In less than one week, November 11, 2009, Dr. Tess Onwueme, Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and English at the University of Eau-Claire, Wisconsin, will be honored at an international conference in Abuja, Nigeria. This convention will be centered around the woman behind unmatched literary works that focus on social, political, environmental, cultural and historical concerns involving women, youth, Africa and the African Diaspora. Dubbed Africa’s best female dramatist and winner of several awards including the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols award and a Ford Foundation research award, this social critic has once again proven herself worthy of worldwide recognition.
On October 29, 2009, Obaasema’s Abena Annan caught up with Onwueme in a short, laughter-filled phone interview before she left her base in Wisconsin to Nigeria. But before delving into the thrill of current events in her life, we glazed over one of her several enlightening plays, Shakara, which won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) award in 2001.
Abena Annan: So, tell our readers the meaning of “Shakara”
Tess Onwueme: In Pidgin, which is the equivalent of West African Ebonics or Creole and a blend of the Jamaican Patois, “Shakara” as a Pidgin word is being sassy, showing off, ostentatious. And to some extent it underscores some rudeness. (She chuckles at this).
In the play Shakara, the conflict revolves around this teenage girl who has named herself Shakara. She’s sassy, on the cutting edge. She’s from a very poor family being raised by a single mother who is a nanny and [her mother] doubles as a laborer on the plantation of a rich drug baroness. Through the marketing of [Shakara’s] body and the exploitation of her body, she can gain financial power that can help her become somebody, she thinks. And so she has dropped out of school and is on this wild escape to the material world. She is very much uncomfortable with who she is. She wears a blonde wig. Very, very uncomfortable with being black, she buys all these magazines and the models are white. She’s not happy with her nose; it’s “W” but she wants to turn it into a “V.” When Shakara looks in the magazines, the people in there are not necessarily people like her. She wears contact lenses to make her eyes blue or green. Shakara would rather be white, she wants to escape from her skin but she can’t. There’s an underlying theme or issue of racial inequality there. The play and the issues and the characters are all products fabricated from the fabrics of society.
Abena Annan: Did the theme of this story have anything to do with something you specifically observed among young African women or was it just pure fiction?
I don’t know of any fiction that doesn’t have roots in reality. It’s not usually something completely [based] on experience. Quite often, the work that personally I write is textured. The DNA of it fits and oozes with that of the society we live in and then we reorganize the sequence of it. Perhaps I couldn’t have been able to write a character, like Shakara, if I had not observed young women, not just African women, but teenagers as a whole. I’ve been in this country for 21 years. I’ve lived in big cities; I’ve lived in small cities. I’ve lived in a place like Detroit and I didn’t like it. The kinds of images I saw, of not just black young women and men, but the general urban decay and the struggles and challenges. It seeps into the mind, it seeps into the soul and there’s no way one can draw a line between those and, say, the kinds of experiences I get in watching young women in Lagos who are very much like Shakara. We’re trying to make sense out of the very senseless rational world we live in. A world where we have values, society dictates values of hard work. Nobody works harder than Shakara’s mother but at the end of the day she takes home mere pittance. Whereas the same society really applauds the rich and the famous and [gives] them so much respect so the contradictions of it are embodied between the two women. The rich, affluent madam Kufo who makes it to the top materially and then the struggling underclass mother of Shakara who’s trying to be a role model playing by the books but playing by the books doesn’t get her where she has to be. In society, she’s nameless and Shakara doesn’t want to be like that. She’s an archetypal representation of those constituencies of youth and women in particular who have to find a place and being challenged by all the rules in society, all the pressure to become somebody with very little work.
Abena Annan: You were appointed to the U.S. State Department Public Diplomacy Specialist Program. How did that happen?
Tess Onwueme: That came from mars, from Jupiter! I never, never, in my wildest imagination thought about that kind of honor but it felt great! I got a surprise call from an official at the State Department in January 2007 congratulating me. Actually, I was in the airport. I was going to a speaking engagement in Houston, Texas and I was in the bathroom when I got that call. I didn’t know who it was because it was a private number and I said ‘Let me just pick it up.’ And then there was this strange voice, very masculine, baritone voice asking ‘Is this Dr. Onwueme” and I said, “Yes,” and he said, “This is so, so and so and I’m calling from the State Department.” I nearly collapsed because I thought that maybe I had done something wrong! And he said, “Congratulations.” I was dumbfounded, so the rest is history. By February 2007 I was on my way to India. I was the inaugural speaker for the Black History Month. It was the most exhilarating experience!
Abena Annan: So, this conference you’re attending in Nigeria, how does it feel to be honored in this way?
Tess Onwueme: It’s even an understatement, I’m elated. I’m overjoyed. I’m humbly, humbly surprised. I’m overwhelmed by the honor that is being given to me. I never anticipated it. I feel humbled by the whole experience. I feel at the same time like I’ve grown; I’m only 5″6 or 5″7, but I feel like I’m 20 feet taller! It hasn’t changed anything that I am but has given me more strength and empowered my voice. It shows me that people are watching and I hear them and I am going to speak even louder. I have back support, solidarity and that is strength.
Obaasema congratulates Tess Onwueme on such incredible contributions to African literature and on her achievements.