About the Author

T OBINKARAM ECHEWA is a Nigerian native, who currently resides in the United States and teaches English at West Chester University, in Pennsylvania.  His books include The Land's Lord, winner of the 1976 English-Speaking Union Prize, and The Crippled Dancer, regional finalist for the 1986 Commonwealth Book Prize.  Echewa is also the author of two children’s books, The Ancestor Tree and The Magic Tree, as well as the political satire How Tables Came to Umu Madu. 

Dr. Echewa answers two of the most commonly asked questions about his novel.

Question

    "How can you as a man know so much about how women feel and write so perceptively about them?"

Answer

    "Imagination has something to do with it, an ability to step outside myself and attempt to imagine truly how women must feel about some important issues.  I believe this is what is called empathy. Everyone should have it, whether it is about women's issues or something else.  Writer, especially, should have a larger dose of it than everyone else, if he is to write credibly about people other than himself.

    "A second answer to the question is art, though I do not wish to sound unduly pretentious here.  Even so, I must state my belief that genuine literary art demands  that a novelist be able to stand in each character's shoes and feel and think what that character feels and thinks.  That is the only way to create genuine, credible characters.  And since Nne-nne was the main narrator of I Saw the Sky Catch Fire, I had to stand fully in her shadow, think and feel like her, and role-play her, including all her sensibilities,  to the fullest.  One of the greatest compliments I have received about the novel is that one editor who originally considered the manuscript for publication thought that I was a woman.  A good writer should be able to write credibly and authentically about "other" people, whether otherness is a matter or gender, race, or class.

    "The third part of the answer to this question is: Why not?  Here, I am addressing what I sense as the political or ideological undertones of the question.  I am not willing to concede that, as a woman, my sister has a greater claim to our mother's heritage than I have as a man, nor do I believe that my being a man gives me a greater claim to our father's heritage.  Because I am fully my mother's son, I do not find it strange to address her "issues" forthrightly in my writing."     

Question:

     What aspect of your novel do you like the most?

      All of it, of course!  In actual fact, what I like most about this novel is the narrative tone.  The co-narrator of Part I of the novel, Nne-nne, is like one possessed.  Her husband has died recently.  Her only relative, her grandson, Ajuzia, is about to go off to study overseas.  Despite her pretensions to the contrary, she is afraid that she may not be alive when he returns.  Yet, she must put up a brave face for him.  It is also a time when she must reassure herself that, Hey, this is only a bend in the road not the end of it.  As she says over and over again, as much to herself as to Ajuzia: "I may be sleeping, but I'm not yet dead!!"

Whenever I read the book before an audience, I wind up losing my breath.  The words come in torrents.  That is how I conceived the novel.  I imagined it in Igbo, then translated the Igbo to English. 

Do you have a question about I Saw the Sky Catch Fire?  Why not ask the author?

He will review questions every week and attempt to answer as many as possible.  Some of the more general questions and Echewa's answers will be posted on the Amadi website.

    If you do not have a question but, instead, with to make a comment on the book or on some aspect of Igbo culture, please see Reader Reviews & Comments