On Friendships, Child Characters, and Writing Tragedy: An Interview with Uche Okonkwo

Tryphena Yeboah

April 25

In A Kind of Madness, Uche Okonkwo's stellar debut, ten riveting stories explore the complexities of familial relations and class disparity, religious and cultural norms in Nigeria, and the nuances of childhood innocence. In "Long Hair" and "The Girl Who Lied," themes of identity, belonging, envy, and violence are tackled through the intimate lens of friendship. The young characters in "Animals," "Eden," and "Shadow" are memorable with their longings, curiosities, and fears, and can very quickly send the reader from a moment of playful suspense to one of dread. In A Kind of Madness, there are the quiet, hidden tensions of loss and the wrestle of desires, and there are the loud and jarring insanities that punctuate the reading experience with ferocity and a sense of mystery.

Okonkwo writes with deep empathy and yet casts an unsentimental eye at the world's cruelties and corruption. Her writing is strongest when characters' motivations are revealed and there's a gesturing towards their growing sense of self, a daring invitation to confront what they learn about themselves and each other. In this interview, Okonkwo shares why she makes child characters take up space in her story, her engagement with dark themes, and some of her experiences attending boarding school in Nigeria.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tryphena Yeboah

All the stories in the collection are set in contemporary Nigeria and you bring an interrogative lens to issues of gender and power, the complexities of religion, and the socio-cultural factors that affect the dynamics of a relationship. I would love to know how your upbringing and experiences in Nigeria have shaped how you perceive these matters and how your creative engagement with them has evolved over the years.

Uche Okonkwo

I feel like many of the stories I write have a universal quality to them—or at least I hope so—while still being decidedly Nigerian. Being Nigerian is a huge part of my identity. Both my parents are Nigerian, and I was born in and lived in Nigeria until well into adulthood. Most of my family is in Nigeria, and even though I have been away for years, it is where I call home. A formative aspect of my experience growing up in Nigeria is being from a family of girls—my parents have five daughters, of which I am the middle one. Growing up, it was interesting and alienating to witness how people responded to this, usually with pity for my poor parents, my poor father especially. Who will carry on his name? they'd ask, like the world was ending. But I remain grateful in many ways for my parents, my mother especially, who did not make us feel less for being girls. Some of the characters in my stories—and in real life, of course—are not as lucky; this is an inescapable reality if we just look at the world around us. I feel like this work of writing, and of taking in others' writing, is a small way of coping. At the end of the day, I feel like I am left with more questions than answers.

Tryphena Yeboah

Stories like "Shadow," "Animals," and "Eden" have such moving and memorable characters. You have an astute way of making a child come alive on the page, and the reader gets to witness their naivety, motivations, and fears, as well as their own uncertainty as they attempt to understand themselves and the world around them. Can you speak to employing this perspective and voice in a story and what this brings to a piece?

Uche Okonkwo

There's something magical, but also so very vulnerable, about childhood. Not to overgeneralize, but children are so eager to absorb from the world around them, so excited to be a part of things, and if you let them, so ready to show who they are. One key piece of advice that I have heard about writing child characters, and that I have observed from stories that do justice to child characters, is to take their concerns—no matter how whimsical or how much you know better from an adult perspective—seriously. Do not condescend to them. When I write child characters, I think about how big some of my childhood moments had felt at the time they were happening, and I try to channel those moments as much as possible, even though now as an adult they seem less world-ending than they did back then. Writing child characters also makes me more acutely aware of the illusions of control that we hold on to as adults, [and] puts me back in that space where the adults in charge of you basically shape your life. When I imagine child characters who are trapped in one way or another, I enjoy finding ways to give them their little rebellions, whether by providing them a place to retreat to, physically or mentally, or having their innocence highlighted by the contrasts of adult cruelty or indifference, or even by having them enact cruelties themselves. They might be small in body and age, but their imaginative lives are so expansive. I try to give my child characters permission to take up space in a story.

Tryphena Yeboah

When I read "Long Hair" and "The Girl Who Lied," I was immediately taken back to my time in senior high school in Ghana, and the boarding experience that plagues one with terrible homesickness and, at least for me, this sense of being suspended and isolated from everything. Do you have any memories from your own experience in boarding school? Is there anything you miss about that time?

Uche Okonkwo

It's so interesting how in reading boarding school stories by writers from across Africa, we can draw so many parallels, almost as if the same slightly sadistic mind designed all our boarding schools. I read Jennifer Makumbi's A Girl Is a Body of Water recently and was struck by some boarding school moments, thinking, this could easily have happened at my school. Boarding school was such a strange and formative time, and my six years there certainly shaped the person I am today and the stories I write. I cannot say boarding school was fun for me throughout, though. For the first three years, every time I had to go back to school, I would be miserable for days, crying every time I was dropped off. I only stopped crying after I got into senior secondary.

"Long Hair" and "The Girl Who Lied" were inspired by my boarding school experiences. At my school, just like in "The Girl Who Lied," we had a caged chimpanzee just across from the girls' hostel. Some days, he would break out from his cage and disrupt school for a few hours, sometimes less, I guess depending on his mood. It would always take some coaxing to get him back into his cage. He was there the entire six years I spent at that school, and it was just normal to hear a chimpanzee hooting in the middle of maths class.

Are there things I miss about boarding school? I certainly feel nostalgic about some things—so much about life felt new to me at the time, and I suppose I miss knowing less about the world, about pain and suffering. I miss having a kind of framework for certainty, even though I now believe that certainty was an illusion. I miss the horribly unhealthy concoctions we would make at school—Indomie noodles made with cold water, feshelu and kodo (we made kodo by mixing dry garri with canned sardines or canned Geisha mackerel in tomato sauce; we made feshelu by mixing garri with water to make eba, and then making the canned sardines or Geisha sauce into "soup"). I don't think these foods would taste the same to me if I tried making them today, and that makes me a little sad.

Tryphena Yeboah

I couldn't shake off this sense of eeriness surrounding the narrator in "Long Hair" and Kemi in "The Girl Who Lied." There's a trepidation and suspense that is strongly sustained throughout the stories as you work within dark conditions of violence, crime, horror, fear and manipulation. Can you share your experience writing noir and what you find fascinating or challenging about the genre?

Uche Okonkwo

I really don't think of myself as a writer of noir—ironically "Eden," one of the stories in A Kind of Madness, was first published in Akashic Books's Lagos Noir anthology—maybe because I primarily think of "noir" as a crime fiction sub-genre. But if I think of "noir" in terms of dark themes and violence and a sense of pessimism, then maybe I can make some claim to writing noir.

There was a period in my life, in my undergraduate days, I believe, when I thought, why do I always write dark stories? Why spread darkness? Then I declared to myself, From now on, I shall write only joy, only stories that end happy! I'd get an idea for a story and when I realized it wouldn't be or end happy, I'd sadly drop it. I managed to write a few "happy" stories, but I could not sustain my self-imposed ban on darkness. And the more I learned about the world, the more I realized that people don't always get what they deserve, bad things happen to good people and vice versa, I realized that even the sad, tragic stories are worth sharing because they touch us. They allow us to share the weight and perplexity and just the mind-boggling condition of being alive. In some ways, writing the darkness feels like me saying to the reader: I don't know what to do with this, does this make any sense to you, do you see it too? And when I feel a reader responding, yes, yes, yes, it's like finding someone to sit with for a moment. It makes me feel a little less alone.

Tryphena Yeboah

I particularly enjoyed your writing on friendships, and how you use that to grapple with differences in social classes, people coming of age, and emotions of shame and fear. In some instances, these juxtapositions become a lens—often exaggerated and misconstrued—through which characters view themselves and feel the pressures to change. When constructing these distinct portraits of friends, do you find yourself leaning towards an element that is important for you to examine and capture? What are the dynamics of female friendships do you remain curious and excited about?

Uche Okonkwo

In thinking about my childhood friendships, I remember comparing myself to my best friend—prettier, more outgoing, with a mother who, from my own supposedly persecuted lens, was softer, gentler than mine. Of course, my perceptions were flawed, but they were mine and they were real to me at the time. When writing friendships, I like to think about what the pinpricks of conflict will be. Where will those little twinges of jealousy come from? What can I do to feed them, to make these tumors grow until they cannot be ignored?

These days, I am very curious about friendships between older women, particularly women who never got married (or lost their partners) or had children. As a girl, I had taken it for granted that when I became an adult, I would get married and have children. I am well into adulthood, and I no longer hold that assumption. I think about the women in my life who are decades older and without spouses and/or children—particularly the Nigerian women. In a culture (and a world, even) that teaches women to see marriage and children as the crux of a woman's existence, the source of her joy and esteem, I am so curious about the lives of these older women without spouses or children. I want to know their communities, their support systems, and how they sustain their friendships. I want to hear their internal dialogue. Yewande Omotoso, in her novel, The Woman Next Door, does a brilliant job of writing about two older women navigating their personal feud amidst racial tensions in South Africa. I would like to re-read that book soon.

Tryphena Yeboah

I'm glad you mentioned Omotoso's book! I'm always looking to find a compelling read and I would love to know other books you've read and enjoyed.

Uche Okonkwo

I am constantly singing the praises of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. It's a book that certainly left me in awe. I think of this novel as a brilliant new take on the mother-daughter narrative. It is unrelentingly dark, but it poses important questions about the perfection that is expected of mothers, and the role of the state in policing female bodies that have been deemed transgressive.

Kintu by Jennifer Makumbi holds a special place in my heart. I still remember how much I laughed the first time I read this book. Makumbi's writing is so sharp and funny, and her eye for observation is unmatched. Kintu remains one of my favorite books to re-read. I find Makumbi's work aspirational, the way she handles these massive stories with such deftness and confidence.

I think that everyone should read What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah. It's a collection with a mix of speculative and realist fiction. Nobody does a short story like Arimah. I love stories about mothers and daughters, and so Arimah's "Windfalls" and "Who Will Greet You at Home" are unforgettable and have greatly inspired me.

Call me biased but I must mention Ghostroots, a debut short story collection by my friend, 'Pemi Aguda (forthcoming from Norton in May 2024). Aguda's speculative short stories are strange and otherworldly in the best way, and I am confident that Ghostroots will do wild, brilliant things out in the world.