Writer | Opal Palmer Adisa

Read what the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2023 Winner for the Caribbean region & Global; Co-author Amazon Bestseller: ‘Heart of a Black Man’; Ghostwriter, Content Creator, Editor/Proofreader, and Book Mentor Strategist has to say.

OPA: Briefly trace how and when you first began writing; when did you decide that writing was what you wanted to do?

KMAM: The skill to write began at Tarrant Primary. It was there, we were taught how to compose essays, compositions and poems. At Calabar High, I didn’t do anything around writing unlike my brother, who won a short story competition for a few years. Later on, after migrating to England, London, specifically, while working in the Civil Service, I was approached by a colleague who wanted a personalised poem written for their partner. I think it was to celebrate their birthday. I wrote the poem and they were well impressed. The next thing I knew, I was being inundated by other staff members to write a poem for them. After that, I thought that since others enjoyed my writing I might as well enter poetry competitions, which I did, winning commendations and so on. So, writing was never something I considered as a career, it just happened! Writing found me, rather than me finding writing.

Are there writers in your immediate or past family? Did your family read when you were a child?

My father was a carpenter. He would write building specifications for drawings and so on but he was never a creative writer. He definitely was a reader and both my brother and I are avid readers, absorbing any and everything. As for the immediate family, I have more work to do to find out if any of my ancestors were writers.

You stated that you entered the Commonwealth prize, I think, eight or nine times before you won. That speaks to a specific determination and consistency. Do you think determination and consistency are important traits for a writer and how do you continue to write despite rejections?

Yes, actually, it was nine times overall, really. Two of those times was when it was called the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the ninth time when I won everything in Jamaica as the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. I would say that as a writer, having self-belief and confidence enables the determination and consistency to lead to success. Rejection is part and parcel of being a winner, not just in writing but in anything in life. The winners we witness from medal-winning athletes to award-winning musicians to a student who passes their exams, have been rejected in one form or the other. Such as losing a race, failing to chart or sell a song, or failing an exam. These are forms of rejection. One just picks oneself up, dust oneself off, put in the work that leads to success. That is the process of a winner, which includes writers!

In your self-published 2018 book, you reveal your bouts with depression, a mental illness that many of us still stigmatize and judge. You offer a 8-step guide for men. Do you think your depression was related to midlife crisis or was the depression something that was on the fringe of your life for sometime. Was writing this book cathartic?

Yes, ‘My Date With Depression: from mental uncertainty to self-fulfillment’, documented a part of my life when I had mental health challenges that led to depression. Not at all was it related to a midlife crisis, it was more about where I was at in my life journey. Lacking the understanding of self – who I was as an African Caribbean/Jamaican man, knowing why I am here, acknowledging how my being and behaviour impacted on myself and those around me, and having a fundamental concept of financial management and how to build generational wealth. When I wrote the book, I was recounting the story and thus the journey and how it helped me comprehend what that part of my life meant to me today. It played a pivotal role in making me who I am. The beautiful thing too, is that the book has helped other men to come to terms with where they’re at, assisting them to overcome their own challenges since they see themselves in me.

Having won this prize, there’s a lot of pressure on you, some self-imposed and some by others… what’s the next work, and are you trying to top yourself ?

Lol! I don’t feel any pressure, I just keep doing what I’ve always done and that’s writing and producing my best work. For me, the storytelling doesn’t stop and thus, there’s so much to write about. If others choose to put pressure on me, I don’t see or feel it and actually that isn’t my burden to carry. I just do what I do, challenging myself with every and anything I can do, and that means entering as many competitions as I can, just to see how well I do or don’t! The ultimate will be to see one of my pieces done visually…whether as a movie or tv series.

How has winning the prize impacted what you write and how you write?

Positively. Pre-competition I shifted my writing to tell tales from an African-centred perspective, even more. That means, subtlety placing African people as the main characters, telling and showing up in the story. Sometime ago, a UK publisher put out a call looking for diverse writers, for an anthology series. Each author was allowed to submit one story for one anthology. I had three of my pieces accepted out of the four I submitted. Everyone of those stories focused on African characters and settings. So, I realised, for the world, there’s a need for more stories to be told from that perspective. And, honestly, my writing has evolved and I can’t write any other way now.

You, like so many Caribbean writers, write both poetry and prose; is there a different kind of hat you put on when you write poetry or when you’re write prose? Do you prefer one above the other?

There’s a different hat for sure. When I started my writing journey I began as a poet. I still do poetry but not as much because I’ve fallen in love with telling longer pieces. I find I still can do poetry in storytelling prose too, so in a way I’ve been able to merge the two but I definitely love writing and telling stories in prose form.

You have been writing for a long time and have won other prizes and you continue to write. Is there a story you have been storing in your head that you’ve wanted to write and are you now writing?

Great question! There are so many stories I want to tell. As a writer, I challenge myself to write across genres such as sci-fi, western, romance, historical fiction and even as a female protagonist. And all of these are either ongoing or near completion!

You’re listed as a UK/ Jamaican what does that mean? Were you born in London to Jamaican parents? What is your lived experience in Jamaica ? Did you spend some time in your childhood here? Did you leave, for how long, and when did you come back?

That’s what they’ve documented, personally. I prefer just being Jamaican since my formative years and some of my young adult life was experienced right here in Jamaica. My parents were Jamaicans who went up just after the Windrush and I spent about nine years in London, but my memory of that time is scanty to say the least. My parents divorced and my father took myself and brother home. All of my full memories are set in Jamaica. So, I lived and created my long lasting friendships in Jamaica. I was schooled and worked until I was an early twenty something young man who only left his home to pursue further education (I hadn’t left high school with enough subjects) and England was the option.

I was always in Jamaica, even the first year after I’d left since all of my true friends were home. Every year or every other year I was in Jamaica and I’d vowed from the time I left that I’d be returning home. It took me a while but I also had the opportunity to live in another cold country for a while and that just confirmed I couldn’t live anywhere but Jamaica.

What is your definition of writing and specifically, when you think about good writing what are some of the characteristics or traits that you look for?

Writing is the ability of a writer to tell a story that engages the reader, taking them on a journey, building tension and allowing the protagonist to weave in and out of their interaction with others, creating complexity but not losing sight of the outcome. The characteristics and traits I personally look for, is drawing the reader in so that they become the protagonist.

There are many writers I admire and a few have influenced my own writing, but at the end of the day, it’s the story that needs to be told, how it’s told, and what effect it has on the reader which makes for a successful storyteller/writer.

When my book club selected Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), as our book of the month, that was my first introduction to Adichie. I had not read Purple Hibiscus (2003), but was impressed with her second novel, both the content (describes the Biafran struggle, 1967-1970, to establish an independent state in Nigeria and the awful Nigerian civil war that resulted in the lost and displacement of one million civilians) and the lyrical prose style that I decided to teach the book in my course on contemporary women writers the following year. Then when her collection, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), was published, I read it right away and decided to teach it in my graduate seminar on short stories from the African Diaspora. The twelve stories that comprise the collection are fierce, penetrating and provide unique insight into the motives of humans living in Nigeria as well as the USA. A long-standing admirer of Chinua Achebe, whose books I devoured and also taught, and who was the first writer to open the doors to Nigeria and invite me to be witness, praise Chimamanda Adichie. “We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.” I certainly would not dispute the great Noble prize writer, and in fact concur that Adichie is an astute storyteller, whose works does not shy away from both political as well as social commentary, and as such she in keeping with the ideological perspective of many writers from Africa and the Caribbean who feel an obligation and responsibility to use their art as a vehicle to understand, and even heal the social milieu of their respective countries. So it was with this mind set that I bought tickets for my daughter, a good friend, and I, to go and hear Adichie at San Francisco City Arts & Lectures Series at Nourse Theater on Tuesday, October 1. Adichie was in dialogue with Dave Eggers, whom she claims as a friend at the beginning of the talk, related in great detail a story of Eggers’ visit to Nigeria, and him having to drive in Lagos, and avoiding bribing the police when they were routinely stopped. Chimamanda Adichie was very upbeat from the moment she entered the stage, fashionable and commanding, she directed the course of the conversation, throwing off Eggers prepared attempt to ask her specific questions about her book and her work. She talked at length about the writing summer workshop that she started in Lagos, and the number of talented writers that have benefited from that program. Also, she shared her path to being a writer, which forced her to veer from the medical career that was to have been her faith, instilled by her family. Raised very privileged, Adichie said she had a wonderful, almost idyllic childhood, and upon reflections now, wouldn’t change anything about her past. Nonetheless, or perhaps as a result of her comfortable life, she felt a deep sense of responsibility, to both country and family, when she wrote Half of a Yellow Sun. And in contrast, she emphasized, that her new novel, Americanah, 2013, that has garnered even more rave reviews than her previous works, was a departure from her other works and that she wrote it for herself, without any sense of obligation to anyone, and with a certain sense of freedom to both explore new terrain as well as experiment, and as a result, she didn’t think more than seven people would read it. I have not yet read Americanah, as my time has been absorbed reading and preparing for the graduate seminar I am teaching this semester on Haitian Literature, which includes several new texts to my repertoire. However the synopsis of this new novel indicates that it explores blackness in America through the eyes of its protagonist, Ifemelu, the young Nigerian who leaves a military ruled Nigeria for America. And although Adichie did not discuss about drawing from her own experiences attending university in the USA, she did say, with, it seems to me, still a tinge of indignation, her professor was surprised that she wrote the best essay in the class. She followed up this with by saying, and I paraphrase, I don’t know why he was surprised everyone knows that Nigerians are smart. In her world that was a given, just as blackness was a given, but the USA that she encountered that was not a given. In fact, the dominant discourse, which lumps all Blacks as the same, the converse is promoted as the truth. While Chimamanda Adichie did not elaborate in her talk about race, which does get boring for those of us whose experience of growing up in black countries, where everyone from the leader to the beggar is Black, we know the range and class difference that exist, and often find it tedious to continuously have to justify who we are to whose we deem ignorant or beneath us. After all, Es”kia Mphahlel, the great South African writer, hit the nail on the head, when speaking about African writers and their lack of need to name their blackness said, “A tiger does not have to declare its stripes.” It is self-evident. Without reading Americanah, I cannot say if Adichie arrives at the same conclusion, but I suspect that she might. More importantly, it is important for writers of African descent, for whom blackness is a given based on their experience of dominance and normative reality, tickle the ludicrousness and obsession of American racism that for too long has been a thorn thwarting the dreams and goals of selected members of its citizens. Adichie made is clear in her talk that she would not follow anyone’s agenda, and directed the course of the conversation. She did not need permission nor would she allow someone else to corral her. Yet, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed about the dialogue on two fronts. First, that Adichie did not read, even a short excerpt from the novel and second, given the plight of Nigerian girls and the political climate, that Adichie did not say anything on that subject. I suspect she had been asked about that issue ad nausea, but still, given her visibility, a concise statement would have suffice. During the Q & A, someone asked her about a feminist talk that she gave a while ago, and about how she felt that Beyonce used an excerpt of her talk in her song. Adichie deflected the question, but did say that among her nieces, to whom she had always appeared serious, being quoted by Beyonce scored her high, favorable points in their eyes. In all, the entire tone of the evening was lightly conversational and Chimamdana Adichie was gregarious and charming. Adichie’s Americanah is going to be made into a movie staring Lupita Nyong’o, who played Patsey in the movie, 12 Years a Slave. Already, the novel has won numerous awards including, 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, has been named One of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year , and won The Chicago Tribune 2013 Heartland Prize for Fiction, etc, ect. When asked about her reservations about her book being made into a movie, Adichie was very clear that both forms are very different, and that she would not be involved in the movie in any way, and did not want to be, except to make sure that the actors’ accent was Nigerian and not the common, generic, erroneous portrayal of African speech. Seeing Chimamanda Adichie, the darling of the literary world, celebrating her Nigerian style, her poise and intellect in an easy engaging manner that makes it clear she knows who she is, and is unapologetic in her confident suave and candor, was a special treat. I look forward to reading Americanah novel, and perhaps adding it to my rooster of books I teach.