5.6 A Forensic Level of Honesty: Aminatta Forna and Nicole Rizzuto (AV)

Aminatta Forna, author of Ancestor Stones (2006), Happiness (2018), and most recently The Window Seat (2021) joins Georgetown prof. Nicole Rizzuto and host Aarthi Vadde for a wide-ranging conversation about reversing the gaze.  Aminatta is deeply aware of the power to look, to define, and to control the narrative.  Although she accepts the moniker of “African writer,” she sees it as the creation of a European way of looking at other parts of the world and rejects the double-standard of authenticity it implies.  Aminatta is from Sierra Leone, but has Scottish and Malian ancestry and grew up around the world. Her mixed upbringing led her to develop a prismatic view of identity, and she chafes against the Conradian image of Africa, which infused so many of her own literary encounters with her home continent. In response to these distortions, Aminatta describes developing a “forensic level of honesty” that allowed her to re-encounter Sierra Leone on her own terms. She also learned to look back at those who would look at her.
Reversing the gaze extends not only from Africa to Europe but also to the human-animal divide. Aminatta and Nicole reconsider Western stereotypes around African animal cruelty, what it means to portray animal consciousness, and what the treatment of dogs in Sierra Leone and foxes in London tells us about what those societies value. Finally, Aminatta reads from Ancestor Stones and offers a chilling vision of the civil war in Sierra Leone through the dissociated perspective of a character inspired by the women who lived through it. Listeners will feel the “underground rising” in Aminatta’s memorable phrase.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Kazuo Ishiguro
Dr. Gudush Jalloh – veterinarian in Sierra Leone and subject of Forna’s essay “The Last Vet”
Pablo Picasso, Bull’s Head
Forna, Happiness
Forna, The Hired Man
Temne – largest thenic group in Sierra Leone; also the name of one of the official languages of Sierra Leone

Listen and Read:

Audio: A Forensic Level of Honesty

Transcript: 5.6 A Forensic Level of Honesty

7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW) – Novel Dialogue

Although Katie Kitamura feels free when she writes—free from the “soup of everyday life,” from the political realities that weigh upon her, and even at times from the limits of her own thinking—she is keenly aware of the unfreedoms her novels explore. Katie, author of the award-winning Intimacies (2021), talks with critic Alexander Manshel about the darker corners of the human psyche and the inescapable contours of history that shape her fiction. Alexander and Katie explore how she brings these tensions to “the space of interpretation, where the book exists” and places trust in her readers to dwell there thoughtfully. They also discuss the influence of absent men (including Henry James), love triangles, love stories, long books, and titles (hint: someone close to Katie says all her novels could be called Complicity). Stay tuned for Katie’s answer to the signature question, which takes listeners from to the farmlands of Avonlea to the mean streets of Chicago. Mentioned in this episode By Katie Kitamura: Intimacies A Separation Gone to the Forest Japanese for Travelers The Longshot Also mentioned: Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation” Henry James, Portrait of a Lady Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Novels Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables John Steinbeck, East of Eden Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1. 7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW) 58:53
2. 7.1 Etherized: Anne Enright in Conversation with Paige Reynolds (JP) 41:58
3. 6.6 Overtaken by Awe: Sheila Heti speaks with Sunny Yudkoff 44:24
4. 6.5 Attention is Love: A Discussion with Lauren Groff and Laura McGrath (SW) 48:31
5. 6.4 “We All Relate to Each Other’s Dystopias” 46:11