(birds chirping) - [Sueann] Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma speaks many languages, but he wanted to unlearn one of them, you'll find out why.

Also the personal story behind "An Orchestra of Minorities" his book, and hear what insights Chigozie has of American culture.

(upbeat music) Your second book "An Orchestra for Minorities", when I have read that beginning section about the woman at the bridge and the poultry farmer, and he comes and he throws his precious chicken to show her the danger of jumping over into the river, the way you use the language made me feel as if I was him, and desperate to stop this person from doing something harmful to themselves, that they would sacrifice something precious just to prove their point.

I have read the story, you know, people talk about you using Greek mythology, but there's also something very personal in this story.

Can you talk about your friend, who went to get educated abroad and it didn't work out so well?

- [Chigozie] Yeah, I went to Cyprus myself, it was a very weird trajectory for an African, 'cause the usual destination, if we were to leave Nigeria for instance, to go to school would always be not generally the US actually, because your fees here is too expensive, nobody can pay (laughs).

- Totally, it's terrible.

- [Chigozie] Even Obama had to finish paying his sum when he became president, so it's usually the UK that we go to, or somewhere in Europe.

But then I ended up somehow in inner Cyprus.

And I was lucky my dad had just retired from his bank job which he had for like 25 years, so he had a relatively good settlement from the bank, so I went to Cyprus with quite a reasonable amount of resources that I needed.

But on getting there I saw that quite a number of people were coming from Africa, especially in Nigeria, who did not have that much resources.

In fact, what little they had had been taken from them by agents who were like very duplicitous and fraudulent.

- [Sueann] Scammers.

- [Chigozie] Yeah, basically scammers and grifters.

And so this guy came one year into my stay there, and he was already from the airport, we went to pick him up.

And long story short, we found out that he was in Germany before and then he was deported on an alleged crime, a frame up according to him, so he had returned to Nigeria and was coming to Cyprus to try and get back on his feet, but then he'd been deceived so badly that he had sold everything he had.

So, he came there finding that this was in fact a lie, and somebody has made away with his money.

So he became so psychologically defeated that he was basically gone by the time we met him.

So, a few days after he arrived, we started looking for him, we discovered that he had drank so much and fallen from the attic of this tall building to his death, so, it was ruled by the authorities as suicide.

So, it was in the aftermath of that events that I was shaken by it, so I started to think to myself, "How can I retrace this guy's journey?".

'Cause he had mentioned that the major reason why he came to Cyprus was because he was engaged to this lady, and he wanted to make money quickly to go back and be with her.

So, I started to ask myself the question, what would the dynamic between the both of them have been to have made him make that sacrifice?

Of course he didn't know that he was going to die in Cyprus, but anyway, it was a sacrifice that was worthy in my mind of a kind of fictionalization.

So, the novel really was inspired by that experience.

- [Sueann] Because the character in the novel does fall in love with a woman, and he does go to try to make himself wealthy.

There's a little bit to me, in high school we read "The Great Gatsby", and he tried to get rich to get the woman, because there's a class difference between the poultry farmer and the love of his life.

The book is obviously amazing, you have won many awards, while I know our audience is going to devour it, I think what I'd like to talk to you about more with the book as a background theme is this idea of class differences, because I know you can speak on Nigerian class differences, and now that you live in Nebraska and spent time in the US, your insights into our culture, while teaching us about Nigeria would be so helpful.

So, this character did not have money, and then he was rejected, can't marry the woman you love 'cause you do not have an education?

So, I don't necessarily feel like that happens in America per say, but it may be because of the class I live in, but in Nigeria, is it often that suitors are rejected by the family because of status?

- [Chigozie] Yeah, in fact I see Nigeria, I conceive of it in tyranny as a kind of a fiefdom situation, so, we have a ruling class that's impenetrable.

So, people often ask, why is it that Nigeria, for instance, does not progress despite the wealth of resources and people that it has?

It is because there's a grid lock there, that ruling class have locked it in.

So, upward mobility is a very difficult thing, sometimes even impossible.

And in the novel as you see, the desire for upward mobility, in fact, the attempt of it becomes the undoing of Chinonso.

So, yes the situation is very much like that.

And people do look down on you, if you're not educated, you are seen as basically the wretched of the earth, for lack of a better term.

So, I would see a kind of a parallel of that in the US been, I mean, say people in the inner cities.

My first experience of America was going to grad school at Michigan, at the University of Michigan, so I volunteered with a few of my cohorts to teach at a kind of inner city school in Detroit.

It was mostly black children as well as Arab ones, so it was a mixture of both ethnicities.

And you see privation there, I mean, Detroit is known for being a kind of decadent city in America.

So, you do see it might not be extreme material lack, but there is in some ways a kind of a, should I say, there is a lack that is much more psychological, people don't feel like they are where they are supposed to be, or that they are, you know, the country as a whole has been fair enough to them.

So, that in itself is a kind of poverty.

And then in the rural areas like, you know, so I live in Lincoln, outside of here, and all my heart the other big city in Nebraska, there really is all just, I mean, not necessarily poor but rural places, and some of them are really poor, you'll see white quote-on-quote hillbillies all over the place.

So, these people too are in a class of their own, they are looked down upon, there's all kinds of assumptions that are made about them as well.

So, you do have that kind of class situation in America, but as a whole, this is an extraordinarily wealthy country, I'll tell you that (laughs), it's a very wealthy country.

I think that the Americans do not understand the level of comfort generally that you have here.

- [Sueann] Oh my goodness.

Sometimes I feel as if our society just complains about itself so much, it forgets the good things (laughs).

- [Chigozie] No, absolutely, it's human nature.

Like when your immediate past president was president, a lot of my colleagues, I know some people who used to be literally sick day by day from looking at the news and on that.

And it was kind of very difficult for me, I mean, I understand he was an embarrassment, but I just could not make sense of how the tweet of the president is what causes this much damage, you know.

People have problems.

I know of families in Nigeria who, family of four, and all have, they earn like $25 a month, you see what I'm saying?

Like, the idea that they can even, I mean, what is happening in the white house of Nigeria, they don't spend even a second thinking about it, they're thinking, "Okay, how why do we eat, how do we cloth?"

They are praying every day, "Please God, don't let any of us fall sick, because if that happens," and is a serious in is debt.

And then you have people who have a good job, they are professors, and they have everything basically that they need, and so they have time to worry about how somebody is tweeting, so, there was a disconnect.

And they look at me, "This guy is not angry at this thing going."

And I'm like, I mean, I'm disappointed that the president of a country like America was behaving the way he's behaving, but I just could not bring myself to feel that kind of visceral anger and rage that they had, because again, there was this gulf between us basically.

- [Sueann] Between your experience and what have you seen of the world.

And this is why, if there's somebody who's listening, I really would like a program where we can send every American to another country for at least three months.

- [Chigozie] Yeah, no, no, yes.

I tell my students that all the time when they ask, "What should we do after this, do we go straight into grad school?"

I said, "No, no, no, no, go somewhere, go and live- - [Sueann] Go somewhere (laughs).

- [Chigozie] For six months, go and be here if you want."

- [Sueann] I totally agree.

Well, you see other ways of living, other ways of thinking.

There is a scripture in the Christian Bible that talks about man and silver needing each other to become shiny or sharper.

- [Chigozie] Sharper, yeah, iron sharpen into iron.

- [Sueann] Yes, and I've always thought about that for us, how are we to know who we really are as a country unless we go out of our country.

- [Chigozie] Absolutely, in fact, even in my writing, I discovered that when I got to Cyprus, my vision of Nigeria became even clearer and sharper, because now I could see it in totality.

Let me even come a bit much more smaller on a smaller plane of things.

So I was born into this family of many children, an eccentric family, and for a long time I did not even see my siblings as anything special.

I liked them of course, but I didn't know to the extent to which I actually had this closeness with them until I left.

So, I left and then, it just occurred to me that I did not at that point have a friend, because for a long time I had not thought that there was even any need to have a friend.

- [Sueann] 'Cause you had brothers and sisters?

- [Chigozie] Yeah, so, we were self sufficient.

And any kind of person you wanted, you had the guy who plays game, the sister who cooks, the one who likes violin, just about anybody (laughs) was in the family, so that was surprising to me.

So, I was able to appreciate them better and understand them more because I had gone then.

- [Sueann] I could see how that extrapolates to understanding your culture and your country better.

I had spent a tiny bit of time in Switzerland, just being there, and you wouldn't think it's much different than Seattle, Washington, but it was enough difference for me to see what they do well and what we do well, and what I didn't like and appreciate.

So when I came home I was so thankful for the freedom in this country, you can move about so easily, and I understand the culture here, so I don't have to second guess myself all the time like I did in another culture, you have to do a lot of thinking, 'cause you could offend people (laughs).

However, being exposed to different ways of thinking, and seeing different types of people, that was valuable education.

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(upbeat music) - [Sueann] Speaking back to your education in Cyprus, you have a piece that was written in the Paris Review I believe, about wishing you could unlearn a language.

And Chigozie, you are very talented in language, like how many do you know, five?

- [Chigozie] Yes, five languages.

- [Sueann] (laughs) And it almost seemed like you picked up Turkish quickly.

But when you were there in school it wasn't exactly a blessing, can you tell us why?

- [Chigozie] Well, so I think one of the things that I wasn't very prepared for when I got there was, I wasn't prepared for the fact that, even though, you know, not Cyprus and all of Cyprus was a Commonwealth country, most people did not speak English, so they spoke Turkish in the Turkish spot, and Greek in the Greek side.

I mean, the Greeks, the European side more than the Turkey side knew English.

Anyway, so, there was then a kind of a desperation to interact more with people outside of the university compost.

So that desperation led to a pocket of force trying as much as possible to learn.

It was a very difficult language, Turkish is closer to a Farsi and Arabic in a way.

So, during one summer, I think my first summer, I had made a good friend, who wanted me to go to Turkey with him.

So, it was something that none of the Africans would do because, in Cyprus itself, the Turkey students were very racist towards us.

Some of it was born out of, as I would understand later on, just the novelty.

When I eventually went to Turkey, I was in the west of the country, and really, I met people who had never seen a black person before, they have only seen on TV or sometime in the distance, but it will really was a first time that they would come in contact and touch a black person, they just haven't seen that before, so they had a lot of misconceptions, but some of them were from Istanbul and some of the major metropolitan, so they were knowingly racist.

So you have folks like that who make comments about all sorts of things, and call you monkey and whatnot.

But until I learned the language, until I went to Turkey for that two months holiday, I didn't sometimes know what people were saying about me and my fellow Africans, but after I returned back from Turkey to Cyprus, and now I wasn't on this protection of my friend and his family, I just found it was almost like a miracle that I could understand most of what was being said about me and to me.

And so it became very difficult, because sometimes you will be in the bus, and people will be talking about how you must be smelling because you are a black person and you've just come in, and the next thing you see, people are laughing, they're moving away from you, you could be more well-dressed than the way, so it was a black blatant in your face kind of racism that was sometimes very painful.

So, at some point it started to really hurt me, and I started to wonder if one can unlearn a language, because there was in fact some kind of liberty in ignorance.

- [Sueann] Ignorance is bliss.

God, I'm just empathizing with you all of a sudden, and then hearing everything they're saying, erodes your sense of self and self-esteem, how did you cope with that?

- [Chigozie] That's a good question.

So, there's something about our upbringing in a place like Nigeria, not just Nigeria, I know for sure of most of West Africa that creates a kind of resilience in us that makes it in some ways very difficult to, again, I think it goes back to having seen difficult situations.

I would say that I'm abit lucky, I come from a kind of a middle class family, so I never really experienced in Nigeria the kind of privation that others saw, but it was always very present around me.

So I understand that sometimes there are bad people who want to hurt you for no just reason.

So, I would get angry sometimes.

There were a few times when I fought with people, like actual physical fights with Turkish men, but usually we just laughed it off and insulted them back.

One of the funniest part of it was once, in fact, a couple of times, but at least I saw this happen once, you go to the streets and you see beggars, people who are crippled, who are like on the streets, and you're, well-dressed, you're going, and you say, "Oh, I feel sorry for this guy, he's like a beggar, a crippled guy on the street," and I give him money, and he calls me a slave (laughs), you see what I'm saying?

So, even if Obama were to be walking on the street.

So, this guy is not even at my level of anything and yet he insults me, and I'm like, "I just helped you."

(laughing) So, some of it was just irrational and didn't make sense, there were some times when it just was stupid, and I would just feel like these guys know what my time.

There was one incident that really broke my heart actually, I was with a friend of mine who was a lady, a Nigerian lady, and we were like waiting at a bus stop for a bus to come, and this drunkard guy was just driving past, and he just stopped and started shouting sluts at her, and calling her all kinds of names, and asking if she would come and have sex with him or something, that very vulgar insult and stuff.

What is funny is that we didn't even respond to him, 'cause that just kind of people could be very violent, and he got mad that we ignored him, and he spat on the girl's face, and we chased after the car but the guy sped off.

So I was haunted by doubt for a long time that there was nothing we could have done to avenge that kind of injustice.

So, that was a kind of racism that you see in a place like that.

- [Sueann] Wow, there'd be a lot of self-talk, I mean, I'm just trying to think if I was your friend, it's super demeaning to be spat on.

- [Chigozie] It is.

- [Sueann] It takes away so much of your sense of self, and then you have to really work hard to build that back up again, even if you don't even know this person.

It's so easy to be cruel, isn't it?

- [Chigozie] Yeah.

- [Sueann] So, that was your time in Cyprus and Turkey (laughs).

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 2] Did you know you can find us on MPR's podcasts?

Just look up Traverse Talks on the NPR website and enjoy.

(upbeat music) - [Sueann] Back to your book "An Orchestra for Minorities", the interesting way that it's narrated, I would like you to talk about how you use this spirit, this chi, and how important that is in Nigerian culture.

- [Chigozie] So, the chi is the index of divinity in every individual according to the Ibo cosmology, this group of people in the east of Nigeria.

- [Sueann] Which are in ancient people, right?

Like there's like kingdoms from thousands of years ago.

- [Chigozie] Right, absolutely.

So, my name for instance is prefaced with chi, so Chigozie, so it is a common name in Ibo.

So, this is because of, the chi is the central figure in the worldview of the Ibo people.

So, it is a spirit that ensource you, and after the death of an individual, the aspiration, the chi transcends, it goes onwards to embody other people, so we say reincarnating spirit, it never dies, so it often circles around a particular clan or an extended family.

It is believed for instance that I am the incarnate of one of my mom's uncles, the chi that ensoared him is the same one that is within me right now.

So, at the death of a person, the chi gives a kind of an account in this cord, celestial cord to- - [Sueann] The big God, the number.

- [Chigozie] the big God and its subordinates.

And so this is where the story is told.

So the story begins in some ways from the end, as the foothold, as a stepping path by which we launch this story.

So, Chinonso is the main character, his chi is this temple, this cord, and is telling the story, and therefore looking back through the life that this guy has lived, and how he has arrived to that point where at the end of the story where he is.

- [Sueann] Without spoiling it, giving an account.

It's a beautiful, and unique, and culturally significant way to tell a story, it is deep, why did you choose to tell it through a chi?

- [Chigozie] That's a good question.

So, I wanted to cover what I saw as a gap in Africa and modern African literature.

So I had looked and there wasn't a cosmological novel in the realm of say a deanship in funnel, which explores the Judaeo-Christian idea of hell and the afterlife.

And I thought that I would want to write something, given that across Africa we have very interesting cosmologies, and the chi is eminently interesting.

But also on a craft basis, or even in my first novel, I always try to do something that I think I haven't really seen people doing, or at least that it feels fresh in a way.

So, in "The Fishermen" for instance, I tell this story by association with animals, different animals, and so the story is composed through this montage of different other figures.

So here I wanted that, so I wanted a narrator who can tell the story and break all the boundaries of point of view.

So the chi is at once a third person narrator, but also a first person narrator, because it's also telling a story about itself, its history, the times when it has lived before, the things it has experience and witnessed in the past.

So the chi is telling a story of itself, but also the story of its host.

And sometimes because it is addressing a jury, sometimes it even tells a story in the second person.

So I wanted to do all of that all at once in the novel.

- [Sueann] You wanted to make it simple.

(laughing) - [Chigozie] But it isn't as complicated as it sounds, I think it's kind of restrict narrative.

- [Sueann] Yes, it plays out beautifully.

And it makes me wonder, well, I know you have a deep sense of Nigerian culture, and the spiritualism of some of the things in your culture, so I'm curious, what is your take on spiritualism?

Do you follow more Ibo style, are you Christian?

Because I've read that Nigeria is like split in two, as far as religion, Islam and Christianity.

- [Chigozie] I am a Christian in fact, but I'm deeply interested and curious about the different African religions.

I think that in a way I am practicing both in fact, in a way, I mean, I do believe in the chi actually, at least to some extent, but I was born a Christian.

I would say that my dad, for instance, and my mom, born again Christians, so they're even more spiritual.

So that would be my religious belief.

Again, I generally in my life, I believe in what I like to call provisional thinking, so which is, I constantly try to challenge my views, so that I do not end up as an ideologue, so I am constantly questioning my assumptions and the things that I understand.

Because I think that is easy to just fall into a group or a group thing and say, "Okay, this is how this things are, and I must conform and follow this."

So, because of that, I had dabbled into quite a number of things.

- [Sueann] Chigozie are you dabbling too because you wanna understand the deep history of your Nigerian Ibo culture, I mean, and I only know on the surface, but there's like three millennial (laughs) of cultural history there?

I ask because, I'm in my early 40s, my mother is Korean, my grandmothers they converted to Christianity, but before that it was Buddhist, or earth, and ancestral worship, and I feel like there's something missing in understanding each other.

And when you talk about chi, I feel as if chi could almost scientifically be our epigenome that's passed in through families, like you have your uncle's chi, and it's maybe because of the experiences of your mother and brother, and all this is in you now.

And I'm so sorry if I'm offending my religious practices.

- [Chigozie] No, no, absolutely not.

- [Sueann] But just with the lens of Christianity, it seems kind of like a small lens and very recent.

So this book, and the way you describe the way you try to think, it seems as if we all should be working harder to understand more of our ancestors and beliefs.

- [Chigozie] Oh yeah, no, absolutely.

The novel is in many ways a reputation of just what you're talking about, the embrace.

So what happened in Africa was very interesting.

So if you look at other places in the world where there was colonialism, you look at the place, let me just take India as an example, they were colonized by Britain, just as Nigeria or Ghana were.

But you will find that their religion, language, culture was intact by the time the British left.

In fact, the British were part of the people who constructed the Taj Mahal, they helped fund it in a way.

But if you go to Africa, the colonialization there was more of like a civilizing project, so it was cost at, because there was little respect for the Africans, who were black people, who were by their standard barbaric savages who had nothing, and no cultural, and nothing.

So they wanted to completely wipe out the little, quote on quote thing that we had, and replace it completely.

While in India, there was more of a respect for the culture, okay, these guys had distance, "Lets us just bring us as a compliment."

So it was more complimentary than here, in that in Africa where it was much more destructive.

So, in that sense, growing up, for instance, Nigerians, Ibo people, West Africans, see their own traditional religion as evil, and anybody who did not convert to Christianity was a pariah, you know.

My mom's family's side, for instance, it did not convert to Christianity, they were probably the only one in the entire district, and they were treated horribly, they were like outcast, "oh, do not say hello to those people, they are Hindus, they are terrible human beings."

When in fact what they were doing, their crime was that they were imbibing the religion of their ancestors that had been there for years, and years, and years.

So, if anything, if there was any reason for writing "An Orchestra of Minorities", it was that I wanted to a monumentalize the aspects of that religion, I wanted at least to document it so that future generations, or even mine, or even my dad's, when they think of, okay, or deny the Ibo religion, what was it about?

There is a resource that they can go to.

So, I have reconstructed most of the beliefs.

Even the idea of the heaven, the afterlife, there's a whole chapter where I map it out completely, so that's what I tried to do in the novel.

- [Sueann] Oh, spectacular.

How has it been received in Nigeria?

- [Chigozie] Oh, well, it's is a book that is very popular there, it really is.

I mean, obviously because of the economic situation of many people, there hasn't been that much of, you know, it sold very well, but it doesn't sell like you have in the UK, or Europe, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, people read it, but they just pirate it, they get soft copies of it.

But yes, it's a very popular novel, it's been very well-received.

And I heard that the the current vice president of Nigeria often buys it for his friends.

- [Sueann] Chigozie that's a big deal, that's amazing.

- [Chigozie] Well, I'm happy that at least he reads, the other guy who is a president cannot read that.

(Sueann laughs) - [Sueann] The politics.

Will you be taking your children to live in Nigeria too?

Because the thing that happens in the states is, we tend to lose our cultural identity quickly because of this idea of melting pot and just going with the majority.

And I really am trying hard not to do that with my children, but it's difficult when they're a quarter Korean (laughs) versus half.

And I don't know, are your children Nigerian-American?

- [Chigozie] Yes, they were both button here, so.

- [Sueann] They are American.

- [Chigozie] The thing with that is, I mean, I would love to move back and live there, I try, like this summer I'm going to spend two months there.

But the thing with American children or children born here is, because of the, again, the comfort, I think they are lost (laughs).

- [Sueann] Oh, fascinating.

- [Chigozie] It's gonna be very difficult.

I mean, I'm sure they will appreciate their heritage, especially now that there's a lot of pride in the black culture.

So they're going to appreciate that they are black, they're going to appreciate that they are African, but I think that the African parts will be kind of a surface level, is just something that they would wear that's officially, you see what I'm saying?

There won't be like deep investment.

I mean, I hope for a different outcome, but this is what I think how it always goes.

- I see.

- They would just have a superficial relationship where they can tweet about being African (laughs), they don't really want to go and live there (indistinct) experience, you see what I'm saying?

- [Sueann] I do, but Chigozie, I feel as if you as a involved father, just your presence in their life, me speaking from experience, while I am 100% an American cultural product, I feel I have a sensitivity towards a different view of culture from my mother's lens, and you will give that to your children so that they, I feel will be more open and empathetic to different ways of thinking and being.

And you know what's interesting?

Chigozie in Nigeria do you call people auntie, uncle, you never call them by the first name?

- [Chigozie] Yeah, yeah, we do that, absolutely, we do that.

- [Sueann] 'Cause it's honorific.

This is the part your kids are gonna struggle with is.

I could never call grown-ups by their first names.

- [Chigozie] Yeah, I struggled to do that too.

- [Sueann] Yeah, because we wanna give them honor and respect, but in a weird way American culture is like, "No man, I'm your best friend" (laughs).

It's like, "But I'm five" (laughs).

- [Chigozie] No, American culture does not allow for that, I mean, yeah, you're right.

So, I mean, I would take them to Nigeria, I really will, will see whether or not (laughs).

- [Sueann] If it works out for them, exposure.

'Cause this is the way we live here, I don't think is the way the world lives.

So what are you working on now?

- [Chigozie] So, I've completed a novel that is set in the 60s in Nigeria.

There was a historical upheaval at that time.

- [Sueann] War?

- [Chigozie] Yeah, and the current has a struggling to navigate that.

But I also have a kind of a collection of short stories that on this side that I'm working on, some of which will be set in the America, because everybody's like, "When are you going to write about the America?"

So I'm starting to do that too.

- [Sueann] Oh, I think that's gonna be amazing and fascinating.

Thank you so much for your time.

And I really appreciate your insights into our culture, and your contributions to the literary world.

- [Chigozie] Thank you very much Sueann.

It's been a pleasure talking with you, you're so warm and just a delight, thank you so much.

- [Sueann] Oh, thank you, I appreciate that.

- [Chigozie] All right, thank you my friend.

- [Sueann] Thank you, bye-bye.

(upbeat music) Author Chigozie latest book is "An Orchestra of Minorities", and his book "The Fishermen" back in 2015 was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

Consider getting these books and others from an independent bookseller in your community, many of them can order the books in for you.

This is Traverse Talks, I'm Sueann Ramella.

(upbeat music)