Zaynab Alkali Quotes

Simple question, but difficult answer. At the age of eight, I literally held a hoe in my hands. Two plots of land were carved out for me from my mother’s land, one for okra, the other for groundnuts. I helped my mother pay my school fees. Many people would find this hard to believe. I am still holding a hoe, (in a sense). Hard work runs through my blood. It does not kill, but laziness does. If I were to write about myself I would have hundreds of titles, maybe a title for every page.

When I read a book, I look out for the message the author is trying to pass across to the reader. Does the work contain wisdom? Have I learnt anything from it? I also look out for entertainment. Have I been sufficiently entertained? I believe strongly that apart from imparting knowledge to the reader, a writer should entertain the reader, because reading should be a joyous experience.

By the Grace of Almighty God, I want to believe that I have been able to touch the lives of people, not only through writing, but in other simple ways, and I intend to do that for as long as I live.

I research a lot depending on the subject-matter. The subject matter informs the nature of settings to be used in the story; historic, physical, socio-economic and political environments, also referred to as Time and Place/Space. For example if the setting is to be a hospital scene, my research will be to observe how the entire hospital management functions, and how medical and other technical staff operates.

When I read a book, I look out for the message the author is trying to pass across to the reader. Does the work contain wisdom? Have I learnt anything from it? I also look out for entertainment. Have I been sufficiently entertained?

Recommending any one of my books would depend on the target audience. For young adults, ‘The Stillborn’, for the teens, ‘The Virtuous Woman’, for a variety of readers, ‘From The Housewife’, to the university undergraduate to the footloose, ‘Cobwebs and Other Stories’, for those interested in family values, ‘The Descendants’ and for the symbolist, ‘The Initiates’.

Writing is my key to self expression. It has been my life line. Not only have I found satisfaction, I have been able to grow intellectually and emotionally through the art of writing. The hope that someone, somewhere, and somehow may benefit from my work makes me feel I have made some contribution to humanity. This feeling is simply great!

I should mention also that besides all these, I was born into a long line of artists from my maternal side, musicians, dancers, drummers and story tellers. My major genre is prose fiction, (the novel), followed by short stories.

I am a reader, as well as a writer. I read whenever I have the opportunity to do so, and as often as I can. My slogan for reading is, ‘’read a book a week.’’ You see, no matter how small the book you pick every week is, you will be sure to cover a lot of ground in reading by the end of a year.

I would say that life demands that we do not give up, no matter how hard it looks. I have lived by the simple code contained in almost all religions, Believe in God and do good works. (Remember God does not leave anybody behind.)

If you want to be a good writer, write what you deeply feel you should write, not what you feel the audience will like.

A little bit of me is in every book I have written. Consciously, or unconsciously, an artist gives away a piece of the ‘self’. It is widely believed that a good piece of creative work is an extension of the artist.

I teach, interact with students on daily basis, and supervise their theses. I create time for family members. I do not set a daily writing goal. It does not work for me that way. I realized also that I needed to be sober to write convincingly. I cannot write when I am excessively happy. Some days are simply blank. Often I would write when travelling, or at night when sleep escapes.

Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo and Nawal el Saadawi are some of my favourite authors. There are quite a number of Western authors, too numerous to mention here. I, however, identify with these three great African writers, because they have deep understanding of human psychology and pay attention to details. They accept that human beings are what they are, and behave according to the circumstances they find themselves in; no judgement.

In the mid-eighties, I was “discovered” by Prof. Stuart Brown, a Briton, and an English lecturer at the Bayero University, Kano. He had come across an excerpt of a story I was attempting to write. He was highly impressed by what he had read and quickly assured me that I was a writer in the making. Not only did he encourage me to write, he exposed my work to the international literary scene, and made it possible for the first edition of “The Stillborn” to be published by Longman Harlow U.K.