An Evaluation: Talking to Jackee Budesta Batanda
Our featured writer in this issue is the award-winning writer, Jackee Budesta Batanda who lives in Kampala, Uganda. She is one of the young talented women writing in Africa today. In 2004, she was highly commended for the Caine Prize for African Writing, has been short listed for Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa, a Regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2003 and thrice selected as fellow on the Crossing Borders African Writers’ Mentoring Scheme run by British Council. She has been published in Uganda and abroad. Some of her stories have been read on the BBC and around the Commonwealth.
Why do you write? And what does writing mean to you?
Writing has always been a passion for me. I write because I am able to play God. I take mundane things and give them wings to fly. I give voices where there was silence. I also write because I want to leave a stamp of myself behind. Writing forms who I am.
Does writing help you define the way you think about an issue or a value?
Yes, writing helps me define the way I think. I look at things in a different way from what I did before I started writing seriously. My writing is focused on issues that affect the helpless in society. This has defined my understanding of the society we live in and reinforced my will to do something positive in my lifetime through my writing.
Which authors have influenced you the most? Do you read them when you get stuck as a way of resolving your problem?
I have had a number of influences in my life. Say I read Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood when I was 12. And I remember saying to myself, I want to write like this. I want to write. I read Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala around the same time. And I wanted to write like them. I later graduated to Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood and I have never stopped. Now that I am older, I have read a number of writers that I like. If I were to close my eyes, I would randomly say J.M. Coetzee and Edwidge Danticat. But there are a number I have read who influence me and I thank them for that gift of writing good stuff.
Do you write with a particular audience in mind or do you write for yourself?
I write with the hope that people around the world will read my works and relate to them and understand them. Yes. I write for an international audience.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a woman writer in Africa?
I don’t want to talk about limitations. I would rather talk about the good. I think that it is a great time to be a woman writer in Africa today. Writers alike face the same limitations, which now sound like clichés. I look beyond limitations to possibilities.
Helon Habila the 2001 Caine Prize winner once said that, ‘Women have a tendency to focus on little domestic issues like love and betrayal, divorce, rebellious children, etc’ As a young woman writer, what do you think of women’s writing in the 21st century?
This attitude is not new. There has always been a tendency to relegate women’s writing as being petty. That is why mainstream publishers at least in Uganda take on male writers over female writers. I think it is a myopic view. These issues are all important. It is how the story is told that counts. These so-called domestic issues mould the people we become in future. If we did not have such writings then we would never know why some presidents become dictators or mass murderers. There is a lot going for women writing in the 21st century. I am proud to be part of this group of writers.
Most of your writings are in English. Why have you opted for English as your medium of communication? Do you also write in any of your indigenous languages?
English is the medium of instruction in school from kindergarten to university level. I am a product of this system so I write in English. My thoughts flow fluidly in English. I can speak my mother tongue but can hardly write or read it out loud.
So, does language determine your style or how you approach your subject matter?
Language does not determine my style or my approach to subject matter. Rather it is the subject matter itself that determines the style. Each story has its own body and I let it lead me when I write.
It seems the short story is your favoured genre. Why not poetry, the novel, plays? What is it about the short story?
I used the short story to practice the writing craft. It was a way of self-discovery. Now I feel confident enough to embark on a novel. I have written two novels which I shelved. I stopped writing poetry for personal reasons. Well I have written a children’s book, which was short listed for the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa. That was a shift from the short story, no?
What really makes a short story? Is it the length?
A short story has different definitions. As long as it is not a novella, then it surely is a short story.
Of the stories you have already published, which was the most difficult to write and why?
Remember Atita, was the most difficult. The ideas stayed in my head for over a year, before I sat down to write the story. And I was not sure how to tell the story. Sometimes, imagining situations you have never experienced is harder than you think. I felt like I was singing people’s sad songs in public without their permission. I went through a moment of personal reflection on why I wanted to tell this particular story. I did not want to mess it up. I wanted it to be just right. I hope I captured that.
Are writing competitions necessary to writers? Of what value are they?
Writing competitions come with a number of boosts. The recognition, the money, possibilities of publication etc. Writers write to have their work read. If you want to get in print with a reputable house build a C.V. so that a potential publisher will see and take a risk on you.
You have won some of illustrious awards, did you write with the intention of winning prizes? What are these stories about?
I wrote the stories because they had to be told. Submitting them for the awards came as a way of getting them in print. My stories are based on the insurgency in Northern Uganda, a war which has been going on for over 19 years. This has been a silent issue that has to be talked about. I am glad that I am one of the writers doing just that.
You can read the on-line version of Jackee’s story, Remember Atita.