Women Writers’ Round Table: Of Phases and Faces: Unoma Azuah Engages Sefi Atta and Chika Unigwe

In recognition of the centrality of women writers to the effervescence of the third-generation novel in Nigeria, a first in the literary annals of Nigeria, the co-editors decided that a project such as this ought to carve a space for women writers of the generation to self-critique and appraise the significant developments and contexts that have led to their international consecration as the arrowheads of new Nigerian fiction. We wanted a frank discussion among writers, devoid of critical mediation. The novelists Unoma Azuah, Sefi Atta, and Chika Unigwe picked up the challenge in this interesting conversation.

Azuah: Well, ladies, what are your thoughts about being supposedly on the fringes of the writing/literary world? I’d like to share an exchange I had recently with Pius Adesanmi on the subject of “fringes,” marginalization, and women writers. According to him:

I am not sure I buy this idea that the female writer is marginal to the dynamics of third generation writing in Nigeria, especially when it comes to the novel. I think the contrary is the case in this phase of the Nigerian literary process: women are central to what is going on in recent Nigerian literature and this, in my view, presents something extremely unique in modern African literatures. Continentally, women were marginal to Negritude, marginal to the cultural nationalism of the first-generation anglophones, marginal to the neo-Marxist, postindependence disillusionist writing of the second-generation francophones and anglophones but now they are centered. Afterall, the first major thirdgeneration novel in Nigeria—and for a long time the only one—is Omowumi Segun’s The Third Dimple. After her, the most phenomenal successes in the novel have been women: Sefi Atta, Helen Oyeyemi, Chimamanda Adichie, Chika Unigwe, Promise Okekwe, Unoma Azuah, Bina Ilagha, and so on. Yes, Chris Abani and Helon Habila are successful, but they are not “the face” of the new Nigerian novel. The women are, though we do need to recognize the emergence of distinctive new male voices such as those of Jude Dibia and Dulue Mbachu. Even the most famous manuscripts of future novels are now in the drawers of female writers. We hear of Sarah Manyika’s manuscript, Lola Shoneyin’s manuscript—I’ve read those two. Gone are the days when the dust-gathering manuscripts of Obi Nwakanma, Akin Adesokan, and Ogaga Ifowodo were “discoursed” by a certain Nigerian third-generation critical establishment as if they were published works. Now it is the women we hear about. It seems to me that the men have mostly become internet noisemakers, doing ego trips and building personal myths on generational online listserves like krazitivity and josana while the women are doing the writing. So when you speak of marginality, permit me to allege that what seems to be at work, in the context of third-generation Nigerian literary politics, is an unproblematized compulsion on the part of women writers to self-fashion as marginal and then proceed to reject the label. With regard to the new Nigerian literary scenario, I just don’t see evidence of marginality in the domain of the novel. It’s a long way from the conditions we had when Toyin Adewale and Omowunmi Segun co-edited Breaking the Silence!”

Unigwe: The African female writer in Europe and America is marginal to the dynamics of contemporary European/American literature. Unoma, perhaps you asked that question from the position of your marginality as a female Nigerian writer in the United States? Pius Adesanmi might have missed that dimension.

Azuah: Yes, I was looking at the issue from the international perspective. However, I think Pius was focusing on the Nigerian space.

Unigwe: I find being seen as “the other” problematic because it usually means that people want/expect to see a certain kind of writing from you. With my novel, a reviewer seemed disappointed that I had written about someone who lived in Europe, not in Africa. I got the impression that he would have been happier if I had had animals, jungles, tam tams, and characters who sang and danced...