"Words are life-giving, magical, powerful" Yabome Gilpin-Jackson on imagining new narratives.

Dr. Yabome Gilpin-Jackson is a Sierra Leonean-Canadian scholar, organizational development consultant and writer. She has published several stories on identity and immigration including Identities: A Short Story Collection and Ancestries. In this interview with Poda-Poda Stories, she talks about the power of words in crafting new narratives.

Poda-Poda Stories: Thank you for joining the Poda-Poda. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work as a writer and scholar.

Yabome Gilpin-Jackson: Professionally, I identify as a scholar-practitioner in the broad applied social science field of human/organization development. That means generally that I am concerned with how humans organize themselves to achieve positive experiences and outcomes. When I am practicing on the Human Development end of the spectrum, I am working with groups and communities working on social change challenges such as for example working with immigrant service professionals supporting new immigrants and refugees in their resettlement journey and overcoming systemic barriers as well as processing past traumatic experiences. When working on the Organization Development end of the spectrum, I am supporting leaders and groups in organizations with their complex organization/systems and people development challenges, helping them through organizational changes and transformations and generally supporting them to shift from where they may be feeling stuck to where they aspire to be. This background 100% translates into my writing. I want to provoke and inspire people through my writing in ways that are transformative. That means writing to evoke emotions that inspire different insights and challenging assumptions in ways that open readers up to new/different possibilities.

Poda-Poda Stories:  You have a rich collection of short stories. Tell us how you started out as a writer.

Gilpin-Jackson: I started writing to respond to a deep desire to write for a broader audience than academic higher education audiences and specifically for Black and African audiences on the continent and in the diaspora. I started writing way back in elementary and secondary school and recall teachers telling me I was a good writer. I won essay competitions in my schools or was often the recipient of the best creative writing paper. One standout for me was that an essay I wrote via British Council for a Martin Luther King Day writing competition won one of the top 3 prizes in Sierra Leone at the time.

Over the years after that, I stopped writing creatively for a long time as I focused on my academic and professional growth. At some point though as I became increasingly frustrated with lack of visibility and representation of my own experiences and the many diversities of Black/African experiences I was exposed to, I started writing as a way to process these experiences of visible-invisibility---being part of a global society yet finding oneself missing from available narratives altogether or included in token representations that felt anemic to me. I wanted to write in ways that were more accessible than my scholar-practitioner papers and chapters, easy to read and open to all.

I also found it most rewarding to capture and study these social moments that may have happened in everyday interactions, like the kind of identity questions I am often asked (where are you from? where are you really from?) and turn them into stories. That is how my short story collections Identities and Ancestries and the flash fiction, Destinies happened.

Poda-Poda Stories: What is your writing process like?

Gilpin-Jackson: My process is both planned and spontaneous. Since I was a child, I would often find myself daydreaming…grabbing a moment I think is interesting, inspiring or challenging and making up stories and scripts in my head with characters that emerged from that moment and would make up multiple alternate endings. Now, I intentionally reflect on what I want to write about, but I also carry a physical notepad or take electronic notes on my phone whenever I’m out and about and find myself with characters jumping into my head from random everyday interactions.

Yabome Gilpin-Jackson receiving the prize for the Martin Luther King Day essay competition at the American Embassy in Sierra Leone, circa 1993. 

Poda-Poda Stories: You’ve written about immigration, identity and trauma? Why are those themes important to you? What inspires you to write these stories?

Gilpin-Jackson: All these themes are present in my writing because they are part of my own lived experiences as well as some of the underlying themes of Black/African experiences whether on the continent or the diaspora. I was born in Germany, grew up in Sierra Leone where I completed elementary and secondary schooling as well as started university at Fourah Bay College. I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Canada and the United States. I am a naturalized immigrant to Canada and arrived there as a refugee because of the Sierra Leone blood diamond war. All these experiences have shaped me and inspire my work in the world. In my doctoral work I researched the post-traumatic growth experiences of war survivors and examined how peoples of African descent experience the process of being transformational leaders despite and often because of experiences with global systems of oppression.

My writings include these themes to make visible different dimensions of these kinds of experiences through the characters I create that embody and transcend these experiences. All writing, after all, is somewhat autobiographical, as no matter how broadly we research and extend our gaze to create characters and stories beyond ourselves, the stories we write are formed first from within the writers’ consciousness and lenses of the world.

It is also important to note that my writings extend beyond these themes that have often been written in stereotypical and trauma-laden ways, to intentionally create Black/African characters who also create their own belonging and exercise agency in all circumstances. I am always thinking about what it means to claim one’s place in the world and live out fully open to sharing the gifts of oneself. To live and not hide, no matter the cards one is dealt.

Poda-Poda Stories: How does your career as a consultant inform your work as a writer?

Gilpin-Jackson: So much of consulting is relationship-building and relationships are the soil for inspiring connection, belonging and the power of human love, used in its broadest sense.Relationships are also where we learn what lies in the shadows of our human consciousness and emotional reactivity. It is in relationships that we touch on people’s deepest fears and where the darker, harder side of humanity can show up. Relationships, professional or otherwise, can both nourish and hurt us, but even in the hurt, we can learn to productively engage humanity past our pains in ways that grow us. I have learnt as much about myself and human relationships as a consultant, leader and colleague as I have in other contexts. Often, the seeds for my characters are sown in everything from casual professional conversations to the boardroom dilemmas I may be privy to. In the short story collection Identities for example, the story The Conference is based on an amalgamation of dilemmas I wrestled with at a conference and across professional interactions I’d had or been privy to.

Poda-Poda Stories:  What advice would you give to young creative writers living in Sierra Leone?

Gilpin-Jackson:  Write your lives, tell your stories, imagine new narratives to the social struggles you see, experience or are aware of and write them into life. Your perspectives matter to the world. Some of the greatest writers of Black and African literature have written from the perspective of centering Africa and Afrocentrism that continue to inspire generations—Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Mariama Bâ, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and so many more. We need more present-day Sierra Leonean writers like Yema Lucinda Hunter, Adelaide Casely-Hayford who tell stories set in Sierra Leone/highlighting our histories as well as writers who uplift Afrocentrism and Afrofuturism now.

We can choose to create worlds. So if you believe you have stories to share, share them and keep sharing them until words form beliefs and beliefs become reality through actions. Words are life-giving, magical, powerful. Our humanity has always grown from words that turned to action so act on your writing dreams and share your writing until people start noticing.

Poda-Poda Stories:  How has writing saved your life?

Gilpin-Jackson: As a former refugee, I struggle with the human suffering all around us that has escalated with the wars and geopolitics of this era. I am deeply troubled by the hunger crises in our world and by the planetary challenges of these times. As a mentor, coach, leader and just a human in the world, I am regularly witnessing how the mental strains of these times are manifesting in people’s lives and in the organizations and institutions around us. Back when I had my creative writing resurgence to process my inner conflicts and social dilemmas, I found an outlet to make sense of the world.

Strangers who have reached out to tell me how my writing has saved them are saving me. They remind me I can still write about my inner troubles and the circumstances around me and imagine better futures for all. They are pulling me in from the high tides and taking me back to why I write, motivating me to return to my writing pages (screens!) which have needed a lifeline. I thank them for throwing me the line and I am reminded to keep writing so that I might throw it back out.

"A professional opportunity"- Poda -Poda Stories Fellow Sulaiman Bonnie's reflection

The Poda-Poda Stories Fellowship is a year-long program that is designed to support young Sierra Leonean writers to grow in the literary industry and manage an independent creative project.

The goal of the fellowship is to inspire and train the next generation of young writers in Sierra Leone. Through access to resources, coaching, training, and support for their independent projects, we hope that fellows will enhance their creative skills, while gaining exposure to the literary world of publishing, writing and editing.

Poda -Poda Stories Inaugural Fellow Sulaiman Bonnie reflects on his work over the past year and talks about his independent project— an anthology of poems from students.

"Writing is the way I work out what I think about the world", Aminatta Forna Reflects on Craft and Country.

Aminatta Forna is an award-winning British-Sierra Leonean author who has published several books including The Hired Man and The Memory of Love. Her memoir, The Devil that Danced on the Water, is an account of her investigation into her father’s execution in 1975. In this email interview, Poda-Poda Stories asked Aminatta Forna about understanding Sierra Leone through fiction and non-fiction.

Poda-Poda: It’s been over 20 years since the publication of The Devil that Danced on the Water. In what ways have you changed as a writer since the book first came out? Is your writing/creative process still the same?

AF: The 20th anniversary edition of The Devil that Danced on the Water came out in November 2023 and I reread the book for the first time in many years. I was still happy with what I had written, so I guess that answers the question. However, that book is a work of non-fiction. The story is fixed, it's really only the way a writer chooses to structure and narrate that can really change.

Fiction is a little more complicated. Over the years I've learned a lot as a writer of fiction and gained a great deal more experience. Unlike many young writers nowadays, the opportunity to study creative writing wasn't readily available when I began to write. I taught myself and learned at the coal face. There are some choices I made then that I would have the wisdom not to make now - for example, I would not have written Ancestor Stones in four first person narratives. That was overambitious at that stage in my career. If I'd had anyone around me to tell my why - as I do my students - I'd have changed to third person.

These days I give my finished work to other people to read, I have a chosen group of careful readers. Sometimes they are experts in the field, say, of psychiatry or wildlife biology, which is a theme of the work.  Another reader runs a book club. Another is an actor and is always great on character and motive, can tell me if something feels out of place. Beyond that not much else has changed overall. I always do a huge amount of research and fact checking, whether a story is fiction or non-fiction. I enjoy it.

Poda-Poda: The Devil That Danced on the Water wasn’t just a story about your father, Dr. Mohamed Forna, but it was also about the political history of Sierra Leone at the time and events leading up to the tragic Civil War. What was it like to go through the investigative process of trying to find out what had happened, considering it was a personal story for you? Was it ever possible to have emotional distance when trying to piece together the story?

AF: It was important for me to create a certain amount of distance when I was researching the book, because otherwise I would not have managed to persuade people to talk to me, or indeed, keep going through some very difficult moments. I learned, as a reporter for BBC TV, to distance myself from the story and it came in useful. When I was interviewing people, for example, I took care to refer to my father as 'Dr. Forna,' and not 'my father.' I am of mixed heritage and many people in Sierra Leone take me as a foreigner. This could have been a disadvantage, but I used it to my advantage. The less certain people though they were confiding to his daughter, the better. At one point, I travelled into rebel territory, to the HQ of the RUF in Makeni. So, there were many reasons I needed to keep my head. I kept a tight check on my emotions throughout the research phase.

Writing the book required a different approach. There is a balance to be struck. Some of the emotion has to be allowed onto the page or the work becomes dry. So, it's important to let go a little. Too much and reading the book would become tiresome. Only when I had finished the book did I realise how emotionally draining it had been. Then I had to go on the road with it, touring the US, back to Sierra Leone to give talks, so many interviews. I'd say it took me two years to put it behind me.

Poda-Poda: How do you balance writing both fiction and non-fiction about Sierra Leone?

AF: “Nonfiction reveals the lies, but only metaphor can reveal the truth.” That's a pretty good rule of thumb for writing about Sierra Leone. Fiction describes a different kind of truth to non-fiction, an internal, existential truth. That's definitely a useful definition and one I would say lay behind the The Devil that Danced on the Water and subsequent novels. Now I'd add to that and say that I also think of non-fiction as a 'found story,' by which I mean that a story that already exist in all its parts. A recent essay collection, The Window Seat, contains the story of Bruno, the ape who lived at Tacugama Sanctuary and escaped.  It seemed to me that all the narrative elements and emotional resonance were all there. I just had to capture it in writing.

Poda-Poda: Sierra Leone has gone through her share of suffering. There was so much trauma because of the war. Then came the Ebola epidemic in 2014, the 2017 mudslides etc. Those stories matter, because they significantly shaped the country. But how can we carry that trauma, but also transcend that trauma narrative, especially as Sierra Leonean artists?

AF: There is nothing inevitable about trauma. Suffering, yes. But trauma is different. Trauma is the wound that will not heal. Unfortunately, we too often use the words interchangeably. The late Dr Edward Nahim, who ran the mental health facility in Kissy for many years, was immensely helpful in guiding me towards understanding trauma and subsequently it was a central theme in my novels The Memory of Love and Happiness.

Additionally, I have published various essays on trauma, most recently in the Yale Review. Art soothes suffering and has the power to heal trauma. That's why art is so important. Anyone who is interested might read Boris Cyrulnik's Resilience. He was a Jewish survivor of Nazi occupied France, who lost his parents to the Holocaust. He became a psychiatrist and worked with many child death camp survivors as well as American prisoners of war in Vietnam. He writes about how, among the latter group, it was the poets rather than the athletes who survived the deprivations best, because they possessed a powerful inner life and imagination. This allowed them to transcend their circumstances, to refuse to be defined by them and to envision a future beyond the present in a way that gave them strength and ultimately saved their lives.

Poda-Poda: What do you love about Sierra Leone? What are some of your favorite memories?

AF: I love the dogs. I love the way people in Sierra Leone are so tolerant of the street dogs. Over the years since childhood, I have adopted many dogs, and my essay about Dr. Jalloh and the street dogs of Sierra Leone (which was first published in Granta and also appears in my anthology The Window Seat) won him and me many fans and readers the world over. How a society treats animals tells you a great deal about that society's humanity.

As Milan Kundera said: “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”

I also love swimming off Lumley Beach on Sundays, where my father loved to take us kids in the 1970's. The beach then was pristine.

Poda-Poda: How did writing save your life?

AF: Writing is the way I work out what I think about the world. I've lived many lives through the characters I have created, and I understand what makes people human in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Even if I create a character I dislike, I still have to understand why they do the things they do.

Writing makes me happy. Once I began to write, I knew that I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Those days when I have no other pressing tasks except to write are days, I wake up filled with contentment.

Isatu Harrison on Building Creative Spaces in Sierra Leone

Creative Hub Africa is a space in Freetown where creatives learn and connect with each other and explore potential markets for their creative businesses. The founder says their goal is to unlock the creative potential and build an entrepreneurial mindset in Sierra Leone's growing youthful population, which is almost 80% of the country's population. The hub also hosts creative events like open mic nights, which bring together poets and writers. Poda-Poda Stories Fellow Josephine Kamara interviewed the founder and CEO, Isatu Harrison, about the importance of creating such a space in Sierra Leone and how it all started.

Isatu Harrison: I was invited to a creative space in the UK. I was so inspired by it as it was such a bold space and I imagined having something like that in Sierra Leone. When I moved back home, I started off with the Izelia factory, a fashion company, and the impact we had on young people was huge. More young people kept approaching me and my team to come to the factory to work. So, we started working with creatives in the Izelia factory and that was because we have a little bit of space that we could play with. And that's how the Creative Hub started.

Josephine Kamara: What gap in the creative ecosystem were you aiming to address?

Harrison: I thought it was important to have a space sharing and creating opportunities for people that want to pursue creative careers. This is a hub for ceatives with ideas who are looking for a space where they can go and flourish and flesh out their ideas out work on them. And this is the gap the Creative Hub is trying to fill – providing a home for all of them.

Kamara: You mentioned something about infrastructure, when you stated that systems for creative people work in the UK and in Sierra Leone, it's almost non-existent or even if it's there, we're not well-structured. Please comment on the creative infrastructure in Sierra Leone.

Harrison: Because most of the population are young people in this country, there is dire need for nurturing ecosystem for them to birth their dreams. When I came back home, the only space that I found was Ballanta Academy. Ballanta has been around for 24 years, so I won’t say nothing exists, but the infrastructure is small. For the Creative Hub, we got a grant from the World Bank and the Government of Sierra Leone. We had a $50,000 grant and I matched that with personal funds. I have no regret in doing it because every day people go into that space to dream, to do creative work, to share their work. I don't have the words to explain how it makes me feel.

Kamara: As you emphasise the importance of providing infrastructure for growth, could you elaborate on the specific resources and support that the hub offers to young creatives in Sierra Leone?

Harrison: So when you go into the space, we have what we call the design space, and that design space is really the space for creatives to get their work done. So we have all the graphic design software loaded on computers so you can do, you know, practice your graphic design. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or just at the ideation stage, we have expert advisors that work with you to develop that idea and turn it into an actual business. 

Kamara: We always say that as Sierra Leoneans, we need to tell our stories more. I've attended some of your events, and I've seen great storytellers and poets there. Can you comment more on specific support for young people who use this art form to express themselves.

Harrison: What we want to do next is connect is connect young writers to writers’ programs and workshops. We have a few people interested in working with writers, and we're planning our first MasterClass. On that note, we have some visitors coming this month. I don't know if you've heard of Fela, the play? They have Broadway shows in New York, and the writers have some connection to Sierra Leone. They are really interested in meeting young writers, poets, young people in that sector. They're having a master class possibly on the 21st or 22nd of December. I feel like we have a lot of wealth in terms of writers and directors in the diaspora, and if we connect them with local talent, it could be amazing.

Creative Hub Africa offers a space for young people in the creative sector to network and learn.

Kamara: Oh, that sounds exciting! Are there more initiatives like this within the hub to mentor and give visibility to the creatives that makes use of the Hub?

Harrison: Every last Friday of the month we organise an open mic nigh and we select three people from each performance night. We then connect them to mentors at Ballanta Academy. We also want to get more people involved in the process. Starting this month, people in the audience can vote, and we'll select our top three. Once we have those three people, we're making contacts in Nigeria with CC Hub in Nigeria. CC Hub stands for Co-Creation Hub. It's a creative hub based in Nigeria and present in Kenya. They've been in the space for over 10 years and understand how the creative space operates. They have many opportunities that we don't have access to here. The creative sector is still very young in Sierra Leone, and it's at a stage where we all need to come together to establish it. So, we are collaborating with organisations like CC Hub to help us nurture creatives from Sierra Leone, starting with those from the open mic sessions.

Poda-Poda Stories Fellow Josephine Kamara(L) and Founder of Creative Hub Africa Isatu Harrison at her home.

Kamara: Why is it important for a Hub like this to exist in a country?

Harrison: The trend happening globally is that the creative sector is the fastest-growing economically. In Sierra Leone, either due to lack of awareness or conscious decisions, we haven't prioritised or focused on developing the creative sector. There's so much that can be gained from it, and the space we're creating has a fundamental purpose. It's not just about creating a safe space for creativity but also about formalising it. There's tremendous potential in the creative sector, and we are working and hoping to collaborate with the government and partners to make them realise the significant impact it can have on our country.

Creative Hub Africa offers a space for young people in the creative sector to network and learn.

Kamara: Everything sounds so peachy, but I’m sure challenges exist. Do you want to share some for the people who are interested in learning more about what it takes to build this creative infrastructure in Sierra Leone?

Harrison: I’ll start with the most recent event. So, for Christmas, what we decided to do was bring female entrepreneurs to showcase their products. So, I thought, why not bring these women together and try a digital market where we only accept cashless transactions.

This way, we can introduce them to different technologies available that they can use in running their day-to-day business. We also brought the idea of reducing single-use plastics. Instead of using plastic bags, we encouraged them to use fabric bags. We even created cost-effective fabric bags for them to use for their customers. It's an eco-friendly approach and encourages the use of reusable bags.

Yesterday was the launch of that market (referring to 7th Dec.), and it wasn't without challenges because people aren't used to going anywhere without cash. The shift to mobile money or card payments was very challenging. I think it's the first market of its kind here, that was completely cashless and plastic free.

It was so challenging. People were complaining that the mobile money was not working, but by 6:00 PM, most people were making payments by mobile. I realised what we need in Sierra Leone is to guide people through change. Internet connectivity is another thing we as creatives are gravely challenged with in Sierra Leone.

Kamara: Looking ahead, what are your dreams and aspirations for the creative hub?

Harrison: If we make this a priority, within the next two years we would see so many changes within the creative ecosystem and we would see a lot of creative careers thriving in Sierra Leone.

Josephine Kamara is a Poda Poda Fellow, Feminist Activist and Storyteller who writes to know and share her well-rounded human experience. She is currently a MA candidate at the Institute of Development Studies – University of Sussex, UK.