“Books bring cultures to people”
The Ugandan author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has been a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. She tells us about her time in Berlin and the craft of literature.
The writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born in Uganda in 1967. She moved to the UK over 20 years ago to study creative writing. Her first novel “Kintu” came out in 2014. A German translation of her novel “The First Woman” was published last year by Interkontinental. Recently she was a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Program run by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) in the German capital.
You were recently invited to come to Berlin to take part in the DAAD Artists-In-Berlin Program. How did you find your time there?
For Germany and Africa to work together as equals, certain things need to be said and understood so everyone knows where they stand.
In January 2023 the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development invited you to give a speechto mark the realignment of the German Government’s Africa policy. You took myths about Africa as your topic.
For Germany and Africa to work together as equals, certain things need to be said and understood so everyone knows where they stand. It’s important for Germany to understand Africa’s perspective on this history of this relationship.
Your books are inspired by Ugandan myths and sayings. Where does that interest come from?
As a child I told many folk tales, but I’ve also transformed western stories which I read, mainly fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, for my readers.
Your feminist novel “The First Woman” also deals with myths about women which are spread to their detriment. Can books do anything to counter that?
We all live in stories, we all tell stories, but the most important thing is that we all create myths: about ourselves, nations and races. Myths are often created about us which distort us. You can try to dismantle them, but if you can’t get rid of this myth-making, you’re better off creating your own myths about yourself. In “The First Woman” I wanted to show what it’s like to live in a female body which is called a woman. I wanted my readers to see the myths which grow up around this body and how they relate to reality.
Like your main character Kirabo, you grew up in Uganda in the Seventies. What do you remember from that?
I remember Idi Amin’s regime, the lack of soap, cooking oil and other things you needed from day-to-day which was caused by the embargo. I remember fathers of my friends disappearing and dying, which meant they couldn’t go to school because they could no longer afford it. Mothers and aunts told the girls not to wear short dresses. I remember the war.
Since then you have been awarded literary prizes such as the Jhalak Prize and the Windham Campbell Prize. In 2024 you will chair the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, which you won yourself ten years ago.
It’s recognition, and by doing it I can give something back to a prize which helped me. Above all, though, I’m doing something for a field I love: writing and publishing books. It’s about finding new talents and announcing them to the world.
To readers outside Africa, I want to say listen to us. We’re like you. We’re good, we’re bad, we’re stupid, we’re clever, we’re wonderful, we’re “Oh my God!”
In spite of your international success you still say you write for readers in Uganda. Why?
I see my books as conversations with Ugandans and people in other African countries. While we talk amongst ourselves, others are listening from outside and get an insight. That’s how I read books from Europe and America. I’ve always been an outsider and I loved it. And I’ve learned from it. Of course I’m aware that the publishers will be British or German, but that’s what books can do: they bring cultures which you may know nothing about into your home.
To readers outside Africa, I want to say listen to us. We’re like you. We’re good, we’re bad, we’re stupid, we’re clever, we’re wonderful, we’re “Oh my God!” That’s why you won’t find any good or bad people in my books: just people. I’ve taught literature for a long time, so I know that a good book is like a mirror. Ugandans can look at my books and have a conversation with themselves, but Europeans, Americans, Germans can find themselves in there, too. People are the same all over the world: only culture makes us a little different.
You’ve experienced different cultures. While at university in England you worked at a care home, for example. That time influenced your work.
In my collection of short stories “Manchester Happened” I wanted to show Ugandans and other Africans that you may imagine Europe one way, but this is how I saw it. I wanted to talk about the nature of immigration. When you leave your homeland you take a kind of homeland with you in your mind. When you return, that homeland will have disappeared and changed, and people there will claim you’ve changed, too. I want to grow old in Uganda, though. England is wonderful but I’m too African to stay there. I feel restless in England even though I have a British passport. I need the sun and the food at home.
