Top 15 Zaynab Alkali Quotes

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I believe in the English saying that ‘No one ever kicks a dead dog’. I must be doing something worth talking about. Criticism, negative, or positive serves as a platform for my intellectual growth. In time, the ‘Mazauni gonin rawa’ will come to realize that strength and weakness have nothing to do with gender, they are personality traits. Society simply assigned weakness for women, perhaps based on physic.

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.)

Writing in Nigeria is not a job at all, because a job pays. Writing at home does not. I certainly cannot remember the last time I heard from my publishers. Between the publishers and the book pirates a creative writer in Nigeria will have to have a better reason for writing. For me, writing is therapeutic. I find emotional and psychological healings in it. The act of writing has always been my life-line.

The hope that somewhere, somehow, someone may have benefitted from my ideas makes me feel I have made my little contribution to humanity. In addition to that, the national and international recognition is simply great.

Unknown to many, there are some good female writers in Northern Nigeria, but they are not easily known because they write in Hausa language. For a wider audience, I have advocated for translations, for years, at various forums, at home and abroad.

The time-factor. I often wish there are more hours in a day. When a writer is holding, rather tightly, to a demanding job, such as teaching, raising a family and fulfilling certain social obligations, writing can easily take a backbench.

My major genre is the prose fiction, followed by short stories, and the central theme has always been about female empowerment. I am intrigued by mysteries, Sci-fi and detective books. As for children’s books, as I get older, I now realize the importance of writing for children.

For me, there’s no special atmosphere for writing. Whenever I feel the urge, (known in literature as ‘inspiration’) I write, using my small note book to capture scenes from the outside and passing ideas from my mind.

Ideas come from a lot of sources, experiences of friends, colleagues, neighbors, self and even strangers. However, my greatest source of gathering ideas is from listening to people talk about themselves, or about others, especially at public gatherings, weddings, naming ceremonies, funerals and the market place. A lot of ideas are also gathered at home among family members. The secret is to be a good listener, not talker.

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.