Chibundu Onuzo, SANKOFA: A Novel
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:47]Here's a little snippet by one of the authors from the anthology.
[0:50]My name is Sarah McCall.
[0:52]I am so happy to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids,
[0:57]which is the funniest title ever.
[0:59]My essay is called The Circular Breast.
[1:02]And what I really don't have time for is finishing Books I Don't Love.
[1:07]I used to feel a sense of duty, but now if I don't love it, I let it go.
[1:12]To Bandu, a new zoo, is the author of Sankofa, a novel.
[1:16]To Bandu was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and lives in London.
[1:19]A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and regular contributor to the Guardian,
[1:23]she is the winner of a Betty Trask Award, has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize,
[1:27]the Commonwealth Book Prize and the RSL Encore Award, and has been longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize,
[1:33]and it's a lot literature prize.
[1:35]She was also a Reese's Book Club pick for Sankofa.
[1:38]The author of Welcome to Lagos, Sankofa, this is her third novel.
[1:42]Welcome to Bandu.
[1:44]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read Books to discuss Sankofa.
[1:48]Thank you for having me.
[1:50]It's my pleasure and congratulations on being a Reese's Book pick, and an Amazon editor's pick,
[1:55]and everything.
[1:56]Look for me.
[1:57]I mean, oh my gosh.
[1:58]Thank you.
[1:59]So much success.
[2:00]Were you prepared for that?
[2:02]Has it been a whirlwind or what?
[2:03]I was prepared for some of it, but definitely not all of it.
[2:06]I think so we knew about the Reese's pick before.
[2:09]We knew about Amazon as well, but I didn't know to what extent Amazon.
[2:13]So yes, I was very excited to say, Billboard.
[2:16]I've never had a Billboard in my nine years of view published rights.
[2:20]So yes, that was definitely a career milestone.
[2:23]Wow.
[2:24]That's just amazing.
[2:25]I love it.
[2:26]So can you please tell listeners who might not know what your book is about?
[2:30]A little bit about it.
[2:31]Sorry to make you do this like elevator pitch.
[2:33]But I do think it's useful if people are out and about listening today,
[2:36]and don't know what Sankofa is about.
[2:38]Thank you.
[2:39]So Sankofa is a novel about Anna Graham.
[2:42]And her mother has just died.
[2:44]Her marriage is falling apart.
[2:46]And yeah, she's just having a,
[2:50]her life is sort of a drift.
[2:52]When she discovers a diary,
[2:55]when she's going through her mother's thing.
[2:57]So it's a diary written by the father she's never met.
[3:00]And then she sets off on this discovery.
[3:03]So find out who her father Francis Ivory was or is his slash was who her father.
[3:09]Well, yeah, once you read the book, you realize that the manager's diary
[3:13]and her father in real life may not necessarily be the same people anymore.
[3:17]Say yes.
[3:18]Don't give anything away.
[3:20]Yeah.
[3:21]Well, that's like part of the fun is that you get to discover along with the protagonist,
[3:30]like what's going on?
[3:31]Who is her father?
[3:32]What was, how did he even meet her mom?
[3:34]How did he feel about it?
[3:36]What was he doing?
[3:37]You know, like the whole thing.
[3:39]And I feel like we got to snoop.
[3:41]It's the best feeling, right?
[3:42]Being able to read someone else's diary and learn about it.
[3:46]Plus the diary is not just like of her potential dead's musings, right?
[3:51]It's a lot of political and, you know,
[3:54]and timely historical commentary because what he was doing was,
[3:59]was really interesting in and of its own right.
[4:01]So I loved how you blended all of that with just, you know,
[4:05]his flat maiden.
[4:06]What's going on?
[4:07]And, you know, all of that.
[4:08]Thank you.
[4:09]Did you always did was the diary piece of it?
[4:12]Always part of it.
[4:13]Like what was the germ of the idea for you?
[4:16]So the term of the idea was the research I did from in South PhD.
[4:20]And I did it on a group called the West Africa and Student Union,
[4:24]which had sort of West Africa students in the 20s, 1930s, 1940s in London.
[4:30]And so I actually read a lot of their first person accounts of this period.
[4:34]So that's why I knew that I was definitely going to have a diary because I was very interested in the lives of these men.
[4:41]And it was mostly men who went on to be these great political figures.
[4:46]I was very interested in this time in their lives before they became the famous men that we all knew.
[4:53]And so yeah, that was the gem of the idea.
[4:55]Very interesting.
[4:56]Well, you know, as I said, I also really like seeing the development of the relationship with her mom.
[5:02]And, you know, living that in real time.
[5:05]And you have this one passage.
[5:07]Let's see.
[5:08]Can I read from the diary?
[5:10]You say, what kind of love, this is Francis speaking.
[5:13]What kind of love is this for a girl?
[5:15]Never to be seen walking out with her man to be sneaking to my room at night.
[5:18]Like ours is a transaction.
[5:20]Yet I lie in bed each night waiting for the sound of the door opening.
[5:23]I go through my lectures in a days.
[5:25]I no longer visit Thomas, his friend.
[5:27]I saw my results and was neither pleased nor displeased by them.
[5:30]It was only Bronwyn, I think of.
[5:32]And then you go on to say, feverish, as this is now the narrator, feverish at feverish as his tone was.
[5:38]Francis Agri's affair with my mother was not a grand passion.
[5:41]If he wanted to stay in touch, he could simply have written a letter.
[5:44]He had rejected my mother.
[5:46]There was nothing to suggest.
[5:47]He would not reject me tomorrow.
[5:50]Gotcha.
[5:51]I love that.
[5:53]It's always such a crazy thing to think about your parents as in their own relationship.
[5:59]So uncomfortable and bizarre.
[6:01]So it's like she has to go through all of that cringe-worthy stuff to get to her own relationship formed.
[6:09]So tell me a little bit more about developing the characters for this book and how you decided on who was going to be who and how you crafted the plot and all the good juicy stuff.
[6:22]So the first big decision I had to make was who would actually be the main narrator in the story.
[6:29]And that's basically the narrator instead of her father, eventually.
[6:33]Because I felt like you have a lot of first person narratives of these great men.
[6:39]You don't have as many as I would like, but you still have, for example, the autobiography of Carmen Crema.
[6:45]You still have two appears memoirs.
[6:47]You still have, you know, Nam de Azicue that's another independence leader.
[6:51]You still have their memoirs.
[6:53]Where as their children and their family and their families and, you know, all the other people that supported these great men.
[7:00]The so-called supporting cast.
[7:02]You don't hear from them enough.
[7:03]So I decided that Anna would tell the story.
[7:06]So that was the first thing who is going to be my main narrator.
[7:09]And then the next thing was, because I was so much younger than Anna when I started I was in my mid twenties.
[7:14]I was here.
[7:15]And I thought, God, she's so much colder than I am.
[7:18]And her concerns are said different from mine.
[7:20]Yes, be careful.
[7:21]I'm 45 years old.
[7:22]So don't say anything to me.
[7:24]Well, well, well, well.
[7:26]Well, I think, well, okay.
[7:28]Well, tell me if I wrong.
[7:29]But I'm 24.
[7:30]What was my main concern?
[7:32]Like my skincare.
[7:34]Making sure my Instagram was color-coordinated.
[7:38]Okay.
[7:39]So I'm pretty sure that by the time I wish my pussy is my, my, my, my parents, these will have hopefully they would have changed.
[7:45]I don't know.
[7:46]I'm still pretty concerned with my Instagram.
[7:48]Are you telling me it doesn't get better.
[7:53]I'm still going to be obsessing about like my picture size.
[7:57]Oh, yeah.
[7:58]Yeah.
[7:59]I don't know if that goes away.
[8:00]But okay.
[8:01]Anyway.
[8:02]Anyway.
[8:03]Well, I did feel I did feel I had to search out the voices of women in their forces.
[8:08]I mean, things have changed a little now.
[8:10]But I started the novel maybe six years ago.
[8:12]And I just felt, you know, magazine covers.
[8:14]You know, it's mostly women in their teens, their 20s, maybe their 30s on television and TV series you watch.
[8:22]Yeah.
[8:23]I just thought that there's, there's a sort of erasure, like just sort of slowly sort of pushing older women out of, out of this.
[8:33]I don't call it mainstream.
[8:34]And so I listened to a lot of podcasts actually, which is why it's nice to come on your podcast like this.
[8:40]Okay.
[8:41]I listen to a lot of, and I feel like that's one thing the podcast base has done.
[8:44]So even if, you know, a radio show, a TV show, whoever is going to give you a platform, then you just make your own platform.
[8:52]So I listen to a lot of podcasts actually.
[8:54]One of them in particular, women's hour.
[8:56]It happens every week day in the UK.
[8:58]It's a radio program and they just bring on women of all ages.
[9:01]And you don't have to be exceptional.
[9:03]So you don't have to be Dame Trudy Den to like Helen Mirren or like an Oscar winner to be sort of a woman in their 50s or 60 sort of giving a platform on the show.
[9:13]You can just just be an ordinary woman and sort of have your time.
[9:17]Yeah.
[9:18]Interesting podcast as like background character research.
[9:21]I like it.
[9:22]That is awesome.
[9:24]And so you wrote your first book and got it published when you a publishing deal when you were 21.
[9:30]Is that right?
[9:31]That's what I read.
[9:32]I was like, that can't be right.
[9:33]Yeah.
[9:34]So I got my do when I was 19 actually 19 and it came in when you were 21.
[9:39]Oh my gosh.
[9:41]How that is wild.
[9:43]I don't even know what to ask about that other than like that must have been insane and amazing.
[9:48]Yeah.
[9:49]I don't think I knew how to enjoy it.
[9:50]I think now from my grand old age of 30.
[9:53]I could say that you've wasted on me.
[9:57]Yes.
[9:58]Yes.
[9:59]But I just should.
[10:00]I'm not feeling very overwhelmed.
[10:01]I just didn't know how to enjoy it.
[10:03]I was just always, I might go to make a mistake,
[10:06]especially when I would get one, things like this,
[10:08]when I'd have interviews.
[10:09]And I'd always sort of feel like smart enough
[10:12]and not like eloquence enough and not clear up.
[10:16]And especially especially if it was a panel interview.
[10:19]And so you'd have other people,
[10:20]and then you'd, I'd just be comparing myself
[10:22]to everybody else.
[10:23]Like, I wouldn't go back to my 20s for anything.
[10:26]They weren't going to,
[10:29]they weren't going to,
[10:30]they weren't going to be always sort of thinking,
[10:32]how am I appearing?
[10:33]How am I looking?
[10:34]And it's just like, you need to, yeah.
[10:36]Can't you just enjoy your life?
[10:38]Yes.
[10:39]It's exhausting, but I agree.
[10:42]Wow.
[10:43]You know, people assume that when you had all this success,
[10:48]you feel great.
[10:48]Like, people would never think that like,
[10:51]look at this woman, look at all she's achieved.
[10:53]She's the one inside feeling like
[10:55]she's not as good as these other people,
[10:57]when so many people want to be you in that scenario.
[11:00]You know, it's really nice to hear you being open
[11:03]about all of that.
[11:04]I mean, I interviewed, there was this really popular
[11:07]but a long time ago.
[11:08]I don't know if you read it.
[11:08]The devil worst product became a movie.
[11:10]It's like, you know, anyway,
[11:12]I interviewed Lauren Weisberger about it
[11:14]because she, that was a long time ago, right?
[11:16]And she was very, very young.
[11:17]And it became a huge head and a movie
[11:19]and like this whole big thing.
[11:20]And she didn't know what to expect.
[11:22]And it's a very similar story.
[11:24]She's like connect to you unexpectedly, you get it.
[11:26]Because she was like, I didn't know.
[11:28]And now she's writing.
[11:29]She's closer to my age around there.
[11:31]But in her 20s, she was like,
[11:33]I had all this success.
[11:34]It just like fell in my lap.
[11:35]I didn't know how hard, I didn't know how to appreciate
[11:39]that it was, you know that logically.
[11:41]But anyway, I'm not saying this very well.
[11:43]But I think she gets stuck.
[11:45]You are sort of appreciating is you just sort of worry.
[11:49]Yeah, I just spend all the time worrying.
[11:52]And I think yeah, now sort of like with Sanko for like,
[11:55]I can't having learned that lesson
[11:56]not to anyone.
[11:57]I can sort of enjoy enjoying the thing.
[11:59]But like, you know, this is fun.
[12:00]You know, don't take it seriously.
[12:02]You don't just enjoy it, you know.
[12:04]So despite getting your novel published at 21,
[12:08]you go on to get a master's in PhD.
[12:11]Anyway, you're like, I'm still on this path.
[12:14]Did you ever consider just like going off
[12:16]and being a writer at that point
[12:18]or were you always determined for a PhD?
[12:21]There was no money.
[12:22]There was no money.
[12:24]He's probably about who makes money
[12:27]from their first novel.
[12:28]Unless you write the devil as part of it.
[12:30]And no, so it's so interesting with the Spider-King's daughter.
[12:34]And I remember because from I guess, you know,
[12:36]it was sort of like a great news story.
[12:37]So I got a lot of news features.
[12:39]I was on CNN, I was on BBC.
[12:41]And I guess people just assume,
[12:43]once they see you in the press that now,
[12:46]you know, you're now rolling in cash.
[12:49]And it's like, no, I cannot say like things breathe
[12:52]and say, well, here's my CNN feature.
[12:55]Please, can I have some groceries?
[12:57]It doesn't work like that.
[12:59]You need cash.
[13:00]So now I mean, it was great to like sort of having
[13:03]all the press and the attention.
[13:05]But like, and they sold well, I guess,
[13:07]you know, they earned out their advance.
[13:08]But that's still well below minimum wage.
[13:11]So my plan was to, it wasn't really my plan.
[13:16]It was a suggested plan.
[13:17]It was a plan suggested to me
[13:19]by all the well-meaning adults in my life,
[13:21]which was doing Masters D PhD.
[13:24]And then you can lecture at the university.
[13:26]And then that would sort of be like a stable job.
[13:30]And then you can write in the evenings.
[13:33]So yes, I did the Masters and then I did the PhD.
[13:37]And then I lectured for a year as a university.
[13:40]And then I was like, I don't want to do this.
[13:43]I've always done my 20s now.
[13:46]I'm a full-time writer.
[13:47]So there we go.
[13:48]We ended up right at the same place.
[13:50]But I think the PhD helped.
[13:53]There would be no Sanko for without the PhD
[13:55]because again, all the material for Sanko for all
[13:57]the sort of historical material for Sanko
[13:59]for a painful PhD.
[14:00]But then also, I think, yeah, just sort of being older.
[14:04]You can pivot better.
[14:05]So now I've started writing for television, for example.
[14:08]And sort of moving into that space more.
[14:10]And so now I can sort of think creatively about writing.
[14:12]And yes, it would be nice to make all my money
[14:14]for my knowledge.
[14:15]But there are other things.
[14:17]There's other writing you can do that is also creative
[14:20]to make money.
[14:21]So yeah.
[14:22]Interesting.
[14:22]I mean, I would think getting a PhD
[14:25]would not necessarily be the biggest money maker
[14:27]either after spending an extra five years in school or something.
[14:31]Who was advising me to be who?
[14:34]I should have gone to work in a bank.
[14:38]I was going to say, there are ways.
[14:40]I mean, you know, that's really funny.
[14:45]Yeah, I was advised to go to business school,
[14:47]even though I wanted to be a writer too.
[14:49]But, you know, who's going to just be a writer?
[14:51]Also, you'd like need all this experience, right?
[14:53]Like, I remember I interned at this magazine
[14:55]when I was in college, still, at Vanity Fair.
[14:57]And my job was to like file the contracts
[15:00]for all these big deal authors.
[15:01]And I was like, but I want to be the big deal author.
[15:04]I don't want to be filing the contracts.
[15:06]Like, and I looked around and I was like,
[15:08]there is no path here to like go from the file person
[15:12]to the writer person.
[15:13]And I was like, I got to get out of the magazine.
[15:15]And I was like, think you're out of New Way.
[15:18]Especially when you want to do something crazy.
[15:20]You have to figure out your own road.
[15:23]There is no one way.
[15:24]And I think that's what a lot of people find scary.
[15:26]Yeah, there's no one way.
[15:28]Yeah, you might as well get your PhD and, you know,
[15:31]and how great they, I mean, maybe it was good advice.
[15:33]Because as you said, you used it all.
[15:34]And you made this great book.
[15:35]And, you know, it's like, so, who knows?
[15:38]Life is weird.
[15:39]And no reason was for the likes of my book.
[15:41]No PhD, no risk with a spoon.
[15:44]That's right.
[15:45]Yeah.
[15:45]So maybe now applications to PhD programs will rise after you're
[15:51]doing it.
[15:52]This is the path to getting a risk book club pick.
[15:55]Yeah.
[15:56]Before you have a PhD, write your book about it.
[15:59]And then there you go.
[16:00]There you go.
[16:01]Yeah, amazing.
[16:02]Watch out PhD admissions officers.
[16:05]Yeah.
[16:05]You flooded very soon.
[16:08]It's a master class.
[16:09]We are on our way back and get another money spinner.
[16:12]True.
[16:13]I taught a class the other night.
[16:15]I was like, this is the most fun I've ever had.
[16:16]People are listening to me.
[16:17]And they paid me for this class.
[16:18]I was like, I can't believe it.
[16:20]I'm used to doing all these zooms.
[16:21]Like, I would never occur to me.
[16:23]I do zooms like night and day.
[16:24]Anyway, it was the coolest thing.
[16:26]So yeah, I highly recommend it.
[16:29]I'm like, I think I just want to be a teacher.
[16:31]Anyway, okay.
[16:32]So what's coming next for you?
[16:33]Tell TV writing, another novel.
[16:35]Like, what are you doing in your day to day life now?
[16:40]I want to make more music.
[16:41]So I released a single ago, along with Sankova,
[16:44]called Good Soil.
[16:45]And I really enjoyed doing that, actually.
[16:48]So I'm going to make more music.
[16:51]I'm definitely going to release another single this year.
[16:54]Well, by God's grace, at least another one this year.
[16:56]And then, I don't know.
[16:59]We'll see one next happens with the music.
[17:01]TV writing, yes, TV writing is another sort of,
[17:05]I was like, I'm learning a new job.
[17:06]A new job that has a lot of rejection.
[17:09]And so yes, if anyone thinks writing novels,
[17:12]you get rejected, you know, and just come into television.
[17:14]Yes.
[17:15]Well, if you feel like you haven't had enough rejection
[17:20]in your life.
[17:21]Oh, right.
[17:25]For TV.
[17:26]And then what else?
[17:29]I'm working on the children's novel as well,
[17:31]sort of in between stuff for TV.
[17:33]Yeah, I'm working on the children's novel.
[17:34]I have an 11 year old niece.
[17:36]I should keep saying, because she's not allowed
[17:38]to read my novels apparently, they're two adult for her.
[17:43]So she keep saying, when are you going to write a book?
[17:45]I can read, when are you going to write a book?
[17:46]I can read.
[17:47]So now I'm going to attempt to write a book she can read.
[17:51]But the problem is novels take so long that she might be like 16
[17:55]or 17 by the time I finish.
[17:56]In which case, she can just read my other novels.
[17:59]There you go.
[18:01]It's a way to read.
[18:02]There are other children in the world, except my niece,
[18:04]so there we go.
[18:06]I mean, I've got some kids.
[18:07]They'll read it.
[18:08]Oh, yeah.
[18:11]Amazing.
[18:12]OK, so what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[18:15]Aside from, go get your PhD and live a completely
[18:17]untraditional path?
[18:20]What advice should I have for aspiring authors?
[18:23]Well, I would tell them, draw clues and listeners for this.
[18:27]I would tell them, stop asking for advice.
[18:32]You don't need any advice.
[18:33]You have everything you need.
[18:35]I think a lot of things, because things that you create,
[18:38]they come from inside you.
[18:39]So then you don't need anybody to tell you
[18:41]about what's inside you.
[18:42]You're the best developer that's in you,
[18:44]or the song that's in you, or the film play that's in you.
[18:47]And I'm not saying that you can't take
[18:48]sort of inspiration from people outside.
[18:51]But I think advice on how best to bring out the story inside you.
[18:55]You know, best for your project.
[18:58]And I think generally, most people who
[18:59]do want to be writers or who are writers.
[19:02]You have all the advice you need anyway.
[19:03]There's nothing new that I'm going to say.
[19:05]Read widely, start, you know, writers or people who write.
[19:11]And the first entry I know you don't even need a laptop,
[19:13]get a piece of paper, get a pencil, get a notebook, and start.
[19:18]If I didn't think I have anything particularly profound
[19:20]to say it soon, yeah, you don't need my advice.
[19:23]OK, I'll just delete this whole section of the interview.
[19:26]I'll just forget it.
[19:30]And then she, yeah, goodbye.
[19:33]All right.
[19:34]Well, Chabendu, this has been so much fun.
[19:37]Thank you so much for coming on mom's time to read books.
[19:39]Congratulations.
[19:41]I'm excited to follow whatever happens next to you.
[19:43]And yeah, enjoy it.
[19:44]Thank you.
[19:45]Thank you for having me.
[19:46]OK, have a great day.
[19:47]Bye-bye.
[19:48]Bye.
[19:50]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's
[19:52]don't have time to read books.
[19:54]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zibi Owens,
[19:57]and at mom's don't have time to read books.
[19:59]I'll see.
[20:00]Sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com
[20:02]and sign up for my virtual book club
[20:03]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[20:06]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[20:09]for the Sound Editing.
[20:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[20:12]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.