okorafor

Sometimes, the mysterious galaxy will express her wishes in precise terms. Neon signs. Words in books. Unseemly coincidences. Images jumping from books onto the silver screens. Distinct shifts in the universe. Nigerian-American authors at magical places on Balboa Avenue in San Diego . . .

Did you know the Igbo griots of West Africa are the most talented of all the African tribes at the art of storytelling? They are the repository of oral traditions; they create reality by speaking it, and have been doing so for millennia. Storytelling is the most basic and fundamental technology of world culture. Just as the modern self-driving car was made possible by the invention of the wheel, storytelling has made possible civilization. As Hollywood/Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur has noted, ‘we are the stories we tell ourselves.’ Our stories influence politics, science, innovation, culture—they influence the future.

What if the likes of George RR Martin (Game of Thrones), George Lucas (Star Wars), and Stan Lee (Marvel Comic Universe), seers of contemporary American culture of resistance, dreams, and fantasy—purveyors of what has been long ago and what will be yet—all agreed upon who the next great one is?

Well, they have and her name is Nnedi Okorafor. George RR Martin will work with Okorafor on her 2010 novel, Who Fears Death, for a HBO series; Okorafor penned an original official Star Wars short story about the giant creature (aka Dianoga) at the bottom of the trash compacter in A New Hope for Lucasfilm; and now Okorafor is chronicling the adventures of the Marvel hero king Black Panther in the comic book series, Black Panther: Long Live the King. Proudly Nigerian-American, with roots in the Yoruba and aforementioned Igbo tribes, Okorafor is a shining star of Afrofuturism.

I caught up with Okorafor at Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego where she was reading from award-winning Akata Warrior, and made note of some answers she gave to questions from audience members:

What are your inspirations? What did you draw from when you wrote Akata Warrior?

I actually have an obsession with things that are forbidden. A lot of that story comes from things that are forbidden. It started with the masquerades. Most African cultures have a masquerading tradition, especially West Africans. They tend to be manifestations of the ancestors and the spirits and the ancestors. So, its very theatrical to have people who dress up in these really elaborate costumes and when they put these things on they become that—they become that spirit or that ancestor. In Nigeria, the people who get to put on the masquerading costumes tend to be to men and they are part of a secret society. Growing up I had a lot interactions with masquerades and was always curious about them. They could look monstrous, they could look bizarre, they could look comical. The masquerade happens during Christmas, Easter, weddings, funerals, all of that. And because my sisters and I were American-born, they would harass us the most. When I was asked about them I was told I was not allowed to know anything about them because I am female. That’s when the curiosity began.

With African language it’s the same thing. I learned about a magical writing script that is the only African script to not be influenced by the Roman or Greek alphabet or hieroglyphics. It is completely indigenous and so I was fascinated in that way. When I asked my great-grand-uncle about it, he said, ‘Why are you asking about that?’ He said I needed to be saved and he proceeded to try to save me because it was evil, and that made me curious.

Those things that were forbidden, especially within Nigerian culture, were the basis of Sunny’s world.

What is your creative process? How does a book come to you? For a long time, I always knew there was going to be a part two to Akata. The ending of Akata Witch was different. It wasn’t necessarily a cliffhanger but I knew there would be more. This was the type of book where I had to wait for it. So, I took that time, absorbed it, and then wrote. It was a lot of work—I wrote Akata Warrior while teaching four classes: Composition I, Composition II, Creative Writing, and Journalism. And I still banged that thing out in the middle of that because for me when a story comes, it comes. No matter what I have going on around me, I will write that thing. So I wrote it and then came the editing; you add all that together and that’s why it took six years. I had to wait for it. I couldn’t force it. I had to let it organically grow. Could you tell me about ‘chi’? In Ebo culture, one’s chi is one’s personal god. Everyone has a personal god. When something positive happens to you, its because you have a good chi. If lots of negative things that keep happening to you, usually the explanation is your chi is problematic or there is something wrong with it. Interestingly most Ebos happen to be of Christian leaning, and that doesn’t matter. It’s like when people say there is a difference between religion and one’s culture—that’s how you can have two forms of spirituality co-existing. Even though you may be Christian, your culture is Ebo, so therefore you have these other spiritual aspects that co-exist with the Christianity, even though you would think they completely contradict one another. Chi is very different from this idea of your personal energy. I think they have nothing to do with each other. It’s also different from a guardian angel. And it’s not an ancestor. Your chi is you—the spiritual part of you. As mentioned Akata Witch and Akata Warrior were published six years apart. How much does it change your approach to writing a novel when you feel as if you have to remind people what happened in the previous novel? That’s an interesting question because that was the exact problem raised by my Nigerian publisher. My Nigerian publisher hates the beginning. She said the prologue is not going to be in the Nigerian edition. For me the way I approach it is probably the same way I approach the Binti books. Some parts needed a bit of a rehash, sometimes referring to the previous book, maybe a sentence here or there, but other than that I just kept going. With the Akata books I wanted to continue the story where it left off and that is how I wrote it. It’s just one big story and this is just the next big chunk of it. I think with the prologue, I knew that especially with American readers, it adds to the marketability, so I knew it needed that beginning of ‘this is what happened in the previous book.’ But I remember feeling so bored writing it. Despite being futuristic science fiction, your work contains many emotive qualities, and its settings are human and fleshy. Is that intentional? That’s a good observation. I never really thought of it but it makes sense. I grew up not reading a lot of science fiction. If it was telling a good story, I tended to read it. So I like reading everything but I didn’t read a lot of science fiction. I didn’t feel as if I existed in those worlds. They were very white and very male. Not that I needed all of them to have an image of me in them. I just needed one, and I didn’t have one. But they also felt cold and sterile. I would think about spaceships on which people have lived for months and I couldn’t understand how it could be so clean. One of the things I am always obsessed with is a sense of smell—just think about it: the spaceship would be very lived in, very warm. Some of the more recent science fiction films are addressing that—they don’t look as sterile and as clean. Things look beaten up. Things look used. That’s the way it should be. That’s important to me. Also, when I am writing any sort of story, I am very close to the character. I am very close to the place where the story is set. So textures and smells and temperatures—all those things are really important. That’s why you won’t see me writing about a place that is cold because I don’t like the cold at all. When I am writing something I have to be there and I don’t want to be in snow. I like to get really close to the character and when I am close to the character I experience the sense of those characters. If I am going to write about Binti—if I am going to write about a character who leaves Earth on a ship—the reader is going to get a sense of everything about that ship. It’s not going to have that coldness that many stories have. The emotional aspect is important to me even if I am writing hard science fiction. I’ve written science fiction in which there are no mystical elements at all and the science is a big part of it. But those stories are also very visceral. I like it to be real. No matter what I write about I believe what I am writing. That’s very important. If I don’t believe it, I will not continue with it. I think that’s where that comes from. I think that gives a much more hopeful vision of what the future could be. I am an irrational optimist. Even when I am writing about dystopia or things going wrong, there is always going to be hope. There always is. That’s because I believe there is always hope, even in the worse of times. Who Fears Death gets very dark but there is always hope in there. That’s important to me. But it is also my own personal philosophy as well. Can you tell me more about your HBO project and what that has been like for you? Who Fears Death has been optioned by HBO with George RR Martin as an executive producer and Michael Lombardo, who used to be the president of HBO and recently stepped down to pursue more projects, as an executive producer. So it’s really cool to have both of them involved. It has been interesting. I’m the type of writer that likes to experience different types of writing. I’m obsessed with that. Not just writing novels but short stories, comics, TV, film, screenwriting—I obsess over storytelling. For me this is my chance to get to see how a TV show is made; how a novel can go from being in that form to TV. And one thing I love about TV that’s different from film is film consolidates and makes things smaller. But TV expands—stories expand. And you have all these writers involved that are not you and you see how that shifts the story. And HBO is a perfect place for Who Fears Death. At this point in time it has been optioned and now we are working together. We had a meeting a few months ago and chose a screenplay writer for the pilot. And just to be clear—we had five writers and I was in the room too. I was involved and Michael Lombardo was there and George RR Martin was on the phone because he was not able to make it and other executive producers were there. We interviewed five writers. The five potential writers were black. Four of them were female. The writer we chose happened to be the one male writer. HBO knows what we are doing here.





Author Details Patrick A. Howell Contributor Patrick A. Howell is an award-winning veteran of the banking industry. He loves all things Prince, especially ‘Sign of the Times,’ believes Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is to the 21st century what Godfather was to end of the 20th, and aspires to write as Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar at some delicious slice of time, in some manner of being, during his life. His early work was published in UC Berkeley’s African American Literary Journal and the Quarterly Black Book Review. He is completing his coming-of-age novel, ‘Quarter ’til Judgment Day’ and is a contributor for the Tishman Review’s Craft Talk series.



