I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My passion is more about bringing the stories out from the African continent mixed with the West.
I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.
I write on sacred stories, symbols and rituals of all cultures - European, American and Chinese - but my audiences, typically, like me to focus on India.
If my characters travel somewhere, I generally write about a place I know to give the scenes more authenticity.
There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else.
I want to present interesting stories that don't qualify themselves just by virtue of their ethnographic type.
Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.
It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.
The key is to work with people who are passionate about storytelling and who have a similar sensibility of the type and nature of the stories that you want to tell.
African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.