by Angel Nduka-Nwosu

Several authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have documented Black women's experiences with their hair on the continent and diaspora. In her groundbreaking novel Americanah, the concept of race and natural hair were explored in an Obama-era America. Another is Taiye Selasi, who wrote Love Your Curls: A Poetic To Curly Hair Inspired By Real Women.

However, not many authors have been hair educators with the additional ability to balance the fine line between the important work that is teaching proper methods of caring for Black hair and creating fiction that celebrates the personalities of Black women who are on a journey to loving their hair. That is what fascinates me the most about Tola Okogwu's superhero novels Onyeka and The Rise Of The Rebels. 

Tola Okogwu is a Nigerian-British writer, hair educator and journalist who has written books like Daddy Do My Hair: Beth's Twists and Onyeka and The Academy Of The Sun. Her latest novel Onyeka and The Rise of The Rebels, is being adapted into a film by award-winning actor Will Smith and Westbrook Studios.

Through the careful physical descriptions of characters like Onyeka, we see a celebration of Black hair and identity in a coming-of-age fantasy novel. The novel also explores themes like family and what superheroes should look like for Black British girls. It follows the lives of Onyeka, Chidinma and Adanna as they try to find a cure for the Solari disease that comes with using what the novel terms their "Ike Power". 

It also documents the girls' attempts to find Onyeka's missing parents and expose the lies of Mr Doyinbo alongside another group called The Rogues. Speaking with her about the book, Black-British female authors, and her writing quirks, one gets the sense that her skills as a hair educator have significantly influenced how she develops her characters.

Your novel Onyeka and The Rise of The Rebels feels like the Black female superhero book I'd always wanted to read as a child. I'm curious about what your writing process was and the Black fantasy works that influenced you. 

I wouldn't say I have any major Black fantasy writers who have directly influenced my writing. My writing as a fantasy writer wasn't planned. It just so happened that that idea came to me in the form of Onyeka. Funny enough, it's the genre that I like to read the most i.e. fantasy and science fiction. But I hadn't, before writing Onyeka, read that many [fantasy] books by Black writers and that's partly because there aren't so many of them on the ground.

So none necessarily directly influenced my writing or shaped it. I was probably more influenced by the writers I read as a child. But the Black fantasy writer whose work I greatly enjoy and who does inspire me is N.K Jemisin. It's just phenomenal her books and the way she can weave a plot, the level of complexity in her characters and the way she plays with the characters are incredible. So she's one of my favourite fantasy writers. My writing process tends to start with a plot and a hook or idea. From there, I build out the characters and what we call writing a plotter which means outlining your story before writing it. So for me, it's just the discipline to carve out time to sit down and write. I've found that if I try and wait for inspiration to strike, I'll be waiting forever so it's that discipline to sit and know that for me magic usually happens in the editing stage of the work rather than the first draft. That's the part I enjoy most, and with writing Onyeka, I wrote [the novel] for the ten-year-old me because I wished I'd had books like that as a child. Cause I love superhero stories, movies and books, it was just about writing a strong, powerful character who is the hero of her own story. Once I had a strong sense of the character, I let her take me on the journey that she wanted to go on.

You have a career as a hair educator. Did that play any role in the creation of characters in the book?

Yes, it did. My career as a hair educator did kind of give me an idea of the heart of the story, which was about a young Black girl who discovers that the thing that she feels is a flaw or a problem ends up being her strength. I knew immediately that the thing was going to be her hair. It very much came from my profession and my journey with my own hair. It also came from knowing the role that hair plays for so many Black women and girls, and that spoke to the very core of the story. 

Then individual characters, like Onyeka, for instance, also have their journeys towards reaching self-acceptance and learning to love and accept their hair for what it is and realise that there's nothing wrong with it. And that was very much my journey with my hair, and that of so many women around me. It made it somewhat easy to put a lot of those experiences into the characters. I honestly didn't have to look too hard to find inspiration for Onyeka in terms of the things she would go through and the feelings and thoughts she would have about her hair.

What character would you say you resonate with and why?

It's a mixture of two characters. Actually, that's not true. It's quite a few. I often say that Onyeka is quite autobiographical because it's so much of me and my experiences that I've put into her. But then there's a little bit of me in Adanna as well; in her snarky personality and being able to sort of lean into and say all the things that you are supposed to keep inside and you know, just her sort of not caring about what other people think attitude is in so many ways where I strive to be. Then there's also a bit of Tope who is Onyeka's mother in me and there's also Mama, and I put so many of my aunties in that character. I would say it's probably Onyeka with little bits of Adanna thrown in.

What is your major wish for the Black and African girls who will be watching?

I hope they feel seen. I also really hope they feel the same when they watch the movie and that the experiences they've gone through are [wholly] confirmed and acknowledged. I also hope they know that those experiences weren't just in their heads and that they are not alone in this journey and experience. I hope that when they watch it, they fall in love with Onyeka and they feel connected to her. I hope too that her journey helps them to realise that they have power and that the things our society keeps telling us are a problem are actually and can be our strength and all that's needed is to shift our perspective.

Finally, if you could talk to the Tola of ten years ago what advice would you give her?

It will all make sense so stick with it and hang in there. It seems a bit crazy, and you are going to go on a very long journey but hold on because it's all going to make sense. Everything that you will go through or have gone through is for a purpose so don't lose faith and hold on to God cause He is going to get you through. It will all make sense in the end.