A Grandmother’s Stories Helped Turn a Reader Into a Novelist

Bunmi Oyinsan does not have a background in literature. What she had was a grandmother who told her stories when she was a child.

Oyinsan, a prolific author of stories for all ages and of YouTube content devoted to Africa’s rich but often neglected history, was born in Lagos, Nigeria’s culture capital, and lived there until she was about 8 years old. Her formative years were spent in Port Harcourt, also in Nigeria. She attended college in the United Kingdom and then studied for her master’s and doctorate in Canada, where she currently lives.

Her grandmother’s stories, Oyinsan says, “were populated with strong women, which left a lasting impression on me. Some of the stories she made up; others were about real-life women. But these were stories that were not in the textbooks I was made to read at school.”

Oyinsan’s grandmother was the inspiration for her latest novel, Three Women, an ambitious, cross-generational saga grounded in contemporary Nigeria. One of the three main characters in the book is Oyinsansola (Oyinkan) who gained new understanding about life from reading her late grandmother’s diaries. Another section of the novel focuses on Ibidun, Oyinkan’s mother, who abandoned her to be raised by her grandmother.

Kirkus Reviews praised Oyinsan as “a strong writer, presenting a well-developed voice and inventive descriptions.”

Among the more compelling sections of the novel are the diary excerpts, which, Kirkus said, “are engrossing and effective, adding texture to the novel”:

On the matter of marage. My Baba acuse me that maybe something is wrong with me. He said he dont know any woman who dont think about marage like me. The Ifa insist that Mr Kekere Efon to be the husband that I choosed from heaven. They also predict about my answer that I will say no and that this is handwork of devil. But my Baba make mistake. How can lady of marrageable age like me not be thinking about marage? I think about marage everytime.

A recurring theme throughout Oyinsan’s writing is the importance of portraying women “not as victims, but as active determinants over the course of their lives, as well as active elements of their community,” she says. Three Women represents her attempt to “experiment with capturing the voices of women of three different generations of the same family. The idea was to have each narrate their own stories, their challenges—difficult marriages, love relationships, raising kids—and the different paths they took to come into their own.”

The grandmother character, Oyinsan reflects, “was influenced by things I remember from my own grandmother. She was educated but not in the standard way. She was a teacher, a high accomplishment for a woman of her generation. But it was not because she had the best education; she was trained by the wife of a missionary. She was someone highly intelligent who struggled with making the English language work for her. I wanted to reflect her outlook on life.. That’s why I decided to [write] the grandmothers’ section of the story in the form of a journal rather than have her story told by her daughter or granddaughter”

The love of stories passed down to her by her grandmother is reflected in Oyinsan’s two children’s book series. One is The Adventures of Anansi and Sewa, a contemporary reintroduction of the beloved trickster character with roots in African and Caribbean stories. The second series is Legends of Africa, which profiles notable, albeit lesser-known, Africans and people of African descent. The inaugural volumes in the series are Mansa Musa: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived and Phillis Wheatley: The Girl Who Wrote Her Way to Freedom.

To keep busy during the pandemic, Oyinsan also started a YouTube channel, the “Sankofa Pan African” series, that likewise focuses on African history and biographies but whose stated purpose is “Know your African history, change the negative narrative.” “I cannot believe the kind of reception it has gotten,” she says. “It has grown wings.”

This endeavor was inspired in part by what she perceived to be the generally negative portrayals of and references to Africa and its history in the media. “One of the things that I noticed growing up,” she says, “was that the history taught in our public school was mostly European history. By the time I finished 12th grade, I could tell you everything about the Roman and British empires but very little about the civilization that started from Africa. It’s sad when your own history has been ignored, and it’s still not readily accessible.”

“I had a lot of books growing up,” she recalls. “My father was an avid reader. He also indulged my love of reading. He always bought me books, even as a teenager. All I needed was to let him know there was a new book out I wanted to read.” She remembers being captivated by Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories by Arthur S. Maxwell, a series of books comprised of Bible stories or tales that promoted core values and positive character development.

Oyinsan was barely out of her teens when she wrote her first book, Silhouette. She saw the play Children of a Lesser God, and the main character, a deaf woman, and the obstacles she faced reminded her of her grandmother’s stories about indomitably willed women. “What I loved about the play was that the challenges [the main character] faced did not inhibit her ability to become whatever she aspired to,” Oyinsan says. “I came up with the idea of a story about a blind, gifted Nigerian man from an indigent family who found his way to a university, where he falls in love with a girl from an affluent family.”

The book was adapted as a 26-episode series for national network broadcast on Nigerian television. Just as Oyinsan’s books and web content focus on extraordinary Africans and the continent’s rich and often untold history, so has she devoted herself to improving educational opportunities for children. She has co-founded two schools that provide affordable education for thousands of children from low-income families. She also established the Equality Through Education Foundation to raise scholarships and other forms of educational support. “The idea,” she says, “is not just to help them pass the national exam, but also to offer leadership orientation programs and teach vocational skills.” She takes special pride in one of her books, Fabulous Four, an adventure story about a diverse group of African teens who outwit their kidnappers that is included in the Nigerian syllabus. 

“While the characters and situations in Three Women are indelibly culture-specific, the bond between the women of three generations—mothers and daughters—is something to which anyone can relate,” she says. “Love is universal.”

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based writer.