The Heroism of Ordinary People: An Interview with Helon Habila

Thanksgiving day in America... a cornbread dressing in the tradition of my Louisiana grandmother is in the oven and a pumpkin pie is done and cooling on the counter. I'm going to my advisor's house later for dinner to celebrate with some other African students. My interview with Helon Habila was published this week. I am thankful:

This is the 1000 word (ie. gutted) version of an interview with Helon Habila I conducted via telephone last Tuesday before he left for his book tour in Nigeria. (The easy part was transcribing. I spent hours cutting it to get it to 1000 words... ughh...) The story of the interview itself is a longer one, which perhaps I will post about sometime, but Habila was one of the most gracious people I have met via telephone.... The following was published in Leadership this past Monday, 19 November 2007. Unfortunately, the link is no longer up, but this is how it appeared in the newspaper. (In an interesting aside, my dad met him today after the reading at the University of Jos.) Perhaps I'll post the entire interview on my other blog when I have a chance to edit it properly; it will be published in the journal Abiku early next year. But here is the short version:

"The Heroism of Ordinary People: An Interview with Helon Habila"

Award winning novelist Helon Habila grew up in Gombe State. After earning his BA in English at the University of Jos in 1995, he taught at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi. Moving to Lagos in 1999, he became the arts editor at the Vanguard and wrote a novel, published as Waiting for An Angel in 2002, which won the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2001 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2003. Habila has published stories, articles, and poems in journals world-wide and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia. After a stint as the first Chinua Achebe fellow at Bard College in New York, Habila took a position at George Mason University where he teaches creative writing. He is in Nigeria from November 17 to November 24 to promote his second novel Measuring Time. In this interview on behalf of LEADERSHIP, he speaks with Talatu-Carmen [my real name used in the publication; i suppose i should stop this ridiculous attempt to protect my identity--pretty much everybody who reads this blog knows who I am], a PhD student at a university in the USA, about his writing.

Talatu-Carmen: I was wondering what your creative process is like. Where do your stories come from?

HABILA: I really cannot say exactly, but I am really inspired by books. Sometimes I write in reaction to books I have read. Then there is also my experience: Measuring Time has a lot of that—my experiences as a child growing up. There was a time when I realised that I wanted to write about my hometown. From that moment whatever I did I viewed it through the eyes of fiction, thinking of how to represent the people I met, the things I did, the places I saw. I was thinking of them as already a part of my book that I was going to write. I was going to write Measuring Time even before I started writing Waiting for an Angel.

In both of your novels the act of writing itself seems to take on a political significance. What, to you, is the political responsibility of the writer?

Well, quite a lot, especially as an African writer. I think there is that tradition which started from the first generation of African writers. They were writing against the whole colonial system, which was very repressive, very racist, very dictatorial. They actually used to have congresses where they would discuss the best way to write fiction in a way that would address the political issues of the day. Even before that, in traditional African society, from the folk tales, there’s always a kind of moral lesson, a kind of didacticism that is seen as an aesthetic part of that story. So politics more or less becomes an aesthetic in African fiction. There are no boundaries between what is purely political and what is art. Art becomes politics and politics becomes art. So I think people like me who find themselves in that tradition, and have that temperament, that awareness of what is going on, who feel that things shouldn’t be the way they are, have a duty to speak out. It is tradition and it’s also a matter of temperament, because there are definitely writers in Africa who don’t write about politics. They write art for art’s sake, or whatever you want to call it.

Could you say more about the influences of Hausa literature on your writing?

Definitely. I grew up reading the translation of One Thousand and One Nights in Hausa and the works of Abubakar Imam, Magana Jari Ce, Ruwan Bagaja, etc. So there is that magical or folkloric representation of reality, which is very different from pure realism. I was definitely influenced by that. And before that I was also influenced by folktales told to me by women in the compound. So, these Hausa books I discovered later were almost a continuation of that story tradition with the magical elements, spirit figures and things like that.

Both of your novels deal with history. In Measuring Time, the character Mamo wants to write a biographical history. Is this one of your own goals?

Definitely, I think so. Because so much that we have is fast fading away and being taken over by the modern, I see writing itself as cultural conservation. That is exactly what Mamo’s project is, conserving the history of people…, because they were misrepresented by the [missionary] Reverend Drinkwater. If you represent what has been misrepresented, you are putting the records right. And that is what history is supposed be. Taking moments of glory, and also ordinary moments—moments of humanity, of value to the community, and putting it down in books. It doesn’t have to be about generals, it doesn’t have to be about chiefs, it could be about ordinary people, their heroism. That is the whole point of the book, that lives should be celebrated, regardless of what office or what lack of office that person has.

Newton Aduaka, the winner of the Golden Yennenga Stallion at the FESPACO film festival, is making a film based on Waiting for an Angel. How involved have you been with this?

I’m not really involved. I’m just the author of the novel. I see film as being totally different from literature. They are both narrative art forms, but they have different ways of representing their story, their subject. I trust him as an artist. I think my novel is strong enough to stand on its own, even if the movie is a bit different in some of its portrayals.

Have you ever thought of writing a screenplay or becoming involved in film?

I really want to do that some day. Some people approached me to write a movie script. I started writing it and then it became a novel! I’m really enjoying the experience. I don’t know how far it’s going to go, but I’m definitely going to go into movies one of these days. To write, or even direct, if I have the chance. The movie industry is just incredible, and I think this is the moment to get involved.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you, you’re welcome.

Photo credit: Helon Habila with Jeremiah Gyang and Ola Soyinka. Kudus to amazing middlebelt artists! From Naijablog

Lomba's plaigerism

Ok, at the risk of being accused of more stalkerish behaviour ({-;), I've posted on my "literary blog" an excerpt from my MA thesis, where I talk about the imprisoned Lomba's purposeful "plaigerism" of poetry in Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel.

Second degree down, one more to go...

master of toilet repair...

MA defense (and off to my cousin's wedding

so, now i've lost the momentum to write about my MA defense. It all went fine. My committee asked me a few scary questions that I don't think I answered very well, they basically said that I wasn't really doing anything original, that my theory seemed a bit muddled, and that my title was too descriptive. But most of the discussion seemed to be less about the actual thesis than "lessons to learn for your future career in scholarship."

Despite my best efforts at being zen, that all disappeared with the first question--after which I was fighting back tears the whole time--not that I was especially surprised or hurt by anything they were saying--but somehow my body physically reacts to situations in which I am having to defend myself to authority figures--and unfortunately it reacts in that way. I was so GLAD I had preceeded myself by bringing in a bottle of water which I would take a big swig from everytime I felt my mouth trembling too much. One of the committee members said that "surprisingly, I seemed to hardly deal with the idea of the postcolonial at all." This observation also surprised me because i kind of thought i had. And my advisor said his signature harsh comment of the day, "Reading this, you would think this novel was the only piece of African literature Carmen has read... although I know Carmen and I know that's not the case...." This bemused me as I had written a whole chapter on intertextuality with other works of African literature in the novel. But their overall point was right: the most polished part of the paper was the most unoriginal stuff.... the stuff that excited me I didn't articulate as well.

All that to say, it was a surprisingly short process, and despite some of the harsh things they said specifically about the thesis, they said it was perfectly fine for an MA thesis, and they were very encouraging about my overall work as a student. The discussion seemed mostly about general things to know in the field and in scholarship and had very little to do with what I had actually written. In addition to his one or two token harsh comments, my advisor (talking to the committee and not me) gave me several wonderfully backhanded compliments: 1) Sometimes we have students who struggle with writing; Carmen obviously does not have this problem. 2) For class (we have a class listserve we post to every week), she will write these long but extremely provocative and eloquent posts, and she does it on the spur of the moment--that's what you need more of here, the combining of the close reading with the broader theoretical.

So, basically... I needed to write my thesis a little more like I write class posts... or perhaps blogs? Finally, they sent me out of the room, and called me back about two minutes later, and there my intimidating advisor is standing there, with the warrant in his hands, grinning and shaking my hand. And another committee member hugs me, the other one pats my back and hands me two tickets to the South African film U-Carmen, which is playing at a film festival this afternoon, and which I've been wanting to see for ages. I felt horrible telling him I wouldn't be here this weekend, because I'm going to a cousin's wedding.So, they signed the warrant, and said, of course you are continuing in the PhD programme, right? And of course I am. I FINALLY feel like I've caught up to myself. For the past two years, I've cringed everytime someone has asked me where I am in the programme. Since I've been doing PhD research for the past year and a half, I hated to tell people I was still an MA student. I felt like such a loser. There are reasons this has taken over three and a half years--a strange culture of long MAs in my dept, me being gone doing language training or research every summer, long lags in communication with those in charge. I finally feel like I'm at the right level, and it's such a huge relief.

Anyway, enough blather. I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow for a cousin's wedding this weekend. I took her engagement photos over Christmas. We had planned to do it outside, but it ended up raining most of the day, so they decided they wanted me to take pictures of them shopping in bookstores and Trader Joes and video game stores. I had so much fun trailing them around and photographing them that I thought that the job of a "documentary 'wedding' photographer" might not be a bad fall back plan.... I'm sure I'd get sick of it very quickly, but I do love an excuse to take lots of photos.

Introducing... Introducing... introducing

Introducing the latest Master of Arts degree holder, and official PhD student (hopefully we will move to the status of PhD candidate in less than a year.) I cannot describe my relief. It's nice to see one's advisor grin... More later.

D-Day tomorrow....

pray for me. my defense is tomorrow. i've re-read my thesis, and it is not the horrible thing i thought it was when i handed it in. i argue very intelligently in some of the chapters and there are occasionally (to quote my advisor on his last comments) "flashes of brilliant close reading." It, however, is not a masterpiece. There are passages that feel out of place, the organization is sometimes iffy, there are moments when I don't follow through on a thought. It starts out well and then gets a bit scattered at the end. I feel like I say very intelligent things in it, but that I don't always say them as well as I could. What worries me the most is that I have a scandelously small bibliography (ie. in the secondary sources/theoretical works... I have quite a few creative works that I've cited.) I also sort of made up my own theory and didn't quote any one theorist at length. I, personally, think that is ok, but I know the MA thesis is supposed to prove that you've grasped how to use theory, and nowhere in my thesis did I say anything like "in this thesis, I am following a poststructural feminist paradigm"... I'm just praying that my close reading is close enough, that there are enough of them, and that I the theory that I made up works consistently(I use poststructuralism without actually citing any poststructuralist thinkers, although I do quote Foucault all of one time [somewhere along the line my Derrida got axed], I cite Soyinka and Ngugi a lot but have cut out most of my quotes of their theory, and I argue that the theoretical foundation comes from within the novel itself, ala Harold Scheub and the "mythic centre.")

I defend at 10am tomorrow. I know one of my committee members will just smile at me, ask me easy questions and defend me against the others. The other one will be mildly critical, will ask me questions that relate to his research interests, and will give me a page long list of recommended reading of other people I can cite and refer to. And my advisor will rip me to pieces. I know him. And I've heard what he's done at other people's defenses. Everything he will say will be brilliant and right on point, and I will wonder why i didn't see all of that before. Just pray that I make it through without crying. I have this HORRIBLE habit of getting a twisty-cry-ey face in the middle of situations where it will be sheer mortification if I cry... these are the times I cry, unfortunately. I'm trying to calm myself down tonight so that I am a calm, confident, prepared epitomy of zen tomorrow. (ohm...ohm...) This probably means I should go to bed soon. But first I need to at least write up my intro. Here are my three imagined scenarios:

1) Dream world scenario: My advisor tells me that it is a brilliant, sophisticated, and elegantly written masterpiece of an MA thesis and that I should start revising it to turn into a series of journal articles.

2) Nightmare scenario: My advisor tells me it is the worst thing he has ever read, and that he can't believe that it has taken me so long to write such rubbish. That now that I have proven how simplistic my argumentation abilities are and how sloppy my research skills are that it is clear I am not cut out to be an academic and that he does not recommend that I continue in the PhD programme.

3) Probably what will happen: My advisor will pick my argument to pieces. Tell me my titles are bad and that my work is very unorganized and that he couldn't figure out what I was saying and how it related to my overall argument in at least three of the six chapters. He will also tell me that I clearly am a fan of the book, but as critics, we are called to take apart the book, and that I have clearly not been critical enough of Habila's shortcomings. And that where I was critical, it is obviously a straw-man argument. He will grumble about me having cited online editions of books (which I will be able to respond to by saying that I've fixed it since I turned in the draft), and he will kvetch about my wordiness. He will say that my work is not very original--it's not clear why I'm making such a big deal over Habila's novel when plenty of other novels use similar form. Furthermore he will say that when he told me to cut out the theoretical works in my first chapter, he didn't mean that I should cut them out all together (as i did in some cases) but that I shouldn't lean on them as if I had no thoughts of my own. He will say that this risks looking a lightweight because of my short bibliography and my writing on one novel. He will continue on in this vein for about 20 minutes until the gentle, smiling professor intervenes and says that afterall, this is just a masters thesis, and it is fine work for what it is, and that I've now gotten good practice for the disseration. And my advisor will say that, well, if this were a dissertation, I would have many years ahead of me, but since he knows that it is just an MA, and since it has improved a lot from the initial draft he read, he will pass me, but that I need to make sure I make these revisions before I turn it in. And I will humbly nod my head and say that they are all right in what they have said and that I will work on it. And then they will sign the paper, and I will be a MASTER OF ARTS degree holder. This is what I think will happen... it is what I hope will happen. The nightmare always lurks until it is over...

Mun Gode Allah

I thought I would have Handel's Hallelujah chorus soaring. I would write about 10 Hallelujah's and pretend as though you could hear them. I planned to throw glitter about--metaphorically-- so that there would be dazzle and rejoicing and hilarity.

instead, i feel rather anxious and dissatisfied, a bit like i did when i turned in the disasterous seminar paper last semester. i turned the thesis in today, but i'm not happy with it. i found myself sniffing and getting teary in a university computer lab today when i got an insensitive email. i wanted to come home and read over the thesis again. but instead i'm going to bed. i didn't do that last night. not even for 30 minutes. so the computer is going off, and the light is going off, and my body is going off.

i'm calling it a draft, even though i gave it to all my committee members. i suppose this is the beginning of the end. i wish that i could sing a little louder.

the day i defend, i'll post an entire oratorio.

And for a fitting end to a post about my thesis, here's a fantastic article on Helon Habila that my google alerts sent to me. If it had been yesterday, I would have put some of it into my thesis...

Kafka's The Great Wall of China OR I WANT TO EAT THE SHORTBREAD IN THE LIVING ROOM

AARGGHHH!!!! Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned. I have lied to my advisor, I have lied to myself, and I have lied on this blog. I am NOT almost done with my thesis

How can I be writing about intertextuality in Waiting for an Angel and have somehow neglected to read Kafka's The Great Wall of China until the night before I am hoping to turn in my thesis (actually a month after originally planned to hand in). It's so brilliantly relevant to everything I am writing about. Ohhhh, it's even relevant to how I'm writing. Every reference I check turns into another close reading so that "none knows more than" me "the absolute futility of" my mission--first I have " to get out of the innermost chamber with its thousands and thousands of courtiers impeding [my] progress, and after that there are a thousand outer chambers to traverse, still filled with courtiers; and though [I] am able to get out of these chambers (it will take years), how can [I] manage to elbow [my] way past the millions of people waiting in the courtyard?" (Waiting for an Angel 103) In other words, with so many millions and millions of words and thoughts and new insights each one blossoming out of the other into an eternal fountain of interpretation, how can I possibly every push beyond to hand it in---- I MUST deal with the Kafka... how can I have gotten this far without doing an extended reading of it's significance dab smack in the middle chapter of the book. Oh misery...

And, oh God, I want to go out and eat the butter shortbread cookies that someone brought to my house the other night not knowing that I have given up chocolate and all store bought sweets for Lent (and all others sweets too, except that I will be lenient in allowing myself to eat homemade, non-chocolate based sweets if someone offers them to me... how bad and wishy-washy of a Lenten resolution is that....!?!). But I shant.

Helon Habila and Rewriting History

Here is an exerpt from part of my thesis on Helon Habila's novel Waiting for an Angel . Even though, I added the stuff from Measuring Time this morning, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut it out or at least break it up (ie. my advisor's wise observation that I tend to distract myself with too many analogies...). Posting it on my blog keeps it in existence somewhere.... Here I am talking about Habila's use of intertextuality, but I think I sidetrack myself with the discussion of Measuring Time and placing multiple stories side by side... maybe not... maybe I need to just move it somewhere else.

Similar to the passage in The Man Died, where Soyinka requests books from the library, the character Lomba also requests books from the prison superintendent, who is extorting poetry from him. “He wanted Wole Soyinka’s prison notes, The Man Died; but when it came it was A Brief History of West Africa” (29). In openly referring to Soyinka as he also does in the words of his student demonstrators, Habila acknowledges the setting—as if he is in the same set that Soyinka reflected in his memoir, on which a different play is now being acted out. The actual events recorded and made into symbols by Soyinka are re-used by Habila. During his sojourn in prison, Soyinka devoured a dog-eared copy of the Letters of Queen Victoria, a seemingly ironic reference to the imperial past in which history is defined in the person of the queen and her perceptions of the colonies rather than by the experiences of the “natives” of those colonies. Similarly, the substitution of A Brief History of West Africa for Soyinka’s prison memoirs requested by Lomba not only ironically refers to the scene in Soyinka’s prison notes in which he had requested books from the prison library but also reinforces the idea of living in a story written by someone else. The title A Brief History of West Africa evokes images of colonial texts in which the story told of West Africa is that of the Victorian-era European explorers like Richard Burton and colonial governors like Lord Lugard, (Blog Note: or like this... heehee) as well as the critiques of novelists like Achebe on this telling of history.

At the end of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, as the District Commissioner thinks of including the story of Okonkwo in his book The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, he considers writing a whole chapter on Okonkwo. Then he thinks better of it. “Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details” (TFA 209). Achebe is, of course, ironically commenting on the effrontery of the colonizer who will write only a paragraph on a man whose story has been the subject of Achebe’s entire novel. The history that the colonial officers in Achebe’s Arrow of God read in order to “understand” the people they are ruling is this same book, in which the author has been so disciplined in subverting individual stories to his own narrative of “pacification.” In “cutting out details,” the author reinforces the idea of an authoritative version of history. The details, the individual stories, have no place in the narrative of the colonizer. As Habila illustrates with his inclusion of A Brief History of West Africa being substituted for the harrowing and detailed account of Soyinka’s imprisonment, neither have these individual stories any place in the narrative of the military dictatorships that followed official independence.

Similar to Achebe, Habila gives the details of the lives of ordinary people, those which would not normally be considered part of a larger history. Much of the power in the way he presents these ordinary lives is the way he references other literary works, indicating that not only are there multiple voices within his own novel but that his novel is only one of many novels voicing out protest against oppressive structures. In his second novel, Measuring Time, Habila’s character Mamo envisions a “true history” of Nigeria, in which “if the historian could capture these ordinary lives, including their recollections of their own family’s past, then he might come close to writing a true ‘biographical history’ of a nation; for when we refer to a nation, are we not referring to the people that inhabit that nation, and so isn’t the story of a nation then really the story of the people who make up that nation” (Habila, Measuring Time, 180). In Mamo’s subsequent attempt at this biographical history, he writes the history of his father the failed politician, and his aunt the divorced wife, alongside the less than glorious history of the mai, the traditional ruler, of Keti. Every story has it’s own place alongside the others. Mamo says: “I want to make the Mai’s biography simply a part of the other biographies I told you about…. [that] I will eventually compile to form a biographical history of Keti. That’s what history really is, people and their lives, no matter how we try to manipulate it. It is the story of real people with real weaknesses and strengths and… not about some founding fathers and … even if we want to write about the founding fathers we shouldn’t privilege them, we should place them on par with other ordinary folks…” (225).In his first novel Waiting for an Angel, Habila does much of Mamo attempts to do in his biographical history, placing the story of the inglorious prison superintendent alongside the stories of the imprisoned writer, the brilliant student turned prostitute, and the young boy from Jos exiled from his family for smoking hemp. Just as Mamo discovers the inherent weakness of the “powerful” Mai when he writes his history, Habila reveals the way the superintendent may be overcome by showing him as “just Man. Man in his basic, rudimentary state, easily moved by powerful emotions like love, lust, anger, greed and fear, but totally dumb to the finer, acquired emotions like pity, mercy, humour and justice” (41). The character of the prison superintendent is perhaps one of Habila’s most obvious appropriations from Soyinka’s prison memoir. It is as if the prison governor from The Man Died has been transferred to Lomba’s prison. (And I go on to illustrate this with quotes in which I illustrate the similarity of voice... but I imagine the blog reader will have been long ago exhausted by the length of this excerpt...)

Holding my breath

Finally writing again. My whole problem with finishing this thesis is the transitions. I feel good about my first chapter and the last chapter, but the middle is a big muddle: I'm not sure exactly how to re-form my material so that it transitions my argument from point A to point C, although I can easily write down the argument in brief. I've been telling it to my writing center tutor for the past month. She knows my argument as well as I do; it's just that the details get in the way. ('Well, it's a very complex, sophisticated argument," she says comfortingly. I'm sure what she's saying under her breath is that the best thing to do would be to uncomplexify it a little bit; i just can't bring myself to simplify...) So, as I am working through it I cut and paste and colour my text red and blue and grey. I start working on one transition around 7pm. It turns into a close reading of Lomba's "bowdlerization" of Sappho's ode to Janice. I tie most of the last nine lines of the poems to other lines in Lomba's diary, and use it to make my point about the hidden "political" power of the love poem: the metaphoric prisoner of "love" is used to indicate the presence of the literal prisoner writing behind bars. What I haven't quite figured out yet is how to make the transition to the larger more "external" use of intertextuality that is crucial to my overall argument. I find myself holding my breath as I write. The next time I look at my clock it is 9:30pm.

I take another breath.