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West—especially when we reference
Deola‘s tendency also to switch accents.
SA: It‘s not an immigrant phenomenon. I
listen to radio in Nigeria and radio hosts
put on American accents. Nigerians in
Nigeria switch accents. Give a Nigerian a
microphone and their accent changes.
But I have observed this about people of
other nationalities. People speak in
different voices for all sorts of reasons. I
don‘t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
It might be as simple as communicating
in the easiest possible way or as complex
as colonial mentality, but as a writer if
you have an observation that is relevant
to your story, you can‘t ignore it. Deola
switches accents reluctantly to fit in with
the corporate culture overseas. Dara is
trying to make his name internationally as
an Afro hip-hop musician. He is a player,
in the theatrical and slang sense, and, as
my daughter would say, don‘t hate the
player, hate the game. As a Nigerian
writer published overseas, I have seen
that there are ways to tell stories to get
easy international recognition. It‘s not
that I don‘t want to pander or any such
lofty ideal; I just can‘t be bothered. I‘m
too bogged down with trying to tell
stories in ways that interest me.
DA: Well, about the radio host accent, I
happened upon a Facebook Update
which became an assertion rendered
popular in minutes. Kola Tubosun, a
linguist and editor of a Nigerian literary
magazine, wrote, ―That usually
unconvincing but foreign-sounding
accent on Nigerian radio…isn‘t a ―fake
American accent‖ but a ―Lagos Middleclass
accent‖ of Nigerian English. What
are your thoughts?‖
SA: If you live in Nigeria and you‘ve
never lived in America, and you say
wanna and gonna, something is off,
however you define it.
DA: Still on Dara, Polygamy helps. When men
have several women, they don’t sleep around.
Polygamy is hugely legal in Africa and it
is a concern of our contemporary
literature notably Lola Shoneyin‘s The
Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives and Bimbo
Adelakun‘s Under the Brown Rusted Roofs.
Polygamy is arguably an African norm but
westernization is persuading a rethink.
What are your thoughts on polygamy as
a remedy to casual sex, the rising spate
of aging spinsters and the transmission of
sexually-transmitted diseases?
SA: I have to say that I‘m as clueless
about polygamy as I am about juju,
which is strange because polygamy is
practiced openly. I‘ve just not been
around openly polygamous families. I
have been around a lot of families whose
fathers have other families outside their
homes, which says a lot about growing
up in Ikoyi. Men and women in
polygamous marriages are quite capable
of having casual sex outside their
marriages. Traditional arrangements give
single women more options, if they can
live with them, and if we‘re talking about
preventing sexually transmitted diseases,
the focus should be on the steps people
take to protect themselves, not on how
they choose to cohabit.
DA: You chose the limited Third Person
point of view which is quite technical;
writers often get carried away and begin
to head hop forgetting that they do not
have the divine abilities of the standard
Third Person. I often hear of authors who
write a story from a point of view and
then realize that they chose the wrong
voice? What informed your choice of
Deola‘s voice and perception throughout
the novel? Were you not tempted to
enter say, Bandele‘s head or Wale‘s
head?
Saraba | Issue 13 | Africa 28