Aleya Kassam is one of Kenya’s most vibrant storytellers. She is known to share beauty – mostly in the form of flowers – on her social media pages, and is 1/3 of the LAM Sisterhood. She shared with Natalie about her journey as a storyteller, finding healing and solace in books, and the things that excite her.
Natalie: Mithu’s Masi. The A in LAM. Maker. Storyteller. Performer… and my own addition, Lovely Human. What have you listened to recently that’s made you happy? What are you currently reading?
Aleya: What a most wonderful salutation! I love so much that you began with Mithu’s Masi, because you know even if the other parts of my identity slip away, I will always be Masi to Mithu.
I’ve been listening to music that makes my soul sing. There’s a ghazal written by the Sufi poet, Hazrat Baba Gulzar Sabri, and the lyrics are so beautiful. This one in particular has been on repeat. And it led me down this path, returning to this glorious expression of Sufi devotion – Maulidi ya Homu by The Mtendeni Maulid Ensemble – only in Zanzibar is this still practiced.
As for the books I’ve currently got open and in various stages of being read, there’s…
The First Woman by Jennifer Makumbi;
Bead Bai by Sultan Somjee;
Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma (I’m re-reading this);
Qur’an and Women by Amina Wadud; and
All About Love by Bell Hooks.
Natalie: Maulidi ya Homu by The Mtendeni Maulid Ensemble reminds me of coastal movies. There’s also a short story I wrote that’s based at the coast; if it ever adapted into a film, this would be a great opening song.
Let’s talk about your current reads; they’ve piqued my interest – particularly The First Woman and Collective Amnesia. I’m a Makumbi stan and I appreciate her contribution to African stories. This is the first I’m hearing of Collective Amnesia, but it has great reviews online, and I see Koleka Patuma is from South Africa. Was there any reason at all why you selected these books to read and re-read?
Aleya: Earlier this year I finished The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Owuor. Really what can I say? I had lost my beloved grandfather earlier, and Yvonne’s weaves stories of such love, I could feel a sort of tender healing. The book felt like the ocean for me, and my spirit refused to leave Pate. What does one read after The Dragonfly Sea? I tried several things, but it just refused. Then I remembered Kintu. I remembered how I felt when I first read that, and I knew the only author who would be able to coax me out of the world Owuor created for me, is Makumbi. I’ve just started the book, and already I don’t want it to end.
In terms of Collective Amnesia, I actually picked it up at the Cape Town airport in March last year, a week before COVID was announced. And then even before I had a chance to read it, I watched the online audio experience – it was almost exactly a year ago – and it was so enormously affecting, so powerful, so beautiful, so intimate. As a performer myself, I was already playing around with the various possibilities that virtual shows offer to create an experience for audiences – and I remember sitting in my bed, late at night, completely consumed by this work. Immediately afterwards, I read the whole collection in one gulp. And I return to it now, as someone with an aspiring poet’s eye. I’m trying to see how she did what she does from a technical level, so I can learn at the feet of this master.
And always, when I lose my way, I know it is the women who will help me find my way back.
Natalie: I am happy to hear that story and words gave you some comfort, and I remember so dearly your reading of The Dragonfly Sea when it was launched in March 2019…. I also recall that shortly after that you went away to the coast and carried this wonderful book with you. How was it like reading it by the sea?… and on that same note, what’s the African-authored story or book that made you fall in love with African writing?
Aleya: What a wonderful afternoon that was, squeezed into Prestige bookshop, celebrating our very wonderful Yvonne in the first-ever launch of The Dragonfly Sea! (How I took being squeezed together in a bookshop for granted. When will we be able to that again I wonder?)
I took the book down to the coast, but I was at the time working on my YA novella, which was also set at the coast – and honestly, I found Yvonne’s voice to be too deeply affecting – it kept seeping into my writing. So, I put the book down until a few months ago.
I can’t remember the first book that made me fall in love with African writing, but there are the first few that really stand out for me.
1) Diaries Of a Dead African by Chuma Nwokolo – I have had to buy so many copies of this book, because I’m either giving it away or it is getting stolen from my bookshelf.
2) Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – This was like finding treasure – my gosh, reading this book felt like being led into a secret world that I never knew existed.
3) The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin.
I was thinking about what it was about of these books that I loved so much – they are each of them a piece of brilliant storytelling – imaginative, truthful, sublimely written, funny, painful, masterful – and I really got the sense that there was no outside gaze – these books were written for us. And that’s what makes them so glorious.
Natalie: I always say ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ is a ‘Let me tell you Maina…’ kind of book. Easy to read, and it brings forth so many emotions.
You’ve used a number of adjectives: brilliant, imaginative, truthful, masterful… and wound that up by saying these are stories for us – I absolutely agree. In a lot of African stories, we see ourselves, even if just a fraction.
Your role as a performer gets me excited. What kind of characters do you love (love love) to portray, and why?
Aleya: Well, you know, I’m less of an actor than I am a storyteller – the tradition I belong to and claim is one of the oral storytelling traditions. And so my favourite sorts of performances are ones in which I am in cahoots with the audience, and it feels like I am telling them those stories that sound like mushene, but then make your eyebrows leap up your forehead, your toes curl, your eyeballs pop out – yes I LOVE drama, I LOVE the absurd (and I also love tender stories) – during the performance, I want the audience to be inside the story, cackling, participating, shouting suggestions, escaping into this world – and then after I want them to feel so excited about having a wonderful story that they can also go and tell other people.
My favourite kinds of audiences are children 🙂 They are the absolute best. You cannot be pretentious or boring with children – you’ve got to come proper and you’ve got to commit. If they don’t feel your vibe, they’ll either switch off or just stare, they won’t pretend to be polite, the way adults do – I’ve even seen children walk away lol! But once they are in it, there is no more exciting audience to be telling stories with.
Natalie: Now that you’ve given me a clearer picture of you as a storyteller-performer, when did you get into this? Were you in your high school drama club? Or did you find this passion way before?
And when did you first perform in front of a children audience? How was it?
Aleya: I actually got into performing accidentally. It was in 2013 and Sitawa Namwalie asked me if I was interested in doing The Vagina Monologues. I had a vague idea what they were about, but it has been one of the wisest (and most rewarding) practices of my life to say yes to Sitawa Namwalie when she asks if I’d like to do something. So, I said yes, and joined a dazzling cast led by Mumbi Kaigwa. It was incredibly intimidating. The cast included Wanuri Kahiu, Lorna Irungu, June Gachui, Patricia Kihoro, Chichi Seii – I remember feeling very out of place – and I was doing a piece that required me to moan. A lot. In different ways. Because I hadn’t really stepped on stage before (aside from when I as 10years old or so), I wasn’t familiar with the contours of that specific nervousness. That first performance, I will never forget. As soon, as I stepped up to do my piece, and I felt the audience connecting – that heady and addictive feeling of shared connection, I remember thinking, I am home. This was peculiar because up until then I’d thought that writing was my home. What I really love about the stage is how as an artist you get to experience the audience’s reaction in real time, whilst you are there – unlike writing, which feels much lonelier.
After that I joined Sitawa Namwalie and performed with her for years, first with her material Silence is A Woman and Cut Off My Tongue, and after that co-writing the shows and adding my own material.
In terms of children’s storytelling – when I first began performing, I worked at Storymoja, who have an incredible culture of storytelling. Between the Festival, the reading promotion activities, and bringing alive the books that Storymoja published, storytelling was so much a part of the organisation that you were around it all the time. I remember watching in awe as one of my favourite storytellers Wangari Grace told story after story to a rapt audience of children. That is how I learned and picked it up. It was a useful skill to have, especially during the Storymoja Festival, when we’d have hundreds of children gathered, with pockets of time to fill in between sessions. I think that may even have been my first performance – trying to entertain a large group of antsy students as they waited for a session – it was nerve-wracking, until they started laughing and joining in, and then it was just pure fun!
Natalie: You didn’t shy away from an opportunity, and it led you to where you are. And now you’re also part of the LAM Sisterhood. Tell me about this sisterhood, and how it came to be. BTW I absolutely love your newsletters.
Aleya: I LOVE that you read and love our Lam Letters.
The LAM Sisterhood began with a ululation in November 2017. The first was to me, Aleya. The second to Laura Ekumbo . The third to Anne Moraa . We ululated together and many, many women responded. Together we found Micere Mugo asking: “Where are those songs, my mother and yours always sang?” And in looking for those songs, and wanting to share them, we created Brazen, which celebrated six invisible women from Kenya’s history who came before us.
We wanted to see the women whose victories have been hidden from us, to see them in all their complexity, to know who came before us, to be able to breathe in their fury when we need to, to wrap their skin around us for courage and to invoke their fire to burn through us. Nine months after that first ululation, with many more women ululating back, The Brazen Edition was staged at the Kenya National Theatre, with an incredible all women cast and crew, to 5 shows of sold-out audiences.
In the making of Brazen, Laura (The L), Aleya (The A), and Moraa (The M) found our dreams in each other, and we found a sisterhood. And so, we continue the work of filling the world with stories for African women to feel seen, heard and beloved.
From film to theatre, podcast to stage show, essays to performed readings, we love story in all its wonderous forms!
Natalie: I just had a thought of seeing a short docuseries on the making of the LAM sisterhood at your 10 year anniversary… but I digress. I do however look forward to more productions by you.
To end our conversation, I want to hear from you what you think the future of African stories looks like… whether on a single or multiple platforms. And as a contributor and consumer of these stories, what would you like to do more of?
Aleya: A 10-year anniversary docuseries – from your lips to the Universe’s ears!
Well, I’m so excited by the expansion of what people are doing already – Just here in Kenya, I think of what @Paushinski does with Twitter threads and his stories about life in the estate, what the Nyabola Prize for Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction in Kiswahili will unearth, how the Macondo Lit Fest brought into Kenya a whole host of Lusophone writers that we hadn’t had the opportunity to be in conversation with…overall, I think the trend will be towards more stories, in more languages, translated into more languages, of more genres, made more accessible – that’s what I’m excited about. Truthfully, I think there’s a lot of incredibly exciting work happening all over the Continent, but the big gap has been accessing to it – and so I hope that the distribution and infrastructure catches up to what the writers and story makers are doing. I hope (and think) the future of African stories is a stand up to gatekeepers of all kinds (we’ve had too many of all sorts for a long time).
As for what I would I like to do more of… I’ve always been extremely promiscuous when it comes to genre and form – I tend to follow my curiosity; so I’ve got a YA novella I’m editing, two musical theatre pieces I’m working on in collaboration, a short animation, a one-woman stage show/mixtape that’s marinating, a children’s poetry book for my sweet sunshine, a semi-non-fictional novel that’s coming be in drips and drops and quickly typed into my notepad of the phone (I’m not questioning the method!), a series of flash fiction I’d love to see go into short films….I want to finish. And I’d like to earn a living off my creative work. Much of it is in progress because so much time, energy and mind space are spent earning a living, working on establishing two start-up businesses, simply surviving, that I have less energy for my creative work – so it’s taking longer than I like. The dream would be able to just hunker down and focus on each one by one and know my and my family’s needs are taken care of – but isn’t that just the dream everywhere. And surprisingly, whilst I am not a multi-tasker in life, I find myself stimulated by having different creative projects on the go that I can turn to, depending on what I’m feeling like in the moment.
Natalie: I agree about the incredible productions and those in the pipeline across the continent. As for you and what you’re working on… I am absolutely here for it. Thank you so much for taking the time to vibe with me. I’ve had a smile on my face as I read all your responses.
