>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^E00:00:04 ^B00:00:22 >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Okay. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African and Middle East Division. Welcome to the Library of Congress those of you who are not from the library, and thank you for coming, everyone. I'm delighted to see everyone and today we are hosting Okey Ndibe. Dr. Okey Ndibe, a Nigerian novelist, political commentator and essayist. This program is part of a series that we launched four years ago entitled Conversations with African Writers and Poets. We are three partners in this endeavor. The African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Poetry and Literature Center here at the library headed by Robert Casper, and the African Society of the National Summit on Africa whose President and COO is Bernadette Paolo. Unfortunately, neither Bernadette nor Robert will be here today. They won't--they really have been help in their different institutions, organizations, and they are sending their regrets, their apologies to our speaker and to all of you. But we will have Patricia Bane who's from Uganda. A graduate of the University of Virginia, and who has worked on the Hill for Congressman Payne Sr. And has been the director of programs for the Africa Society for ten years. And she will talk about the Africa Society in a moment. Suffice it is to say that we, the three partners, decided four years ago, to host a series of conversations with established African authors and poets, as well as with young and upcoming literary figures. All who have been award winners and have been writing in a new style, a new way, for everyone to share. We started the program, in fact, before that with Chinua Achebe. And in fact, we celebrated his birthday here. We had a big cake and there were 350 people who showed up and we had a wonderful time. We also, then, invited Professor Ali Mazrui to share his thoughts with us on the state of African literature. And unfortunately, Professor Ali Mazrui passed away last year, and again, we held a program for him in December. We also had Dr. Susan Kiguli, a poet and writer, and professor at Makerere University in Uganda who came and read her poems. And we also had the Poet Laureate of South Africa who was here as well. Anyway, today we have over--we've interviewed over 20 established and up and coming writers and poets. And each has been an absolute delight to have with us. This series now has become very well know, not only in the United States, but in many parts of the world as well. And so, let me now say a few words about our various partners. I'll speak about our division. I have to show off a little bit about our division. And then I will say something, of course, about the Poetry and Literature Center. And then I will let Patricia speak for the Africa Society. So the African section in the African and Middle Eastern Division organizes numerous programs, book signings, briefings, symposia, lectures, music programs, films, on and about Africa for the general public, as well as for scholars, researchers and everyone who wants to come to our division. We see our mandate here at the library not only as one of acquiring and possessing publications and other materials from the continent, but also giving people a better understanding of the life and culture of the more than 50 countries of Africa. Now the Poetry and Literature Center, I'm not really the person to speak for the Poetry and Literature Center but we're all in awe of what the center does. The magnificent programs that it does, and most important of all, the fact that it hosts the Poet Laureate of the U.S. This year, this past year, the Librarian of Congress appointed Charles Wright to serve as the 20th Poet Laureate consultant in Poetry. As you see, 2020, we do the--we're keeping up with the Poet laureate in the United States. When he followed Natasha Trethewey, who served two terms in this position. Wright concluded his term on April 30 with a big program, with a former poet laureate, Charles Simic, and with poetry magazine editor, Don Share. And there have been numerous other poets, and just to mention the last three--well, we talked about Natasha Tretheway. There was also W.S. Merwin, who was here in 2010-2011. And we had poet laureate Philip Levine who was also here. So if you probably recognize their names, they're all great poets. So now I'm going to pass the microphone to Patricia Baine. Where is Patricia? There she is. Okay. And then I'll come back and introduce our speaker. ^M00:06:34 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:37 >> Patricia Baine: Good afternoon, ladies, and gentlemen. I am Patricia Baine. I represent Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa. We're proud to partner with the African and Middle Eastern division, and the Poetry and Literature Centers at the Library of Congress. The mission of the Africa Society, we educate Americans about the countries, the economies, the cultures, and the contributions that emanate from the continent of Africa. We tell a different story than you often see and hear in the media. This series is very important to us because we believe that African literature is vital to communicating a contemporary and a balanced image of Africa which is what we try to promote at the Africa Society. Today we are very fortunate to have among us a powerful literary voice in Dr. Okey Ndibe. We look forward to his discourse. We thank you for being here to participate in this program, and all those who will watch it online. Thank you for coming. ^M00:07:39 [ Applause ] ^M00:07:41 >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Thank you. Thank you, Patricia. And now, let me say a few words about our speaker today. Okey Ndibe is a novelist, political commentator, essayist, and the author of the novel, "Foreign Gods, Inc." Published in January 2014 to great reviews in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly, National Public Radio of Toronto, Hartford Courant and so many more. Such major writers as Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Literature, John Edgar Wideman, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o have praised Dr. Ndibi's creative works. He began his career as a magazine editor in Nigeria. And then moved to the United States in 1988 to be the founding editor of African Commentary, a magazine published by the late novelist, Chinua Achebe, hence the reason for my mentioning Chinua Achebe in the beginning because there is a link. So we have continuity in what we do. He created the essay collection Writers Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa. His weekly column is widely syndicated. He also contributes opinion essays to numerous journals, newspapers, and websites including the New York Times, Al Jazeera Online, and BBC Online. Okey Ndibe earned an MFA and a PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has taught at Brown University in Providence and Rhode Island, Connecticut College, Bard College at Simon's Rock, as well as in Trinity College and University of Lagos as a Fulbright Scholar. He has his career spans many, many fields and I just wanted to say--to quote some of the things that all these writers have said about him. His fiction has been Wole Soyinka who said that, "It was quite a while since I've sensed creative promise on this level." Edgar Wideman spoke about his work and said it was first-rate fiction. Ngugi wa Thiong'o called it, "Moliere-like." I thought it was beautiful. So with no further ado, let us hear from Okey Ndibe. ^M00:10:27 [ Applause ] ^E00:10:32 ^B00:10:40 >> Okey Ndibe: Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. >> Okey Ndibe: We're going to try it again. And hopefully, you're going to speak from the heart. Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. >> Okey Ndibe: That's much better. The reason, actually, that I insist on hearing back from an audience is a cultural one. I come from a culture where you can't begin to address any audience at all without offering salutation. And if you offered salutation, and you didn't hear back from the audience, that would be the very polite way of saying to you, "Take a hike." ^M00:11:16 [ Laughter ] ^M00:11:17 And so before I speak, I want to be sure that I'm welcome to speak. And I think that from the second greeting that indeed, I am welcome. So I like to begin by expressing my profound gratitude to the three organizations that have partnered to make my visit possible. I'm humbled. I feel privileged to be in this very revered institution. One of the place in the world that have made knowledge, and books, central to the discourse of civilization. So this is particularly a privilege for me to be here. And I'm really, really delighted. I'm going to start by--anybody who knows anything about me would know that, in a sense, I'm an anti-reader. So I was invited to read for about 20 minutes, and I said, "No, I'm not going to do 20 minutes. What I'd much rather do is to start by telling a story," you see, "And then, I'm going to read a short section from the novel just to give you a taste." I'm not in the habit of reading to adults. I love reading to children, you see. But adults are much better readers than I am, so I like you to encounter the work in your own hands and to read it. And what I'm going to do today is to merely give you a taste. But stories, I love to tell to adults, and to any audience. So I like to tell--by the way, at some point, I hope that when we hold the conversation, the question of how I became a writer, a novelist, will come up because I like to tell that story. But a story that I like to begin with is one that has to do with my name, Okey. If there are Nigerians in the audience, and I think there are, you recognize that Okey is a fairly common Nigerian name. It's a fairly common Igbo name. But I came to America and found that Okey became a source of hilarity. And so I'm going to tell one story of the day when I met--I lived in Amherst, Massachusetts at the time, and I met a graduate student from Botswana. And as we shook hands, I said, "My name is Okey." And this guy just started laughing. And for a long time he couldn't, couldn't control himself and I knew there was some story. So I waited patiently. At length he said to me, "You won't believe what happened yesterday." So I said, "I can't wait to hear it." It turned out that he'd been to a grocery shop and it had snowed quite heavily the previous day, so there was a bank of snow all around. And as he pushed his cart down an aisle, in the opposite direction came a woman. As they passed each other, the woman said to him, "How do you like the snow?" And this guy began to protest that he didn't like snow at all. That he wanted it warm and dry. Then the woman said to him, "You have an accent. Where are you from?" And he said, "Botswana." And she said to him, "Is that in Africa?" He said, "Yes." And she said, "Are you Okey?" He said, "Yes." And so the woman stopped and began to talk to him. And he said for about 15 minutes she talked to him with interest. And then she said to him, "I can't believe you are Okey." At which point the guy said, "Is there anything about me that suggests I'm not okay?" [Laughter] At which point the woman said to him, "No, it's just that I've heard some stories about you." And he said, "You have?" She said, "Yeah." He said, "What kind of story?" The woman said, "Well, I hear that you are in town. The invitation of Chinua Achebe to set up an international magazine." The guy said, "That's not true. I'm a graduate student." Then the woman said, "But you said you were Okey." And the guy said, "Yes, I'm fine." ^M00:15:36 [ Laughter ] ^M00:15:38 At which point she said to him, "There's actually somebody in town whose name is Okey, so I thought I was meeting him." And he said he left this encounter with the woman really upset. That he thought that what happened was that the woman wanted to pick him up, and he said he was willing to be picked up, but then somehow the woman changed her mind midway through the game and came up with this silly story about somebody in town whose name was Okey. So the very next day, he met me. So that's why when I shook his hands, and said, "My name is Okey." He couldn't, couldn't control his laughter. So that's my way of different introduction to me. It's actually part of a series of essays that I'm working on next. That's my next book. So I call it, "Going Dutch," this essay project which will be my next book. I call it "Going Dutch and other American Misadventures." I've had a very interesting life in America. Some hilarious stories, but also some frightening stories. For example, I got arrested ten days after I arrived in this country for bank robbery. Somebody robbed the bank and the police picked me up at the bus stop and said I fit the description. That's why I said politics and prose, last year when I gave the reading, sort of reflecting on President Obama inviting Henry Louis Gates to the White House to share a beer with the police officer who had harassed him. So I'm still waiting for that presidential invitation. I'm going to read a short section from my second novel. My first novel is actually "Arrows of Rain," which was published in the U.K. in the African Writers Series but in American Edition was published February 6 by Soho Press, my American publishers. So "Foreign Gods, Inc." is my second novel. It didn't do for a lot of Americans, it became the first introduction to my work. So there is that misconception that that's my first novel. So in "Foreign Gods, Inc." we encounter a protagonist who is an immigrant from Nigeria and who has gone to college at Amherst College where he studied Economics. And his ambition is to get a corporate job. A nice corporate job, perhaps on Wall Street. But then, he has to negotiate this ticket that they call--to play for the American dream you need this ticket called the green card. So part of the novel talks about the drama that he has to undergo in order to get a green card. And having got the green card, he still finds that he's still unable to get the job that he hoped for, and that's because of his accent. He has a particularly strong accent. And so he has to drive cabs about 13 years to pay his bills, which is America is unforgiving when it comes to bill paying and so on. But the section that I'm reading is a set piece actually from a previous century when the first European missionary arrived in Utonki. This home of a deity, and African deity, called Ngede. As the novel has to do with my protagonist's decision, ultimately, to return to his hometown to steal what's called Ngene. Used to be a war deity for his people to sell it to a gallery in New York City called Foreign Gods, Inc., hence the title. But the section that I'm going to read is from the time that the first missionary arrived. And so you, sort of, yet a sense of the kind of theological debate that this missionary engages in with the people of Utonki who worshiped Ngene. ^E00:19:51 ^B00:19:57 >> During one session, the Reverend Walter Stanton, which is the name of this missionary. Reverent Walter Stanton's interpreter told the converts that the founder of the white man's religion was a bearded man, Man-God, born in Bethlehem by a virgin. The converts did not find the idea of a born God difficult to handle. After all, the deities in Utonki were carved by sculptors and then infused by men or women, powerful in ogwu. "But born by a virgin?" one new convert whispered to another. Both men shrugged bemused. "The white man knows many things," the other whispered back, "But he doesn't know how to tell a good lie." Sometimes the converts voiced their doubts. One day, the interpreter told the new--I'm sorry, actually the light is not particularly great. So one day, the interpreter said, "The new God's father lived up in the sky far beyond the clouds. Beyond the reach of eyes." He said this divine father was so huge that his feet lolled all the way down from the sky to rest on the earth. He then claimed that the missionaries God was present everywhere. "Our people, too, have Chukwu the great God who lives in the sky," one baffled convert said. "Everywhere we see the signs of his work. The drifting clouds are smoke from his pipe. Rainfall is his sneeze. All great rivers were born from his spittle. Whatever he's scuffed his feet, mountains arose. Valleys formed wherever he stand his feet. Chukwu is mighty, but we never said that he's everywhere. He lives--his home is in the sky and he hardly leaves his part to visit the earth. He comes down to peer around only when something big happens in the world. And when he comes, nobody waits to be told. New mountains, valleys, and rivers are born. The earth shakes with rain the likes of which are seen only in ages. If your own God lives everywhere, then why haven't my two eyes seen him?" The interpreter explained the question to the chief missionary. "It's because the true and living God is invisible," Stanton explained. For a moment, the curious convert was silent, but his face wore an incredulous expression. How can something be everywhere, and yet invisible?" he asked finally. "He is creator and maker of everything. With him, everything is possible. He can do and undo," came Reverend Stanton's response. "Then he should do to make himself visible," the convert suggested. "Why not tell him to appear to us in his body? Then all our brothers and sisters will leave their ways and come follow him." "We can't tell God what to do." "I'm not saying tell him. Take a sacrifice to him and beg him," said the convert. "It is true sacrifice that Gods are deceived." "God cannot be deceived," Stanton explained with visible impatience. "He knows everything including the secrets of our hearts. You deceive your own so called Gods because they are not Gods at all. Only phantoms." "True Christians accept God's will. Wisdom is not given to us to behold God in body, only in spirit." "Ngene, too, is a spirit. But he also has a body," insisted the convert. "His spirit is buried in the river but you can see his body at the shrine." Stanton scratched at his neck leaving splotches of reddened skin. His words tumbled out fast. "What you call Ngene is nothing. It is a lie with which you have imprisoned yourself. It doesn't live in the river, nor does it own the river. Our God owns everything. He made your river and the wood Ngene was carved from." The converts face showed confusion. "All these years, our fathers and forefathers made sacrifices to Ngene. They gave it cocoyam and yam. They offered it chicken and goats. In fact, when their hands were strong with wealth, they brought cows to his shrine. When their wives had new babies, or when their farms have increased, they went to the shrine to say daalu to Ngene. We, too, learned to do like our fathers and forefathers. Mother goat chews yam peelings; her offspring watch her mouth and learn. As soon as we stopped suckling our mothers' breasts, we were taught the secrets of the river. We learned that the river belongs to Ngene, that the god's spirit lives in the river. Are you saying, then, that Ngene stole the river from your deity? If the river belonged all the time--belonged to your deity all along, why didn't he send a diviner to tell our forefathers and us about it?" "That's why we've come. We've come to tell you about the God who made all things. We've brought you the good news of the one true, indivisible God. We're here to spread the word about he who alone sits in the mantle of glory." "I still have one question that scratches my inside," the inquisitive convert said with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Ask it," the missionary invited. "Does your God owe money to another god?" Perplexed, Stanton asked, "What do you mean?" "I still don't understand why your God likes to be invisible. Around here, those who take to hiding are men who don't wish to pay their debts." An edge of exasperation nudged away Stanton's eager expression. Fixing the interpreter with a glare, he spoke in a slow, halting manner. "Tell them to get it into their thick heads, once and for all, that there aren't any other gods besides the one we worship. Tell them that our God can't owe anybody because he owns everything in heaven and on earth. Tell them that he's invisible because he's holy. Tell them that we're all tainted sinners, corrupted by the original sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Tell them that, because all have sinned and come short, our eyes can't see God in flesh and blood. Tell them that nobody who beholds God can live to tell about it. Tell them, finally, that there will be no more questions today." Thank you. ^M00:28:00 [ Applause ] ^M00:28:03 >> Angel Batiste: Good afternoon. My name is Angel Batiste, and I am the Area Specialist for Nigeria here in the African and Middle Eastern Division. And I have the pleasure, on behalf of the African Section of welcoming Okey to today's program. We are extremely pleased to have you today. ^E00:28:26 ^B00:28:29 At this point, I'm very anxious to ask, how did you start writing? And particularly, you've made a transition from political commentary to the novel. >> Okey Ndibe: Yes. >> Angel Batiste: So, please, take us on this journey. >> Okey Ndibe: I'm happy you asked. ^M00:28:45 [ Laughter ] ^M00:28:47 >> Okey Ndibe: The short response is that I started writing by telling a lie. As I said, I was indicated to an introduction Chinua Achebe had invited me to this country to be the foreign editor of a magazine that he set up called African Commentary. In 1992, the magazine ceased production because we simply--it was losing too much money and the investors couldn't sustain it. And so I was, sort of, caught in limbo. I said, "Why?" I didn't know what to do, I had interrupted my career as journalist in Nigeria to come to come be the foreign editor. And so I was contemplating whether to return to Nigeria and resume my career or do something else in America. So one day, I run into John Edgar Wideman, a fascinating writer. One of my favorite writers in the world. And he was one of the columnists for the magazines. So John said to me, "So what are your plans? What are you going to do next?" And I said to him that I didn't know. And he looked at me, and he said to me, "You are working on a novel, right?" I wasn't working on a novel. But the way he asked the question, I felt that it was imperative that the answer be yes. In fact, I felt that if I said no, he would never talk to me ever again. So I said, "Yes, I'm working on a novel." So he said to me, why don't you get me a few pages, 15 or so pages of the manuscript, and I'll see if I can get you into the MFA program at UMass to start it. So for the next few days I wrote furiously. Without knowing whether I understood the mechanics of fiction, and whatever I was doing resembled fiction at all. But I knew that I had to produce at least 15 pages to give to Wideman. The following week, I went to his office, I had 22 pages of what I had produced. I left it with him. A few days later, he called me and said he read it. And he said, "It was really fascinating." And he said that my writing reminded him of the writing of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. And he was able to get me a fellowship to start a fiction at UMass. So the moral of the story is lie if you must. ^M00:31:27 [ Laughter ] ^M00:31:29 >> Okey Ndibe: But be prepared to follow it up by doing the work. >> Angel Batiste: Okay. Your new work. Your latest work, Foreign Gods, it's been described as a morality of our time. What was your intent in writing Foreign Gods? >> Okey Ndibe: My ambitions in writing Foreign Gods were not exactly clear to me when I started. The germ of the story came from somebody telling me that a deity from--really, powerful deity around my hometown had been stolen. And so I was intrigued by that story. I said, "Who could have done this? Who would go to a shrine and pick the statue of a deity? And what could be their purpose?" So as a novelist, as a storyteller, when you don't have the complete story, but you are intrigued by a story, you try to make it up. You try to create something that has dimensionality, and that's, sort of, in the sense, has the form of a story. And so I wanted to write a story, initially, where it would be a pastor of--particularly fundamentalist Christian church who goads his congregation to go pick up this deity to destroy it as a way of showing the mastery, and the superiority of the Christian God. So that's what I set out to do. But in the midst of writing this, I became interested in the whole subject of examining the immigrant experience in America. Especially what we call the American dream. As we all know, that is the going ethic in America. America tells you that if you work hard, and you put your nose to the grind as they say, and you take your vitamins, you're going to do well. Right? And you could always, always point to any number of Americans. [Inaudible] is President Obama or President Clinton, or, you know, so many Americans in different fields. And you can tell their [inaudible] to great story and, therefore, authenticate the American--or validate the American narrative in that way. But equally important is the fact that you get so many people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who have done all the things that are required of them, and yet they don't "make it." The same is true of immigrants who come to this country. You see some of the best surgeons, some of the best writers, professors, and so on are immigrants. But there are immigrants who've come to this country, and they have studied and done everything, and yet, they can't quite make it. And sometimes, they haven't quite made it because of something as--simile, consequentially or inconsequential as their accent. So I wanted to tell the story of one immigrant who hasn't made it. That's one aspect of it in the end that evolved in the process of writing the story. But another ambition in the story was that I wanted--I've always been intrigued by the idea of greed. What are some of the things that we are driven to? That we can be driven to if we really want a lot of money? And we want it now. And we want it desperately. And so, the novel is an extended meditation on the idea of greed. But, also, on the ways in which our identities are formed, or deformed, because of our material pursuits. So I guess that the person who described the model as a morality tale about time was referencing some of these aspects of Foreign Gods, Inc. >> Angel Batiste: Thank you. Okay. Can you give us an analysis or a profile of the contemporary African literary scene as you view it as a writer and an author? Both continental Africa, as well as here in the diaspora. >> Okey Ndibe: How many weeks do we have? ^M00:36:11 [ Laughter ] ^M00:36:13 >> Okey Ndibe: It's the sort of subject that will form, you know, that will be explored over a semester. >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: But the thing to point out is that it's a vibrant literary scene. That there is a lot of diverse, extraordinary, truly distinguished fiction, and non-fiction coming from Africans both on the continent, as well as in the wider African diaspora coming from African-American authors. But to say that, one has to almost make the, sort of, the correct that it isn't the suddenly Africans and African-Americans are beginning to produce. They've always produced. But I think that what has happened is that there's a particular, ineffable, inexplicable way of the literary establishment. So that at some point, it's interested in one zone of the world. Or one cultural sector. And so it so happens that there's a particular interest, I think, I don't understand--I could speak a little why that is so, but I can't claim to fully understand it. But there's an interest in African writing. And so African writers are being discovered but they've always been producing and they've always done important work. I remember when my first novel was published--was finished, Arrows of Rain. I sent it to several agents and every agent said to me, "This is extraordinary work but we don't think that there's an interest in American for the kind of work that you produced." In the end, I had to go to a familiar home for it. The African Writer's series which has always had that kind of an investment for more than 50 years now in African writers. By the time I finished Foreign Gods, Inc., on the other hand, Chimamanda Adichie had happened. Taiye Selasi had happened. Helon Habila, Zakes Mda, and much of African writers have come on their own. And so there was a hunger in the American literary palate for works by African writers. But I'll suggest that those works have always been there. I think that that work is just as exciting and diverse as it's always been. Even though I think that a lot of young African writers are striking out in new directions doing what you call transnational writing. So there is--it's energetic. It's energetic. And it's energizing. But I must s tress that what we see is still a fraction of what is being produced. ^M00:39:36 >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: So in the end, you don't have, really, a full presentation of the kind of cultural talent that is present in Africa and amongst people of African descent. >> Angel Batiste: Okay. Thank you. You cited that the work--the transnational nature of the work. So what are the themes? What are themes? What are issues that we're now finding in contemporary African literature? >> Okey Ndibe: Well, all themes. But ones that are now being treated with really the true, new lens, you know, they're old, but always current. Always present, and always important question of identity. >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: Okay. And what are the ways in which are our identities are formed? What forms of identities that are possible to us? I remember that years ago, the first wave of Africans who came to America went to Britain fully intended to return to Africa are the conclusion of their stories. Then we came to a phase where because of global events, as well as events in different African countries, a lot of immigrants finished their studies and had to stay. And so began to have their children in America and Europe, when in the past they would go back and have their children back in, say, Nigeria, Liberia, or Ghana, and so on. And so that questions that kind of pattern would raise. The questions of--when somebody says to me, "How do you see yourself? How do you define yourself?" >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: It becomes a complicated question. I'm no longer simply somebody from Amawbia which is my hometown. I'm no longer a Nigerian. I'm also an American. But what kind of American am I; right? So these are questions that we, a lot of writers, are beginning to grapple with. And what does it mean in a global world where I can now stay in my home and write something on Facebook, and my brother, in my hometown sees it instantly. And so--where I can pick up a cellphone anywhere and call him, and he picks up. The world has changed in that interesting way. So space, the idea of space and the idea of time, have been transformed in very interesting ways. And so all of these ideas, technological innovations, have then formed, then shaped, the writing that is going on now. >> Angel Batiste: And I would like to follow up with a last question. One being, what actually do you see as a future for African writers, and in what ways can more international attention be given to African literary scholarship? >> Okey Ndibe: If I knew those are two good questions. ^M00:43:07 [ Laughter ] ^M00:43:08 >> Okey Ndibe: I'd really, really be--what would I be? I'll sell it for a lot of money. The future for African writing is not something that I can speak to. I can hope that it continues to receive--that I can hope that our writers continue to tell our stories because as a grandmother says in my first novel, "A story that must be told never forgives silence." And so silence erasure is not an option. >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: And so one hopes that we'll continue to tell our stories. In terms of the way international reception of the work, I think that in the end, if your work is important. If your work touches on an area of profound human drama and touches on it compellingly that enough readers around the world will find their way to your work, or to find its way to these readers who want to engage with that kind of mixture. What actually worries me, and what I like to see more of, is a deeper and wider readership in Africa itself. What I'd like to see is a stronger publishing structure. >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: Vibrant libraries in Africa because in a lot of ways, I mean, my book is doing very well in the U.S., doing very well in Britain and all, but for all kinds of reasons, it's not done--it will sell well in Nigeria, but the structures, the people who will read it and say, "It's going to cost us too much if we bring in the copies. We're not going to make money." And so I'm trying to get--make an arrangement where my publisher sell rights to Nigerian publishers-- >> Angel Batiste: Uh-huh. >> Okey Ndibe: To do a Nigerian edition. But so far I haven't got Heinemann off my American publishers to agree to that arrangement. And so it's an anomaly where I'm a more well known amongst Americans as a novelist than I am in Nigeria. The Nigerians know me as a guy who gives trouble to corrupt politicians through my columns. But a lot of Nigerians don't know that I write fiction at all. I want that to change. And I want that to be a culture of leisure reading. And in order for this to happen, we need so many different things. We need a more vibrant publishing industry in Nigeria, we need libraries. For that matter, we need power. Electricity. Because people come home from work and there is no power, and so you can't--you don't have much time to read. >> Angel Batiste: To read, right. >> Okey Ndibe: And so that's what really bothers. It's that I want Africans to read more. And to read their writers more because it's all about them, at least the way I look at it. >> Angel Batiste: Thank you, Okey. >> Okey Ndibe: Thank you. >> Angel Batiste: In closing, I'd like to say Okey mentioned in terms of when a work touches humanity, generally, it's appreciated. And I'd like to say every audience member that walked in here today told me how great a book Foreign Gods' is. And I think that's tremendous. At this point, we'll say thank you to Okey for joining us. We will have a book signing. The books will be on sale and Okey will sign-- >> Okey Ndibe: Yeah. >> Angel Batiste: Works for you. Well we will. >> I have a question. >> Angel Batiste: Yeah. We will take a brief period of questions. And in asking a question, you are giving permission to be included in our webcast. So would anyone like to raise a question? Uh-huh. >> Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very exciting and I really enjoyed it. So what are your future plans? >> Okey Ndibe: Good. ^M00:47:41 [ Laughter and simultaneous conversation ] ^M00:47:42 >> Okey Ndibe: Lovely. That I can speak to. As I said, I'm writing a series of essays based on my own immigrant experience in America. So the story I told my name, Okey, is part of it. The story of being arrested for bank robbery is part of it. The title of that work, at least the working time, is Going Dutch. As we all know what going Dutch is right? Going Dutch and other American Misadventures. So I have about 22 essays. I've done more than half of them. Definitely it's when Foreign Gods, Inc. was completed, it came to 1200 plus pages. And I spent close to four years cutting it down. In the end I removed a 300-page section that is set in Lagos which I'm resifting into a different novel which I call Returned Flights. So it's going to feature a protagonist out of the U.K. now, so it's not Ike, it's not the protagonist who goes to steal a deity. And I've just been given a fellowship by the University of Las Vegas beginning in August. So I'll be in residence for nine months writing another novel called Native Tongues. That novel will feature an American anthropologist working, doing research in an African village and all his dramas, to say. And then I'd like to, at some point, return and tell the stories of my experiences as a child during the Nigerian civil war and that story is going to be called My Biafran Eyes. And there's actually an essay. If you google it, you'll see an essay that talks quickly of my experience--some of my experiences as a child during the war. So those are my subset of what's on my calendar going forward. Thank you. >> Angel Batiste: Any additional questions? ^E00:49:56 ^B00:50:00 >> Okey Ndibe: Somebody should ask me--I saw your question actually. >> Yeah. Do you intend to spend some time back in Nigeria? A significant amount of time to, sort of, spread the African novel structure yourself? >> Okey Ndibe: Good. The answer is yes. But I won't be able to say how and when that can happen. In 2001, 2002, my wife and I were fortunate to get Fulbright's and we went and we worked with Professors at the University of Lagos. And it's something that was deeply fulfilling for me. So much so that the day I was leaving, my last class, my students were crying. And they said, "You've come here and you got us excited about literature but you're leaving us to go back to America." And I wish that I could say to them, "I'm not going anymore. I'm going to stay with you." That's what my heart wanted to do but I didn't have the resources to be in Nigeria and continue to pay my mortgage in America. And so at some point, I'd like to spend at least half of the year, if it could be worked out teaching in Nigeria. Or teaching in some other African country because I think that as much as I've been fortunate to be an effective teacher, to win teaching awards in almost every college that I've taught in in American, I think that America has a lot of extra ordinary teachers. Where my input, my contribution would be most deeply felt will be in Africa. In some African country. Because the talent that we have there, much of it has fled as a result of the brain drain, usually, in the case of Nigeria, during the days of military rule. The military was particularly hostile to intellectual workers, and so there was a huge flight of Nigerian intellectuals and academics who are now in Europe, in Asia, in North America. And we need to reverse that trend and I feel fully implicated in that realization that we must, finally, invest whatever we have. Materially, as well as intellectually in Africa. That's where it will be most deeply felt. ^E00:52:38 ^B00:52:42 >> Of all of the genres of literature, which is especially strong in Nigeria? Oral, literature storytelling, theater, novels, poetry? >> Okey Ndibe: Because of the influence of Chinua Achebe who is the most widely known, widely read African writer, the novel is, sort of, the media form in Nigeria. But then, Nigeria also has been fortunate to have Wole Soyinka who is one of the world's greatest dramatists. And so theater used to be very strong. But because, you know, plays don't sell as well as, you know, people go to watch plays, they don't necessarily pick up plays to read. And so you don't find a lot of people writing plays, at least not as many people who write fiction. And so much of what you see, in terms of literary production coming out of Nigeria, is still mostly fiction and--fiction which is both the novel, as well as short stories. You. She has a follow up, I think. ^E00:54:06 ^B00:54:10 >> I'm curious about media such as television. Are there screenplays? The drama? >> Okey Ndibe: Yes. >> Produced on TV? >> Okey Ndibe: Yes. >> Other Nigerian stories that [simultaneous conversation]-- >> Okey Ndibe: But they are wonderful. I'm sorry, actually, there was--you mentioned the oral tradition. Which I didn't speak to. It's one of the tragedies in Nigeria. What I see as the evisceration of the oral tradition in the country. It used to be very strong. I actually caught my formation as a storyteller, and I think my intuitive sense of how to write a story from the childhood experience of being folk tales when I was growing up. Well, we're fortunate not to have television. And so my parents, or some uncle or aunt, or some elder cousin would tell us children stories after dinner. And we'll sit down and they would tell us stories about tortoise and so on. A few years ago, I was teaching at an American college, and I decided to teach a course into folk tales--African folk tales. I went home to Nigeria and I said to my mother, "Remind me of some of those stories you used to tell us." And she said, "I can't remember one." And then she said, "Go to Susan so she--or she or he will tell you." And I went to everybody and they said, "We don't remember." Because everybody is watching TV now. And so the cultural patrimony of the folktale has been erased. Eviscerated. And so children no longer know that whole economy--narrative economy based on tortoise, and the elephant, and the snake, and all that great dramas and so on. So that's a huge lose. One of the--to get to your follow up question. One of the great phenomenon--cultural phenomena in Nigeria is actually what we call Nollywood. It's become an international, global sensation that has given Bollywood a run for its money. And so everywhere you go. You go to the U.K., you come to New York, Washington, D.C., I travel to other African countries, [sneezes] excuse me, and find what we call home movies. A lot of them are very indifferent quality. But the quality of them, technically, and in terms of the acting has been improving. And so that's actually the--perhaps the dominant art form if we can loosely call it art. ^E00:56:56 ^B00:57:03 >> Angel Batiste: If we have no more questions, that concludes our--oh, we do have one. ^M00:57:12 [ Off mic ] ^M00:57:16 >> [Inaudible] One of the things that endear you to millions, I mean Nigerians, is your energized commentary on social issues, political issues, for which you have detentions in a series of detention. I want to know, people classify you as activist, protest writer, and some [inaudible] or critic, and so then no more flattering languages, you know, [inaudible] but how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as projecting social justice? How do you see your work outside your [inaudible]? >> Okey Ndibe: Okay. I started out--I don't see my work in any reductive sense. I see my work in an expansive sense. So if somebody reads my weekly journalism where I call the contemptible politicians who have reduced the promise of our country, Nigeria, to hopelessness. And so I call them by their proper names. I call them idiots, and I--which is, like, one of the more polite names that I have for them. I call them visionless, and so on. So people who read it, some of them see me as angry, but I'm one of the happiest people in the world. And in fact, when Nigerians see me after they've been reading my work, they think that I'll be spitting fire. And then they see I'm very funny. And I said to them, "I'm actually--the outrage that I feel about the abortion of the promise of a country is formed by the happiness that I feel which I want for every Nigerian. And which has been denied more Nigerians because of the visionlessness of these idiots who have taken the promise of a country, the hope of their country and reduced it to hopelessness. So some people, again, see me as activist. To the point that my columns energize citizens to have a different outlook. Not to assert that their conditions are immutable, and divinely determined. If that constitutes activism, then I'm one. I see myself as a storyteller. I see myself as practicing the ethic which an elderly woman in my first novel speaks to her grandson about. And she says to the grandson that a story that must be told never forgives silence. So I think that the story of the destruction of Nigeria that must be told. I can't be indifferent to it. I can't be silent about it. But there is also the [inaudible] narrative of hope which I always seek. I mean, in fact, I tell people that if I concluded that any condition were hopeless, then I'll be silent, you know. So I guess that the most expansive way to define me in the end is that I'm a storyteller. Yeah. >> Angel Batiste: Okay. Thank you. ^E01:00:56 ^B01:01:01 >> My name is Michel Rdawu [phonetic] from Nigeria. The northern point of Nigeria exactly. >> Okey Ndibe: Yeah. >> And I actually saw your update on Facebook where you're going to be here. That's actually why I'm here, too. >> Okey Ndibe: Thank you. >> And based on your own classification of Nigerian leaders, [inaudible] and visionless as you have said, do you see yourself, if given the opportunity, to move back to Nigeria to contribute [inaudible] of Nigeria, how would you see the emergence of this incoming administration? You will, of course, consider them visionless or idiots, or do you have the optimism to [inaudible]? Thank you. >> Okey Ndibe: Yeah. Now, I'll take the first part of your question. One of the things that my Nigerian critics say to me, "Okey, you are in America and you are criticizing. Come home and run of office." And that's one of the most regrettable things that I read. People don't understand the point where a writer, and when you're a reader, and not making a contribution. I'm a legend to political office. Okay? I've actually been offered political appointments. I say, "No." I have ambitions and I have talents in two directions. I'm a writer, and I'm a teacher. And I'm going to stay solidly in those two areas. If you hear me running for political office tomorrow, then know something has gone wrong in my head. If you hear me accept to be somebody's spokesman, or a commissioner, or a minister, then I have lost it. So I make a contribution by writing. I make a contribution by telling stories about our condition. Then I will talk about the current situation. As some of you know, Nigerians held elections on March 28, and April 11, in which the ruling party, or what I will call the misruling part, the People's Democratic Party, was roundly defeated. On the one hand, that's a history development. It was the first time in more than 50 years of Nigeria's history when a ruling party, and incumbent government lost an election. And guess what? They tried to rig it. But simply they couldn't because the Nigerian people, the will of the Nigerian people was particularly insistent on change. Now, there is a great sense of hope in Nigeria that things are going to be different. That hope rides on the person of integrity of the man who's been elected president, Muhammadu Buhari. His personal integrity. This is a man who has been a military head of state, a governor, military governor. Oil minister. And everybody knows he remains a man of modest means. It's unusual in Nigeria. So Nigerians suspect that that's personal integrity is going to shape, or reshape, the country. And I hope so as well. But I've also written that what Nigerians need--what Nigeria needs in the end is not a strong man. Not a good man. But enduring institutions. So I've written that the best contribution that Mr. Buhari, President to be Buhari is going to give to Nigerians is not to jail corrupt politicians--which I hope he would so some of it, it's not to stop corruption, but to give us institutions that when he's gone as president, or when he's moved on, we would have institutions that would then enforce a sense of sanity in the nations life. If he does that, that would be a success story. But if all he offers is just--I'm a good man, I'm not going to steal, and I'm going shut up people that steal, then people can wait him out. And when he's done, the stealing will continue. Yeah. >> Angel Batiste: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. At this point, we will have to bring our session to a close. So again, thank you. >> Okey Ndibe: Thank you very much. ^M01:05:29 [ Applause ] ^M01:05:30 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E01:05:38