The characters in ’Pemi Aguda’s new collection of short stories, Ghostroots, set out to protect what they have or find what they want—sometimes at a major cost and often via circumstances beyond the ordinary. 

Aguda, who earned her MFA at the University of Michigan and now lives in Philadelphia, will be in conversation about her new book with author and U-M professor Peter Ho Davies on Friday, September 20, at 6:30 pm at Literati Bookstore.

All of the stories in Ghostroots, which is longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction, are set in Lagos, Nigeria. One story, “The Dusk Market,” covers a woman’s interactions with an evening fair, where “When the sun slinks away, when the light of the day things out—oranges replaced by dark grays and purples, the women come out of nowhere.” Yet, “You don’t see the dusk market if you are not invited to the dusk market, but there are slippery moments, slits, frissons.” This unreliability, this capriciousness, catches the attention of this woman, Salewa, whose “eyes are willing to see more than is otherwise available to her.” 

Salewa catches on to the dusk market, but it seems to elude her attempts to go there. The market becomes her main goal because “forget these men, their syrupy tongues, their slimy hands that can break a heart, a body. It is the market that Salewa wants, the soft light, the pleasant hum of commerce, that warmth of camaraderie she had stumbled unto, into, for a short moment or two.” This market becomes a place to feel at home. 

As Salewa searches, she struggles to locate this event and to be recognized as a human. While continuing her quest, Salewa tries to speak to a person whom she recognizes, but the individual responds:  

“I don’t know you,” the woman repeats, a new bite to her words. Then she scurries away, her high-heeled sandals inappropriate for the uneven ground of the park.

The retreating woman is immediately swallowed by more moving people, busy people, hustling people, city people. 

The dusk market and the city take on an unfriendly tone, despite the warmth that Salewa remembers from the market. When she inquires directly about the market during another night of her hunt, people are wary: 

“Night market? God forbid! I hear it’s spirits that buy from the night market. Abi, are you a spirit?”

Salewa looks down at her calloused hands, her ashy skin, her clothes heavy with dried sweat. No, she doesn’t think she is a spirit. But how is a spirit different from an unrecognized body, a body with no connections, nothing tethering it? 

Whether the market is there, whether Salewa will find it, and who Salewa is form questions that are the backbone of the story. Identity, belonging, and what is lost or gained when choosing a course of action haunt the characters throughout the stories in Ghostroots. 

Aguda and I had an interview in advance of her Ann Arbor event. 

Q: School has started for the fall so I am thinking of your time as a student here. What drew you to the University of Michigan to study writing? What was living in Ann Arbor like? 
A: I was clueless about MFAs until two years before I showed up at Michigan. A professor at a South African university introduced the idea to me—that some institutions would pay for me to read and write and think about fiction. I did my research, then applied to a few programs and was delighted to get into U-M. As a landing city in the USA—it was my first time here—I quite loved Ann Arbor. I had overprepared for the cold, so that wasn’t too much of a bother. I loved the walkable streets, the trees, the river, and the access to international cultural acts that the university’s status allowed. 

Q: You will be back in Ann Arbor for your event at Literati on September 20, when you will be in conversation with Peter Ho Davies. I’m curious if you worked with Peter during your program at U-M? What might the two of you discuss then? 
A: Yes, Peter Ho Davies was my thesis advisor! I’m not sure what we’ll discuss at the Literati event, but I’ve enjoyed all our prior conversations about revision, short story collections, and this writing life. 

Q: Short story collections sometimes bear the title of one of the stories. The title of Ghostroots is not the name of one of the 12 stories it contains. Would you tell us about the title? 
A: Peter Ho Davies once challenged me to find an alternate title as an exercise to see how the stories were in conversation with each other. I thought about the hauntings of ancestry and inheritance, and how these roots can either be perceived as grounding or as entrapment, and after lobbing ideas back and forth with my agent, Ghostroots came about. 

Q: All of the stories in Ghostroots are set in Lagos, Nigeria. Did you write these stories there or elsewhere? How did being there, or not, while writing influence the stories?  
A: Some of the stories were written in Lagos, and the rest in Ann Arbor, but all my concerns are still rooted in Lagos. It’s where I’ve lived most of my life. It takes a long time for my preoccupations to start showing up in my fiction, and so even though I was physically present in the USA, my body and ruminations were still firmly in Lagos. Wasn’t it Flannery O’Connor who said that a childhood is enough fodder for a lifetime of stories? 

Q: Sometimes adding a constraint helps narrow the focus of the story or piece. Was this the case for setting Ghostroots in one place? How so? 
A: No, it wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking of Lagos as a constraint. It simply came about from writing into my interests, from my knowledge. The questions I was working through all stemmed from Lagos and its effect on the relationships forged there.

Q: The characters in Ghostroots seek out other circumstances than their own. In “Birdwoman,” “There are more voices and more stones but Felicity succumbs to the rising within her.” Would you say that these characters are successful in making changes, or might the searching come to define them?  
A: That’s an interesting question! I don’t think there’s a one true answer. Some of them have now oriented themselves towards change, while others continue to search. I think a lot of these stories happen at a moment of awareness. They become aware of the weight of history, or embodiment, or familial expectations and demands, or their own desires—and however the story ends, that cognizance feels like a turning point. 

Q: A characteristic of these stories is that they are grounded in the realities of their worlds. The narrator in the story called “The Wonders of the World” reflects, “Whatever had brought Zeme here, Abisola did not need to know. They were here; this was now.” How did you approach tuning the characters into their specific moment in time and truths? 
A: Especially as someone who writes into strangeness, I think it’s important for the stories to feel grounded in body and time and space so that the reader feels comfortable enough to follow me anywhere. 

Q: On the topic of writing into strangeness, these stories have fantastical elements as well. Do you consider these stories to be magical realism? If so, how so? If not, how do you describe the aspects that go beyond a conventional sense of what is possible?   
A: Magical realism? Sure. I mean, a woman literally turns into a bird in “Birdwoman.” But when questions about genre come around, I like to remind people that we all have very different baselines of reality. What is magical for me might seem quite mundane to someone else based on their cultural/historical context and belief. For example, the idea of “Birdwoman” came from a Nigerian news article. Is it still magical realism, then? What’s more important to me is what the strangeness brings up than the strangeness in itself.

Q: As we wrap up, I am curious what is on your stack to read this season?
A: I’m currently reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. I’m excited to read The Coin by Yasmin Zaher. I’ve been re-reading stories from Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness, and I have Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh on my nightstand. I’m a big fan of Jenny Erpenbeck, so I’m also looking forward to reading Kairos. 

Q: What is next on the horizon for you? 
A: I’m working on novel revisions. It’s quite the challenge, but a delicious challenge!

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian.