I saw on Twitter, people talking about this guy’s case, and how hard this is to experience, how it must break his mind and crush his spirit. With it happening to this particular guy several times. And how it is for Iranians going through this kind of thing. And it made me think of a post about these issues I made a while back, about what it feels to strive from a place like this. It was from my personal experiences in the literary industry. After writing it, I shelved it. Who wants to hear me rant. But after seeing this, I decided to post it anyway.
Some days I want to talk about what it means to be me in this profession. To be who I am, what I am, where I am, to have done the things I have. But I don’t because the people I am talking to who have reached those places I have, don’t know what it’s like to come from where I am. And the ones who come from where I am, don’t know what it’s like to be where I have reached, to have done the things I have.
So I don’t try to say it because it’s not a thing that can be understood, really. Still not bothering. Just talking to myself here.
I was once on a thing with Patrick Rothfuss.
And he told me that I was brilliant. Can’t remember if he used that word exactly. He was amazed by something I said. I’ve managed to impress people of that caliber, the most accomplished people in the history of the profession, at their niche, over the years. I remember stumbling into the Discon WorldCon in 2022. Fresh off the airport, but dusty, my limbs creaking from disuse. And before that, a battle with the entire imperialist red tape you needed to cross, to be on that side of the world. Having to enlist the entire profession and drag them into the outrage that tore me from the soil I was grounded in, and gave fire to the rockets that carried me beyond these shores for the first time in my life. The further red tape of Nigerian bureaucracy aimed at the same purpose as its former colonial masters and enslavers, to hold everyone it deems undeserving down. Missing my first flight, doing the instant financial and other gymnastics that saw me getting another one for the next day, spending 30 hours plus on air and in multiple stops, across three continents. Landing, and making my way to the hotel.
Ellen Datlow was the first person I saw when I walked in the Discon WorldCon. Another great I’ve shared space, a ranking with, in my impossible climb. I went and greeted her and sat down at the panel thing that was ongoing for a few minutes. To took it all in. For a second before I went up with my box, to bathe and freshen up and join the activities. No days off. The activities were already on, but with everything that it took to get here, I didn’t get a day off. I had moved a world, an entire industry, several communities and tens of thousands of peoples, and powers, some of them the most powerful in the world, to get here.
Dare I take an extra day off? Those few moments I sat down at the round table/panel after greeting Ellen Datlow before going up was all the rest I took that day. And in truth it was to rest more than join, be part of anything that I sat down there. For even I must take a moment, if it was all I could take. I don’t know if she saw. Or if she understood what she saw. If any of you ever understand what you see. My eyes were bloodshot. I was bone weary. Tired to my soul. Sick, feverish, lightheaded. Stabbing pain all over my body. Muscles cramped. But after a brief shower I came back and went on with the day, then all three days of activities. Meets and greets, laughs, readings, panels, pictures, jokes, networking. I sometimes wonder. Did anyone understand? What it took from me to be there? How many million splinters breaking into, it took to get what was practically a dead cadaver there? You know what it cost in Gofundme money. You paid that price. But do you know what price I paid? What it took to pay that price? What it felt like having to face all those battles, being rejected over and over and over again. Told that you didn’t matter. Your dreams didn’t matter. Your skill didn’t matter.
Having to shove all that aside. To put your life, your emotions, your pain, your lack, your darkness, your madness aside and keep going on on on on and on. Till it feels like you are already dead. And your entire existence is a zombie virus that infects your too stupid brain and already dead body and refuses you rest, insisting you must go on to have all these things that the world says is good but you aren’t good enough for. Did Ellen Datlow see that when she looked into my blood shot eyes? Did Patrick Rothfuss hear when I was saying those clever things? Did any of these literary gods I had worshiped see what it took for someone like me to be there, understand the journey from Hades to Olympus?
When I was at Glasgow WorldCon last year, after, a bunch of people were gossiping about me. How I wasn’t smiling or friendly or laughing too much or interacting in a way they wanted and that was so bad of me. Let me tell you something. ASFS funded me to the tune of 2k pounds or so. I crowdfunded another 3k dollars or thereabouts. The total of what it cost me to be there was going on 10m naira. That kind of money, it would take the average Nigerian working at minimum wage 142 years to get that. Their whole lifetime plus another lifetime, then 2 more years, if they saved everything in those 142 years. Thats what it took for me to be there, that’s how many years it was for me. I do that math, and I carry the weight of those years, and it affects the manner of my interactions. It was also the first visa in my life I got without having to break the system to get it. But even the money alone was heavy on my back. But someone thought I was there to be gay, laugh, sing, smile, take pictures as they wanted or deemed appropriate, so fuck me for it. Prominent writers earning six figures, living in the west, with partners in big tech were making a hullabaloo over this. I understand that you don’t understand. Cannot understand.
A friend of mine who is also a friend of the greats told me the story of one of the greats, their struggles. To illustrate that the great also struggle. But there is a difference between struggling and suffering. And a difference between suffering and dying. We are dying, for our dreams to have a shot at living. Climbing from the bottom of the top, to the top of the top is vastly different from climbing from the bottom of the bottom to the top or even middle of the top. Climbing without legs, or arms. With only your will power to pull you up. My own friends have cautioned me about my view of my journey. Sometimes considered inflated by me, in their opinion. Friend told me, “you aren’t Kanye West. Who do you think you are? Ben Carson?” To these questions I responded that the distance I have climbed, from where I was born, to where I am is a far greater distance than these people have. No disrespect. I might be a lagosian now. But I had to even climb to get here. Warri which I claim, in Delta State isn’t even where I was born. I was born and grew up in Ughelli. You wanna put Kanye or Ben Carson in Ughelli and see where they get to? I told the people I found those comparisons insulting. Those dudes got nothing on me.
I remember sitting talking to Rothfuss and thinking, I have more in common with Kvothe than this guy. I’ve had to have a parent die violently, tortured to death just like K. Had to sleep on the sand, cold and alone at night. Rejected from hospitals, Sick, broken, hungry, insane with the pain of it. I am strongly acquainted with the feeling of dying. I know how it feels. I’ve experienced it enough to have a sense of it. A lot of the things you’d make a chosen one experience if you were a fantasy author trying to paint the most torturous, broken, debased character, I am acquainted with. The life I have lived often doesn’t feel real. It feels deliberately contrived to be unfortunate. As if these guys wrote me. The things I have seen, experienced, felt, most human minds cannot conceive of. I can’t tell you. You wouldn’t believe me. And if I did, you wouldnt like it. Pain and suffering at a certain level is not cool, or inspiring. It’s ugly, and disgusting and painful to look at. The things I have had to do to survive, let alone thrive. I often jokingly tell my friends that everything has happened to me. And it’s true. Everything. But here I am with Patrick Rothfuss. He could have written me. Instead I am sitting with him, talking about books and writing and literature. I wanted to say it. That I understand your writing. I was there with my body, in those places your mind went to. I know your character in ways you can’t. I touched them. I shouldn’t exist in this world with you. I come from the one you write, can only imagine, that is dark and broken and full of horrors relegated to the realms of fantasy and horror.
I’ve met and interacted with nearly all my literary idols. The people who wrote the childhood fantasy books I grew up on. And this is an unbelievable privilege, I understand that. But do you or them understand what it takes, what it means for us to have even been able to share words, the same air? The cost. It cost heavily in coin. It cost a good portion of my sanity. To start.
The things I have done. Nobody coming from where I am has. Nobody. Most of my laurels are either a first for the continent or even Black race. Do you even know what that means? There are privileged Black people in “developed” parts of the world. To be in this void, this Black hole, from which no light may penetrate or emerge from, and be the first at something, before people in the “first world”.
Those things are firsts for a reason. There’s something holding them back from happening. Structures, systems, mindsets, cultures that even solidify to legislation sometimes, preventing them from happening. I’ve had to move through this world differently to break through those barriers. For many of them I am still the first, the only one. And there’s a reason. I used to tell one of my friends that it’s our destiny to fail. It’s destiny that we get nothing. It’s destiny that these things not happen. If things happen, are done exactly the way they have been, that they are meant to, nothing will change. The normal, natural course of events is for good things to not happen to us. The systems and structures and cultures and legislation, which in my opinion amount to destiny, deem that these things not happen for us, to us. And I hate that destiny. To get anything good, we must overturn that destiny. Beat this world. I must move counter to, rail against that destiny. It’s my personal destiny to go and be against and beat that general destiny. As many times as I can before I expire. It’s the thing that drives me. A thing doesn’t interest me until I hear that it’s impossible. That I should not have it. And as many people as possible, like me do. Because I must beat that destiny, as thoroughly as possible.
And so I have not kept this to myself. I’ve carried this continent on my broken back. Most of your greats, favs, from here, even outside it now, I put them on, gave them their greatest wins. The Caine Prize, Hugo award, Nebula award. locus award, Sidewise award, Shirley Jackson award, you name it. It’s in their bios. You can go check. I have published, edited the most awarded African SFF works and writers in going on a hundred years of the genre’s existence. With next to nothing, against all odds. I make that claim openly. So you can check it. I no hide talk am. People have called me the playmaker, the global south whisperer. Some for good reasons, some for bad. You can make what you will of that.
I have gotten criticism for how I have had to move through this profession, through this world. Of not doing things the right way, the better or best way. But if no one coming from where I am has done the things I have. How do we know there’s a better way? As far as we know, this is the only way. The only way that has worked. All you have are theories. I have actualization. I have done it over and over and over again. For myself, for others. I can do it on command. It would have been easier to keep it to myself, but I don’t want it to be easy. I can take it. All the things this world can, has thrown at me. It doesn’t have to hold back with me. I can take it. I have done it, in the only way it has been done. So how do we know there’s a better way? I’ve been criticised and accused of so many things. Of being too fast, too clever for my own good. Of being too short-sighted. Being too intense, being a social climber. Of doing too much, of so many many many many things. I’ve lost track of them all. By people who either haven’t been where I am or haven’t gotten to where I am or done the things I have. The crazy thing is, I haven’t done anything everybody else hasn’t done. The difference is results. I win. And for someone like me, coming from where I am, that’s the cardinal sin.
But I will continue to sin. And win, over and over and over again. Until I am dead. And when I am dead, I will win some more, posthumously. Yes, even death won’t stop me. And here’s something, everything I have done is exactly how much I needed to do. Oftentimes that too much is not even enough. I do see the bigger picture. I just don’t have a big enough lens to capture it. So I take what I can with what I have. I see everything you see. I know everything you know. I am uncommon clever if you haven’t gotten that by now. But the world I exist in, means I have to move in the ways I do. This may sound like an excuse, But it is not. Best believe I am not sorry. I offer no excuses or remorse or apology. I do sometimes wonder if you understand. But the truth is I don’t need you to. You don’t have to understand and cut me any slack. The same way I’m not going to constrain myself to moving in ways you approve of. You judge me, and I move the way I do. Judging me is the prerogative being where you are, high or low affords you. And being where I am is the one destiny affords me not. But I’ll take it anyway. This world will not stop me. I made that vow a long time ago. This is not a new year resolution. It’s the same old world. And so I’ll be the same old me.
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki 