Interview by Muniyra Douglas
In this interview, PRISM speaks with Ugandan author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi about her novel Kintu, her new short story collection, teaching, and the writing process.
You’re a Creative Writing lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. How does being a professor influence your writing?
I have learned much more about writing from teaching than I did as a student. Teaching reminds me what I should be doing in my own writing. It is surprising how often I forget my own advice. I learn a lot from students in terms of what I should and should not do. In any case, it is easy for me to see mistakes in students’ writing than in my own. I recommend teaching to all writers, especially when you are just starting out like me.
Kintu Kidda, the central character in your novel Kintu is subject to a curse that will plague his lineage for generations. What was your inspiration for the curse narrative? What does this tell us about the shared burden family members might face due to the actions of their ancestors?
Where I come from, we tend to have family lore, which we pass on from generation to generation. These stories explain certain aspects in our families. It does not matter how bizarre they might sound—we never question them. So family lore was one of them, but so was the presentation of Africa as a place of madness which was prevalent in Western media not so long ago.
As for the familial burden of inherited curses, this is prevalent in all cultures around the world whether you look at it symbolically, scientifically in terms of familial conditions or literally.
What challenges did you face during the writing process?
Research. I found both oral history and other oral sources as well as what we call history incredibly unreliable. I had to blow away a lot of dust to come to the grain. The novel form was also limiting and limited. It was hard to make it cater to my culture, which comes with multiple characters. I was also broke, my first novel had been rejected and I was on a student visa. I was writing in the dark like a mad person.
Kintu is your debut novel, and I would describe it as an ‘epic saga.’ And you were certainly very ambitious in the writing, and weaving a detailed story. Did you have any self-doubt about this story, which is a complex narrative, being your first novel? Why or why not?
Self-doubt is something that keeps its unwanted company with me always. Kintu did not seem ambitious to me in the beginning. I was so naïve I did not realise where it was going. That is the beauty of the first novel. You will take on anything without realising. However, I had studied and then taught literature, I knew what a novel, especially in the West, was supposed to look like. And Kintu was not it. It did not worry me that it was my first novel, my first novel had been rejected everywhere. It could not get worse.
You create the perfect blend of cultural-historical details with supernatural fiction. How important was this mixture to the narrative? What was your process for this?
The blend of cultural-historical detail with the supernatural was quite important because Uganda has that kind of blend of spiritualism and Christianity. It was important to get the balance right because I needed the Ugandan curiosity whetted by the cultural-historical detail before I deployed the spiritual aspects.
I cannot tell you what the process for this was now. I started writing Kintu in 2003 and the writing tended to be organic. By that I mean, I wrote down what came to mind rather than planning it. All I can say is that I wrote the fictitious story first and then filled in with research of history. The spiritual aspects were filled in when they felt right to include.
The death for Kalema, Kintu’s adoptive son was very sudden. Providing proper funeral rites is a prominent theme throughout your work.
“The men buried Kalema in a hurry. […] They used a stick to measure Kalem’s length, but while the stick fit into the grave, Kalema did not. They crammed him in. […] In a hurry, the men did not even realize they had buried Kalema beside … the burial shrub for dogs.”
Although the characters in the novel are unaware that Kalema isn’t Kintu’s actual son, is the treatment of his corpse a reflection of his low social status?
Not to me. As long as he was Kintu’s son Kalema was not lowly in society. The appalling treatment of his corpse was a reflection of the men’s hurry and fear of o Lweera. They had to wait until daybreak to bury him, which meant they had lost six hours of travel in the night when the air was cool. To Ugandan readers, seeing the boy buried like that meant one thing: he would be coming back to haunt the family. When it comes to the dead, you do not flaunt the rites—rich or poor, high or low born.
Kintu is a work that contains so many layers—culture, history, fiction, multiple voices. For me, it was a complex and intriguing read, but I had to digest it in smaller portions. Did you know instinctively that you wanted to create such a complex story? Did you already have the story figured out in the initial writing stages?
No, I had no idea it was a complex book until my supervisor read it. I doubt anyone sits down and says, I am going to write a complex book. To me, the novel read so normal, so natural, so easy. To many Ugandans, who are just looking for the story, rather than its implications or what the book is doing, the story is easy and straight forward. Muniyra, it us literary people that make it complex because that is what we do with literature. And I believe that a book should work at both levels—at a surface (story) level and at a deeper (interpretive) level for those who wish for it.
However, as a PhD student who was aware of the implications of audiences and issues like the implication of colonization in African literature, I handled certain issues at a certain level. I was aware of other African literatures, I was aware of African literature’s history, how it ‘should be’ written and what a novel should look like. But, I insist that novels are cultural products. Within its culture, Kintu is easy to read and understand. And that was one of my intentions.
In May you’re releasing “Manchester Happened” a story collection, which will also be released to the U.S. market in April under the title “Let’s Tell this Story Properly.” You also have a short story written under the same name. As a Ugandan writer whose work introduces a lot of cultural elements—names, places, religious/cultural rites, etc. how do you overcome the challenge(s) of telling “these stories properly” to an audience who might not be familiar with the culture?
By telling my stories as if Uganda is my only audience. This sounds ironical but it is not. Here is why:
Writing to a Ugandan audience makes my writing focused. It determines the language I use, the diction, it determines the tone, it determines the attitude, it decides the subject matter. This is not about markets; it is about harnessing that energy that an anticipated audience gives a story as it talks to an audience it knows will understand it. You have no idea what this energy means to an author like me. However, it is a risk I understand not all authors can take.
Uganda has over forty different languages. If I can reach all those cultures then I can reach the rest of Africa, the rest of the world. All authors in the West write the same way. It is us from the Third World, because our literatures started out writing back to the empire, that explain ourselves to the world. In fact, it should not be expected of me, it should not be radical for me to write to my audience. Have you read any author from the west who explains themselves to us? Don’t we enjoy their writing? If readers in Uganda, at the equator, do not have winter or the Western culture explained to them, why should we? Sometimes I think we patronize our readers by explaining everything to them. There is pleasure in discovering a text.
Ugandans will not buy lots of my books compared to the West but for any Ugandan that reads my book I would like them to feel that it was written for them, that it is theirs, that they have the confidence to talk about it intelligently, even if it is to trash it. I have felt insecure talking about Things Fall Apart to Nigerians, let alone Jane Austen to the British. I want Uganda to feel that confidence too.
Finally, look at the Mona Lisa. When Da Vinci drew it, it was looking at him, only him. But 500 years later you stand in front of it and it is looking at you. That is what good literature does.
How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
My process has not changed at all. I doubt that it will ever change. A book spends years knocking about in my head. I start with a character and their circumstances. Before I start writing, I know where a story is going—yet I know very well that the book will never go there. Most of the time I am writing myself into cul-de-sacs, into blind alleys and finding my way out. Don’t ask why: I can’t explain it.
With Kintu being hailed as a success and classic masterpiece, do you feel pressure to make sure that “Manchester Happened” is equally successful?
Yes, this pressure is something I cannot help feeling. I am afraid I have found out that I am not one of those authors who just put a book out there without worrying about it in relation to what came before it. I know this pressure is unhelpful, it does not achieve anything, but it is out of my control. But at the same time, I am aware I will never write another Kintu. I will never attempt to. I would not want to. The rest of my work will work or fail on its own merits.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan fiction writer. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Project in 2013. Her short story, Lets Tell This Story Properly won the regional (Africa) and Global Commonwealth Short story prize 2014. Jennifer won an Arts Council Grant (2015) to research her second novel, The First Woman coming out in 2020. Her collection of short stories Let’s Tell The Story Properly for USA publication (Manchester Happened for the UK) comes out in April 30th 2019. She has a PhD from Lancaster University and lecturers at Manchester Metropolitan University. Jennifer is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize 2018.
Muniyra Douglas currently lives in Toronto. Her interviews and articles have appeared on VIBE 105 FM and in Rapoport Journal. She is in the process of publishing an Afro-futuristic novella for 2020. She can be found on Instagram under miw.sheri and enjoys watching anime and reading dystopian fiction.