Only Africans Can Write African Stories – Uponi

After successfully
coming out with ColourBLIND, an inspirational African fiction novel which was a finalist at the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Novels, (African region), Mrs Uzoma Uponi presented another fiction novel, Whispers from Yesteryears recently to the public in Port Harcourt.
The new book is about Egoyibo and Odili’s daughter who ran away from home. Suspicion had it that she was a casualty in a fatal vehicle accident. This was confirmed when her body was located, identified and buried. The tragedy of the painful loss continued to trouble a mother’s heart.
Eleven years later, the family receives an email from a stranger who claims to have been in recent contact with the deceased girl. Family secrets begin to surface and bitter accusations start to swirat, ultimately leading to the disintegration of the Okolie family.
Chuma Zeluwa thinks the singer at the conference looks familiar. She looks remarkably like his high school friend whose death was widely reported and whose grave he had visited many years ago. What Chuma discovers when he confronts the stranger leads him on a journey back in time to his part in a decade – long tragedy and to God who forgives, restores and who gives second chances.
“Whispers from Yesteryears”, against all odds is all about a young girl’s fears unwittingly resulting in a lesson in courage, grace and truth. Uponi, who is a graduate of Mass Communication with Masters in Business Administration who lives with her family in Canada and joggles her time between her work and her family developed the interest in writing in 2009 when she took three weeks off work to attend to some family matters.
According to her, “at this time I found myself with lots of extra time so I decided to catch up with my reading. I went to a major bookshop looking for something to read. I wanted to read on African Fiction, I looked from bookshop to bookshop and I did not find any African novels”, she said.
The author revealed that the African section of the shop she later visited contained books about colonization, wars, the politics, the diseases and the religions of Africa, adding that, “even the books that talked about the cultures of Africa were written by white people”.
At that point, Uponi realized that she would not want her children to read these books, she would rather want them to read about the values that she grew up with, the values that most of the world today is gradually losing and which they do not know how to recapture. These are the values that Africans are still looking onto.
She stressed that Africa has something the world is looking for, adding that, “we have family values and traditions that the western world wished they still had. We have respect for elders and for our families; we are very strong on relationships which these people do not have”.
Explaining further, she conceived the idea that only Africans can write African stories because according to her, “we cannot expect foreigners to explain our culture to the world. They would only see it through their own worldview and explain it in a way that makes sense to them. Only us can explain our proverbs, practices, languages and the little nuances of our culture, like why the kolanut is an essential in our tradition, what it means to us and why we revere it so much”.
She however decided to contribute to the African narrative by making the world see Africa from an African point of view and write stories that would portray Nigeria, the country she grew up.
The Abia-born author, who is married to a Nigerian from Delta State, said that the books were part of her contribution towards telling the story of Africa, adding that her experience in Canada was an indication that Africans need to tell their stories as the outside world does not know much about Africa.
“The two books have been very well received in Canada among both the Nigerian and Canadian communities. The Nigerians are reading them because it reminds them of home and the Canadians are reading them as a source of information and education about contemporary African life which most of them are not exposed to”, she said.
She urged the Federal Government of Nigeria to encourage and sustain reading culture in youths by encouraging and supporting local authors, since there are many local talents in Nigeria that are writing about life in Nigeria, pointing out that students will read local books if they are well written, very interesting and will like to identify with them because they are reflections of the society we live in.
Mrs Uponi, who has started writing another story along the same theme as the first two-contemporary life in Nigeria is exploring some of the modem day challenges faced in Nigeria like violence, religion, superstitions and cultism.

Commonwealth writers Prize Finalist, Mrs Uzoma Uponi, Photo: Newswriter

Ibinabo Ogolo