Reyumeh Ejue
Interviewed by Yolanda Kwadey
What prompted you to write “Natives”?
I promise not to let this response get too longwinded because it’s a favorite chew-bone of mine, haha! I’m from Nigeria, but I now live in the US. When I was in Nigeria, I couldn’t wait to leave, just like other people my age can’t wait to leave. And then I came to the US and discovered that Americans are obsessed with home. There are Americans who are proud of the fact that they’ve never lived outside of where they were born. In Nigeria, we move from our villages to our cities, and then from our cities to the rest of the world. It goes without saying that when I came to the US, I began to miss home. I realized that I was aching for every morsel of home, including the bad bits. So, I wanted to see what it would look like to have a character experience that. This was my entry point into the story.
Why did you choose to make Emem, the Nigerian, the side character? Does it have anything to do with demonstrating range instead of being bound to societal and industry expectations?
I feel bad that my answer isn’t going to be as interesting as all that. This story is one part of a triptych, each from the POV of a major character.
The way that a woman and her experiences are the focus of “Natives” is almost reminiscent of Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, especially because you mention New York at some point. As is suspected of Thurman, are there any aspects of yourself that you write into your main character? Would anything be lost if your couple were men instead?
I’ll reveal some of my ignorant ways by saying this: I only heard about Thurman’s novel when it was referenced in the Kendrick Lamar song. I’ve since read it, but it’s a book I should have known about way earlier than 2015.
As for your question about characterization, when I was a moody teenager in Calabar, I planned to live all over Northern and Western Nigeria as soon as I turned eighteen. That never happened, so it was fun to allow my character to hit the road on my behalf. Another story in the triptych is from the point of view of Tawo and his partner Gabriel. Writing about them was different, not because I was writing men, but because I was writing characters with different preoccupations and anxieties from Sara and Emem—the women.
I’m glad you mention Calabar! I know that writers normally write places that they know— for example we see the Calabar mention in “Natives” when it comes to Emem. As an Iowan resident, what made you decide to set your story in a little Vermont town rather than somewhere in the Midwest? And have you been to Oregon, Texas, and all these places your characters have been, or is that still you living vicariously through them?
Haha! Before I was in Iowa, I was in New Jersey, and I used to travel up to Vermont to visit family and friends there. I haven’t been as far west as Oregon, but I have been to Idaho and California. That’s close enough, right? I have visited Texas and Georgia as every Nigerian in the US does at some point. And there was a very cold winter that nearly made me swear off New York for good. Anyway, back to your question, I set the story in Vermont because the people I visited there were the initial inspiration for the first story I wrote in the collection.
Yes, I have a whole collection of stories exploring the sheer absurdity of Nigerians in New England!
This New England collection of stories sounds interesting! Is that something you are still working on? Should we anticipate seeing them soon, or are there other projects that you are currently focused on?
The collection is more or less done now. Three stories have been published, including this one, of course, and a fourth might be joining them soon. I’m also working on a novel in the style of Javier Marias about young people in Calabar. There was a lot of ennui and dissatisfaction when I was a young person in Calabar. Our parents are stoic and dignified, we are self-absorbed and very brittle. I’m asking, what is wrong with us? Or is there even something wrong with us?