The author of Oprah’s book club pick, Say You’re One of Them, in his own words, shares a glimpse of where he came from, what inspired him to become a writer and why he always looks forward to returning home.

Failure introduced me to fiction writing while I was preparing for the priesthood. I was four years from ordination and teaching 60 pre-teenagers per class at St. Francis Secondary School in a slum  in Lagos, Nigeria. But my dream lay outside the classroom.

I longed to be a columnist in Nigeria’s The Guardian Newspaper, where I imagined I would write articles criticising the ills of my country. I’d hoped that if I submitted four articles a month to their OP-ED page, after six months, I could show up and say to the editor, “I am he... Please, make me a regular columnist!” So I went to work and sent in my first package of four articles. I was well into my second package the following month, when it dawned on me that they weren’t publishing any of my write-ups. When I phoned them, they said they weren’t…well, good enough. I’d failed. I was a miserable 28-year-old. Teaching, which I’d once taken pleasure in, now depressed me. My students complained that I’d become tougher on them. Some days, I was even angry attending Mass, and sleep was difficult. I stopped reading The Guardian for a while.

Some months later, when I went back to reading the paper, I noticed that it serialised stories on Saturdays. So, I decided to attempt fiction. After a few nights of writing, it felt as if a gate had opened into parts of my being I never knew existed. Every night, I ran through that gate like a mischievous child, and played and explored and ran after flying termites. At night, even when there was a power cut (we suffer daily power cuts in Nigeria), I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of  characters. It was crazy. I was free to make and to destroy, like Jeremiah. Awesome responsibility. I’d never been so happy, and yet so frightened except on the day of my First Holy Communion. Which is the easiest way I can begin to describe an earlier turning point in my life, when the faith that called me toward my other vocation the priesthood deepened.

I was 11. First Holy Communion, best day of my life. As an Ikot Ekpene morning sun poured its rays into the cavernous Prince of Peace Chapel, I choked with awe, waiting to eat God. Having experienced the indescribable freedom and joy of First Confession the previous day, now I trembled: But how do you eat God? And how do you live after that? Awesome responsibility. The Handmaid Sisters had warned us not to chew but to just let the Communion melt on the tongue. After Mass, the whole day, I walked around feeling this deep peace that finally, the Lord was my portion, but I was also anxious I would have to pee or go to toilet and flush away the Body and Blood of Christ. It was like what Rilke says: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.”

So it wasn’t too strange for me to begin to believe that I could be a priest, the one who changed mere bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, the one who reconciled people to their God in the confessional. And that Wednesday in January 2000, when, after endless rewrites, I submitted my first short story, “Soaking the Gun,” to the Guardian (they started serialising it three days later), I could imagine the beauty and terror of being a writer.

I was born under a palm-wine tree in Ikot Akpan Eda in Ikot Ekpene Diocese in  Cross River State, Nigeria. I was inspired to write by the people who sat around my village church to share palm wine after Sunday Mass, by the Bible and by the humor and endurance of the poor.

My grandfather was one of those who brought the Catholic Church to our village. I was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003, and I like to celebrate the sacraments for my fellow villagers. Some of them have no problem stopping me in the road and asking to be confessed!

I have very fond memories of my childhood in my village, where everybody knows each other, and all my paternal uncles still live together in one big compound.

When I was growing up, my mother told me folktales and got me and my three brothers to read a lot. I became a fiction writer during my seminary days. I wrote at night, when the community computers were free. Computer viruses ate much of my work. Finally, my friend, Wes Harris, believed in me enough to get me a laptop. This saved me from the despair of losing my stories and made me begin to see God again in the seminary. The stories on that first laptop are the core of Say You’re One of Them . I received my MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006.

I always look forward to visiting my village. No matter how high the bird flies, its legs still face the earth. When I get back to Ikot Akpan Eda, my people and I will celebrate this book in our own way with lots of tall tales, spontaneous prayers and palm wine!

Uwem Akpan’s collection of short stories, Say You’re One of Them, recently came out in paperback, and is the new Oprah’s Book Club selection.
Source: www.oprah.com

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