Chinonso Nzeh is a final-year law student at the University of Lagos, a writer, and an editor who describes writing as the one constant in a future that might also include law, software engineering, or teaching. In this conversation with The Iroko Circle, he reflects on his commitment to writing with nuance, on how language can loosen the hold of fear, and on being unapologetically Igbo without feeling the need to explain himself. He discusses his varied sources of story ideas, his influences, and how he thinks in Igbo and Pidgin before English. He also speaks candidly about writing queerness in Nigeria, the lack of editors and funding for African writers, and the value of consistency, love for the work, and hope in the face of rejection.
The Iroko Circle: Hello, it is so wonderful to have you here. Can you just briefly tell us about yourself, what you do currently, and, in general, tell us who you are?
Chinonso: Interesting. The “who you are” question, though. My name is Chinonso Nzeh, and I’m currently a law student at the University of Lagos. I just entered my final year; I am a writer, and I would like to think that writing is the core of my existence. I joke with my friends that there’s a possibility I might not end up becoming a lawyer. There’s a possibility that in five years I might be a software engineer, but the constant is that I will always be writing. I think of writing as my constant; I love it a lot. This may not be part of the introduction, but it is. I was having a conversation with a friend this evening, and I remember asking him the same question because he is also a writer. I asked him what he sees writing as, and he said it’s just something he enjoys doing, and it’s not a priority or anything. It’s just something he sort of, like, dabbles in from time to time, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I wish it was this way for me because writing has a chokehold on me.’ I think of it as very consuming and sometimes violent in the way that it sort of, like, circles me because, I think, for lack of a better word, permit me to use the embellishing writer-speak of saying that I think it’s an ancestral gift that was sort of like passed down to me specifically from my ancestors. I sort of feel like I have something to say that is quite important. Yeah. So that is the reason I’m specifically saying this is because of the, um, “tell us who you are” part of the question.
The Iroko Circle: What would you say is something that you’re still trying to understand about the world through your writing? And also, do you think that there are some things that a person can only understand after they’ve written about them?
Chinonso: I think these days, I’ve been very interested in nuance. I’ve been really interested in exploring in my writing the nuances of the human condition. And what do I mean by nuances? I like to explore the spaces between the black and the white. I like to explore the gray areas, and interestingly, I was having a conversation with an older friend and editor some months back, and I remember him saying that when writing, it’s very important to sort of like strip off adjectives: good, bad, beautiful, ugly, demonic, angelic. And I find myself doing that in my writing these days because I think that it helps me understand the human condition better: why people are the way they are; what is the conditioning of this person; what motivates us to do what we do; what is the backstory of so-and-so person? While I do this with my writing, I do this with my reading too, and I sort of advise every reader to do the same thing: you know, reading with nuance. I would give an example: a reader is quick to tag one character bad and another character good, you know, that sort of thing. In literature in general, whether you are writing or reading, it is very interesting to explore the gray areas. I love writers that explore this so much too. For example, you know Odenigbo in Half of a Yellow Sun. Odenigbo was such a wonderful man, but he also had flaws, and I think that was quite interesting. Odenigbo cheated on his wife; he did this and that, but he was also a lover. I don’t want to use the word “boy”; he was also a lover. Odenigbo was also a loving father. Odenigbo was a beautiful son. And I think we’ve also had different characters like Ifemelu, Vivek, and John in Go Tell It on the Mountain. The main point of this is that nuances are very interesting. I think in summary, what people understand when they write or read about them in literature is nuance, and yes, people should explore this more often: writing with nuance, reading with nuance.
The Iroko Circle: Your essay, “The Slipping Away,” came from a deeply personal fear—the possibility of you losing your parents and you described writing it as a way of giving language to something you have spent years trying not to acknowledge. Has writing taught you that confronting a fear through language would actually diminish its power, or does it sometimes make you feel its weight more intensely as a writer?
Chinonso: I think this is such an interesting question. Yeah, you slightly answered the question. I think that language or writing shrinks or diminishes the intensity of whatever the subject matter is. Writing about the auspicious death of my parents has given me more clarity. Do I still get scared? Definitely. But I like to think that there’s something language does. I think language has the power to transform. Language is indeed very transformative. And because of that, there is a sense of redemption that comes with using language to actually confront your fears and your feelings. So there’s something about writing or arriving at the truth through language that just sort of diminishes the power of whatever it has on you.
The Iroko Circle: Yeah, that’s very interesting. For you, what does it mean to write about Igbo life without turning it into or having to explain it to an outside audience?
Chinonso: I am unapologetically Igbo. Even as a person, I do not ever find the need to explain myself. I do not necessarily see it as a way of rebelling. ‘Oh, I want to put the Igbo culture in the front line or in the limelight,’ you know, that sort of thing. It’s just simply me writing about my identity in the way that I would write about this identity if I was Yoruba, if I was Deltan, if I was Hausa, or if I was from Kogi. So the point of this is that I do not think of it as ‘I’m glad people find that remarkable’, but I do not think of it as, um, remarkable in the sense that I’m writing about identity. The identity just seeps in. This is who I am. So it’s definitely going to seep in. I would like to use the analogy of a reverend father who is also a writer. We have Uwem Akpan, who was a Jesuit priest and who wrote essays and short stories, and somehow his essays and short stories still circled back to the priesthood and the seminary, and that’s how I see my identity too. Yeah. So that’s who I am, and who I am has sort of infiltrated my writing.
The Iroko Circle: Can you walk us through your process of how you’re able to write such really remarkable stories that you write?
Chinonso: Thank you for that question. I do not have one way of writing a story. Sometimes I can get the story idea from the line of a poem. I can get the story idea from the title itself. I can get the story idea from a question I am trying to answer. I can get a story idea from an incident I have seen. I can get the story idea from a book I have read, which I now write in conversation with that book. And the interesting thing is I might read a book about a woman finding independence in herself, and it inspires me to write a story. And if I tell you that I wrote that story because of that book, you might be amazed because it is nothing like it. So whenever I say I’m inspired by a book when writing, it is not merely in the idea of what the story is saying, but rather, the premise — the fact that the writer wrote it and somehow it’s in conversation. So that’s how I see it; I don’t think there is one way I write. There are so many ways in which I sort of like find my ideas, or ideas come to me. It can be from just one conversation, just one statement somebody makes, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wait. This actually makes sense. I’m going to use this for an idea.’ Or, you know, um, I’m walking somewhere, and I notice something, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wait. I think I’m going to use this.’ But, predominantly, I think while there are others, while there is the coincidental looking at people, getting ideas from feelings, yada yada, I would say that 50% of the time I’m always writing based on a certain question I’m trying to answer.
There was this story I was writing in November last year, and I finished in April this year. I remember what had inspired that story was a larger question: ‘What is moral ambiguity? What does it mean for something good and something bad to coexist within a character?’ And then I remember going to the sub-question, which was the layered question: ‘What happens when a woman who is devoted to her husband, deeply devoted to her husband, falls in love with a younger man, but she’s still devoted to her husband? And the husband was a lovely man through and through. What happens?’ I think writing is also a way of sort of like trying to answer these questions.
The Iroko Circle: You’ve named James Baldwin as a major influence. What specifically does his work teach you about voice? And who else, any Nigerian or otherwise, who else would you say has shaped how you write?
Chinonso: I think James Baldwin is so original with his voice, and I love his sentences- long, winding sentences. And I love his use of commas, and his use of commas is not just merely grammatical but very rhythmic. He works with rhythm. His sentences are very musical, and he uses commas to sort of, like, portray that music, to sort of like, um, convey that music. For Nigerian writers, I would say Chimamanda Adichie. I think for me it’s her cultural authenticity. Then there is also Binyavanga Wainaina, a Kenyan, who, like James Baldwin, was so original in his voice. May his soul rest in peace. And very, very, what I like to think of as naked- very naked with his sentences. And by naked I mean unfiltered, saying what people are afraid to say. I also think Arundhati Roy has shaped how I write. Arundhati is one writer that I sort of like and deeply admire because she’s very unconventional with style and voice. Yeah.
The Iroko Circle: What would you say is the most common thing you find yourself telling young and emerging writers, especially those writing from cultural or Nigerian experiences?
Chinonso: I teach writing from time to time. So, the teaching happens, and I review work in that classroom. Everything is happening in the ambit of the writing workshop or the classroom. The first thing I would tell emerging writers is, ‘Write what you want to write.’ Write what is true to you. I say this because, um, you know, there’s this conversation about, “Oh, Nigerian writers like writing trauma.” They’re always writing about trauma. They’re always writing about trauma. And then I’m thinking of this poem by Hindi Noor, a Palestinian poet, who wrote this poem titled ‘Fuck Your Lectures on Craft, My People are Dying.’
And then there is this other writer, I think it was Orhan Pamuk or Salman Rushdie, who said, and I paraphrase, ‘If I have to write about the clouds or stars, I would want a smokeless sky.’ We writers in the Global South do not have the luxury that these other writers have. So I tell Nigerian writers, if you want to write about something heavy, write about it. What I would say, however, is, write about it with nuance. For example, you know, when people write traumatic things, I like to think that a sad person, no matter how sad someone’s life is, always has private tiny joys, splinters of joy, whatever it is. I think the problem might also be that some Nigerian writers do not write with nuance. So, when they’re writing an incredibly sad story, they only write, like, you know, they make the character insufferable. And a character can have highs and nothing going well for her. But maybe they have a part of their life that makes them happy. Very tiny joy. Because we always say hope is the engine of human existence, and I think that when we write, we should always remember to infuse that hope. That is what I would tell a Nigerian writer.
The Iroko Circle: What do you think emerging African writers need right now the most that they are not getting?
Chinonso: I think two things: we do not have editors, and we do not have funding either. So I’m going to talk about both. I think that the arts in general, except music, do not have funding. When I say music in Nigeria and Africa, I mean mainstream music, because the people who make the artsy kind of music do not necessarily get the clout that someone like Davido would get. And I’m not saying Davido is not a good singer. He is. But people like Asa, for example, make good music; she makes art. However, we would not see Asa in heavy conversations when we talk about Nigerian music at first glance. Except maybe there is a collaboration with the mainstream guys. Coming back to literature, you know, our art is grossly underfunded; our writing is underfunded because we don’t even value these things.
The first step is to sort of acknowledge that art is such an important and nourishing thing in our lives, and it gives the world meaning. Secondly, we do not have a lot of editors in Africa, in Nigeria. Editors are so important, and we need more people to train as editors, even if people from the writing field say, ‘Okay, let’s sort of like transition to this field,’ and they can still be writing. For example, I still write, but I also actively edit. I think this is so important because I know how editors have bettered my work. So, what we need now as writers is, in my opinion, mostly editors and funding. Yeah.
The Iroko Circle: You are studying law while you’re building a serious literary career. Where do you see yourself in the future? Legal or Storytelling?
Chinonso: In ten years? Flourishing in my writing. I might be a lawyer, a very good lawyer in ten years. Or a software engineer; I might even be a teacher — professor, lecturer. The constant, however, is that I would be one hell of a flourishing writer. That is the only thing I am certain of. The other things, I do not know for certain.
The Iroko Circle: When you look at the writer that you are becoming now, is there a difference between the writer you’ve imagined you would be and the writer your actual life is producing? And also, which version of those thoughts do you trust more?
Chinonso: Hmmm. Very interesting question. Am I the writer that I thought I would be when I was in SS2? No. Because I did not know so much about the literary world when I was in SS2. But I was actively reading and writing, and I actively wanted to write a novel. I was writing a novel.
So I think the interesting thing is that my younger self was emblazoned with delusions. And I say delusions healthily. Healthy delusions. I wanted to be this writer. I wanted to write a hundred books. I wanted to write, you know. For example, I wanted an older me to have written a hundred novels, you know, to be prolific and all of that. But right now, I say now, knowing the demand of what a good novel should be. So I think what I think now is quality over quantity. That’s one. I also think that now I am a much more mature writer. Then my writing was burdened with, you know, moral lessons, you know, that sort of thing. When you’re much younger, you write with moral lessons because it’s really less about the writing or less about what you’re reading and more about how you see the world as a child. You always think the world is this way or that way. And if there is a redemption, it means that there should be a moral lesson for that which is bad or that which is not advisable to do. However, now I see there is a maturity that comes with my writing. There is so much compassion that I give my characters.
The Iroko Circle: Thank you. Are there emotions or memory or cultural meanings that you feel the English language or writing in general can never quite hold? And when you get to that point as a writer, what happens for you? What do you do?
Chinonso: Hmmm. Interestingly, I do not think in the English language. I think in Igbo. I also think in Pidgin. I say this because Pidgin can be much more metaphorical than English.
For example, I remember going to a shop one day, and then this woman said, “Abeg give me cold pure water o, water wey dey sweat.” I remember thinking, “Water wey dey sweat.” That is such a beautiful expression for something cold. I never saw it that way. Or I remember going through TikTok some weeks back, and somebody was saying, “People are dying these days; the road has been so hungry, e just dey chop people these days. The road belle, e just the hungry,” you know, that sort of thing.
And I remember thinking that is such a beautiful expression. Nigerians don’t know how metaphorical Nigerian Pidgin English is, especially, you know, the ones that are indigenous to Warri and Port-Harcourt. There’s so much poetry in them than in the English language itself. When I write, I think in Pidgin and in Igbo before I think in English. For example, there’s something called translation and transliteration in languages that I find very interesting. Love, for example, in Igbo, means Ihunanya. That’s the translation. But the transliteration is “I see you.” And to see someone is to love them, you know, to sort of like see the entirety of them. There is also Umuaka. ‘Umu’ is people and ‘aka’ is hand. The transliteration of that is “people that they are carrying in the hand,” but the translation is, um, the translation is “children.” What this means is that I do not just look at the translation when I think in Igbo. I also look at the transliteration to understand what it really means.
The Iroko Circle: That’s very interesting and new. Makes quite a lot of sense. If you woke up tomorrow, and you realize that you no longer can write, not because you lost the ability, but because you have nothing left to prove or explain, what part of you do you think you’d still want people to know about?
Chinonso: I’ll kill myself. I’m so serious. I would actually kill myself because this is my life. This is literally the way I see the world. This is what gives me meaning. If you remove the thing that gives you meaning, I don’t think anything would be left. Even as a person of faith, how I sort of communicate with God sometimes is writing. I journal sometimes, and I direct my journaling at God. So I think that yeah, I would actually kill myself.
The Iroko Circle: We do hope it does not get to that point! Your work has engaged with subjects around queerness. So I wanted to ask if you find it hard to address that topic given the society that we are in.
Chinonso: Two things I would say on this. The first is that I no longer feel ashamed writing about queerness because I don’t think literature should be governed by shame. If a writer arrives at a truth through their work, that truth deserves to be examined honestly. In the Nigerian context, I am not a queer rights activist. Writing is simply the space through which I engage most directly with questions of queerness. And Nigerians do not read. We do have Nigerians who read, certainly, but the average Nigerian does not read. And the Nigerians who would read a queer writer’s work are probably not the same people who would want to stone that writer. I also have a lot of confidence in my craft. If someone who is homophobic or bigoted reads my work and says, “Oh, he is writing about gay people,” they may say that, but they cannot deny the quality of the writing simply because they disagree with what the work is exploring. I have enough confidence in my craft to believe that careful writing can beguile people. I’m not saying I’m a perfect writer or that I’m some kind of literary beast. I’m saying that I write well enough, and with enough care, that even when I am writing about something a reader might disagree with, the writing can make them pause and reconsider. So those two things are connected. Nigerians do read, yes, but sadly, a lot of Nigerians are not reading. And the Nigerian who encounters a work of prose about gay people is not necessarily the same Nigerian who would respond to its existence with violence.
The Iroko Circle: Yeah, it does. Thank you.
Chinonso: Thank you so much.
The Iroko Circle: Chinonso, it’s been such a pleasure having you on this session today. I actually wish the session would go on, as I really enjoyed hearing you talk and spiral a lot of things. So, our last question for you would be this: What advice would you give to writers in Nigeria today, especially those who struggle with knowing what to write about or how to grow their craft?
Chinonso: Consistency. They should keep writing. I say this because I’m going to be honest. I think when I set out trying to break into the literary community, I had rejections, even though I don’t think I had a wobbly or a difficult time breaking into the literary space. I don’t know if this would work for everybody, but just be consistent. You have to love it enough; that’s just what matters: love what you’re doing, write with so much love and passion in your heart. Treat your writing like your child. I speak from the point of view of an editor; I can tell when a writer’s work has soul. So, I think that a writer should love their writing so much to give it a soul. In fact, when you love something, you’ll be consistent with it. You show up for it and treat it well. Rejections will come, sometimes a lot, sometimes for a full year, but some years your questions will be answered.
The Iroko Circle: Thank you so much for that advice, and I really hope people take it. Do you mind sharing your handles since you dabble in editing, just in case writers require your services?
Chinonso: My website is www.chinonsonzeh.com. Anyone can easily reach out there for all my services.
The Iroko Circle: All right. Thank you very much for giving us your time. Thank you very much for indulging the call. We really enjoyed the conversation, and we look forward to seeing more of you in the creative space and hopefully having a more interesting interview with you in the future after you’ve achieved a whole lot of other things. We can’t wait to see you at the top, Mr. Chinonso. Thank you so much.
Chinonso: Thank you so, so much, Iroko Circle. Thank you, Hannah. I really appreciate it, and this was such a wonderful hour.
The Iroko Circle: Thank you. All right. Have a nice evening, Chinonso.
Chinonso Nzeh is a writer, editor, and writing teacher in his final year of law at the University of Lagos. He believes that writing is both his constant and his calling, and that no matter what other paths his life takes, the work of putting words on the page will remain at its center. His essays, short fiction, and poetry move between family, faith, identity, and the tender, complicated spaces where people are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Rooted in an Igbo sensibility he never feels the need to explain, he writes with compassion for his characters and a deep interest in the private joys that survive even the heaviest stories. He also works as an editor and facilitates writing workshops, mentoring emerging writers to write what is true to them and to keep showing up for the craft. Chinonso can be reached for editorial services through his website, www.chinonsonzeh.com.