I remember pausing to think ‘omo, people dey write’ while reading Chimeka Garrick’s A Broken People’s Playlist. I’ve gone on to think the same thing of many African stories I’ve come across. True true, people dey write.
On one hand, this is an amazing find—there is no shortage of beautiful stories to drown in. On the other hand, it is scary, because now my ideas are suddenly shy little things that refuse to dance on my page.
This fear is a topic for another day, though.
Today, we’d discuss an aspect of African fiction you’d relate to: relatability. Don’t leave me!
Relatability is the quality of being understood. It is a kind of understanding and kinship that comes from a shared experience.
First, I don’t think there is any one definition of African fiction that can really capture the diversity of African fiction. I mean, I keep mentioning African fiction, but I mostly write about Nigerian fiction. One thing all African fictional works have in common is Africa—in names, in author origin, in story setting.
But while there isn’t a single ‘African experience’, Africans know that there is a shared experience. If not across all the countries in Africa, then between some.
I’ll stick to what I know—the Nigerian experience. No two Nigerians have the exact same experience, the same way no two humans do, and saying that is an insulting form of boxing people in based on an arbitrary value like country name. However, we share a chunk of our experiences because we live within the same borders, under the same rule and in the same economic reality.
It doesn’t matter if you earn millions every month while your neighbour earns 50k per month: the value of naira is the same across board. This is the shared experience I’m talking about—not individual reality or circumstances, but the reality that everybody in the nation understands to be the reality. A state of affairs.
African novels, especially those that really hit the spot, are in their most basic form, a story of the reader. One of the most used praises for novels or movies is ‘deeply relatable’. This is because underneath the excitement of peeking into another person’s life (las las all of us na amebo) what readers want is to see themselves within the pages of a book.
You are a reader: tell me, how many times have you substituted a character in a romance book for yourself? We listen, we don’t judge.
This relatability is normal, it’s common, it is an amazing way for writers to communicate the lessons within their story.
And this is something African writers do well, consciously or not. They write stories of women in bars waiting for their absent father, and though you may have a present father, you relate because this woman sounds like you, looks like you, lives a life you recognise, and could very easily be the lady who walked past you yesterday.
Or better yet, it might be a hustling boy who falls into the hands of hungry Nigerian police and pays dearly for being that unfortunate. While your closest brush with the Nigerian police might be from the backseat of a bus as the driver pushes a 200 naira note in their hand, you relate to the boy because you have heard true stories like his.
This is for people who may not relate to the exact experience. Now imagine those who do.
When a Nigerian writes fiction for Nigerians, it suddenly becomes gist, a well-crafted update on who did what and where. It is the familiarity of office or face-me-I-slap-you gossips, even when these stories may be macabre and sad.
This is the reason you pause to think ‘omo, writers dey o’—the African writer’s ability to write stories that seamlessly seep into your bones like stories from a brother. Of course, there is the place of a deep understanding of storytelling, structure and tone and a place of skill, but plucking the people one street over and dropping them and their wahala into the pages of a book is the biggest reason these stories pack a punch.
How many times have you chuckled at a Yoruba term you understand? How many times have you seen conversations in stories that sound suspiciously like the exact conversation you had with your friend the night before? That one about trying to mix beans and the half portion of macaroni in the pot? How many times have you felt vindicated when a character had the same stance as you on an issue?
Relatability, people, relatability!
Anyway, I’m off to read The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe, so expect a review soon.
Before then, what story did you read recently that made you go ‘omo, people dey write’?
