Not every book from the title makes a bold declaration about the theatrics of men and dating culture in a hyper-scandalous city like Lagos like Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad. And that's what gives Damilare Kuku's debut oeuvre its resonance to Lagosian women and Nigerian women as a whole. Featuring a collection of twelve short stories, Kuku humorously and authentically depicts the trials and tribulations of millennial dating in an African context. Since its release in November 2021, the book has been widely lauded within the literary space, and for good reason. AMAKA had the pleasure of sitting down with the new author to learn more.
You've spent most of your creative career as an actress and radio presenter. What inspired your pivot into the literary world?
I think that I've always wanted to be a writer. Or I know I've always wanted to be a writer. I remember when I was a lot younger, my mum took me to a reading for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun, and I asked her a question then: 'How long did it take you to write your first book?', and she replied that it took her her entire life up until that moment to write the first book. And when she signed my copy of the book, she said: 'To Dami, and please know that you have all the time in the world to write your first book.' That stuck with me for a very long time. I remember that, and I remember saying, 'I'm going to write. I've always wanted to write.'
I started writing blogs when I finished my NYSC (National Youth Service Corps). I'd write short stories as well. I remember I wrote a story called The Sex Life of a Lagos Mad Woman, and that went viral for that time.
And I don't know that when people ask me questions around acting and radio presenting [sic], being a published writer still doesn't stop all those parts of my life. It just means that now, I'm also a writer.
The title of the book is super interesting. What's the backstory?
I said before that this title came because I was in my apartment in Yaba. Then, I was staying in Yaba, and I remember just praying, and after prayers, I was just sitting and chilling. I was in-between projects; I think I had shot Love Is War with Omoni Oboli and Richard Mofe-Damijo, and I just got the inspiration to write and to do a project called Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad. All of that was like three years ago, and though I had the idea in mind, I didn't even know it was eventually going to become a book. So, the title came to me when I was praying.
One of the things I loved about the book was the way you didn't shy away from writing boldly about sex. Normally, African female authors leave the sex scenes very vague and watery. Did you make an active choice to do this?
[Laughs] So, I've gotten a lot of flak about the fact that I put them there. I didn't know that the sex scenes were that many because I thought they were normal. But apparently, according to African standards, that's a lot of sex scenes. I just thought, there's no relationship that people don't have sex, especially if it's a full relationship — like a well-rounded relationship. So why is it so uncomfortable for us to talk about these things? But I understand.
People have their religion, and they have their self-principles that they stand by, and so they aren't comfortable with these things. I say to people: 'When you pick up the book, and you think it's too much for you, it's a book that you can take a break from and then come back to and continue to read. Maybe skip the sex scenes.' I didn't make an active choice writing them. I just knew that you couldn't talk about relationships and not talk about sex.
As a writer, it's my job to be truthful to the characters. I can't tell a story and say nearly all the men in Lagos are mad, and it's about relationships and the things that we deal with and leave the sex out. It's almost, I think, pretentious if you ask me on my end as the writer. But yeah, I was deliberate with that, and because I had help with my editors Chimeka Garricks and Tahirah Sagayah. They were very willing to go there with me. They didn't have a problem with the fact that I was going to be that explicit. So, it was a deliberate choice, but at the same time, I wasn't writing and saying I'm gonna put sex in this story, no. It's just when it got to the place where sex had to be talked about. I didn't understand why I had to stay away from talking about it.
I think what makes your work stand out is that it is very realistic and relatable. Are any of the stories based on real-life experiences of other people or you?
I don't write about myself. I try not to, but this book has some stories that are, of course, based on people I know. Every story in that book is inspired by someone I know, or some women I've known, or some stories I've heard. As much as the work is fiction, it's born out of reality, but I respectfully stayed away from talking about myself.
One thing that really struck me was the inclusion of the COVID-19 pandemic into one of the stories, such as "Beard Gang". How long was the writing and publishing process, seeing as the pandemic and lockdown happened a year before you published?
[Laughs] I actually started writing this book at the beginning of 2021, properly. Prior to 2021, I only had three short stories
About the inclusion of COVID-19... writers are keepers of time. Writers are gatekeepers of time, and the time I'm living in as a writer now has COVID-19 in it, so it would be totally unfair to the people that I'm writing for, [and] for me, not to tell them about it. Because this book would [sic] be picked up twenty years from now and this person is gonna read and say: 'So COVID-19 existed at some point, and there was a pandemic', I felt that it had to be told because, for me, my writing is very much in the present.
This is a very woman-centred collection of tales, with very women-centred — some may even say controversial — themes, like sexism in the church, infertility, rape and gay men deceptively marrying unsuspecting women. What are your thoughts on the state of women in Nigeria and the types of women portrayed in the book?
Yes, it is. I think Nigerian women are badasses. I think women naturally are amazing — when we are not being vindictive, when we are not envious of each other, when we honestly share a particular goal, you can't stop a woman. Women are unstoppable. I keep saying it. I think women are beautiful in and out. Because we are secret holders, we carry the children (the ones that choose to carry the children), and we just carry a lot in us, and we bring it out and still continue to move on. And we are still waking up every day and killing it. First of all, Nigerian women deserve to be applauded because it's one thing to be a woman, [but] to be Black and to be Nigerian? Wow. I mean, wow. That's exceptional. It's exceptional, and I like the types of women portrayed in the book. I hope I did justice to them. I don't think I made the women saints. I just made them who they were, and I hope that came through the words. Because I wasn't striving to say that women are better than men; that is not my concern.
I'm very much a feminist, and I make no apologies for it because, for me, feminism refers to a problem that needs to be fixed; feminism is a movement about a problem in the society. It's a movement where we are asking for women to be treated better because that's the problem at hand, and I identify with it because I want the problem to be solved. It doesn't necessarily mean I think women are better than men. I just think men and women should earn equally, should be treated better, and women should be treated as equals. And I'm also very much a feminine woman. I think that women that want to be feminine should be feminine. I'm a very feminine woman, and I make no apologies for it. I like to be taken care of and all of those things. But that's my personal preference as Damilare. But as a person, as a writer, I am a feminist, and I stand by that too. So I hope that I did justice in telling the stories of the women in the book as they were.
If you could give advice to the younger you or a character in the book, what would it be? And what advice do you have for young aspiring female writers?
To my younger self, I would say: 'Take it easy. Live life. Everything good will come.'
The character in the book that I would give advice to would be Yejide. I'd say: 'You go girl. Leave every situation that doesn't favour you.'
To any young girl who wants to be a writer, I'll say: 'Start. Just write. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be the best person in the room. You don't have to be the one that knows how to coin and put words together cleverly. Just start writing because that's the first thing. Once you start, you've overcome the first hurdle.'