On Seeri – Obliviously Falling in Love

SEERI by Chiamaka Okike

SEERI - a Novella by Chiamaka Okike is a sapphic love story which also touches on themes such as grief, the chaos of London nightlife, awkward run-ins with ex partners and getting unreasonably jealous when someone flirts with a person you’ve been telling yourself you’re not into romantically.

Despite the chaos of its setting, the story is crisp and concise (a full read took this reader one evening), and the book touches on desire and obliviousness with a subtlety that toes the line between yelling at the characters for not acknowledging their feelings and being able to relate.

Chiamaka holding her book—SEERI

We sat down with Chiamaka to discuss the book, her inspirations, imposter syndrome, and why characters don’t get happy endings.

For this interview, Misan sits with Chiamaka as he asks questions and talk about the book. Misan’s questions are in bold letters.

What inspired you to write Seeri, and the idea of these two people falling in love without realising they’re falling in love?

I think all sapphic stories have some layer of obliviousness to them. Either neither party knows what’s going on, or only one party knows what’s going on. It felt important to reflect the pandemic of obliviousness in the sapphic community. In 2022, I released a short story called “Songs From Surulere” (writer’s note: shoutout my hometown), and it followed a similar theme of two girls who were friends with homo-erotic undertones, and this essentially is a version which says ‘what if “Songs From Surulere” had a happy ending?’. Although, I’m still committed to never giving my characters full happy endings.

Okay but why no happy endings?

Because none of my characters can be in a happy relationship before me.

Any literary inspirations?

So a big inspiration was ‘You Made a Fool Out of Death With Your Beauty’ by Akwaeke Emezi. Grief is a big theme in the book, and grief was a constantly returning theme. Emezi’s book explored grief from the perspective of romance and the loss of a romantic interest, I wanted to explore grief from the perspective of a friend or a sibling, and explore how grief that may not have anything to do with romance still shows up in our romantic lives (and all aspects of our lives). I also really wanted to explore how timing has an impact on things. The time may be wrong for one situation but just right for another.

Okay so a couple of disclaimers. First, Chiamaka is a personal person of mine, I love her and I’m proud of this book so I’m more than a little biased (not that it matters, she’s a great writer and I finished this book in about 3 hours). Second, we in the Communa writers’ room love the Sapphics and a good queer romance. Homophobes go hug a transformer.

Your book reminded me of two of my favourites for slightly different reasons. One was ‘Under the Udala Trees’ by Chinelo Okparanta, and the other was ‘Stay With Me’ by Ayobami Adebayo.

I feel very flattered to have my work compared to those books, but it also triggers a bit of a literary crash-out because I feel like those are very serious books, where mine is a bit more light hearted, and I was concerned about the book lacking depth because romance is one of the central plot points. It’s been very flattering to hear that people are finding the depth in my work and relating it to these deep, heavy stories.

But don’t you feel like romance is one of the most beautiful genres because of how it interacts with the rest of the human experience? Isn’t there a reason so many of the greatest books have romance as a core part even if they’re not about romance?

If we think about subplots like Marius and Cosette in Les Miserables, or Esmerelda, Frollo and Phoebus’ toxic facsimile of love in Hunchback – (Victor Hugo was such a great writer but unfortunately, an even worse husband). No one says these stories are less relevant for having romance or love in some form as a key point. Or when one thinks about queer romances set within greater contexts like ‘The Song of Achilles’ and ‘The Persian Boy’, between misogyny and the dismissal of emotions deemed as “feminine”, maybe we deny ourselves the pleasure of appreciating a good love story for what it is.

Love in all of its forms is something we will all experience at some point, whether it's romantic or filial or platonic or parental.

Now that reminds me…

Why the hell did you name a female character Tajudeen?

I like the name, why not, who would stop me? I think it’s a beautiful name. The character I am writing her name is Tajudeen, let’s keep it stepping.

How did the taxi scene come about?

I really wanted something that felt reminiscent of my nights out. I love interesting Uber drivers and the random things that happen on nights out. I’m always joking with my friends about the way London sometimes shows me pepper, often the best part of an event is the journey there, sometimes the train ride to the venue is better than the event itself. I also just wanted to explore how cute and fun and friendly women are on nights out.

(The next bit of the interview is Chiamaka laughing at an embarrassing personal story of mine which is none of the reader’s business, buy me dinner if you would like to hear it.)

You posted on Instagram when the book came out that this is what happens when perfectionism meets procrastination. Would you like to elaborate on that?

I am an alleged perfectionist, I don’t think I am but people keep telling me I am, and everyone can’t be the problem so it must be me. On some level I guess it was the thing of feeling like telling a romance story is less ‘legitimate’ or ‘serious’. I think the themes that come through were not themes that I thought I had delved into.

I felt like I could have gone deeper into their Nigerianness or their queerness, rather than them just being parts of them going through the motions. There are entire novels written about people coming into their queerness. Even though grief is part of it and such a heavy topic, I guess all of it just feels very early stage, the uncertainty, not knowing who was saying what and why. I was thinking, “should I have made it more heavy or serious?

Every response to it has challenged my thoughts on it though. I’m humbled by the things people are taking from the book. Being confronted with the impact of my work on people has been really humbling and touching and challenging. The amount of depth people are finding in something I feel like didn’t actually require as much effort as I maybe thought it would, and the disconnect of thinking something has to be painful to be worthwhile (although I did cry when I was writing about grief).

I just felt like maybe without that herculean effort it wasn’t at its full potential. But actually, seeing how other people interact with it has felt like watching your child grow up and not be around you constantly, and I think the feeling is that joy is still something I’m trying on (can you tell she’s a writer) and it doesn’t yet feel as familiar as some other emotions.

Okay but maybe exploring things as pieces of the whole is part of why the book is so good, life isn’t one emotion, even when it feels like it is.

Even when you feel grief for platonic relationships, and romantic relationships, even when you ‘sink deep into the mire in which there is no standing’ (Psalm 69, verse 2), there is still joy and love and friendship, and the book is very reflective of that, and I felt that resonate very personally, so you better accept the impact it’s having on us reading it. We’re all made up of all our experiences and emotions, and they all impact each other and are valid. We can and do feel a lot of things at once, and characters that feel the full breadth of human emotion at the same time are so much more relatable. (I went off on a long rant about how the book made me feel, read the book, it will make you feel things).

“God punish Satan and depression”, I will think about this in about three years, and maybe then I’ll be ready to challenge how I felt when it came out. I think criticism is a deep skill but appreciation is an even deeper skill, and sometimes that takes development.”

SEERI

Finally, on grief – was there a personal experience that inspired this or was this a general amalgamation of feelings? How was it writing about grief, and thinking about grief?

Kai. My deepest grief has come from things that aren’t dead in the metaphysical sense. Mourning a breakup or not going to grad school or a part of life I couldn’t live. At the time I was going through a sort-of breakup but it wasn’t the most impactful thing for the story when I compare it to other experiences.

I think I tapped into love instead of any deep sense of loss, and I hope that comes across. What I find most painful about grief is the beauty lost, not the sitting in the sadness, because sadness insists upon itself whereas I think love is so expansive when grief is constricting and love can and does grow around the hurt. I love my friends, I love writing, I love so many things, and grief and love run on parallel lines.

You can’t truly grieve something you never truly loved (or hated) can you?

Exactly.