How did your career in publishing begin?
During a visit to the University of Lagos in the early 2000s, I visited the bookshop and the library and I was saddened by both the paucity and the range of books available on the shelves. I discovered similarly lonely bookshelves in bookshops across cities and in the homes I visited. I wondered what kind of civilisation and cultural confidence can be built when so many homes are emptied of books or when the current books available rarely speak to or reflect the world the readers inhabit. Many of the books were either in the Euro-American self-help genre, business/motivational books, airport fiction, or religious inspiration from Nigerian Christian men of God (they are always men). Where were the great African novels which many of us enjoyed when we were young? Even more startling, where were the African voices that were at the time emerging in the northern hemisphere?
I was struck deeply by this lack and decided to do something about it. I hoped that I could encourage and support someone more entrepreneurial than I to fill those empty and unloved bookshelves with contemporary African writing. With no serious takers, three years after moving to Nigeria to take up an academic position at one of the universities, I quit academia. With no entrepreneurial experience and little knowledge about publishing beyond being a voracious reader, I started Cassava Republic Press with Jeremy Weate with the mission to feed and nourish the African imagination with literature from the African world, starting on the continent and eventually including Africans in Europe and the Americas. Cassava Republic then joined publishers like Kachifo and Book Craft who were already trying to change the literary landscape.
What were the beginning years like at Cassava Press?
The Nigerian publishing landscape is more vibrant now than it was 10 years ago. The early years were a time of wondrous possibilities. Because I knew zero about publishing there was no fear of failure and because my own sense of being in the world is of “I can” rather than “I cannot”, everything seemed doable. Despite starting Cassava Republic with a frail body, a body that just simply wouldn’t obey my mind, the body’s frailty created an urgency that forced me to focus on what really mattered and block out unnecessary noise and turn blockages into openings. There was a sense that there was a lot to be done and there was no time to do them.
Publishing in Nigeria was mostly text book publishing and the one or two trade publishers that existed were also relatively new. This meant that we had to create our own template and rules and design how things will be done. It was both exciting and painful. Exciting because so many people – readers, academics, and, in particular, the Nigerian media – were super supportive and encouraging. Painful because we had to contend with poor quality printing which forced us to print abroad, delays at the port, huge debts from booksellers, not knowing how to deal with or manage talents. However, I think the constant criticism was probably the most difficult thing to contend with. Don’t get me wrong, I am not averse to criticism. I think it is healthy and it is needed for growth. However, I think when there are so few of you in a sector the attack can be more pernicious and not constructive. A minor infraction is magnified. You are not allowed to learn and fail under such scrutiny and vitriol. This is why I am committed to supporting more people setting up publishing houses and sharing my experience with them. When there are more of you, you can make more mistakes. You can experiment more and play around with convention because there are more of you for people to scrutinize. Most of the criticism in those early years was usually borne out of impatience with us from both writers and readers who frequently compared us to Euro-American publishers who have had over 400 years to develop. In those earlier years, people forget or probably did not know that every single one of us had never worked in publishing or ran a business; we were just readers like them and so we were learning as we went along. The internet, Margaret Busby, and many mistakes were my greatest teachers!
Still, I could not have done it without the support of so many people, especially my sisters who all had demanding full-time jobs, yet worked as though Cassava Republic was their full-time job. We always joked that maybe the company should have been called Bibi and Sisters!
What is the significance of geography to Cassava Republic Press? Having started in Abuja, Nigeria and recently opening offices in London and perhaps the US soon, does location matter for the work you do?
Starting off Cassava Republic in Abuja, and later in London, was both a symbolic and functional move. The company started in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, because I lived there. However, it also set the tone in terms of a determination to publish more writers from different parts of Nigeria, rather than focus on the Southwest or Southeast, who have historically produced most of the literary output known outside of Nigeria. Despite this, we have still not succeeded fully in breaking away from this regional hegemony. However, with the publication of Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossoms, we have begun the journey of publishing more diversely. It is not enough, however.
From the onset of this journey, we knew that a time would come when we would have to open up shop in the Western metropolis. First in London and, eventually, we’ll have a base in the USA which, for good or bad, are the symbolic centers of Anglophone literature. We started out motivated by bringing diasporic Nigerian voices back home. Bringing Nigerian voices to the West completes the circle. However, this time, the ownership of the process is in the hands of Africans.
Expanding into these new markets, as well as allowing us to conveniently distribute our titles to a wider market, are signs that there is a significant demand for African books, a testimony to how much the literary scene has grown over the years. At the same time, our presence in the U.K. is hopefully a challenge and a provocation to larger publishers to publish more books by African authors and ensure that we have a diverse representation of writers, reflective of the diversity of Britain these days. Place is extremely important for grounding human experience and identity formation.
So yes, geography-whether metaphysical or physical-is very important to us. This is why the African world that was formed in the Americas is central to our long term goal of connecting African worlds to each other.
How does Cassava Republic hope to continue building readership both in Nigeria and abroad?
By continuously publishing groundbreaking stories that break through the clutter and noise. Last year, we published When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola, a book that is linguistically innovative and a fresh representation of hidden voices in a way that we rarely see in literature. Perhaps for the first time, young, black, British, and trans readers can also see themselves in print in a story they can relate to.
In the coming months, we will be publishing Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Attah Haruna, a historical fiction about the intrigues and power dynamics in pre-colonial Ghana’s court society as it is played out through the bodies of women, and She Called Me Woman, a collection of life stories about living as queer women in Nigeria. Both books are different, both in subject matter and storytelling, and they are part of our efforts to continue to build a diverse readership base across the world as we help to curate the archive of the future.
Also, there is a resurgence in reading with the advent and increase use of social media, a platform which can be used to make books attractive and “cool” for young people. We are hoping to tap into this trend.
Can you pinpoint specific themes or attributes of Nigerian literature that are missing from the Western canon?
The question appears to assume that the Western canon is not part of the global canon which already includes Nigerian literature. In other words, why privilege the Western canon as the baseline point of reference? Nigerian literature, like any other literature, adds to the global bookshelf with stories that are rich in content and in form. Sometimes, Nigerian literature may get there first – think of the fantastical, imaginative, and linguistically inventive world created by Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard (magical realism decades before Garcia Marquez); Yemisi Aribisala, whose words turn food into edible poetry in Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex, and Nigerian Taste Buds (with no other book to compare, at least not in the Anglophone world. If I can Cook/ You Know God Can by Ntozake Shange perhaps comes closest and she will probably not be admitted into the Western canon of food writing); or Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, with its life-affirming and joyous ode to beauty, aging and eros.
Why do you think Nigeria has had such a rich literary history with authors like Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie found on required reading lists in schools around the world?
I disagree that “Nigeria has had such a rich literary history,” at least not in the way that it is conceived of in the West. A rich literary history requires a wide variety of genres, a larger pool of experimentation and conversation between genres, a long list of authors whose names a single person could hardly recall and a history of writers in dialogue with each other’s works. In a country of over 180 million people with up to 500 distinct linguistic and ethnic groupings, I expect a rich literary history to not only come from two or three ethnic groups and to have far more than two authors on the global curriculum.
Nigeria will boast of a rich literary history when the variegated, insane, and complex expanse of Nigeria’s human experience and imaginative world are published, known, read and legitimized both in Nigeria and overseas. We will have a rich literary history when the names of writers who are female, queer, and from diverse ethnic, class, or religious backgrounds can roll off our tongues as easily as other male and female writers from a particular ethnic, social, class, or linguistic configurations. The day we can speak of more than ten Nnedi Okorafors (speculative/fantasy fiction), ten Zaynab Alkalis (oft-cited female writer from the north), ten Olumide Popoolas (writing queer humanity), ten Yemisi Aribisalas (food writer and polemical non-fiction), ten Noo Saro-Wiwas (travel writing), and ten Zulu Sofolas (playwright) is the day we can begin to talk about Nigeria’s rich literary history. That time will come when we can control the periodization and genealogy of our literary history, rather than it being decided in London, New York, or Paris and refracted only through European languages. Until then, I don’t feel able to talk about a rich Nigerian literary history, even as I recognize the enormous work and importance of the writers you have named as well as those who remain unnamed and should form part of the global curriculum.
Some are calling this moment a literary renaissance for Nigeria. Do you agree with that label?
It is a wonderful moment in Nigeria’s literary journey, but I would be cautious to call what’s happening at the moment a renaissance, I think it is too soon. A renaissance to me would imply a particular vibrancy, abundance in genres, and diversity of ideas as well as output. At the moment what we are calling a renaissance is being judged by the predominance of a single genre – literary fiction. Nah! What I will say is that Nigerian literature, especially fiction, is in a much healthier place than it was back in the 1990s.
What are some of the biggest barriers Nigerian writers face today?
Book piracy and lack of publishing opportunities are the biggest challenges faced by African writers (not just Nigerians). There are a lot of fantastic (and not so great) stories being written by African writers and it is often a challenge to get publishing companies to publish these stories. There are still not enough publishing companies on the continent, and still not enough diversity of titles available to inspire African readers that would stimulate the kind of variety we find in music. Perhaps it is because the music industry has grown organically without requiring symbolic legitimacy from the West and therefore has produced much more diversity.
Presently, there are just a handful of independent publishing houses, like Cassava Republic, that are willingly to invest in manuscripts telling African stories. At present we can only publish about eight to ten titles a year. Even though we have high hopes of increasing our output to twelve books a year, it still leaves a lot of writers unpublished even when they are absorbed by other publishing houses such as Parresia Books, Quramo Publishing, Ouida Books, Narrative Landscape, or BookCraft.
What kinds of works do you look to acquire for Cassava Republic Press?
We look out for works that explore themes that challenge-and go beyond-themes for which Africa is often associated with. Our aim is to break stereotypes by representing the incredible diversity of the African experience. We are very open to any stories on as many topics and subjects as the authors can think about. Our only criteria is that they must be well written and the words must sing to us. Don’t look at what we have published as a measurement of what we’ll publish in the future. We want to be surprised.
Crime, speculative fiction, graphic novel, romance and creative non-fiction are genres that we are excited about as they tend to challenge misconceptions about African lives and how our narratives should be presented.
What do you like to read on your free time?
I read a lot of graphic novels and I am often frustrated that not enough of them, especially from the African world, are published to satiate my appetite. If they did not consume so much time and resources, I would publish lots of graphic novels just so I can have more for me. To feed my taste in graphic novels, we are embarking on a publishing program, supported by the Goethe Institute in Nigeria, to produce two graphic novels this year and next year. We hope to publish more in the coming years.
Outside of graphic novels, at the moment, I live mostly inside novellas and short stories. They allow me to have an immersive reading experience which accommodates the pressure of time in my life at the moment. Some of the most audacious, funny, provocative and sublime works I have read in the last two years have been by writers working in these two genres such as Miranda July, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Petina Gappah, and Chinelo Okparanta, to name a few. These four women show the lush, complicated, funny, sensual, and brutal side of humanity, and they do it with so much style, wit, irreverence and craftsmanship, which has enabled them to turn the demotic into the celestial and the political into poetry. I cannot recommend these authors highly enough, especially their short stories and novellas.
Who are some of your biggest literary role models?
They change every few years. At the moment, I have been reconnecting with the writers of my youth who I loved and consumed, writers who contributed to my education about what it is to be human and to live fully in your skin and on your terms. These writers made me conscious of language, the violent and balmy power of words and I appreciate that very much. They write within a tradition for the sole purpose of subverting it, turning convention on its head so that they can dance with tradition in their own way. What is there not to love about Bessie Head, Audre Lorde, Anais Nin, Gertrude Stein, and Toni Morrison?
Source: losangelesreview.org
