With about 46 published books to her credit, excluding book chapters, essays and articles in learned local and international journals, Akachi Ezeigbo does not seem like she’s going to retire from writing any time soon – or ever.
“A writer remains a writer until death,” she tells me seated on the coffee-coloured three-seat leather upholstery in her office at the English Department of the University of Lagos, where she teaches African Literature, with biases in Gender, Feminist and Cultural Studies.
That’s how deep her passion for writing goes. And it dates back in time, all the way to her secondary school days. Her first published book was a children’s novel, The Buried Treasure, which was published by Heinemann of the UK in 1992, but she had published short stories before that. While in the university, she tells me, they had a student journal where she published poems and short stories.
Today, Akachi Ezeigbo has published in all known genres of literature – poetry, drama, prose, and children’s literature – as well as numerous academic texts. Her works include House of Symbols, The Last of the Strong Ones, Rhythms of Life, Roses and Bullets, Echoes in the Mind, Fact & Fiction in the Literature of the Nigerian Civil War, Gender Issues in Nigeria – A Feminine Perspective, Coat of Many Colours, Heart Songs, Fire from the Holy Mountain, My Cousin Sammy, Trafficked, Ako the Storyteller, Zoba and His Gang, Hands That Crush Stone, Dancing Masks, Waiting for Dawn, among others. But children’s literature has dominated her writings, and she tells me she was inspired to write for children because she didn’t see the kind of books she wanted her children to read in any of the bookshops.
“My kids were reading Lady Bird series, Janet and John, Hardy Boys, The Secret Seven, and all that. You know, these books were written for British and American children, and I didn’t think it was the kind of literature I wanted my children to read. They could read them but I also wanted them to read something that had some local colour, something African, and something very Nigerian especially,” she says.
So, while she was toying with the idea of writing the kind of story she wanted her children to read, Heinemann of the UK called for manuscripts from African writers. She was in the UK at that time and saw that as a very good opportunity. “Like many other writers, I tried and they chose two of my titles. One of them has been translated into Swahili and the other into Xhosa, a South African language,” she says.
And the giant efforts of this amiable professor of English have not gone unrewarded. Over the years, she has garnered several prizes and awards for her writings. These include the second prize in the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NBC) Short Story Competition (1975), ANA/Spectrum Prize (2001), Zulu Sofola Prize for Creative Writing (2001), Flora Nwapa Prize for Women Writing (2002), NLNG’s Nigeria Prize for Literature which she jointly won with Mabel Segun (2007), Atiku Abubakar Children’s Literature Prize (2008), ANA/Cadbury Prize for Poetry (2009), among others.
But even with all the prizes in her kitty, Akachi Ezeigbo insists that prizes shouldn’t be a primary motivation for a writer. “You write because you have something to say, something you want to communicate to the public, something you feel should be read or heard, something you want people to know about, or you want to entertain people if you are writing stories. Each book has a purpose; there is a vision that drives each book and a writer basically wants the reading public to read what he or she has written. I think that should be the primary motive in writing – you love writing and you want to write,” she says.
But she also agrees that prizes are a boost for a writer. “Of course, when you win a prize it kind of encourages you; it tells you also that the work you have done has been recognised. You feel happy about it, especially if it comes with monetary reward or any other useful award; you know, things that are given to you to help you improve yourself, to live better. Because when you win money as a writer, you live better, you equip yourself better to write better, and also you are able to travel. For instance, if you win a few millions you can take part of it and travel because nothing improves a writer’s ideas and perspectives as travelling. Travelling itself is a big education. So, it’s useful when you win a prize. It also helps you to be known by people,” she says, adding, however, that there are many good books out there that will never win an award.
Of all her published literary works, Ezeigbo says it is difficult for her to choose a favourite. This is because all she has written have different statements they are making, are written from different perspectives, focus on different issues and themes, and they are all important to her. But in terms of what critics say, the choice is between House of Symbols and The Last of the Strong Ones, she tells me.
But she personally has a special attachment to House of Symbols, which was selected as one of 25 Best Nigerian Books published between 1978 and 2003. “The model there is my mother, and she is a woman I respect so much,” she says. “There is a major character there called Ugonwanyi (Eagle Woman) and I modelled her after my mother; not everything about my mother but some aspects of my mother’s life and experience are subsumed in that character.”
One other interesting aspect of this endearing model of African womanhood is that she is also a Feminist, and she does not mince words about it. But before you fire the next shot about how it doesn’t add up, how Feminism doesn’t seem to suit her amiable nature, she quickly lectures you properly on the subject matter.
“The point is that many people, when they hear Feminism, they become combative. They think Feminism is a war. Feminism is actually a principle that posits that women should be given equal rights with men. It demands a kind of emancipation for women, women empowerment. This is the kind of definition I believe in, and to that extent, I regard myself as a Feminist,” she explains.
She tells me that as a very wide ideology, Feminism is culture-based and has its agenda depending on where it is coming from. So, for her as an Igbo woman, her brand of Feminism definitely differs from that of an American or a European woman, or a Feminist in Islam, or a Feminist in Asia. “But one thing that holds all hues and shades of Feminism together is the desire to improve women’s life, to empower women, to emancipate them, to help them to come to self-actualisation. That is what every Feminist does, but doing it from a different agenda based on the culture they are coming from,” she says.
Ezeigbo tells me specifically that the kind of Feminism she advocates is what has been described as African Womanism, which, she believes, is the closest to the lives of African women. She has also come up with her own brand which, she says, describes her life and the lives of the women around her, what she calls Snail-sense Feminism.
“This theory is based on the lifestyle and habit of the snail. Our society is highly patriarchal, and for a woman to survive here, she really has to be hardworking, resilient, tolerant, and accommodating, and that is the life of the snail. If you watch a snail, it moves over rocks, boulders and even thorns with that lubricating tongue that is never pierced or hurt by these jagged objects that it crosses over because it has learnt to lubricate its tongue to help it negotiate and crawl over sharp and rough edges. I believe this is what women in this country should be doing. We are trying to help build our society, our families, but we don’t have to be confrontational. We need men just as they need us. The relationship is basically complementary. There is need for men and women to work together to achieve a better society, in the family, at workplaces, in politics, everywhere,” she explains.
And the female characters in her works reflect this trait, she tells me. “My women are strong and very resilient; they are not weaklings, but their strength is not in violence or confrontation but in being principled and self-controlled, in collaborating with other people around them. But of course, if this collaboration brings about confrontation, they will move away and chart their own survival. That is how I have always visualised my female characters, especially my protagonists,” she says.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
