Author: Rosemary Esehagu

Publisher: Oge Creation Books

ISBN: 1-933496-00-2

The following interview was conducted by Mary Simmons:  Writer, Journalist and Author: CLICK HERE   to read Mary's Review of The Looming Fog. Click Here To Read More of Mary's Reviews

Mary: What made you decide to tell this story of a rural Nigerian village through the eyes of an intersexual child?

Rosemary: My original intention for writing The Looming Fog was to document aspects of my mom’s difficult childhood. Most of her troubled childhood had to do with her gender and her social standing. As I began to plan a fictionalized account of her experience and her childhood environment, I had to decide whether the narrator should be male or female. The idea of having an intersexed narrator—a person with male and female physical characteristics—came to me then, and I instantly knew that this was the perfect narrator to explore the essence of my mom’s experience. Moreover, as I started reading and learning more about intersexed conditions and the lives of intersexuals, I was convinced that the way we respond to intersexuals, or anyone who is conspicuously different, highlights certain damaging though subtle attributes and mentalities of our society. The intersexual child’s “deviation” from societal expectations is obvious, but by exploring the story through this child’s eyes, society’s deviations from basic principles of humanitarianism are also readily obvious. The intersexual child’s life allowed me more room to play, more room to bring our prejudices and biases to the forefront.

Mary: You say in 'The Looming Fog' that the villagers believed, "If they denied the child's existence, it would fail to be an issue in their lives." Do you think it's really that easy to eliminate troubling aspects of life from our consciousness?

Rosemary: On an individual level, it is certainly hard to eliminate or ignore troubling aspects from our consciousness. However, something happens to us when we become part of a group, where other people share and decide upon ideas and thoughts. As part of a group, it seems the whole (the group) is greater than the sum of its parts (each person), and there is relatively less individual responsibility for the actions or decisions of the group. Being part of a group gives us a mask, and we can restrict unfavorable or disturbing aspects of life from our individual awareness. Even though we make up the group, decisions and issues become “the group’s problem.” As part of a group, I believe we are quite able to neglect certain aspects of life from our consciousness, because the group becomes an external, paternalistic, and overwhelming force, acting to direct our actions. As independent as we like to believe that we are, the thoughts and actions of others are determinants of our own actions and thoughts. This explains such phenomenon as a group of people powerlessly watching as an angry man beats up an elderly person, even as he or she calls for help. If there had been only one or two people present at the scene, the elderly person might have received some help. When we are part of a group (and we all are to some extent), we are highly susceptible to diffusion of responsibility, especially when the decision or situation is a challenging one. In this framework of group mentality, we are capable of doing (or not doing) anything.

Mary: Even though the child has suffered so much from the same attitude in others, it still recoils at first from a family of “unknowns” who are trying to help. Do you think discrimination and stigma are unavoidable?

Rosemary: Well, we are unique beings because we have a consciousness about good and evil, and we all have the potential to be both. As such, discrimination and other negative aspects of being are always a temptation that we succumb to at one time or another. Because of our jealous or competitive spirit, our need to be in control, our need to feel important, and so on, we have a tendency (if the environment permits) to err on the side of our more negative sensibilities. Therefore, a child who has been brought low by others will be less able to fight the temptation to bring another person down. To relieve its internal anguish in being considered nothing, it is unsurprising that the child might be condescending to other unfortunate souls as a way of disconfirming its felt worthlessness. Our human nature makes us susceptible to discriminating against and stigmatizing others, but the key is that we have a choice to discriminate or to not. Our decency as a race, as a people, stems from our ability to choose to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Mary: Within the book, you not only portray an intersexual character, but also women who feel confined by their gender and the role they are expected to play in their culture. Do you think men feel similar constraints?

Rosemary: The constraints that women experience have gathered a lot of the attention, mainly because of the magnitude and pervasiveness of their limitations. However, men do face their own constraints. In fact, the constraints that women experience are due to the constraints of masculinity. In The Looming Fog, we see that it is not uncommon for a man to marry more than one wife or to kick out his wife if she is barren or has any other unbecoming characteristic. This is part of manliness, and a man who does not act in this way is looked at with a curious eye. This definition of manliness goes along with the village’s conception that a man is not a man unless he has a wife and children, especially male children. So, being a man has its own roles and expectations, which confine any man’s expression of his gender and sense of self. The constraints that women have (for example, she must be fertile) serve to secure the men’s sense of self. In The Looming Fog, the story of the madman illustrates that men have their own problems with societal expectations. The madman in the story becomes crazy when his family and friends ostracized him because he lost his wife and children and failed to establish a new family.

Men certainly have their own constraints, and this is true across cultures. In American society, a man has social constraints on what he can wear, how much emotion he can display, and what kinds of jobs he can do. Nonetheless, women’s particular limitations have more prominence, because women have the disadvantage of being the vessel that men, often times, use to meet their societal expectations.

Mary: Again on the topic of female roles in society, Kayinne questions whether she could be a wife and mother while taking on the responsibilities of a healer. Are you one of the many women who have struggled with dual roles and if so, how have you balanced your career and family?

Rosemary: I can definitely identify with Kayinne in this particular issue, because as a physician-in-training, who hopes to have her own family, I have spent quite a bit of time wondering whether I could juggle (and do justice to) all these roles: physician, writer, mother, and wife. Since I am not married, I do not, as yet, have to work on this balancing act. Nonetheless, my conviction is that my career is part of who I am. My being a mother or wife cannot cut that part of me out. The ideal life-partner is someone who would respect that my career is part of my purpose as a person, and that it can only add to (not take away from) any other roles I take on. Some of my other professional peers are married, and they are balancing their roles quite well, mainly because they and their partners recognize that a modern family that serves the needs of both husband and wife is one that allows for independence (via careers),  flexibility in duties and roles (both people are designated caregivers), and equality in decision-making power.

Mary: Why did you choose not to reveal the identity of the woman who contributed to Onuwa’s death?

Rosemary: I could not reveal her identity because she represents a category of people: the privileged who take advantage of the underprivileged. Naming her or giving her a more concrete identity would have focused more attention on her as an individual, which would make readers more likely to regard her simply as a wicked woman. I want readers to dig deeper into this woman’s character, to see that her actions are to be expected given her situation. I wanted the focus to be more on her actions, which, along with her anonymity, would allow readers to engage thoroughly with what her behavior says about her environment and social condition. Both the woman’s and Onuwa’s lives and actions are predictable, and both of their lives have a fundamental similarity. The woman’s anonymity serves to help the reader focus on the link between the two women’s lives.

On another level, I chose not to reveal her identity, in order to signify that she is every troubled woman, that with all her wealth and prestige, she is still like some of the “unknowns” of the village, brought to a prostrated position because of factors that she could not control or prevent. She represents the universality of the suffering woman, who is suffering only because her world has deemed it her burden.

Mary: When the intersexual is given the ability to look into the lives of others, it sees only the troubling aspects. Is misery a more interesting topic to write about than happiness?

Rosemary: The intersexed character is only able to see the troubling aspects for specific reasons. I will talk briefly about two of the reasons. The first reason is that the gods who gave him/her the ability wanted him/her to see that trouble (of various sizes and severity) characterizes every life, so that the character can defocus from itself and concentrate, instead, on why there is so much trouble in the world. The second reason is that a troubled soul does not immediately benefit from seeing joyful souls; misery loves company. The intersexed character’s life was swimming in misery, and for a while, s/he could see nothing but misery.

As for misery being a more interesting topic to write about than happiness, I think it depends on the purpose and goal of the literature. Each writer, in creating any work, must decide which set of emotions is going to be most effective in giving a work its characteristic life and personality. The Looming Fog is about showing the power that our social environment has on our sense of worth. More specifically, it explores the damaging effect of a neglectful and unsupportive social environment. As such, happiness is not the first emotion that would characterize the emotional world of such a book. This does not mean that there aren’t moments of happiness in the story, but it does mean that such moments will be limited.

Mary: In writing ‘The Looming Fog’ was there a particular message you wanted to convey to readers?

Rosemary: Yes, the message I wanted to convey to readers was that each person’s life is a compilation of his or her experiences with others. As such, I hope we recognize and take hold of the power we have to influence, positively, the quality of another’s life.

Mary: Are you working on a second novel? If so, when will it be available to the public?

Rosemary: Yes, I am finishing my second novel. It should be available within the next couple of years, assuming things proceed as planned.

Mary: Is there anything else you would like to share with visitors to BookPleasures.com?

Rosemary: It has been a pleasure to tell you more about my novel The Looming Fog, and I hope you are looking forward to reading my upcoming second novel. Of course, you do not have to wait until the release of my next book to read what my mind has cooked up. A short trip to my blog site, www.rosemaryesehagu.blogspot.com, will give you direct access to the random thoughts and ideas on my mind.