Jumoke Verissimo

“How are those stories told? In telling those stories, it might not be something the West likes to read. How do we tell our stories, and why do we tell our stories? I want to tell the story for those who do not know how to tell their own stories. I want them to recognise their own voices in the story I tell. My projection was publishing from Nigeria to the world. Sad that you need to be in the West to be noticed by your own people. I want to be read by Nigerians. I have my roots here, spent most of my years here. My roots are connected here.”

“I would have said A Small Silence is my love letter to Lagos, but this is not my Lagos book. I love the city very much. The Lagos of Mushin is different from the Lagos of Ikoyi. But we have a common language, but it’s not of strife. The Lagos we know wants to exist. Lagos is dysfunctional (compared to other cities); Lagos hasn’t been as fast-paced as you’d expect of a place like this. I do love Lagos, but it has different dimensions.”

“The thing about trauma is that you can’t say a person is traumatised. When people say they carry the trauma of others, it means they don’t know what it is. The Oriki in Yoruba tradition is the effort of tracing your roots. There’s trauma in not being able to trace your roots. There are those who don’t know, with the language disconnected from the mother tongue that carries the life before them. Trauma can be systemic, not necessarily violent. Our history is fractured; we don’t know how to organise and build. Trauma does exist. Trauma is captured in stories told.”

“Even when you’re out of Nigeria, you’re still haunted, you still need therapy. You’re always going to be Nigerian even when you change your passport. If there are things that ring of suspicion at any international airport, you’re still singled out for questioning.”

“Our trauma is layered, historical and governance; there’re people who don’t want to make things better, and (think) we deserve it. And we know that we can make things work.”

“The average old person in Nigeria cannot go to a clinic and not fear that they can’t pay, (so perhaps they wait for the illness to run its course or even kill them). There’s an inability to go to the north. To go from south to north (of Nigeria) is very difficult (because of insecurity). There’s a lot of trauma we deal with as Nigerians, but (we) don’t think about it (that way). There’s a l lot of anxiety.”

“I still need therapy, everybody needs therapy. Post-colonial nations continue to be haunted by our past. The trauma of not being able to stand on our feet as independent nations, so much so that even basic things become a form of sorrow. Trauma is not linear; it’s cyclical. I’m a descendant of returnees who came back from the slave trade. We had a civil war, trauma of economic want, the inability to have basic needs; we don’t think about it as trauma.”

“In poetry, even if it’s not the narrative type, you find that narrate ambience, characterization and setting even though you are not telling a story. So, that is what I borrow from poetry, that sense of translating the unspeakable.”

“The advantage of being a poet is that I have an understanding as to how language works and what it can do. So, when I do write a story, I go back during the editing process and say “I don’t feel the emotion here. I don’t feel the question of the character,” because what poetry allows you do is to say so much in a few words.”

“The book is not exactly about June 12, which is crucial in our history. It’s primarily about intimacy, the margins and unspoken parts of our lives. But we can’t speak outside the context that creates it. It’s one of the most phenomenal political events in our lives. During that era, a lot of our politicians and activists became themselves or lost themselves. But that is not the focus of my story. It focuses on the unspoken part of their lives, the trauma they face and the margins of being heroic.”

“I didn’t just decide to write a novel. It’s something I have always done and that interests me. I have written short stories. The truth is it’s when a thing is ready that it’s truly ready. But when a story keeps telling you, “I want to be something more,” you have to keep writing.”

“The world is afraid to read poetry, but the world is full of poetry.”

“Poetry is something that I enjoy doing. I do other forms of writing, and it captures the essence of several things. It is my way of understanding the world and how it works.”

“The voice you read is my subconscious observing the privilege to let these things, spaces and people inhabit me. My voice is therefore these elements and more.”

“I come from a place where family speaks of love and sacrifice.”

“I am traditional, I respect the knowledge of ancestral relations, and the idea that I am connected to an idea of being that I am still coming to terms with”

“Don’t we know it already, don’t we? To age in this land, is to arrive in a grave?”

“We stand up tall; it cuts our legs; we sit wearily; it shoots us down”

“We ask for bread; it gives us stone; we ask to live it takes our breath”