Gender and Politics: A Conversation with Peace Adzo Medie
Photo Credit: Sylvernus Darku
“I’m more stimulated by characters who cannot be easily placed into a box. This forces me as a writer and reader to grapple with the complexity of human behaviour.”
As a debut author of fiction, how have you found the writing process? And as an academic, how was the experience of switching from an academic style of writing to a creative style?
I published my first book in 2020 but have been writing fiction since I was about ten years old. Therefore, while the publication process was new, creative writing was not. However, I faced the challenge of combining the writing of His Only Wife with academic research and writing, as well as teaching and administration within the university. So, while I very much enjoyed writing the novel, it was extremely demanding, and I had to work long hours and weekends to make it happen alongside my day job as a social scientist.
I didn’t find it particularly difficult to switch between academic and creative writing. However, I had to frequently remind myself not to sound didactic. I try to save the arguments and theories for my academic writing.
On the theme of debut authors, have you been excited by any debut novels this year that we can recommend to our readers?
Yes, I enjoyed Maame Blue’s Bad Love. I’m also looking forward to reading several books. One of them is The Archer by Shruti Swamy. I read her collection of short stories, A House is a Body, and liked how it transported me into the characters’ lives. I’m also excited to read Zainab Takes New York, by Ayesha Harruna Attah and The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah.
Congratulations on being picked as a Reese Witherspoon's Book Club Pick! How did you find out you had been picked and how has the experience been for you?
I found out in a meeting with the team at Algonquin Books, my US publisher, and I was, of course, surprised and thrilled. It’s been great working with Reese’s Book Club. They’ve done an excellent job of building a community of book lovers and of supporting selected authors.
And now onto the novel itself! For me, the addition of Ghanaian phrases and other cultural references made me feel immersed in the story, as it built a rich and vivid backdrop to the central characters and their lives. Had you always planned to set your first novel in Ghana?
No, I hadn’t always planned to set my first novel in Ghana. In fact, His Only Wife started out as a story about a Ghanaian living in the US; but my stories tend to evolve a great deal along the way. I think I ended up setting it in Ghana because there is so much about the country that I want to unpack and explore in my writing. I have a backlog of short stories and novels in my head, and they are almost all about Ghana.
One of the themes running through your novel seems to be the idea of obligations and expectations within a community and family dynamic. Have you always been interested in exploring these ideas through fiction? And if so, why?
Yes, these are some of the issues that interest me, partly because of the extent to which they shape people’s lives. I’ve even seen this in my research on gender norms and gender-based violence and have written about it in my academic journal articles and my book, Global Norms and Location Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. In fact, I’m increasingly finding myself exploring the same themes in research and creative writing.
Your characterisation is excellent, as you give each character a certain amount of nuance and complexity. For example, the character of Eli is not completely unlikeable, even though he doesn’t always act in the way a reader (and Afi!) would like him to. Did you intend for your readers to feel conflicted in this way?
Thank you, and yes, I wanted readers to feel conflicted. I hoped that it would be a bit difficult to hate Eli; it would have been too easy to make him an outright villain. I wanted Afi and the reader to be conflicted, but I also wanted the story to explore the tensions within relationships. Not making Eli completely unlikable allowed for this. I’m more stimulated by characters who cannot be easily placed into a box. This forces me as a writer and reader to grapple with the complexity of human behaviour.
As an academic and lecturer in Gender and International Politics, did you find it challenging to write about gender roles and expectations through fictional characters? And was it always important for you to include a character who fought against these roles and expectations?
I didn’t find it challenging to write about gender roles and expectations through fictional characters. Our lives are gendered, and I want the fictional characters I write to reflect this reality. And yes, it’s important to have characters that resist these expectations because that is also reality, but also I hoped that Ghanaian girls reading His Only Wife would appreciate and embrace this resistance.
I read that you found it quite difficult to decide how His Only Wife would end. Do you have any alternative endings that almost made it into the novel that you could share with our readers?
Yes, there were alternative endings, including one in which Afi ended up with someone else. But the character demanded a different ending.
If you could attend a dinner party with Afi and three other fictional characters, who would you choose?
Tambudzai from Nervous Conditions, Kambili from Purple Hibiscus, and Sissie from Our Sister Killjoy. They are all having to make tough decisions about whether to accept the status quo. I would love to hear them discuss the choices they eventually made and how these choices impacted their lives beyond the end of these novels.
