Diran Adebayo Interview

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Diran Adebayo Interview

• Kelley Miller, Manmeet Kaur, Susan Wehrle

2
Meeting Diran Adebayo
Make it true, make it pretty, make it kind
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Background

• Oludiran Adebayo was born in London on August 30,
  1968 to Nigerian parents
• Diran, 36, lives in Holloway, London
• He is the youngest of 5 brothers
• He went to Oxford to study law
• He worked as a journalist before writing Some
  Kind of Black in 1996
• He won the 1995 Saga Prize for Some Kind of Black
  along with numerous other awards in 1996 and 1997
• He wrote My Once Upon a Time in 2000
• He is currently working on a third book and a
  movie for FilmFour

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Diaspora

• Diaspora the dispersion of any people from their
  original homeland
• I don't feel fully British non-whites are not
  yet completely first-class citizens. I see myself
  as part of the wider black Diaspora, with as much
  in common with black French people or Americans
  as with white Britons. (Adebayo)
• I might describe myself as a black diasporic
  artist because I can see links between my
  position and other black people in the Western
  world, and beyond black, other dispersed
  peoples, be they Jews or gypsies. (Adebayo)
• Adebayo is struggling to see himself both as
  British and Nigerian he doesnt see England as
  his homeland, and classifies himself as a part of
  the black Diaspora from Nigeria.

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White Gaze

• What characterizes white gaze is the fact that it
  is first seen through color and prejudice and
  then seen in terms of cultural difference.
• Manchester's exhibition Black Victorians Black
  People in British Art 1800-1900 is a case in
  point of white gaze. Of all the paintings,
  photos and sculptures presented here by curator
  Jan Marsh, none are by black Britons these
  images are, more than usual, a record of the
  white gaze. (Adebayo)
• This example of the exhibit humanizes the idea of
  white gaze.
• Here, while blacks are given a spot in the
  exhibit, and therefore recognized, black
  Britains do not represent themselves because of
  the white gaze they are seen as incapable of
  providing art, about themselves, as they are not
  good enough for the exhibit and its standards
  (once again, according to the white gaze).
• The gaze is oppressive and squeezes blacks into
  specific communities

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Violence

• There's sex and drugs and violence, in a London
  setting But Adebayo is more serious. I
  wanted to do something about relationships, but
  different from middlebrow books, he says. He was
  interested in the difficulties some black males
  have with relationships, and the fact that rates
  of black-on-black relationships are below 50.
  (Cunningham)
• The presence of violence in Some Kind of Black
  adds to the constant stereotype that violence is
  a large part of the black experience.
• Love relationships do not always carry much
  value, and are therefore, replaced with violence
  this also conceptualizes black male on black
  female violence.
• While there is more male on male violence in this
  book, it nonetheless reaffirms the large presence
  of violence in black British literature.

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A Few Words With Diran

• Having had a most atypical UK black experience
  (lived in poor, inner-city, but got scholarship
  to posh private school and then Oxford Univ), I
  certainly felt an internal need to reconnect with
  the mass of black britons when I left college,
  which I felt involved getting deep into street
  culture the great majority of black britons
  have had working-class upbringings, someway
  different from the States. (Adebayo)
• I guess, when I'm with whites, I see myself more
  as 'black' and, when I'm with black people, I
  think of myself more as an African. (Adebayo)
• J. D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye had a
  great impact on me as a teenager, an emblematic
  example of this kind of angsty, individual at
  odds with the world-type of work that is still
  the dearest to me and frequently informs my
  work. (Adebayo)

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A Few Words With Diran

• Identity is certainly a major theme of my first
  novel. Some Kind of Black examines one
  troublesome summer in the life of its protagonist
  Dele, who has his feet in many homes, in the
  sense of being of Nigerian background, but born
  in this new country, where hes a minority within
  a minority, but also a Londoner . (Adebayo)
• Dele is Dirans alter ego, to some degree
  Deles struggle for a comfort zone in Some Kind
  of Black mirrors my own search in my early
  manhood, and the type of information and issues I
  was grappling with, and the peer pressures I was
  subject to. (Adebayo)
• The language Adebayo uses sets his work apart
  from all others, I dont think you could read a
  page of my stuff and mistake it for anybody
  elses. Also, I feel I have a rare set of
  environmental influences, from the street to
  the heights of British society to international
  ones that I bring to bear on the page. (Adebayo)
• It became apparent that Diran Adebayos work
  captures the essence of the Other imprisoned in
  the mind and body of a Westerner (Modiano)

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Adebayos Views on Africa

• Whites in Africa
• Seeking to increase their status
• Use Africa as a background to export ideas
• Portrayal of Africa
• Africans are shown as wildlife or a slightly
  different species
• Images are bleak
• Problems in Africa
• Poor use of aid
• We must change to paradigm

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Problems for Minority Writers?

• Minority writers suffer the burden of
  representation. (Adebayo)
• Apposed to majority writers (i.e. whites)
• Fewer works equals a bigger burden
• Readers look for representation and vindication
• Counter point
• Readers do look for the art
• Artists responsibility

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Commitment To Truth In Craft

• Artist must not adhere to the political
  correctness of minority representation
• When the truth is written, there are no
  stereotypes.
• Reader empathize and understand
• Ironically the truth ends up jaded
• You spend your time worrying whether what you
  write is true, yet it's eventually unleashed
  into a world where no one can judge whether it is
  or not. The publishers and editors who read your
  stuff are middle-class white people. (Adebayo)
• Belonging / Unbelonging
• Adebayos connection to the wider black Diaspora
• Wants to see an ethnic-minority prime minister

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Observations On Current Black Britain

• Diversity of Experience
• Age
• Location
• Upbringing
• Work field
• . . . there's an increasing number of black and
  mixed-race people out there who associate other
  black people with difficulty, with issues about
  and around Britain that they themselves aren't
  feeling (Adebayo, Young).

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Observations (cont.)

• England vs. Europe and US
• Nearer to peace
• Refugee feeling is more prevalent elsewhere,
• Curiosity further from the center
• Asian shift
• Racism or not?
• On hearing the 'alpha male' anecdote above, my
  ex would probably say it had nothing to do with
  race, and everything to do with the stresses of
  London driving and that my black youth on the
  escalator was nothing to do with white timidity,
  and all to do with British reticence. And
  possibly she'd be right. Determining what is and
  isn't a race issue is a tricky business
  (Adebayo, Young).
• Establishing Britishness with acceptance

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Observations (cont.)

• Race vs. Culture
• Black vs. Nigerian
• Returning to roots
• Distinctions between and within race and culture
• British vs. Western Ways
• The main faultline now is not what colour you
  have to be to be British but, rather, who has
  British or western ways - and who doesn't
  (Adebayo, Tribal)

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Observations (cont.)

• War against white supremacy
• White ignorance
• Celebrating diversity
• Conforming
• Race still enough to kill and limit
• But we must do much more talking with each
  other. There must be much more knowledge, more
  widely spread (Adebayo, Young).
• It's hard not to feel the force of the old maxim
  when confronted with the Mori survey for Prospect
  magazine which, as this newspaper reported
  yesterday, found that four in 10 white people
  don't want an Asian or black Briton as their
  neighbour - while two in five Britons generally
  would prefer to live in an area with people from
  the same ethnic background (Adebayo, Tribal).

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Works Cited

• Adebayo, Diran. Diran Adebayo. 07 June 2006
  .
• Adebayo, Diran and Giles Foden. Interview. BBC
  Radio Four. 15 Jan. 2005.
• Adebayo, Diran and Kwame Kwei Armah. Interview.
  Today. BBC Radio. 5 Dec. 2003.
• Adebayo, Diran, et al. Of Wodehouse and Wood
  Green. The Guardian. 22 September 2002
  ction/story/0,,555665,00.html
• Adebayo, Diran, et al. Racism is learned
  behaviour and we have to unlearn it. The
  Guardian. 21 Mar. 2005 g2/story/0,,1442439,00.html.
• Adebayo, Diran, et al. White Lines. The
  Guardian. 15 Oct. 2005 /features/story/0,,1592525,00.html
• Adebayo, Diran. Tribal Britons Should Live and
  Let Live. The Observer. (2004)
  67,00.html.
• Adebayo, Diran. Young, Gifted, Black, and Very
  Confused. The Observer. (2001)
  5,605333,00.html.
• Modiano, Marko. "An Interview with Diran
  Adebayo." Moderna Sprêak 96.1 (2002) 35-42.
• Wragge-Morley, Juliet. "Diran Adebayo."
  Contemporary Writers. British Council Arts. 07
  June 2006 ors/?pauth5.