Meet Isio Wanogho popularly known for her column “Isio Knows Better” she is a prolific writer, a painter, a model and an entrepreneur. She is the award winning winning author of the book titled The One Called Chosen. We discussed her book series and her writing journey.
1: Congratulations on your new book “the one called chosen” what inspired you to write this book? I would say three words, the very first one would be dichotomy and dichotomy been how two things that are seemingly different can exist at the same time and the line of dichotomy is explored in the relationship between Ethan and Urhie and their background of course. Ethan is a westerner and Urhie is a Nigerian girl who has never left the village. So that dichotomy of two people who don’t have anything in common, they don’t have any similar background finding a uniqueness and a unique love that they wanted to celebrate, that was a very keen gradient for me and for the writing of the book. Another thing would be the dichotomy in religion we practice at the same time. On one hand influences of the western culture and religion were poured into the town at the same time a lot of the villagers were deeply ingrained in their traditional religion so both existed at the same time and they found some kind of balance.
Second thing I would say inspired the work of chosen is love, love between a grandmother and her grandchild and the love between a young girl and her lover. The love between friends, the love between a community and even to a woman who is devoted to her own sex. The third inspiration was culture, I think the Urhobo people have a very unique phenomenal culture that hasn’t been wildly shared with the world and so I wanted to explore and really bring to light some of the uniqueness in the people and the culture at the time in far back as 1960. How they thought and how they must have experienced life. Those were the three things that really inspired this my book. Dichotomy, love and culture.
2: Was the subject character Urhie inspired by a real person?
Absolutely not. Urhie is a 100% conceptualised, I think the character is so real to me that it feels like she was telling me her story and her story felt very real to me writing it and even when I was writing it, I could sense what she was trying to say to me. It’s just a character in a book but it was like she wanted to share her story through me and the book.
3: What did you learn when writing the book? I learnt so much more than I knew when I was researching the Urhobo culture, I learnt about the indegineous ways of life and how the people lived and how they thought and their relationship with their faith and how they worshipped and how they just went about their day to day life and what I didn’t realise was how deeply spirituality was a part of culture until I started researching the book and I am glad I am able to learn and infuse some of the culture and realities in the book.
4: The one called chosen explored the belief in ancient deities and ancestral magic, would it be right to term the genre as African fantasy? Hmm interesting, truth is when I wrote the book for the first time it was written as a short story of course it had a little bit of fantasy but it was just six page short story and so I rewrote it into a novel. I think the book too itself in that direction and in some ways yes. It’s a epic fiction fantasy, I think that the book1 in the series which is this one, when you read the book it begin to descend into god, deities and all of these things so I think it would be right to term the genre as African fantasy but I don’t think it’s entirely African fantasy at least not book1. Boo1 is a little bit of hybrid mix, book2 probably delved deeper into the fantasy genre.
5: Do you want each book to stand on its own or are you trying to build a body of work with connections?At this point I would say definitely build a body of work with connections so the story is gonna continue from book1 and book2 and the characters so we see more about different characters so the story also flows forward into what happens after the conclusion of book1 and the consequences of the actions that were carried out in book1.
6: Most of know us know you as Isio knows better of Bellanaija, personally I have always been a fan and an ardent reader of your work which is more of non-fiction taking us through your personal experiences with gripping humour. How does it feel to delve into fiction? Thank you very much, it feels natural to be honest and what a lot of people don’t know about me is that I have been writing for almost as long as I have been doing any kind of creative expressionism which is painting, drawing. I have been writing for a long time, so writing for me has to just do with expressing myself, expressing my thoughts and all of those things so delving into fiction was not very odd. I found it very fascinating because when am writing non-fiction like when I write Isio knows better I narrate my own personal experiences and I write the way I speak. I write the way I think and so I guess that’s why a lot of people liked it because it was very natural for me to switch between English and Yoruba and Pidgin so I write like that. It’s like my subconscious is sharing its memory with Isio knows better but with fiction I found out that fiction pretty much tells itself, my subconscious is just narrating its own memories and some past experiences and presenting it to the world as gist but with fiction, as the writer I am surprised as what comes next as the reader probably would be because I didn’t know what would come next but then it came and it just tied itself very well together and even I was like wow this is interesting it was very good, felt very natural and I was very happy.
7: You have been writing for a long time, would you say it has been rewarding? If you mean rewarding in terms of personal satisfaction, the answer is a big yes I mean writing for me is about the same as being able to speak it is very natural way of me expressing myself to be honest and so perhaps I am lucky enough to think about it without an anxiety with writing, for me writing is inside, its innate as being able to talk; you don’t wake up in the morning with this heavy anxiety like oh my God I am going to talk today, it’s just you have to speak and so it’s been very rewarding for me. It makes me very happy and I am just very happy that I am able to write and I am able to express myself in different ways especially through writing.
8: What is next for you what are you working on now?Now the good news is that I am working on the book sequel for the Isio knows better series the fascinating news is that I had started working on that before I finished on “the one called chosen” so I started that, you know how it flows little by little and then “the one called chosen” just like okay I have to do this and I finished that book before the other books so the next thing for me would be to write some more, write the book2 and work on my other books and yes you know that I have work, I have companies to run and my personal life and I am just in a really good place.
9: What is your favourite childhood book? The golden fleece, it was a book about Greek mythology. I remember I really loved that book, animal farm was amazing I really loved that book another book that I loved a lot was the Narnia series oh my God those were amazing. The Narnia books I really love them. So the three of them.
10: Do you view writing as a kind of spiritual practice?
Absolutely I really do.
11: How do you balance modeling, entrepreneurship and writing? Well I have modelled professionally in years so everyone says once a model always a model. Entrepreneurship having to balance that with writing, sometimes it can be challenging some days are better than others but I think by just taking things one day at a time and so writing for me like I said is very natural, it’s very innate when I have to write I do have the feeling that I need to create something, I need to document things so when I’m in that zone I need to start writing and the same dedication I give to writing, I also give to my work. I balance it by paying attention to what needs to be done when it needs to be done and dedicating enough time to all of my interests to make sure that all of them have receive my attention.
12: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Keep going, that’s what I would say. Keep going you are doing the right thing. Let it flow easily. Don’t be afraid to express yourself through writing and you would be surprised at how much value you can bring to yourself, to others by sharing your gifts and happy that you did it.
