As spotty-faced, arrogant
students, Nick Mulgrew and Efemia Chela used to present radio shows at Rhodes
University. Five years later, they’re arrogant, award-winning short-story
writers. Mail & Guardian
Ghana-born Chela (22) was one
of the youngest nominees ever for the Caine prize for African writing and
Durbanite Mulgrew (24) is this year’s winner of the National Arts Festival’s
Short.Sharp.Stories award, the richest prize in South African short-story
writing. He asked her about her rise and about the future of local writing –
and where it should be going.
So, Effie, let’s start at the
beginning of our relationship. We met at Rhodes Music Radio in 2009. Times were
tough. Weather was cold. I had a terrible haircut. But what were your ambitions
then? Did you come into university thinking you wanted to be a writer? If not,
how has that changed?
Ha! I remember those nights.
Kak, it was cold and, man, was your haircut bad. I was also a greasy-faced,
speccy little thing. I started off as a shy violet and became a loose cannon.
This one time I set up two Scrabble players and dramatically live commented on
the match going on in-studio in between songs.
Then I did my last show naked
in the booth. I didn’t tell my listeners that. But I think they could feel my
nakedness over the air.
Now I would like to be a
literary fiction translator and film subtitler. I have always fancied the idea
of being a writer and thought I would get down to it in university. But I
didn’t write a word of fiction and instead had wonderful experiences like
chairing a wine-tasting society and lying to my parents at least once a month
that I had gotten mugged and needed more money.
In fourth year, I went on
exchange to Aix-en-Provence – where Sartre, Camus, Van Gogh and Christine Lagarde
used to hang out – and when I came back something [had] happened and I was no
longer afraid of the empty page.
Now I do think of myself as a
writer. There is an entire novel in the bottom of my handbag written on the
back of receipts, at least.
What are your biggest literary
influences? And what are your biggest life experiences? And, anticipating your
answer to these questions, what would you say has been more influential in your
writing: Fanon, or that time you were forced to be an illegal immigrant? (In
which country I won’t say, for obvious reasons.)
I think it’s a tie. Being
illegal was definitely thrilling but, at the same time, Frantz Fanon changed my
life.
I was introduced to his oeuvre
by Richard Pithouse, my lecturer in politics at Rhodes and it opened up a whole
new way of thinking about the often confusing nature of black lives in the
post-colony and the importance of us recording the experiential, whether in
fiction or otherwise.
My biggest literary influence
is probably the completely underrated Georges Perec. My favourite book of his
is A Void (La Disparition), an entire novel written without the letter “e”.
Then Chinua Achebe – do I really need to explain this one? [Another influence
is] Douglas Coupland, whose books have wryly surveyed the grand fallacies and
personal failures of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.
Then Toni Morrison – for who
else has so eloquently articulated the complexities of the black woman’s
existence in fiction?
And your upbringing? Going
from country to country?
I was raised all over ... in
the most random places, from a council flat in Essex to Chikankata in Zambia –
which Google Earth does not acknowledge exists.
Bumping along from country to
country has made me feel like a rough rolling stone. I suppose it’s shaped my
character a lot. I have very strong opinions on the Queen’s [Elizabeth’s]
brooch collection, I have trust issues, and I always know the exchange rate –
just ask me.
It’s also made my way into my
writing where I like to explore the travel, emotions of a space, feelings of
placelessness, the segue from being awake and being asleep.
That’s interesting, right?
People want to read that, right? But if you say the word “diaspora”, I will
kill you.
Let’s talk about your
Caine-nominated short story Chicken. It’s the first short story you have
written. It’s the first short story you have published. It makes you one of the
youngest nominees ever for the most prestigious prize in African writing. What
do you make of this?
[The year] 2014 has been a
careening and quite awful ride. I ran away from home. I have done odd jobs and
slept on 15 different couches. I have been – am still, really – broke, cold and
crazy. I still can’t afford rent.
But I was completely blown
away by the nomination. It’s the best thing to happen to me this year.
I wrote Chicken at 21, after
work, in the evening disillusionment of my first job. I thought I had a good
story but nothing of Caine prize calibre. I didn’t realise people would
appreciate it so much until [writer] Rachel Zadok said to me: “This is
incredible, you’re clearly a fucking writer.”
Everyone tries to be all noble
and say prizes don’t matter but they do to a young woman who isn’t sure of her
writing or even where she’s going to lay her head next.
I feel so honoured and excited
about this journey. The winning is in the journey.
I know that things weren’t
exactly – how should we say – great for you around the time that Chicken was
written, because we were working together then, too. The story – about a young
woman from an indeterminate West African country making do in an indeterminate
Afropolitan city, who eventually sells her eggs in a fit of ennui – isn’t
autobiographical, I know that. But does exploring difficult situations in your
writing, whether it be in Chicken or your other work, in a way help you out of
your own? I don’t particularly write for catharsis personally – is it the same
for you?
When I used to play The Sims
as a child, I would build a swimming pool for a Sim, make them jump in the pool
and then take away the ladder so they couldn’t get out and would drown.
I like to torture my
characters somewhat and put them in awkward situations. I do write for some element
of catharsis. Isn’t it just so satisfying to kill your co-workers in a story?
But, like you, I use my
writing to express things, like a lonely hearts ad I saw and laughed at, or an
idea wandering around my mind, or a song whose words I can’t remember, or
someone I wish existed.
So then what do you think are
the sorts of things you’re going to want to deal with in your future career,
thematically and formally?
I’m reluctant to answer this
question because then people will actually expect things from me and I’ll have
to stop watching old episodes of Daria and Adventure Time and do more writing.
But I would love to write an
incredible graphic novel: a 400-page, beautifully illustrated, cinematic,
zeitgeisty masterpiece with piercing prose that makes your heart tumble like
the stock exchange, then brings you up as quick as coke.
I’m still on page one, though,
so don’t wait up for me.
What do you think writers in South
Africa should be focusing on? We’re super young and I just don’t, for example,
relate to a lot of writing done by many of our older peers. I want to see more
genre-bending, more gender-bending, more … I don’t know, innovation.
I would like to see fewer
books that use apartheid as a crutch to prop up bad writing. I would like to
see more tentacles in South African writing. There are very few, if any at all.
Tentacles are very important. They have suction and are wiggly. What more could
you want?
But, seriously, I want to see
publishing houses get bolder about what they publish. I want to read absurdist
South African plays. I want to read a fantasy short story that seamlessly opens
portals into stories inside other stories. I want to read more graphic novels.
I want South Africans to write
a fictional icon, in the same way [that] Okonkwo, or Patrick Bateman, or Marla
Singer, is an icon. I want dystopia, utopia and the afterlife rolled up into
one. I want to read feminist zines that smash together poetry and pictures.
I want more literary journals
like Prufrock that are game to take on anything and aren’t stuffy and boring
like some others I could mention.
I want to read more work in
translation, or works written in isiXhosa on the left and English on the right,
for silly people like me who can’t speak any African languages. I would like to
see much more equitable access to books.
