My novel is based on the diary of the first missionary in Yorubaland —Orr

What memories do you have growing up in Nigeria?

I grew up primarily in Yoruba land, in Ogbomosho, so am ”omoOgbomoso”—daughter of the soil— and I also lived in Eku in Urhobo land. This was from the 1950s through to the early 1970s.  My memories are abundant and extremely happy.  I was what Americans call a “tomboy” for I loved climbing the trees, swimming in rivers, running down paths.  Extremely vivid in my imagination are Yoruba blue cloth, beautiful pottery bowls, the sacred forest of Osogbo, goats and chickens and cattle in the road, the night market with a thousand oil lamps, huge rains, harmattan season, high-life music coming from radios, shopping in Kingsway and Bata, going to Nigerian church services, the taste of mango and pineapple and guavas in my mouth.

What is your best Nigerian food?

Akara.  I would like to have some every day!

Your parents were missionaries when they came to Nigeria. What was their experience  like?

My parents were Baptist medical missionaries so they were usually attached to a hospital.  My mother taught nursing and my father was hospital administrator or business manager.  My mother also worked with the Women’s Missionary Union and my father visited associational churches outside of Ogbomoso.  I always remember my parents saying that they were in Nigeria to work themselves out of a job.  Their mission was to train Nigerians to take up their posts.  As a girl, I didn’t think anything of the fact that I was an oyinbo growing up in Nigeria.  It seemed normal to me.  I was just a girl growing up, going to school, trying to get out of the house so I could explore and wander about.  But now that I look back, I see that my head was shaped by Nigeria and Yoruba land especially.  When I think of the globe, I imagine Africa first.  The world begins there.

Were you in Lagos during Nigeria’s civil war and as a foreigner, what was on your mind during the war?

I was living in Osogbo at the time, attending an American boarding school.  I remember hearing Colonel Ojukwu declare Biafran independence on the radio.  It was a very somber moment.  I was filled with awe because I felt that something beyond my understanding was happening.  Nigeria was my country (or so I thought).  Then we began to see road blocks and many young boys with sub-machine guns.  One day we were in Lagos when sirens went off and rather than get down on the floor, we went to the window to see armored vehicles coming down the street.  Back in Osogbo, my parents carried bread to the trains coming in from the north.  Friends began to slip away in the night, trying to get home.  It seemed to me the air was filled with grief and God wept.  I remember being very sad but not frightened.

Tell me about your novel ‘A Different Sun’ .

I decided to write the book when my mother gave me the diary of an American missionary woman who lived in Ijaiye and Ogbomoso in the 1850s. Her name was Lurana Bowen, the first American missionary to Nigeria, along with her husband, Thomas Jefferson Bowen.  He was the first pastor of Oke’lerin Baptist Church in Ogbomoso.  The diary was full of brief and mysterious phrases.  I wanted to know what this woman’s life had been, the first white woman going to Ogbomoso, my home town.  The only way to know was to do as much research as possible and then to make up a story, to fill in the blanks.  I traveled to Nigeria three times to follow in the Bowens’ footsteps.

My purpose in writing the novel was to explore the yearning that the American South has for West Africa. Why does a white American feel “called” by God to go to Africa?  My thinking is that there is a link between these continents.  What is the link?  What trauma has occurred historically between these continents?

My white characters believe they have the theological answer to deliver to Africa: they are bringing Christianity.  But in Yoruba land, they learn that people have already thought a great deal about God.  I wanted to show this religious encounter.  Finally, I wanted to show what the white characters learned in Africa.  How were they awakened to their own insufficiency?

For the longest time, I could not decide on a title.  Finally, my editor found the phrase “a different sun” in a sentence I had written in the manuscript.  We decided to choose it for the title.  I am always inspired to show the light in Africa, to dispel the idea that Africa is “dark.”  So while I know Adichie’s novel, I did not consciously choose my title with hers in mind.  Certainly it’s an honor for me to be associated with her.  Her books are brilliant.

What is your writing routine like when you started A Different Sun; was it daily you wrote or once a week?

My writing schedule varies since I am also a university professor.  With a project as large as a novel, I write primarily in the summer months (or May through August).  I also try to plan little trips away from home where I may stay in a cabin for a week here and there and devote all my energy to writing.  During the school term, I try to write three days a week on smaller projects.  It took me six years to write the novel.  I had never written a sentence of fiction when I began.

The novel is published in America; do you have plans publishing it in

Nigeria and have you been talking to Nigerian publishers?

Nothing would make me happier than to publish the novel in Nigeria.  I hope that this interview may lead to some interest so that my literary agent can make a connection.  Certainly, as I wrote, part of my audience was Nigerian.  I kept thinking: how will Nigerians read this book?  I would love to hear responses and for this I need a Nigerian publisher!

Of all the characters in your novel which one do you admire and why?

Perhaps I love Jacob, the Yoruba assistant, most of all, because he represents “home” to me and that part of myself that I lost when I was sent to the U.S. to finish my education.  I created Jacob to cast a light on the white American missionaries who come to Africa to spread the light.  In him, I show that the light already shines.  He is at once the most humble and the most noble character.

Is this your first book that is published; if not which other ones have you written?

I have written two scholarly books but I think the one that your readers may find interesting, in addition to A Different Sun, is my memoir about growing up in Nigeria, titled: Gods of Noonday: A White Girl’s African Life.

How do you combine your job as a Professor at North Carolina state University with your writing?

I have already talked about how much of my writing is accomplished when I’m not teaching.  But my teaching does feed my writing too.  I teach courses in World literature, with an emphasis on African literature, and I teach a graduate course on the African short story.  So I often do research for my classes that then informs my writing.

What do you think about Africa and how do you think storytelling could help solve issues as it relates to Africa?

Clearly, the story-telling tradition in fable and folktales is very strong in all of West Africa.  We know that enslaved people brought this tradition to the U.S. and that much of American literature is fed by this tradition.  Simply making our students aware that we are connected through oral literature (West African and the American South, for example) is a powerful way of teaching global consciousness.  We are one race: the human race.  This recognition of a shared humanity is the bedrock for solving the problems that face us everywhere: religious conflict, political conflict over resources, age-old grudges.  In Africa in particular, claiming the power of story-telling as a human resource is a beginning.  How might the stories told by earlier generations come into dialogue with new technologies to create sustainable solutions for water or for electricity or hospital equipment in African climates?  We need to reclaim the forms of earlier generations and work to make publishing accessible to more writers.  Story telling is an avenue to discovery just as much as scientific invention is.  Adichie writes a story in which an Igbo woman and a Hausa woman take refuge together when there is a bloody conflict in the street.  The story offers them common ground.  At least for one night, they sleep on the same cloth. If we discuss this story as seriously as we discuss the political news of the day, could we imagine a soccer team on which Muslim and Christian children play together, or a well-baby clinic, or a community well?

Which novels matter to you most and have helped you as a writer?

My list changes all the time but some books that have influenced me greatly are The Famished Road by Ben Okri, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and July’s People by Nadine Gordimer.

Which African novel are you currently reading?

Ghana Must Go by TaiyeSelasi.  I just finished Lisa Fugard’s Skinner’s Drift, a wonderfully disturbing novel about South Africa from a white perspective.

14 Are you working on another novel at present, and if any what is it about?

Yes.  I have begun a novel that once again connects Nigeria and the American South.  It is set around 1960 in the Osogbo/Ede area and in North Carolina, my home state in the U.S.