O.O. Sangoyomi and Rita Woods on Needing to Know Our History

Tor Books, in partnership with Literary Hub, presents Voyage Into Genre! Every other Wednesday, join host Drew Broussard for conversations with Tor authors discussing their new books, the future, and the future of genre. Oh, and maybe there’ll be some surprises along the way…

Welcome back, travelers—

This week we are continuing with one of the unexpected themes of this season, which is the reclamation of stories and of narratives. It feels, as I know we touched on a little bit at the beginning of the last episode, like a particularly vivid and lively moment in our culture. We’re seeing that we don’t have to default to the ways that we have done things or the stories that we have told that there is an opportunity for change, that there is an opportunity to to broaden the scope of what we see, what stories we tell, who we see, who we tell stories to. We all certainly have blind spots when it comes to a knowledge of the past in general, how much can we know? How much has been told by the victors, as it were?

But I find such thrilling energy around the idea of excavating the past, excavating our histories, and by our histories, I mean humanity’s histories—to try to tell not only a more inclusive story for our present, but to show that historically speaking, it has been a big world for… Basically the entirety of human existence. It is so easy, or it has been anyway, to trust the stories that we are shown and the stories that we are told as the default, as the only thing, even. So what a joy to read two books that are deeply engaged with a practice of reclaiming aspects of history: O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade and Rita Woods’s The Last Dreamwalker. Two very different novels and yet eerily well-paired!

Happy reading,
Drew

PS we’re taking a short mid-season break—we’ll be back with the next episode of this season on Sept 25!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

Read the full episode transcript here.

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FROM THE EPISODE:

O.O. Sangoyomi: In Yoruba culture, which is a tribe in Nigeria, storytelling plays a really central part in preserving memories and preserving people. I had always wanted to learn about pre-Colonial West Africa because my family is Nigerian and that’s where I’m from. And I noticed that there was a real lack of it in mainstream media and also in my studies so I took it kind of upon myself to make this a project on the side for my classes to research pre-Colonial West Africa and first, that’s all it was. I just wanted to learn more about the history of, the country that my parents came from. but then the more that I read, it was just such a rich world, the medieval period in particular that I just got inspired to write a story in it because I’ve also always been a writer. So I kind of wanted to write a story to help preserve that time period a little.

Rita Woods: And for me, I have a very real sense that for us to be complete as people, we need to know our history. I’m always really excited when I find these unexpected gems that get dropped into my life that I had no idea about. there are so many gaps that we don’t even know we have sometimes because you don’t know what you don’t know. I consider myself fairly well-read, and yet when I became aware of the Gullah Geechee I realized I didn’t know anything about, that history or about its relevance and its broad reach in this country. And I also found that I wasn’t alone in that. So when you mention, you know, the Gullah Geechee to, I’d say 90% of people, they have no idea what you’re talking about, and that’s such an exciting opportunity for me to be able to weave that into, into the stories I write, unknown histories that I can tap and mine and create a story around.

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Tor Presents: Voyage into Genre is a co-production with Lit Hub Radio. Hosted by Drew Broussard. Studio engineering + production by Stardust House Creative. Music by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn.