Irenosen Okojie: “I never think of genre when I’m writing”
The author of Curandera, which has been longlisted for the 2025 Ondaatje Prize, on Nigerian folklore, writing about women of colour, being inspired by Margaret Atwood, and how writers with hyphenated identities are opening up the borders of the English language
Folklore is woven into the very fabric of your prose. Did that happen organically or was oral storytelling something from your childhood that shaped your journey as an author?
I would say the latter. I grew up in Nigeria for the first eight years of my life, soaking up oral storytelling: these fantastical, strange stories about different characters with multiple intentions in the story. But depending on who told you the story, the ending or the middle might change. So, they were kind of shapeshifting stories in a way and I think I imbibed that as a child. These incredible stories about characters in Africa, folktales, fables, all of that rich imaginative scope was something that I was able to have access to really young. That’s incorporated into the very matter of me, the very bones of my being. And then, when I moved to England, age eight, I discovered books. Because in Africa, sometimes things weren’t written down.
But then books came into the picture and that kind of anchored my sense of hunger for storytelling and where it could go and what it could do. I just was such a voracious reader. The combination of having this incredible appetite for reading and this imagination that I didn’t know what to do with meant that that could only go in one direction, which is to play with words, to kind of be an observer of life around me. I used to keep a diary moaning about my older brother and all the things that he would get up to that I felt left out of or just writing about other children and quirky little observations. Even then, you could see that playfulness in the voice. I’ve been very lucky in that sense, because it’s an amalgamation of forms and influences – oral storytelling, speculative fiction, literary fiction, poetry, which is a huge influence of mine as well. That’s also part of my process. So, yeah, it’s really complex.
You’ve mentioned that you purposely don’t write in the way expected of African-British woman authors. Please elaborate on how your work challenges Western aesthetic expectations?
Firstly, I’m writing stories about black women and women of colour. When I first started writing, there was a dearth of that. You didn’t really see that being published in the UK. But I think the kind of stories I want to tell, centring these characters in unexpected worlds, worlds that we recognise but also feel new, is also challenging the aesthetic of what are these stories about black and brown people supposed to be and look like. Suddenly, I’m writing stories about monks with a woman at the heart of it. I’m writing stories about sexuality. I’m writing stories about transformation and shape-shifting and forms changing and landscapes changing.
All of this is in the history but also new, in a sense, because I’m putting a different spin on it. My foremothers are people like Octavia Butler, Ursula K Le Guin, Arundhati Roy, whose work I love, also a radical writer in a completely different way, but political and challenging the norms. I think the intention is always there to challenge these aesthetics, to create our own aesthetics and to centre what is considered the fringes because that’s important. Our voices are just as important. They matter just as much. And there’s always been a multiplicity of stories, but we’ve not been allowed to tell it in our own way. So, for me, there’s a sense of agency in reclaiming that, in the freedom of thought, in the ideas as well. The ideas are really playful, really unexpected. Ideas are huge to me. That’s how I get excited about the work. The idea has to challenge me and it has to challenge the aesthetic for me to even want to create a world around it.
Would you agree that writers with hyphenated identities are also opening up the borders of the English language to incorporate experiences that have rarely found authentic expression in Anglophone literature?
Yeah, I think so. It’s really important to give space for these voices who are reclaiming their narratives, their histories, where they are in the world politically. There’s a real movement I think with young voices, especially as more literary platforms open up both online and in person. That’s been super exciting to see because we want these stories out there. The more of these stories are possible, I think the more power we have basically, the more agency. If you see yourself reflected, you’re going to feel comfortable claiming space, right? It’s hugely important that we’re seeing these voices from the diaspora coming to the forefront and being taken seriously. We are a force to be reckoned with.
I’m excited about it because it means that there’s so much room for exchange in terms of our different experiences. When you feel like you’re doing it on your own, it’s very lonely. When it feels like there’s a movement, it’s so liberating and the space feels much more rich and much more nuanced as well. It’s a great time for these voices going forward. And more power as well to the spaces that are supporting them, because it just makes a difference to be seen, it makes a difference for somebody to say, ‘I think the story that you want to tell is really powerful, and it’s going to resonate with different audiences.’
Your works are often relegated to the genre of speculative fiction or magical realism. Does that take away from how it also aims to question what we recognize as real as opposed to the fantastical?
I think the work pushes the boundaries and is elusive genre wise. I mean, if you read Nudibranch, my collection, it’s kind of everything. It’s sci fi, it’s speculative, it’s literary, it’s folk, it’s fable – there’s so much there. It depends on the lens in which it’s being seen. But I never think of genre when I’m writing. I just think about the story and the idea and the characters, and what is my intention behind this story. Where do I want to go with it? How do I want to center these characters? What do I want the readers to be left with? It’s about the joy and enjoyment of creating these worlds and these narratives. I have no control over how people define it. It’s really interesting that people say magic realism. I think my work is actually closer to surrealism and speculative rather than magical realism. But I understand that that’s kind of the easiest way for people to frame it, even though I think that that’s incorrect.
Ugandan-British author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi said she prefers the term ‘expat experiences’ instead of migrant stories to describe her work because of how there is a perceived hierarchy within this terminology. Is that something you contend with as well?
Oh, definitely. Jennifer understands how authors of colour are defined in a white patriarchal system; you are kind of relegated to certain genres. And then perhaps you’re not introduced to a wider audience. She’s been very smart in that regard. Her stories and her writing speaks to the global majority, because she is coming from that kind of expat experience. It’s a fascinating lens to write about that kind of in- betweenness, where you’re navigating several identities. Her perspective is really interesting.
I went through that experience at eight years old and I grew up in the UK. I grappled with those cultural differences and the sense of otherness and the ideas around belonging. What does belonging look like for one person and how that can differ for another? I can talk about how I came to my sense of belonging and acceptance and embracing my weirdness. What’s given me my authorial voice is accepting those dichotomies about oneself, about one’s experiences and how that can be such fodder for great work. It’s challenging, both for the writer but also you outside of that. You’re forced to navigate the world in a different way. That’s just the reality. It’s all really good for writing, basically.
You worked across different forms and mediums. How do you feel language moves across these different mediums of expression?
I love language and I would say language is something that motivates me hugely at a sentence level. I really love poetry and what you can do with that. If you read my writing, a lot of people say it’s very lyrical and that’s the influence of poetry. I grew up reading people like June Jordan, Sylvia Plath, all these great poets that were doing interesting things with form. I found that fascinating. But I also realized that I wanted to break the boundaries around language. I never want the reader to be comfortable. I want language and imagery to challenge them and to make them look at the world that I’m creating where it’s interrogative. Where they never kind of rest on their laurels. For me, the use of language is really key. I want it to excite people. I want people to pick up the book or finish the stories just with ideas, just kind of ruminating and maybe never having a particular thread ended. Leaving them with some kind of kinetic experience in the body. I’ve had people say that about some of my stories that they were just like, “I just never saw this coming”. It’s really encouraging to hear that because writing is hard. It’s hard work and it’s, you don’t do it unless you’re crazy and passionate. It’s both of those things. So yeah, it’s wonderful to be able to create these stories, do interesting things with language that really sit with the reader.
Which other contemporary authors do you feel are also shifting the contours of English literary fiction in terms of experimentation, inclusion?
There’s quite a few. We mentioned Jennifer, who I think is just incredible and everybody should read her work. I also really like Victor LaValle, whose book The Changeling was made into an Apple series. NK Jemisin, if anybody’s big into speculative fiction, you can read her stuff. I’m going to go back to old school now and say that our foremothers are also always current. So, I will say Margaret Atwood’s work is incredible. I’ve been lucky enough that Margaret is a fan of my work and championed my books as well. She’s phenomenal. Also, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy. The God of Small Things is one of my favourite books ever. I read that book and it changed me. Women writers, whether they’re past or present, are always moving the dial because we have to contend with so much. So that puts you in a unique position in the world and how you see yourself and how you frame your experiences because it’s so complex. I’m always encouraging men I know to read women writers and putting books by women in their hands because otherwise they won’t actively do it. I always look to women whenever I want to be inspired, whenever I want to be challenged, whenever I want to lift myself up. And women always lift me up.
You mentioned in your session at the Jaipur Literature Festival that African history has inspired you. What role do you envisage for literary fiction in reclaiming marginalized historical narratives as you do in your work?
I have to give my father a lot of credit. He sadly passed away two years ago. We were very close and he knew I loved stories and he would tell me about African history. He was a real bright man and loved knowing about the world and historical context. But he was a very proud Nigerian man, so he knew an insane amount about Nigerian and African history and he planted that seed and that is what made me write my debut novel, Butterfly Fish, which was a reimagining of the 18th century Benin Kingdom. I had such fun writing that particular part of the novel because there really wasn’t much in fiction written. There’s lots written in non fiction but not in fiction. I felt like I had this sense of agency to make it my own. And I then really got the bug about using the novel form to write about African history in a way that’s hopefully exciting. My new novel, Curandera, looks at shamanism, female desire, and transformation across time and dimensions. The historical part is set in 17th century Cape Verde with a shaman who has an agenda who infiltrates the life of a local fisherman and his family in this small town where suddenly things begin to go awry and they wonder is it connected to her or not. This duality is always happening. Again, being able to create, recreate 17th century Cape Verde, the smells, the sounds, the landscape, the spirituality, the sense of being, the cultural identity, all of that… I had a lot of fun researching and playing around with ideas for that. It really just gives you space to do the continent justice. I’m thrilled to have been able to do that.
Simar Bhasin is an independent journalist.