Stuff don't ride each other

7th December 2011

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Excited to read more Helen Oyeyemi

I really enjoyed Helen Oyeyemi’s totally spooky White Is for Witching, a contemporary gothic horror story where supernatural terror and racist terror overlap.

Excerpts from an interview Oyeyemi did with fictionwritersreview.com:

I’d rather write a heart-warming tear-jerker or romance or something just nice, but it doesn’t work. These two things just keep coming out, the immigrant thing and the supernatural thing. But I don’t process consciously. I do like reading [supernatural narratives]. I like imagining that sort of stuff. I find ordinary realist narratives just lacking in something, like realist narratives just aren’t real for me. They don’t make that much sense. Whereas reading stories in which the world suddenly changes, I’m like: “Yeah … that makes sense.” Strange mental states, all that stuff, just seems to be a more – not an honest way – but a more interesting way of describing the world.

and

Reviews of White is for Witching especially [in England] have been kind of wishing that it would not be about the supernatural and that I would just get down to the nitty gritty of immigrant life. While reviews in America and Canada have been like “Yeah, the supernatural bit is great, but maybe there is too much of a political agenda.” I can’t win. (Laughs.)