>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Bernadette Paolo, and I'm the President and CEO
of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa.
But today I have the honor of welcoming you to the Library
of Congress on behalf of our partners at the Library,
Dr. Mary Jane Deeb who leads the African and Middle Eastern Section,
and Rob Casper who is the head of the Poetry and Literature Center.
I also at this point want to thank all of their colleagues,
Dr. Angel Batiste, Eve Ferguson and everyone associated
with this program because now today we are embarked on our third season
which is quite an accomplishment.
So thank you, all of you for making this program a reality.
This literary series consists of webcast interviews
with contemporary African writers committed to literature
of continental and diasporic Africans.
We have fiction, biography, poetry, literary criticism and readings
from their written works.
Our goal, our collective goal was to make this body of work accessible
to the world so as to document the talent and contributions
of African writers, those whose works are well known
and those whose works are just being discovered.
We have lots of programs at the Africa Society, and we have many
where there are hundreds of people, but I dare say that this is one
of the most important programs that we've ever had because these people
and their talent will be forever archived within the Library.
Three years ago we invited the famous Chinua Achebe,
the late Chinua Achebe, the famous Nigerian writer and scholar to read
from his novel Things Fall Apart.
And following that program this series was officially launched
in October of 2011 with Professor Ali Mazrui
who as you know is a writer and a film maker and an eminent scholar.
Since that time I must tell you that some of you in this audience
and many of you who will be watching this
on your website have toured the continent of Africa.
In this very room we've had poets and writers from Nigeria, Uganda,
Kenya, Djibouti, South Africa, Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia,
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d'Ivoire.
The good news, the very good news is that we've just begun
to tap the vast pool of talent on the continent of Africa.
And so we invite you to continue on this journey with us
as together we will explore the artistry
of Africans and diasporic writers.
You know, today -- I never fail to get excited about our guests.
Today we have a young man in our midst whose life story is
as fascinating as his work.
And when he told me that he's been in this audience
like you many times before as I told him I was both happy and sad.
Happy because he knows what we do,
but sad because we didn't have the opportunity
to know about him before.
How fitting it is then that we open this season
with Tope Folarin's book.
It's name is Miracle, and he'll read some of it to you.
But he's truly in real life the beneficiary of many miracles.
To talk more about the Library of Congress's Poetry
and Literature Center and to provide you with additional information
about our program I would now like to call upon Dr. Robert Casper.
Rob? Thank you.
>> Thank you, Bernadette.
And thank you to the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa,
and of course the African and Middle Eastern Division.
As Bernadette said my name is Rob Casper.
I'm the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here
at the Library of Congress.
I'm also a very proud partner in this series representing
and celebrating literature from across the African continent.
It was great to hear Bernadette catalog all
of the countries we've represented here throughout the course
of the series.
And I'm excited for all of the countries we'll have the opportunity
to represent going forward.
Now let me ask you to do what I'm going to do which is
to turn off your cell phones and any electronic devices that you have
that may interfere with the recording of this event.
I also need to tell you that this program is being recorded
for a future webcast, and that by participating in the program,
the Q and A section of the program, you give us permission
for that future use online at our website.
The program will go as follows.
After Mary Jane Deeb's introduction of our future speaker he'll read
for twenty minutes, and then we'll have a moderator discussion
with Angel Batiste, program specialist here at the African
and Middle Eastern Division.
Finally, I'd like to tell you a little bit
about the Poetry and Literature Center.
We do programs such as this.
We are also the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
To find out more about this series and other programs,
literary programs at the Library,
you can visit our website www.loc.gov/poetry.
You can also check out webcasts of the African poets and conversations
with African poets and writers series
and see all the wonderful programming the African
and Middle Eastern does at their website, www.loc.gov/rr/amad.
And now I would like to welcome Mary Jane Deeb Chief of
and energizing spirit behind the Library's African
and Middle Eastern Division.
>> Thank you Rob and thank you Bernadette.
These are the two pillars
without whom we would never have had this program.
So welcome again on behalf of the African and Middle Eastern Division,
on behalf of the African section.
Each one of the staff members
of the African section has done a fantastic job in identifying,
selecting and writing some of the great speakers that we have had.
And Dr. Angel Batiste has been the person who has been in contact
with Tope Folarin and has convinced him that this is the place
to come and talk about his work.
Now, Tope Folarin is the fourteenth Caine Prize winner
for African writing.
And we really are honored and delighted to have him
with us talking to us about his work.
When he was given that prize in July 2013 he was announced as the winner
at a dinner held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford in July 2013.
The chair of the judges who decided
that he is the winner was Gus Casely- Hayford.
And he praised the story Miracle of Tope Folarin
by saying Tope Folarin's Miracle, that's the name of his story,
is another superb Caine Prize winner, a delightful
and beautifully paced narrative
that is exquisitely observed and utterly compelling.
This is to tell you the quality of the work.
Tope was born and raised in the United States, and he spent a year
in Nigeria and six months in Cape Town but has mostly lived in the UK
and the U.S. and is now based in Washington, D.C.,
hence his presence among us at some of the earlier programs.
Tope Folarin is the recipient not only of the Caine Prize
for African Writing but also other writing fellowships
from the Institute of Policy Studies and Callaloo,
and he serves on the Board of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
He was educated at Morehouse College and University of Oxford
where he earned two master's degrees as a Rhodes Scholar.
He was a Galbraith Scholar at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government, and he's just a very young man with enormous promise.
So historically, in the future as we look down
and our successors will be here
at the library they would say we got Tope Folarin early
on before anyone else.
So here he is to speak about his work.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Thank you so much to the Library of Congress
and the Africa Society for hosting me today.
It's especially poignant for me to be here today
because as has been mentioned I've come to many
of these readings before.
And so to be on this side of the room
as it were is an incredibly wonderful experience for me.
I wanted to start by talking a little bit about fear,
because I think for me that has become as I've talked
about this story and I thought
about this story it's become a prevailing theme for me.
I started writing my novel from which this story is taken
about four years ago in 2010, about June-July of 2010,
and I remember vividly when I wrote this story
because first it's a story that I'd been trying to write for a while.
I started writing creatively at Oxford in maybe 2004 or 05.
And I wrote a story that was like this, but it just didn't cohere.
It wasn't working the way I wanted it to work.
And so I abandoned it.
And so back in 2010 when I started writing again
for whatever reason I wrote this story again without knowing
that I was visiting an earlier story.
And the first feeling I felt upon finishing the story was one
of intense fear.
And I didn't quite know why I was so fearful.
And so for that reason I shelved it for a couple months, and I went back
to it again maybe August-September of 2010,
and I read it again I discovered that there was something in it
that I quite liked, but again I was still afraid of it.
And so because I tend to be a very logical person I tried
to determine why I was afraid of the story.
And the first thing that came to me was because there seems to be a kind
of subtle critique of if not religion then perhaps of the way
that my parents and their friends practice religion.
And that didn't feel quite right to me, but that's the explanation
that I took with me as I traveled and as I talked about this story.
I had the great fortune in November of 2013 of visiting Nigeria
for the first time in about 30 years.
And it was an especially important trip for me
because my mom has been there for quite a while
and many family members that I've never met before.
And it was a trip that I was incredibly nervous about as well.
It was a trip that in many ways I was writing this book
in anticipation of the trip.
I was writing this book because I was trying to connect
in a very tangible way with this part of myself
that I hadn't been able to interact with in quite a while.
And so I remember getting on the plane to New York and then getting
on the plane to London and then getting on the plane to Lagos
and staying awake the entire time because I was
so nervous about the experience.
So I arrived in Nigeria.
Had a really interesting experience getting to my hotel
which I can relate later.
And I had the experience the following day of reading my story
for the first time in Nigeria.
And the first time I read the story it hit me very,
very hard that the reason why I was afraid of the story
when I wrote it was because it was truly a story
for me about being accepted.
And I think it was about being accepted by Nigeria in a way
because I hadn't been there, and I wasn't sure if after being away
for so long and having my American accent and having grown
up in America if I would be acceptable as a human being
and as a person in Nigeria.
And I think that fear was instantly dissolved because I was welcomed
as somebody who had returned home despite my many sort
of eccentricities and despite the fact
that I am in many ways American.
So it's so interesting how sometimes, and I say this
to the budding writers or people who are writing in the audience,
I think it's interesting that sometimes we are writing
to our future because that's what happened to me
in a very tangible way when I wrote this story.
And so I would say that even if you get some kind of compulsion
to write something or create something that doesn't make sense
in the moment that perhaps you honor that because
in a very real way you are connecting yourself to your future.
With that said I'll read a bit from the story,
and then I look forward to questions later.
The story, again, is called Miracle.
Our heads move simultaneously, and we smile at the tall sculpted man
who strides purposely down the aisle to the pulpit.
Once there he raises both of his hands and then lowers them slightly.
He raises his chin and says let us pray.
Dear Father we come to you today on the occasion of this revival,
and we ask that you bless us abundantly, we who have made it
to America because we know we are here for a reason.
We ask for your blessings because we are not here alone.
Each of us represents dozens,
sometimes hundreds of people back home.
So many lives depend on us, Lord, and the burden
on our shoulders is great.
Jesus bless this service and bless us.
We ask that we will not be the same people at the end of the service
as we were at the beginning.
All this we ask of you, our dear Savior, amen.
The pastor sits and someone bolts from the front row
to the piano and begins to play.
The music we hear is familiar and at the same time new.
The band leader punches up a pre-programmed beat
on the cheap electric piano and plays a few Nigerian gospel songs
to get us in the mood for revival.
We sing along though we have to wait a few moments at the beginning
of each song to figure out what he's playing.
We sing joyful songs to the Lord, then songs of redemption
and then we sing songs of hope, hope that tomorrow will be better
than today, hope that one day soon our lives will begin
to resemble the dreams that brought us up America.
The tinny Nigerian gospel music ends when the pastor stands
and he prays over us again.
He prays so long and so hard that we feel the weight
of his words pressing down on us.
His prayer is so insistent, so sincere, that his words emerge
from the dark chrysalis of his mouth as bright, fluttering prophecies.
In our hearts we stop asking if and begin wondering
when our deeply held wishes will come true.
After his sweating and shaking and cajoling he shouts another amen,
a word that now seems defiant, not pleading.
We echo his defiance as loudly as we can,
and when we open our eyes we see him pointing to the back of the church.
Our eyes follow the line of his finger,
and we see the short old man hunched
over in the back two men on either side of him.
Many of us have seen him before in this very space.
We've seen the old man perform miracles
that were previously only possible in the pages of our Bibles.
We've seen him command the infirm to be well, the crippled to walk,
the poor to become wealthy.
Even those of us who are new who know nothing
of him can sense the power emanating from him.
We have come from all over North Texas to see him.
Some of us have come from Oklahoma, some of us from Arkansas,
a few of us from Louisiana, and a couple from New Mexico.
We own his books, his tapes, his holy water, his anointing oil.
We know that he is an instrument of God's well, and we have come
because we need miracles.
We need jobs, we need good grades, we need green cards,
we need American passports.
We need our parents to understand that we are Americans.
We need our children to understand they are Nigerians.
We need new kidneys, new lungs, new limbs, new hearts.
We need to forget the harsh rigidity of our lives,
to remember why we believe, to be beloved and to hope.
We need miracles.
I remember as the two men help him to the front,
and in this charged atmosphere everything about him makes sense,
even the irony of his blindness, his inability to see the wonders
that God performs through his hand.
His blindness is a confirmation of his power.
It's the burden he bears on our behalf.
His residence in a space
of perpetual darkness has only sharpened his spiritual vision
over the years.
He can see more than we will ever see.
When the old man reaches the pulpit his attendants turn him
around so he's facing us.
He's nearly bald.
A few white hairs cling precariously to the sides of his shining head,
and he's wearing a large pair of black sunglasses.
A bulky white robe falls from his neck to the floor.
Beneath he's wearing a flowing white agreda [phonetic].
He remains quiet for a few moments.
We can feel the anticipation building breath
by breath in the air.
He smiles then he begins to hum a haunting discordant melody.
The band leader tries to find the tune among the keys of his piano,
but the old man slaps the air
and the band leader allows the searching music to die.
He continues to hum and we listen to his music.
Suddenly he turns to our left and points
to a space somewhere on the ceiling.
I demand you to leave this place he screams,
and we know there is something malevolent in our midst.
We search the area his sightless eyes are probing somewhere
in the open space above our heads.
We can't see anything, but we raise our voices
in response to the prophet's call.
Soon our voices are a cacophonous spew of Eurobond English, shouting
and singing, spitting and humming, and the prophet
from Nigeria speaks once more.
We must continue to pray ladies and gentlemen.
There are forces here that do not wish for this
to be a successful service.
If we are successful in our prayers that means they have failed.
They do not wish to fail.
So we cannot expect that our prayers will simply come true,
we must fight.
We make our spew thicker.
We throw in more screams and prayers
until we can no longer distinguish one voice from another.
Finally, after several long minutes, the prophet raises his hands.
We are finished.
It is done.
And we begin to celebrate, but our celebration lacks conviction.
We haven't yet received what we came here for.
The prophet sways to the beat of our tepid praise.
The man on his left stands and dabs his forehead.
The prophet clears his throat and reaches forward with his right hand
until he finds the microphone.
He grabs it, leans into it.
I have been in the U.S.
for two months now he begins rhythmically moving his head left
and right.
I have been to New York, to Delaware, to Philadelphia,
to Washington, to Florida, to Atlanta, to Minnesota, to Kansas,
to Oklahoma and now finally I have arrived here.
We cheer loudly.
I will visit Houston and San Antonio before I leave here,
and then I will go to Nevada and then California.
I will travel all over this country
for the next month visiting Nigerians across this great land,
but I feel in my spirit that the most powerful blessings will
happen here.
We holler and whoop and hug each other for as words of confirmation
of the feelings we've been carrying within ourselves
since the beginning of the service.
The reason I am saying that the most power blessings will happen here is
because God has told me that you have been the most faithful
of His flock in the U.S. You haven't forgotten your people back home.
You haven't forgotten your parents and siblings who have sent you here,
who pray for you every day.
You've remained disciplined and industrious
in this place, the land of temptation.
And for all your hard work, for your faithfulness,
God is going to reward you today.
Some of us raise our hands and praise the Father.
A few of us bow our heads, a few of us begin to weep with happiness.
But in order for your blessings to be complete you will have
to pray today like you have never prayed before.
You will have to believe today like you have never believed before.
The only barrier to your blessing is the threshold of your belief.
Today the only thing I'll be talking about is belief.
If I have learned anything through my visit to this country it is
that belief is only possible for those you have dollars.
I am here to tell you that belief comes before dollars.
If you have belief then the dollars will follow.
Silence again.
We search our hearts for the feelings of doubt that reside there.
Many of us have to cut through thickets
of doubt before we can find our own hearts again.
We use the silence to uproot our doubt,
and we pray that our hearts will remain pure
for the remainder of the service.
Let me tell you great miracles will be performed here today.
People will be talking about this day for years and years to come.
And the only thing that will prevent you
from receiving your share is your unbelief.
At this moment he begins to cough violently,
and the man on his right rushes forward with a handkerchief.
He places the handkerchief in the prophet's hand,
and the prophet coughs into it for a few seconds
and then he wipes his mouth.
We wait anxiously for him to recover.
He laughs.
I am old man now.
You will have to excuse me.
Just pray for me.
We will pray for you prophet we yell in response.
Yes, just pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.
Thank you prophet, amen, amen!
And because you have been faithful God will continue to bless you.
He will anoint you, He will appoint you.
Amen! Now, God is telling me that there is someone here
who is struggling with something big,
a handicap that has lasted for many, many years.
We fall quiet because we know he is talking about us.
He is telling me that you have been suffering in silence
with this problem and that you have come
to accept the problem as part of yourself.
We nod in agreement.
How many indignities have we accepted
as a natural part of our lives?
The purpose of my presence in your midst is to let you know
that you should no longer accept the bad things
that have become normal in your lives.
America is trying to teach you to accept your failures, your setbacks.
Now is the time to reject them, to claim the success
that is rightfully yours.
His sunglasses fall from his face,
and we see the brilliant white orbs quivering frantically
in their sockets, two full moons that have forgotten their roles
in the drama of the universe.
His attendants went to the floor to recover them,
and together they place the glasses back on his ancient face.
The prophet continues as if nothing happened.
I do not perform these miracles because I wish to be celebrated.
I perform these miracles because God works through me,
and He has given me the grace to show all of you what is possible
in your physical and spiritual lives.
And now God is telling me, you, come up here.
You remain standing because you don't know to whom he is referring.
You, you, you come up here.
We begin to walk forward shyly, slowly.
I turn around suddenly and I realize
that I'm no longer a part of the whole.
I notice then that the lights are too bright, and the muggy air
in the room settles fog-like on my face.
Now I'm in the aisle, and I see the blind old man pointing at me.
You, young man, come here, come up here for your miracle.
I just stand there, and I feel something red
and frightening bubbling within me.
I stand there as the prophet points at me,
and I feel hands pushing me forcing me to the front.
I don't have enough time to wrap up my unbelief and tuck it away.
Then I'm standing on the stage next to the prophet.
The prophet moves closer to me and places a hand on top of my head.
He presses down until I'm kneeling before him.
He rocks my head back and forth.
Young man you have great things ahead of you, but I can sense
that something is ailing you.
There is some disease, some disorder that has colonized your mind,
and it is threatening to colonize your soul.
Tell me, are you having problems breathing?
I find myself surprised at his indirect reference to my asthma.
But now the doubts are bombarding me from every direction.
Maybe he can hear me wheezing.
It's always harder for me to breathe when I'm nervous,
and I'm certainly nervous now.
Yes sir, I reply.
Ah, you not need to confirm.
I now have a fix on our soul, and the Holy Spirit is telling me
about the healings you need.
He brushes his fingers down my face and my glasses fall to the ground.
Everything becomes dim.
How long have you been wearing glasses, my son?
Since I was five, sir.
And tell me how bad is your vision?
Really bad.
I have the thickest lenses in school.
They kind of make my eyes seem like two giant fish gloating
in blurry separate ponds.
It's bad, sir.
The prophet removes his hand from my head, and I can feel him thrashing
about as if he's swimming in air
until an attendant thrusts a microphone into his groping hand.
As you guys can see I know a little about eye problems, he booms.
And although it sounds like he's attempting a joke no one laughs,
and his words crash against the back wall and wash
over us a second time and then a third.
And no one this young should be wearing glasses that are so thick.
The congregation cheers in approval.
I hear a whispered yes prophet.
I can already tell that you have become too comfortable
with your handicap he roars, and that is one
of the main problems in this country.
Handicaps have become normal here.
I see the many heads nodding in response.
People accept that they are damaged in some fashion,
and instead of asking God
to intervene they accept the fact that they are broken.
More head nodding, more amens.
Let me tell you something, he continues.
He's sweating profusely, some of it dribbles onto my head.
My scalp is burning.
God gives us these elements so that we are humbled,
so that we are forced to build a relationship with Him.
That is why all of us in some way or another are damaged.
And the reason they have come to accept handicaps in this country is
because these Americans do not want to build a relationship with God.
They want to remain forever disconnected from His grace.
You can already see what is happening to this country.
I think I'll end there.
Read the story.
Thank you so much.
[Applause]
>> Tope, I, too, would like to welcome you --
>> Thank you.
>> -- to the Library of Congress.
I, too, have noticed you in the audience
for almost all of our speakers.
And little did I know that we had an emerging literary giant among us.
>> Kind of you.
And there's a couple more out there I'm sure.
>> So we thank you for joining us today.
We'd like to learn a little bit more about Tope and about your writing.
When did you actually start writing?
Why did you turn to the short story as a genre?
>> Yeah, so a lot of this starts for me at Oxford.
Because right before I went to Oxford I was at Morehouse,
and I was committed to doing as well academically as I could
because I have a very, very Nigerian father
who had come from Nigeria in the 70s.
And I had these creative impulses my entire life.
I sang a lot, singing was incredibly important
to me when I was growing up.
And the arts were as well, reading, writing, that sort of thing.
And my father made it clear that he wanted me
to do very well in college.
And so when I went to college I basically thought
if I pursued my passion for fiction or for writing
that I would distract myself from some
of the academic things I needed to do.
So I spent most of my time
in college studying really, really hard.
And I did some speech and debate as well, so I was a debater
and that was my kind of lone extracurricular activity
for most of my college career.
And then I graduated from Morehouse and I went to Oxford.
And the first thing I noticed I was really nervous about going
to Oxford for a number of reasons.
One because I knew I was the only person who looked like me
who was part of my [inaudible] class.
At least the only guy who looked like me.
And I was sensitive as well to the idea that I didn't know a great deal
about -- that I emerging from a kind of lower class background,
a working class background.
And many of peers both from the states and at Oxford didn't emerge
from that kind of background.
And so I remember vividly we were at one of these functions
and we were having conversations and cocktails or something.
And people were talking about all of these contemporary writers
that I had never heard about.
They were talking about Philip Roth, Betty Smith, Geno Diaz,
and I had not a clue what they were talking about.
So the nerd in me promptly went back to my room and sort
of bought a number of books, and I began to read
so that the next time we had these conversations I could show off a
little bit.
And what happened is that I fell completely into the fiction.
And it was really a profound experience for me because I think
in reading that work I discovered my own kind of passion again
for writing and for dealing with my story and the stories of people
who are like me through fiction.
I guess with respect to the short story my first novel had these
grand ambitions.
And I am somewhat hesitant to admit this in public,
but my first story was this kind of sprawling epic that was
like 600 pages long that I basically actually sacrificed most
of my time writing my second thesis at Oxford writing this novel
because I was convinced it would launch me into the stratosphere.
And I got a job at Google afterwards,
and I remember one time I was like traveling somewhere,
I was reading this novel, and I was
like this is possibly the worst thing that's ever been written.
And so I kind of shelved it, stopped thinking about it for a while.
And because I was keen to kind of understand how to compose a story
and the kind of craft elements of composing a story I went
to the short story and I began to read them.
And the one thing to my father's credit that I gained from being
in college and studying hard is that I'm really good at studying,
and I'm really disciplined as well.
And so if it takes me sitting down and reading the same story
like 17 times to get what the writer is trying to do
and how the writer is doing that I'm willing to do that.
And so I just purchased a number of short story collections
and I began to diagram them.
Like when does the dialogue begin, when does the scene begin,
how is the character entering the room,
how is the character leaving the room.
And I basically sat by myself for three months, and I did this
like every day for hours and hours and hours until I was able
to in my mind have a number of short story structures
which is really helpful so that when I want to compose a story I am able
to kind of intuitively reach back into my mind and rely on one
of these kind of templates that I've read any number of times.
>> Now, in the Washington Post profile it's mentioned
that you also write poetry.
>> Yes, yeah.
>> Do you still do so and --
>> Another painful conversation potentially.
So what happened was that when I started
to read fiction a lot I noticed that a lot
of my favorite fiction writers are poets.
And so I was kind of intimidated by contemporary poetry
because I remember trying to do iambic pentameter
like in high school, and I didn't know what my teacher was talking
about so I got a B on that one because I just kind
of wasn't paying attention.
And so I thought, well, I want to write like these people write
so let me start reading poetry.
And I started by reading people
like Saul Williams because I loved hip hop.
So I thought, well, I need a bridge point between hip hop
and the poetry world so I read Saul Williams, Patricia Smith,
and I read Rita Dove and Natasha Trethewey.
Then I started reading Kay Ryan, Mark Strand,
Charles Simic, Ted Kooser.
And I just completely lost myself in that world.
There was this rough period which is referenced in the post article
where nobody would hire me when I arrived in DC after working
at Goggle for about 18 months.
And so I was basically living on my savings, growing my bohemian beard
and just writing lots and lots and lots of poetry.
And my aspiration at that point was to release a book of poems.
And so I was just writing in my room kind of invisible to the world.
And not a single person would accept the poems
and I sent them everywhere.
And so I think I started writing prose again in 2010 as a kind
of concession to the idea
that it would be profitable to get my poetry out.
And I initially conceived of my fiction as a kind of Trojan horse.
So like people would accept the fiction
and then I'd throw a couple poems at them.
But I've been working on the novel so hard for the past three years
that I haven't written as much poetry of late.
But I still read a great deal.
Like Tomas Transtromer who is probably my favorite poet.
It's somebody I read every day.
I take his book called The Half Finished Heaven which was translated
by Robert Bly, I take that to work with me and back every day,
and I read a couple poems from that collection.
>> And now about Miracle.
What really inspired this work and how did this work develop?
Just tell us about Miracle.
>> Sure. It's really surreal being on this stage talking about Miracle
because it's a story that came --
once I tried it the second time it came very easily to me.
And I can be a bit of a nerd so that when I finished
at least the initial draft of my novel I had about twelve stories.
So my novel is a novel in stories, and I had twelve stories
that I was really happy with.
And I kind of went through each story and I thought
about a literary journal, and I thought, well, I'll send this story
to this literary journal.
And when I was thinking about my stories I thought that a couple
of the other stories would hit before Miracle did.
But I sent Miracle to Transition Magazine which is based at Harvard.
And I sent it to Transition for a very particular reason
because Transition started in Africa,
and it then moved across the Atlantic.
It was edited in Uganda, and then [inaudible] started editing it
in Nigeria.
And then it went through a period
where it wasn't being produced or edited.
And then [inaudible], Jr., resurrected it at Harvard.
And so I thought that the kind of trajectory of the magazine,
here is my family's trajectory in starting in Africa
and making its way across the Atlantic.
And so I thought they are uniquely positioned to get this story.
So I sent it to them and they liked it.
They didn't really edit much of anything.
I will say one thing about the editing process again
to any writers out there.
I had a massive preamble to Miracle before.
And so this was when I was trying to account for the idea that I needed
to kind of describe setting in depth, I needed to describe some
of these characters in depth.
And so I had a kind of preamble and then the story itself.
I didn't think of the preamble as a preamble,
before it was part of the story.
And the editor at Miracle said, well,
I don't think you need any of this.
And she was right about that.
They didn't edit a word in the second half of it.
But I think it made the story more powerful.
I think the process is akin to kind of peeling a shell off a nut
or something or a peanut.
And the actual story was pulsing inside.
And so that once they accepted it and then it kind of took off.
It was really weird.
So I'm blessed and it's amazing, but I'm still kind
of reeling from it a little bit.
>> But Miracle is described, it's described
as an African diasporic story.
Is it really an African diasporic story or a more universal story?
>> I think it's the latter, yeah,
and I appreciate that description of it.
But I am also in the story trying to consciously evoke diaspora
by naming the places where the prophet has been.
He's been through all of these places to the east of them
and he's going to the west after he departs.
By evoking where the people in the church are from as well.
I'm trying consciously or subconsciously, however,
to inform the reader that there is this network of Nigerians
across the states who are sometimes connected, sometimes not,
but are still interested in ensuring
that they can somehow make their dreams come true.
And the function of the prophet in this story is that he's the one
who can kind of bring these people together.
Whereas in other parts of their lives these people might be at odds
with each or might not even interact with each other.
When he enters the church space they instantly become cognizant
of the fact that they are together, they're in this together
and that they need to at least in the preponderance
of the story pray together in order to make their dreams come true.
>> Okay. And I believe that that Miracle is a part of a larger novel?
>> It is, yeah.
>> And so can you touch on the larger novel that you have in mind
or where you're taking this?
>> Sure, yeah.
I've been working on this for the past four years as I mentioned.
And it's a novel in stories.
And I chose that structure for a particular reason.
It's so funny when I was initially --
I've become somewhat of a cynic since I won the Caine Prize
because I can still remember vividly like sending my stories
out to people and nobody wanted to read them.
And they were like this is too weird and [inaudible]
and stop sending me stories.
And then I won the Caine Prize.
And I kid you not the first agent
that wrote me back upon winning the Caine Prize is the first agent
that I sent my stories to who had rejected me in 20 minutes.
And at some point somewhere I will read the copies.
The first copy she's like I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense.
The next one she's like, you know, this is unconventional
but I really understand what's going on here.
So there's this kind of sudden transition that happened.
And so I say that to say that my novel is somewhat unconventional.
But I think in writing the novel it's informed in some way
by the academic stuff I was doing when I was at Oxford which isn't
to say it's an academic thing by any stretch of the imagination
but that I'm interested in identity construction.
And I have been in my life many, many people.
When I was growing up, I grew up in Utah,
I spent my first 13 years of life in Utah.
So I didn't really meet another African-American until I was
in the sixth grade, his name was Jamal [assumed spelling].
And I remember vividly when Jamal entered the classroom
because I wanted to be like Jamal, and I wanted him to teach me how
to be Black because I didn't know how to be Black.
And so Jamal was my boy.
And then we moved to Texas.
And so I had been learning from Jamal how to be a Black person.
Then I went to Texas, and it turned out he had taught me some
of the wrong lessons because I was out of my depth.
But then I went through this period where I was obsessed with hip hop,
and this was a way for me to kind of ingratiate myself
with the Black people I was meeting.
And so I knew every song that was on the radio.
I knew every lyric that Tupac had ever uttered at one point.
And so I had become for all intents and purposes a kind
of African-American I think at least in the traditional way of sort
of thinking about that term.
And then I went to Morehouse.
Partly, again, I was chasing my identity.
And at Morehouse I think I became more comfortable with the kind
of various parts of my identity.
And by the time I arrived at Oxford I was completely comfortable
with who I was.
And so I wanted to write a novel that kind
of in some ways mirrored that trajectory.
How a single person can be many, many people.
And somebody who is the product of multiple identities seeks to kind
of brave the identities into one single thing.
And so I wanted to structure the novel to reflect that as well.
>> Can you speak to us about contemporary literature
in continental Africa and in the African diaspora?
And where do you see you fitting in
or your work fitting into this scenario?
>> Yeah, it's a really important question.
I think the last week in the New York Times I've seen articles
about Tedra Cole [phonetic], Chimamanda Adichie,
Helen [inaudible], and I was at Politics and Prose two days ago,
and I was kind of perusing the best sellers, the bookshelves,
and there were so many African writers featured prominently.
This is an incredibly exciting time to be a writer of African descent,
a member of the African diaspora.
But I think one can look at this two ways.
One, one can look at it in the way that an agent
who wrote me two days ago looks at it which is to say
that she emailed me and she said I'm really excited
about Novales [phonetic] book, and I thought it was a great book,
and I want to read your work because there's a space
for your kind of work right now.
And I didn't like that approach very much
because in my view the implication was
that I was writing what Novales is writing.
And so I think it's incredibly ironic
that Chimamanda Adichie is known for this video where she talks
about this kind of danger of the single story.
I think in some ways we might be entering the era of the danger
of the single writer in a way.
I think in some ways Chimamanda has become sort of the defacto voice.
I think she's incredibly talented, I admire her work a great deal.
But I do think it's important to think of the writers
who are emerging from the diaspora in Africa as well
as individual people who are writing
about individual and important things.
And I am not attempting to write like Novales
or Chimamanda or any of these people.
And I think sometimes when people are thinking about this
from a market perspective they think somebody like this book
by Chimamanda so let me get this person to get to write just like her
and be her kind of male doppelganger or something.
I'm not particularly interested in doing that.
That said I think there is something to be said for the idea
that so many African writers are garnering praise, both critical
and popular praise from their work.
And so I think that means that in some ways people are, one,
excited about where Africa is going to be in the 21st century.
And I think, two, it says as well that people are starting to think
about Africans in the diaspora and from Africa's human beings as well.
And they're learning about themselves
from the fiction they're reading which is to say that it's universal
to use a word that you used before.
And that is the most amazing development.
Because what is says is that I think by the end
of the century we will stop thinking about Africans as the people
who are sitting on our television sets with big stomachs and flies all
over them but people who are a part of this human enterprise,
and I think that's an incredibly important place to me.
>> Alright, thank you.
What are some of the themes that are expressed
by what I call the third generation post nationalist group
of African writers?
And do you think these themes will continue, will new themes develop,
but what are some of the themes or the emerging themes
that African writers are putting forth?
>> I think you see maybe three or four themes in a lot
of the books that I just mentioned.
We Need New Names, Open City, Ghana Must Go, Americana, all these books.
I think that, one, they're kind of obsessed by identity,
and that's my story that is explicitly kind of about identity,
Miracle that is, and a lot of the work that I write is about identity.
And that's about like who am I in this place
when my parents are telling me I'm one thing,
the media is telling me I'm another thing,
my friends are telling me a third thing.
I don't know where I fit in this equation, that's one theme.
I think placeness as well is a theme, this idea that something
that I've experienced -- it's always an awkward conversation to have
where someone says where are you from
and I don't quite know how to answer that question.
I'm like do you want the paragraph?
Because I was born in Utah, etc., etc. But I feel like I need
to say all those things because if I say my parents are
from Nigeria people say, oh, you're Nigerian, 419, right?
And so they automatically have one assumption.
Some people got that.
And if I say that I'm from Utah people think another thing entirely.
And so I kind of do feel the need to say I'm from this place
and this place and this place and this place.
And what I find when I go through the process of doing that is
that some people don't want to go through --
their eyes glaze over after the second place I name.
And so I think that's another theme that comes
up in a lot of this writing.
And the third is how it can be possible to love
when you're struggling to love yourself.
And I think Americana is in some way obsessed with this topic as well.
And that's something I certainly struggled
with because I didn't have somebody to kind
of look towards when I was growing up.
I was convinced that I was inadequate for a very long time.
And I remember when I was growing up my father insisted
that we watch the news in order to kind
of learn how to become Americans.
Because we were growing up in Utah he was convinced
that one reason he wasn't doing well was
because he had an American accent.
And so he insisted that we learn how
to speak the way Tom Brokaw spoke or Peter Jennings spoke.
And I wanted to rebel against my father, and so I saw Sidney Poitier
and I decided I wanted to be like him.
And so I began to model myself after this guy.
But even in the midst of that I was searching
for somebody I could relate to who would say
to me it's okay to be who you are.
And I didn't ever encounter somebody who said that to me.
And so I think some of the fiction as well as trying to kind
of situate these multi-hyphened individuals in America
and Africa and in the world.
>> Okay, great.
And my final question to you is just what do you think is the future
for African writers?
And more importantly how does African writing
or can African writing gain greater international recognition?
>> I think I have two responses to this.
First I would say that I'm incredibly happy to be a member
of this kind of up and coming generation of writers
because I think that we've spoken about Chinua Achebe,
that generation of writers.
There are many, many more obviously in that generation.
But what they were doing with the essential work
of establishing the fact that Africans were bright,
incredibly creative and intelligent people.
And so their texts are a part of the canon
because they established beyond any measure of doubt that we can contend
in this kind of writing game as it were.
Now we have the privilege of playing jazz against their classical.
They set up the classical standards.
I can rip a bit on what they've done, and so I feel incredibly happy
that I have the ability to do that, and that makes me happy.
And that's what I aspire to do in my fiction is to be as jazzy
as possible, play a lot of blue notes.
And the second way I respond to it is that I think a lot of people
in the same way that people were excited
about Indian American fiction say in the early 2000s, even today a lot
of Indian American fiction is doing well.
I think a lot of times people pick up a book
and they see either their parents' journey reflected
in the stories they read, the way their parents
if you're a white American who's been in America
for a very long time perhaps
in the interpreter maladies you see the struggle
that your great-grandparents had in coming across the Atlantic.
Or you see the way that this writer sees America and seeing
that reflection of yourself and perhaps you learn more
about the way you're perceived.
But all of this is about the essential I think part
of what fiction is about is ensuring
that we can connect to another human being.
And I think the fact that so many people are seeing themselves
reflected in the books of people
who don't resemble them typically means that, again, we are beginning
to understand and think about Africans as fellow human beings.
And I think that's, again,
an incredibly important thing moving forward.
>> Okay. Tope, thank you very much.
>> Thank you so much for this opportunity.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
We will have a Q and A at this point.
>> Hi, my name is Dijana [phonetic].
How do I [inaudible] about myself.
Okay, you guys don't care.
>> We do care.
>> Oh, okay.
I go to George Washington University School of [inaudible].
I had a question and you mentioned it earlier the fact of [inaudible].
My concern and I just cracked the code [inaudible] with my parents.
>> Congratulations.
>> Thank you.
>> Tell me your secret afterwards please.
>> Over time I've learned how to understand [inaudible].
I'd like to understand [inaudible] but I can't speak it.
I know my parents [inaudible] dialect.
I understand my parents [inaudible].
And my concern with them is this constant kind of --
it's said in jest but you're not Nigerian
because you don't understand the language
and you don't speak the language so, therefore,
you are not one of us, right?
And that concern especially with not only the speaking of the language
but also where you were born is this weird assumption
that you had some kind of say in where you were born.
If you are born in America your parents have to have been in America
for a reason you don't want to talk about in
that generation for some reason.
They have to be in America and you're born here and for you
to be raised here they also have
to make the active decision to keep you here, right?
And that assumption that you are not one of us [inaudible] someone
who was born on the continent and comes to America in America
or we would go to Nigeria itself really troubles me.
And I wonder what your thoughts on that are
because it just always confused me.
Why would you blame me for something that I didn't have.
>> Yeah, it's a really, really great question.
It's something I've dealt with a number of times.
To give one example I mentioned before that I went to Nigeria
for the first time since I was three months in November of 2013.
And so another reason I was fearful/nervous about this trip was
because I knew I would experience what you're talking
about which is one tangible example of this is that I call me Tope
in the states, Tope, Tope, Tope.
And that's the way you're supposed to pronounce it.
And so when I was in Nigeria the first thing that people often said
to me is that you don't know who you are
because you are calling yourself Tope, Tope,
you are calling yourself Tope.
And so they were really going in on my in Nigeria about that.
And I needed to understand --
and I think you said something really important.
Like you said my parents went to America for a reason.
And I am not responsible for that decision.
I am who I am, I'm a product
of where I was raised [inaudible] what I was exposed to growing up.
And so I endeavored to explain that to people like, you know.
And I think sometimes what's actually happening,
and this is what I discovered is that there is a fear
that I have come back and I'm too high for my britches and I think
that I'm something that I'm not.
I always try to say that I am proud of who I am.
I am proud of the Nigerian part of me.
Again, when I was growing up my parents didn't really insist
that I speak [inaudible] or Igbo
because they didn't want me to have an accent.
And so they just basically said speak English better
than anyone else speaks English.
That's what my parents wanted me to do.
And so here I am as that person who has endeavored to learn a lot
and now I'm being castigated for it in some ways.
And so I take the ribbing because if you're
in Nigeria you will get ribbed.
It doesn't matter where you're from or who you are.
You take it, you smile, you try to give it back and try
to move forward in this life.
But I think there's something else
from a generational perspective as well.
There are so many Nigerian Americans,
so many of us who were either born here in the states or were born
in Nigeria and then traveled over the Atlantic shortly afterwards.
And I think that literature that's emerging or whether it's music,
literature, movies, art, all of this is trying to situate us in the world
and to say that we are important.
One strand of thinking goes that we're Afropolitans,
and I don't necessarily subscribe to that kind of thinking.
But certainly it's an attempt to capture who we are
and where we're coming from.
And I think that definitional work still needs to be done.
But I suspect that in the next 10 to 20 years we'll be much closer
to kind of defining ourselves if only for the fact that it's going
to be a lot of work out there
and our children will be even more confused I'm sure.
But the process will continue.
Thanks for the question.
>> I want to make a comment first, and that is to say
that you're describing your quest
for discovering your Blackness reminds me a lot
of our current President quest for Blackness
and how he describes that [inaudible].
But I did want to ask about Miracle in to say you refer to it as fiction
but how much of it is actually autobiographic?
>> So I refer to it as this spiritual autobiography which is
to say I did go to those kind of churches when I started going
to when I joined the church when I was about 13.
And it was a shock for me because I didn't know, one,
that such things existed in the states.
I had never even thought about that.
And, two, it was the first time that I'd ever seen my parents comfortable
in the U.S. The moment we entered the church something
in my father's face left, and he looked younger and happier
and more excited about life than I usually saw him.
And we were entering a place where there was a large Nigerian flag
on the back of the church.
There was Nigerian food.
You could smell the Nigerian food in the back for post service.
People were teasing each other.
And so it was kind of my first entry point into Nigeria,
and that definitely left a major imprint on my mind.
And there were prophets who came to Nigeria every now and then claiming
that they could do all manner of things.
I might have once or two feigned a miracle
for the purpose of the audience.
But that said the exact incident that happens
in the story didn't happen in my life.
And that's why I said at the outset that I think it's more about my kind
of fear and nervousness about going back to Nigeria
and about being accepted by the community.
Because the story is really about a child who takes a decision
to do something for the greater good.
He thinks in that moment, look, maybe I can't see better,
but if I say I can the way they expect these people will leave
with hope.
And he comes to recognize that because he recognizes
that there's a kind of desperation.
They need for this to happen because the stakes here are incredibly high.
When the story was short listed last year a lot
of people criticized the story, some people did anyway.
I got some hate [inaudible] on the back of it.
And they said that the story wasn't very African because it took place
in the states, and/or they said that the church narrative was kind
of conventional narrative.
But I think it's different because it's taking place in the states.
And so because it's taking place in the states you have a bunch
of immigrants who are desperate for this miracle to happen
because the stakes are incredibly high.
They have come to American to make it.
They aren't making it the way they want to make it.
And so if this prophet is coming from Nigeria saying
that this miracle represents your dreams, your hopes
and fears it suddenly becomes much more than I can see better
at the end of the service.
The child recognizes that, and he says, well, if I, you know,
take the fall for this then people will leave with hope.
And that's more important than whether I can see or not.
And in that way he learns to see the broader community
and his place in it.
And certainly that's the way that I've come
to understand my place in the community.
So that part of it is autobiographical.
>> Thank you.
I'm [inaudible] and the question I have is when I meet a lot
of African immigrants in particular, immigrants in general,
I find that we're very talented when it comes to the arts, writing,
singing, all of these things.
But there's almost a fear of allowing it to manifest
because of what our parents think.
Typical Africans you should be a lawyer, you should be a doctor,
you should be a nurse, an engineer, these kinds of things.
But [inaudible] myself to subscribe to that.
So I was wondering what sort of words of advice
and encouragement you have
for Africans [inaudible] let me come to life.
>> Sure. I would say two things.
One, I would say that examine the biographies
of every kind of prominent writer now.
If you have Chimamanda she was originally going to med school.
[Inaudible] was in med school.
[Inaudible] was at Oxford thinking about going to law school.
So you have a number of people that they decided to focus
on their creative pursuits.
So it does take a kind of courage.
In my case, and before I even say my case,
I had this wonderful experience in the back of the Caine Prize
to travel to various places, and every single place I've been
at the end of a reading some African will come up to me,
always whispering, will say I'm a writer or I'm a painter, right?
They're whispering.
They're keeping [inaudible].
So I think it's amazing that there is so many of us
who have this kind of compulsion.
And I can relate to this because I as studying very hard for the LSAT
when I was in my second year at Oxford.
And then I decided to take a position at Google.
And my thinking was I'll work at Google for two years
and then I'll go to law school.
I knew I wasn't going to do that but I needed to tell myself that.
And then when I left Google they gave me a bonus.
I said peace, I went to the states, and when I was
in the states I wasn't getting a job.
And my father was calling me every day and saying this is a sign
from God you need to go to law school, this is a sign.
And I thought it was time that I needed to write.
So we stopped talking for a while because I started writing.
And my father did not understand what I was doing at all.
And we just stopped talking about the job situation entirely.
And he was kind of disappointed with me until July 9,
2013 when I called him and said I won the Caine Prize.
And the next day I called him
and he said I have been telling you your entire life
to write and now you are writing.
And I'd become his thing.
So I would say that if you feel this compulsion inside you have
to follow it.
You just have to follow it even if you have some fear
in the interim because I certainly did.
But it came to a point where I could not life or think
or breathe if I wasn't writing.
And so I said this is a part of who I am, let me just acknowledge it
and do it and move forward.
Thanks.
>> I think that's a great place to end.
>> Thank you.
My name is Bernadette Paolo.
Well, your father should know that there are 60,000 lawyers
in Washington, DC [inaudible] very good recommendation.
And there are very few writers like you.
But it does beg the question immigrants when they come here
and their family they want their children to succeed.
And succeeding means earning lots of money.
>> Yes.
>> And so you wont the Caine Award and now you're on your way.
But for writers how does that manifest?
I mean what do you do to sustain yourself after this?
Do you teach in a university?
I've often wondered whether awards such as these translate
to monetary gain in the future.
Thank you.
>> That's a really great question.
I came here in my work garb obviously,
and I'm running back to work after this.
So I'm still doing things to support myself as a writer,
and that's just the reality of it.
I didn't think I could become a writer until I got that bonus
from Google and I had some money to set aside and sort of sit back
and write for an extended period of time.
I think, one, teaching in the academy
or being an academic is one way of going about it.
But I'm afraid that a lot of the fiction that emerges
from that world is becoming kind of the same, either kind of obsessed
with academic issues and/or it's writing
about the same things in the same way.
So I've been trying my best to kind of --
since this is for posterity I am happy to work at any institution
of higher learning in the world if that happens.
But I do think at least in the short term I'm keen to kind of stay away
from that space because I want to develop in myself before I kind
of attach myself to some institution like that.
But, yeah, I think it's becoming more difficulty especially in an age
where everything is available by the internet.
Content perhaps isn't as valuable for its own sake as it was before.
Content becomes valuable insofar as you're able to attract advertising.
That's always been the case, perhaps it's more the case now.
And so I don't think about any of these things.
I just write, and I hope that there's an audience.
And I suspect that if there's an audience that I will find my way.
That's the only kind of response that I can have.
Thank you so much.
>> Thanks for much for a terrific reading and Q and A. Thanks to all
of you for your wonderful questions.
And we do have copies of the Caine Prize anthology in the back.
I'm sure they would be happy to sign copies.
So I hope you buy it and I hope you come to our next conversation
with African poets and writers soon.
Thanks so much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.