From debunking the misconception that one is only a writer once they’ve published a book to exploring settings in fiction writing, Kenyan writer Dennis Mugaa chats with Natalie Sifuma about his take on creating and reading stories.
Natalie: It would be great to start with how you describe yourself.
Dennis: I describe myself as a writer. It has taken me a while to describe myself as so, as I initially thought one needs to have published a book to define themselves as so, or to have studied writing. However, I’ve come to realise it is not so. I use words to describe my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings and how those intersect with stories that emerge from life.
Natalie: The idea that one is a writer – or an author – because they have published a book is a misconception slowly being erased from people’s minds.
And even though you haven’t (yet) written a book, you’ve published a number of short stories and essays, right? In these – like you say – you have used words to describe your thoughts, experiences, feelings, and possibly added concepts of fiction to your prose. Tell me about your writing process… beyond self-reflection, what else inspires you before you begin writing?
Dennis: Yes, that is true, but at the time I was in my last year of university and I was doing an unrelated course. I must have transferred the formality of school into a hesitancy to describe myself as a writer. However, my ideas changed the more I read, and each writer I read was a revelation to me, especially their journeys into writing.
My writing process is quite analytic. When I have an idea about a piece I would like to write, I think over it for a very long time. I write notes, I do my research and more importantly, I look for every reason not to write it. Why I look for a reason not to write something is so that I can ensure the piece I’m writing means something to me. It is a great investment of time and effort; therefore, I always want to make sure it counts.
I am mostly inspired by observation. The things I see, hear, touch and smell. In this I hope to find beauty and to have that beauty translate into a sentence that is precise. I write also because of existentialism. There is a freedom that comes with writing, of saying, this is how I see the world. In The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, the narrator says: Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens to me.
Natalie: I’ve spoken to a number of writers over the years, and listened to interviews featuring writers… I’m always encouraged by the diversity in their / our writing processes. Yours adds to the list of interesting ones. But does your ‘waiting’ or thinking process end up going on for months, years?
There is indeed freedom that comes from writing, and on the other end of ‘the line’ understanding that comes from reading. Are there any African authored books or short stories that have opened you to a new world or reality, or maybe just stayed with you?
Dennis: Yes, sometimes the thinking process can be that long. Last month I wrote a short story which I had been thinking about for a year. The reason could be one of two things, either I am meticulous in my writing, or that I am afraid of making a mistake. But I do think this enables me to inhabit the consciousness of my characters and it enables me to bring out their voices.
There are so many African authored books I love and treasure. However, there are a few which stand out. One of my favourites is: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. I love this book for its language and style. The sentences are poetic and pitch perfect. Sometimes, it is hard to believe that it is a translation from Arabic. Another one would be Small Country by Gael Faye, I read it often because of the nostalgia it contains. For non-fiction, I love Chinua Achebe’s essays. I think I have read all of them, and each one was a revelation to me into post-colonial thought. Aminatta Forna’s book The Devil That Danced on Water is a masterpiece, it is a portrait of her father and Sierra Leone. For poetry, I love Safia Elhilo’s The January Children. And I always find myself returning to Lesley Nneka Arimah’s short story collection, What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky.
Natalie: I’m yet to read Small Country, but I hope to in the near future.
And I agree about Chinua Achebe’s essays. They left me with a profound respect for him.
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky is one of my favorite short story collections – just wow!
While we’re on the topic of books, if you think back to your younger years, how did you adopt a reading habit? And from this, how did the creative side (writing) come to be? I guess what I’m asking is how did your love for reading bring forth your ability to write.
Dennis: I remember reading a lot when I was a child. I don’t think it was a habit I had to adopt; it was simply something I liked doing. The first novels I read during this period belonged to my mother. I read because I felt different worlds became available to me and I could lose myself in them.
We had really good English teachers in my last two years of primary school. They encouraged me to read and to write. Therefore, if I were to look back to a particular point where I felt my writing came from, it would be from when I was twelve.
Natalie: And you kept at it (the writing) till today.
Earlier you mentioned you studied a course unrelated to Literature. Today, you’ve been published in a few anthologies and on platforms, not to mention you went to West Africa for a writing residency.
My first question on this is, of all your published stories and essays, do you have a favorite one – and what about it makes it your best?
Dennis: No, unfortunately I didn’t continue writing for a long time. It took me eight years to get back to reading and writing on a consistent basis. Perhaps that is how life is: we go so far only to meet our true selves as we were as children.
I don’t think I have a favourite amongst the pieces I’ve written. But I do try with each piece to give it the best of me.
Natalie: While I also don’t have a favorite story written by you, I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve read. When I think about your short story, Half Portraits Underwater, I remember a saying by Maggie O’Farrell: “you have to write about the things you don’t know about.” – It’s a quote I came upon late 2020, but didn’t quite get it until I read this piece.
In this story, the narrator has a twin sister and the impression I got was that they were ying and yang almost. Second, the story is set in Nigeria.
With fiction, there’s so much room to imagine and explore… but sometimes there can be limitations with portraying actual locations which exist. How was it like to set your story in a country you’ve never lived in, with characters whose culture you may not fully be conversant with?
Dennis: It is difficult setting a story somewhere where one has never lived. It is easy to get things wrong when one does not understand the culture of a place. This brings to mind how Europeans wrote and some still continue to write about Africa. But I digress, with the story, “Half Portraits Underwater” I was lucky enough to have visited Nigeria, and I stayed there for five weeks. During this time, I was able to understand in a small way how Nigeria is.
However, I don’t think understanding a place is enough, I think a key part in writing about people different from you is compassion. Knowing that beneath the simmering observations one makes is a human being. Learning that every person goes through grief, separation, anger, anxiety and all kinds of emotions. Human nature is constant, across time and place. Last year when the pandemic was just beginning, I read the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. I was moved by the book immensely. I felt so close to the two main characters, Elena and her friend Lila. And yet the book is so separate from who I am as a person. It is Italian, it is about two girls and some of the parts take place in the 50s and 60s. I think that the substance that makes us human remains, and while it is important to understand and research places and people different from us, knowing this fact makes the journey there a little easier.
Natalie: Yes, compassion is a necessary component I believe – even in reading. Like I’m currently reading A General Theory of Oblivion which is a story about a woman locked in an apartment (both my circumstance and by her own will), isolated from the world, where she will remain for thirty years. I’m not yet halfway through but I already feel her anxiety, her worries, and I admire her ability to seize each day that she wakes up. And while this is a story loosely based on a real-life event, my heart goes out to her. So yes, compassion.
You digressed there earlier, but I want to hear more about what you think about Europeans writing / who have written about Africa. The names that come to mind for me are Karen Blixen and Ernest Hemingway. Should we see their works as an inspiration to retell the story of Africa, or should we simply see them as works of fiction and leave it at that?
Dennis: I do love that book too; I think Jose Eduardo Agualusa is a brilliant writer. It’s unfortunate that much of African Literature discourse has been dominated by Anglophone writers. There is a formidable presence of Lusophone and Francophone writers who write very well but I feel their books are not as widely read as compared to books written in English. For instance, Ondjaki, Mia Couto and Leonora Miano. And this is without mentioning literature written in African languages.
I don’t think there’s a problem when Europeans or Americans write about Africa. Some of the books are well researched and they do portray Africans well, for example, King Leopold’s Ghost. Some books are obviously poor and only seek to represent caricatures of what Africa is. But I think the worst ones are books which from a literary perspective are quite stellar, but are then laced with racism. These books now become classified into “permanent literature” as Achebe calls it, and they are read and taught in universities, such as Heart of Darkness, or Blixen’s Out of Africa whose film adaptation won an Academy Award.
Africans ought to always tell their stories, but for themselves. It’s too much work to keep on explaining and defending ourselves. I am glad there have been platforms where we have been able to do this, for instance if I consider East Africa literary magazines, there was Transition in the sixties and seventies, Kwani? in the 2000s and nowadays, Jalada and Lolwe. And there was for some time in the 20th century the widely successful African Writers Series.
Natalie: Perhaps this would be a good time to share some books by Lusophone and Francophone writers that you would recommend – including some by Ondjaki, Mia Couto and Leonora Miano. I may have told you in one of our many previous conversations that I trust your taste in literature, and I believe many more readers would.
I like what you say about us telling our stories for ourselves, and the emergence of new, and continuance of existing pan-African literary platforms and publishers. Do you foresee more of these coming up? And – tying back to Lusophone and Francophone writers – more recognition, with of course, some intentionality in finding, reading and celebrating their work?
Dennis: I would recommend Ondjaki’s Good Morning Comrades and Mia Couto’s Rain and Other Stories. Unfortunately, I am only aware of Leonora’s work, I haven’t been able to find a book of hers in translation. I think this is part of the problem I refer to. I almost forgot to mention Afro-Italian writers, Cristina Ali Farah’s Little Mother is a wonderful book and Igiaba Scego is a writer who fascinates me in how she speaks and carries herself.
I do think platforms will spring up. We have seen the burgeoning of several of them in different languages over the last decade because of the internet. However, the trouble comes in when it comes to books. Several francophone writers have to go to Paris to be published, while Lusophone writers have to go to Lisbon. This book publishing problem is also present in the Anglophone world as well, as talented writers have to leave the continent to find publishers often in New York and London. Most local publishers in Kenya don’t consider literary publishing a worthy endeavor.
Natalie: I understand what you’re saying, and I also believe that with the platforms coming up, and the different voices and languages being amplified, it’s only a matter of time before more recognition goes to these.
And thank you for the book recommendations.
To end our conversation, I’m keen to know what you’re reading and what you’re learning from it.
Dennis: I recently finished reading Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri. I hope to write a book in vignettes one day and I learned a lot from it in terms of that.
It has been a pleasure having this conversation.