Chigozie Obioma

Chigozie Obioma (born 1968) is a Nigerian writer and assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Quotes

 * I've always wanted to write something that will show the world that prior to the coming of the British to Nigeria, we had some kind of complex systems. I feel like there hasn't been an African version of, say, Milton's "Paradise Lost" which actually explored the very foundational principle of Western civilization, which would be the free will. Or even Dante Alighieri's "Inferno." So I wanted to write something cosmological, and the chi has been very fascinating to me. It was very difficult, it entailed a lot of research, even down to actually going to shrines and interviewing the last adherents of Odinani, the Igbo religion, now that most Africans are converts to either Christianity or Islam…
 * On what he envisioned for his novel An Orchestra of Minorities in “The Spirit Tells The Story In 'Orchestra Of Minorities'” in NPR (2019 Jan 5)


 * I believe that some of the strongest stories we can have begin with very simple archetypes…The great mother, or the great father, for example. And you work your way from that, slowly, to more complexity. The idea of this guy who wants to be with the woman he loves – you can say the same of the movie Gladiator, for instance. If you strip everything down to the basics, it’s just about Maximus wanting to go back to his wife and every other thing stopping him. Even Homer’s Odyssey; he just wants to go back and the entire universe is conspiring against that ambition.
 * On archetypes in “'Why Jay?': Chigozie Obioma on the haunting death that inspired his novel” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 18)


 * There are some rhetorical moves that I wouldn’t be able to make if I didn’t know these languages. In terms of writing figurative language, I probably pull a lot from Yoruba imagery…
 * On his first novel The Fishermen in “'Why Jay?': Chigozie Obioma on the haunting death that inspired his novel” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 18)


 * People always ask me, why do your stories end this way? And honestly…I want to write a feelgood story. But I think that because I’m fascinated with the metaphysics of existence, I keep thinking why, of all the people who came to Cyprus, was it Jay who died? Or, I read not too long ago of a nine-year-old doing her homework and there’s a drive-by shooting and a bullet comes in through the roof and kills her. She didn’t do anything to deserve that fate. When you think about these things, and you want to write fiction around that, the path it takes you to can feel inevitable and tragic.
 * On why his works end on a tragic note (drawn in part from his real-life experience associating with a student named Jay who died untimely) in “'Why Jay?': Chigozie Obioma on the haunting death that inspired his novel” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 18)

The fishermen (2015)

 * Hatred is a leech: The thing that sticks to a person's skin; that feeds off them and drains the sap out of one's spirit. It changes a person, and does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace from them.


 * Mother was a falconer. The one who stood on the hills and watched, trying to stave off whatever ill she perceived was coming to her children. She owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm.

The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible. This was the case with my brother.
 * I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what become permanent can be indestructible


 * Do you not know that there is nothing the eye can see that can make it shed the tears of blood? Do you not know that there is no loss we cannot overcome


 * Listen, days decay, like food, like fish, like dead bodies. This night will decay, too and you will forget. Listen, we will forget.


 * That story, as all good stories, planted a seed in my soul and never left me.


 * I'd heard someone say that the end of most things often bears a resemblance - even if faint - to their beginnings