A Conversation with Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi on Her Captivating Debut Collection Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

Brittle Paper

Congrats Omolola on the publication of Jollof Rice and other Revolutions. I get to ask you this question only once because you’re going to be a debut author only once. Are you enjoying being the author of a published book? Did you have one of those rapturous/tearful experiences–often shared on social media– when you held the book for the first time?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

It’s absolutely an amazing feeling to be published but also surreal – sometimes I feel like it’s happening to someone else. I was elated when I saw the galleys/advance review copies for the first time. They came in a box, and I made a reaction video. The first time I saw the finished hardcover version of the book was at my local Barnes and Noble bookstore. It was the only copy on display (a few days before the official publication date) and there was no time for tears because my husband quickly talked someone who’d come in to buy a mystery into buying my book by offering for me to sign it. She jumped at the opportunity, so I held it for a few minutes, signed it and then it was gone.

Brittle Paper

That’s a beautiful story. Let’s talk about the title? You’re probably tired of hearing people comment on how cool it is. I know it’s the title a story in the collection and that it captures the comical yet tragic heart of the story. Where did the idea for the title come from?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I wanted jollof rice in the title – because jollof is pan-West African but also present in the new world in the form of jambalaya and Gullah red rice, and a nod to those connections was important to me for this book. I also wanted to capture the idea of someone using something that’s good and comforting and familiar to try to dull the senses and thwart rebellion.

Brittle Paper

Jollof is comfort food but it’s interesting that it is also what inspires the rioting in the story. Just the thought of Jollof starting an uprising is intriguing. Let’s go from food to space. So, Ibadan is this overarching frame for the book. As someone who grew up in Benin City, I get frustrated at the dominance of Lagos in Nigerian fiction. So, it always delights me to see other cities featured in stories. What is your connection to Ibadan and why did you choose to place it at the heart of the story?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I was born and raised in Ibadan and spent my formative years living in faculty and staff quarters on the campus of the University of Ibadan. I think Ibadan allows for a less hurried and more contemplative view of life than Lagos while still offering the delights of a large city. I thought it was important to showcase that.

Brittle Paper

Can you expand from Ibadan into the broader sense of space and place in the collection? We go from an Igbo village at the beginning of the collection all the way to a futuristic Lagos. As a writer, how much importance do you place on readers really experiencing the space of a story?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I believe that place informs our view of the world and the way we move through it. Each person’s experience of Nigeria, Africa, or the world is shaped (or limited) by the places where they live or visit, and this should come through in some form on the page. I tried to show characters in different environments within Nigeria, within a variety of African countries, and then in the US and Eastern Europe. Lagos doesn’t feature prominently in the 2050 story because in the backstory I wrote that didn’t make it into the book, much of it is under water in 2050 due to the world’s failure to take climate change as seriously as we should have in the present day. I decided not to focus too much on that aspect of the story because a lot of it was already grim, instead showcasing a fictional Irawo State (Irawo means star in Yoruba) with no explicitly defined geographical boundaries.

Brittle Paper

Let’s shift gears a bit to structural stuff. The collection has an interesting organizational logic. It is not your typical collection of random short stories. Can you tell us about its unusual structure?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I knew that I wanted to examine how things have evolved over time for a subset of Nigerian women in terms of autonomy and being able to live their lives freely in the ways that they choose. I chose to do so by featuring the stories of a group of women friends, focusing on important events in their lives and in the lives of people connected to them. The people connected to them are older relatives, lovers, and employees, and there are life patterns and decisions to be made that recur across time, but the choices made are unique to each individual.

Brittle Paper

This is the literary scholar in me being intrigued by how authors make aesthetic decisions. Why didn’t you write a novel instead? In other words, what do interlocking stories do for you that a novel could not have done?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I didn’t set out to write a novel; I deliberately chose a linked short story format. I thought it would allow me to get to the heart of what I wanted to say without the pages and pages of descriptions of settings and main character appearances and quirks that can endear readers to a novel but sometimes leave me frustrated when I read. You kind of have to get to the point more quickly with short stories. With a linked collection, each story has to be able to stand on its own and convey something meaningful, while collectively, the stories give you a broader or deeper view of the human experience as explored through the characters you choose to focus on.

Brittle Paper

That’s brilliant. I also liked that I could begin at any point in the collection but still hold on to some kind of continuity among the character. Speaking of the characters, this is a powerful book about women’s experiences captured at different stages of their lives. What was most important for you to convey about the lives of women?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I wanted to look at independence and agency of Nigerian women historically, in the present, and speculate a bit about the future. I wanted to show women attempting to take charge of their own lives and how they deal with the forces that can conspire to keep them off balance, whether it’s the experience of being colonized and having European misogyny placed on top of the strictures of traditional African life (in the process, choking off previously negotiated avenues of female independence), negotiating how to integrate new religious values with cultural norms, or the ways in which wealth and class can insulate some from problems that destroy others.

Brittle Paper

My next question is one that I have to ask given that this is a book with an ensemble cast of characters: were there characters that you loved writing about more than others?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I think my favorite character to write was Adaoma, the western Igbo woman born in 1897. I learned about female chieftains and also about Omus, female merchant queens, while researching that story. These were women who were experienced in trade, built wealth, and wielded substantial power in precolonial days.

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Adaoma’s story is a great opener for the collection. There are very few stories that represent pre-colonial African women as having such presence of mind and independence. The story also explores the Igbo cultural practice of female husbands, right? Can you tell us more about this practice and how it, perhaps, enriches our understanding of African women in history?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I was introduced to the concept of “female husbands” as a teenager in Ibadan when my mom mentioned that her aunt had been married to a woman in the late 1800s/early 1900s. In her hometown, this was an option available to wealthy women who had the means to provide for a family if they experienced infertility. The woman that the “female husband” married would take on a male lover and any children she had would be recognized by everyone in that society as the wealthy woman’s, not his. Essentially, the man functioned as a kind of sperm donor. That blew my mind. It got me wondering about other Nigerian practices originally devised to address some of life’s unfairness for women and what we potentially lost through colonization because such practices were misunderstood or simply disregarded as unimportant.

Brittle Paper

The stories span the late 19^th century to the mid-21^st century: a mix of historical fiction and speculative fiction. What do you think this breadth brings to the collection?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

It helps to showcase the things that have changed and those that have stayed the same over time culturally, the ways in which women serve to elevate or restrict other women, and how one Nigerian woman’s idea of progress and modernity might be another Nigerian woman’s dystopian nightmare, depending on the times.

Brittle Paper

Right! The book does capture the fluidity that history brings to women’s lives. Let’s talk about friendship. It is a central theme in the collection, specifically friendship among women. Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape’s relationship is to die for. Can you tell us about your experience with friendship and how it may have inspired the way you represent the life-long, intimate bonds among people in the book?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I attended a boarding school in Nigeria just like the one described in the book, and it helped me to learn independence at a young age, to bond with others over shared experiences (good and bad), and also how to make friends that have often felt more like sisters, at different stages of my life.

Brittle Paper

Thank you Omolola for chatting and congrats on the new book! As a closing note, what would you like to say to the reader as they embark on the many journeys of these women’s lives?

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

I hope that every reader enjoys the book and reflects on the ways in which deep and lasting friendships enrich our lives. For those in Nigeria, I hope that they begin conversations with their living parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents to learn more previously untold and unique stories. We need more storytellers and distinctive stories and I hope that some readers are inspired to write stories of their own!

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Buy Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: Amazon | Bookshop.org