One of three Nigerians nominated in 2007 to the prestigious Caine Prize shortlist, Ada Udechukwu has begun to attract attention in a big way, and not just for her fiction writing. She is also the author of Woman, Me, a magnificent collection of both poems and drawings from her early years. Her compelling artwork is characterized by bold, sparse pen strokes across broad canvasses, lines that become dancing women, emotive faces, families reunited.
Incredibly, Ada has found time between creative exploits and recent media attention for studying. In 2005, Ada received her MFA from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. Her degree is concentrated on fiction writing; her widely acclaimed story, “The Night Bus,” nominated for the 2007 Caine Prize for Fiction, is linked at the end of this interview.
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You are both a talented artist and a prolific writer, but it’s writing that’s earned you recent international acclaim. How and why did you become a writer?
I began writing in what I consider a significant way when I was fourteen. At that time my primary genre was poetry and this continued to be the case throughout my undergraduate years as an English and literature major at the University of Nigeria (Nsukka, Nigeria). For many years afterwards I thought of myself primarily as a poet; the poetry of that period is complied in a chapbook of poems and drawings published in 1993, Woman, Me.
In 1990 I wrote my first short story, “Waiting,” which was subsequently published in early 1991 in the literary supplement of a Nigerian newspaper, the Daily Times. However, I’ve always been interested in exploring multiple ‘ways of saying,’ and the ways in which this is achieved through different genres and media (in my visual art). This is what informed my decision to choose fiction as my area of interest in 2003 when I began an MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College (Bennington, Vermont, U.S.). Throughout my time at Bennington, and subsequently, I’ve continued to write poetry, although my recent publications have been short stories.
For me, the how and why of my becoming a writer are intertwined. The impulse for my writing—and my art as well—is personal. In my early years it was a way of articulating my experience of the world. My first efforts were intended for myself alone and never with any eye to publication. I felt shy about showing my poems to others and considered my poetry deeply personal. I still do. My fiction is less obviously personal, but it draws on the same wellspring as my poetry and art: it is emotionally autobiographical.
You and your husband have devoted much of your careers as artists to the uli style of the Nigerian Igbo people. Has there ever been conflict between the traditional world of your art and the contemporary world of your fiction & poetry?
Uli—the traditional art that influences my art and my writing—has been practiced by Igbo women for millennia. The Igbo-Ukwu bronzes and terra cottas unearthed in eastern Nigeria by Thurstan Shaw in 1959/60 and 1964 are dated to the 9th century and are replete with uli motifs and style.
Uli, an art of body and mural painting among the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, is an abstract art form that emphasizes brevity of statement. The lyricism of uli comes from direct, economical statements that operate within and against expanses of space which function as backdrop and presence. Linearity, abstraction, and a balancing of positive and negative space are significant elements in composition; uli motifs comprise abstract renditions of plant and animal life, celestial bodies, and manmade objects. All of which are at once representative and symbolic, depicting phenomena in the Igbo cosmos and also referencing Igbo philosophy.
Often what is considered contemporary has its roots in traditional cultures. I’m not sure I would categorize my artwork as distinctly “traditional,” for I am not creating uli. The influence occurs in my incorporation of the uli aesthetic. And, as an artist, I experience no conflict, no crisis of relevance. My art continues in conjunction with my writing; this has always been the case since early teens.
How does your creative process as a writer compare to your creative process as an artist?
They are similar. When I write or make a painting or drawing, I begin with a clear image: the emotional impact of experience—sometimes personal, at other times it takes form out of the experience of others, something heard, read, or seen. As my creation takes shape, I extend the original image, transforming and refashioning it, as I seek to find the story it holds. This has always come easier to me when I write poetry or make art. When I began to write fiction and found myself dealing with narrative in ways I was unused to, the challenge became one of allowing expressed statements to dialogue with each other on the page so that feeling and emotion remain implicit in the images generated.
Interestingly, it was the work of a poet, Jane Kenyon, which helped me. Discovering her poetry was one of those watershed moments in my development not only as a writer, but also as a visual artist. From Kenyon, I gained an awareness of the power of image in conveying meaning and in the infinite vocabulary of space. Ọkụ ụzụ daa ibube, ọ dị ka ọ nyụlụ anyụ, addresses the potency of space, recalling how, when a blacksmith’s fire settles under the ashes, the embers only appear to have been quenched. This saying reminds us that space does not equate silence, rather it contains absence.
How do you straddle the two worlds of your upbringing, Nigerian and American?
I recognize that my cultural and racial heritage means that I am of two worlds; that my life is shaped by this, that it also involves the paradox of creating a space for myself in places that I am a part of and yet in many ways not. I have spent portions of both my childhood and adult life in Nigeria and United States and coming to terms with my dual heritage is an ongoing journey. Out of my personal experience I find myself returning often to the question: what, if any, is the connection between identity and the crossing of personal and physical borders?
You said once in an artist’s statement that you are most interested in “how the unspoken communicates.” If you could tap into the communication of one element of African life and explore it through poetry or art, what would it be?
My interest in “how the unspoken communicates” stems from a very early concern with giving voice (through my poems) to what I term the silences in my life—experiences and their resulting emotional impact—that shaped and continue to shape me. Giving form to emotion is central to my literary and visual work. Allied to this, is a preoccupation with examining the boundaries of memory, how its threads link and form within us to shape the contours of our relationships with ourselves and others.
However, what is crucial for me on a more global level, and what I also articulate in the artist’s statement you refer to (from a 2004 exhibition catalog for Spaces and Silences), is that, “…silences—those areas of pause between the forms, between the lines—provide sites for the viewer [or reader] to evaluate what is experienced…” This is what I strive for in my writing and art; it arises out of the Igbo belief, Ife kwụlụ, ife akwụdebe ya, where one thing stands, another stands beside it. As a writer, I believe in trusting my readers to be active participants; to bridge the space between expressed and implied statements in the poem or fiction before them.
What was your greatest dream in becoming an artist?
There was no dream involved. The arts—particularly the literary and visual—have always been a part of my life right from early childhood. So, becoming an artist was a natural progression.
If you could meet any African artist—author, painter, sculptor, musician, lyricist, singer, designer—who would it be? Why?
The singular any here is a hard one to address. My list is long! I’ve already had the privilege of meeting many of the African artists who provide inspiration to me through their work and their lives.
But here is one… Many years ago as an undergraduate, I read Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s short story, “A Handful of Dates” (from his collection The Wedding of Zein). I rediscovered Salih’s story three years ago, and reread it periodically for story, for the lessons in craft. And yet in spite of my familiarity with it there is always something new to be gleaned. Each time I pick up his story what lingers is the spare haunting evocation of human nature that Salih captures in his story’s four pages.
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Click here to read “Night Bus” (published in the Atlantic’s 2006 Fiction Issue).