The BIPOC/ACCUTE First Person Interviews series is adapted from the CBC First Person series. It captures the stories and perspectives of BIPOC members of ACCUTE from different parts of Canada at different stages of their teaching, research, or graduate student careers. The interviews are presented in dialogue style to enable us to present participants’ stories and experiences in their own voices. We hope to encourage other BIPOC members of ACCUTE and future members to join the conversations. Please reach out to cezenwa@mun.ca or info.accute@gmail.com  if you are interested in joining the First Person BIPOC/ACCUTE series. We hope you enjoy reading our members’ stories and we look forward to hearing from you.  — Chinelo Ezenwa.

Chinelo Ezenwa: 
Hi Ama! I know we already know each other, but for the sake of our readers, I would like to introduce myself as Chinelo Ezenwa. I am of Igbo, Nigerian origin and an Assistant Professor at Memorial University. My work is in African, Black, decolonial studies, and the ways in which community intersects with academia. 

I am really happy to have you here with me today, more so because you are one of the people responsible for creating the BIPOC Caucus within ACCUTE. You also invited me to serve as a volunteer, so, in some ways, one could say that this conversation space we have is in part because of you. Thank you for that and for joining us today. 

Amatoritsero Ede:  
Thank you. And I must congratulate you on the wonderful pioneer work that you and Titi Aiyegbusi have done in building up ACCUTE’s BIPOC Caucus. My name is Amatoritsero Ede. I am an Associate Professor of English and Rev. William Purvis Chair at Mount Allsion University. I teach African and African diaspora literatures.  I moved from Nigeria to Germany as a student in 1994 and from there to Canada in 2002 for PhD studies. When I finished my studies in 2013, there were very little jobs available in my area of specialization within the Canadian academy. Maybe my long wait in the job market has to do with the fact that the BIPOC community, as we know it now, was not a thing then. The more of us that are in certain institutional locations, the more there would be volunteers to help in mentoring and navigating other early-career BIPOC scholars into job situations. In my case, when I completed the PhD, I had to leave Canada after three lean years. I went to Uganda in 2017, to South Korea in 2018 and from there further to The Bahamas, where I stayed for two years before a job opened up here in Canada. Altogether, I wondered seven years in the wilderness before coming back into a tenure track. 

I am a scholar as well as a poet. I have had three poetry collections published and appear in 15 poetry anthologies in Canada, USA, the EU and Nigeria. Moreover, I write literary nonfiction and released “Imaginations Many Rooms” in 2022. I am also a publisher and curate The Maple Tree Literally Supplement. These diverse pedagogic interests inform how I teach and what I teach. For example, I created a course at Mount Allison that I call Introduction to Electronic Publishing and Web Writing.  This course teaches students how to populate literary and other kinds of websites with content and successfully manage such content. It also teaches the fundamentals of plain English and writing different kinds of content for the web. This is an Experiential Learning course addition to the English department’s curriculum. It is a hands-on, work-oriented and participation-intensive offering, which emphasizes professionalization amongst students of English/creative writing but is equally ideal for students from other departments interested in practical web skills in a 21^st century digital economy.

Chinelo
As you were speaking about the journeys you made after your studies, I was hoping that things have improved in terms of being able to get a position after the PhD. I was also wondering how the experiences of being in those diverse places (Uganda, South Korea, and The Bahamas) influenced your teaching and research when you came back to Canada. 

Ama
Well, those international experiences have an impact on how I teach or work with students from different cultural backgrounds and, with different learning styles. It is why we talk of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) today. Those differences can include racial, religious, sexual orientation and other demographic presentations, which translate into diversity in the Canadian classroom. We have students from all over Canada and the world, and those experiences teaching outside of Canada help to inform how I teach them and the kinds of material I choose to reflect the diversity that I find in my classroom.

Chinelo
The other thing is, I am really interested in The Maple Tree Literally Supplement, which you mentioned. What informed the idea of starting the magazine?

Ama
I started it in 2008 as a practicing poet. When I came to Canada, I discovered that there was not a lot of space to publish BIPOC writing. Writers I came across were complaining to me that they couldn’t find any outlet for publishing. Mostly they were immigrants. I also found that the traditional Canadian publishers might not publish your work, not necessarily due to the quality, but due to the topic/the subject. Some publishers might think that the kinds of experiences in the writing are outside of their own range of publishing interest or that the writing might not have resonance with the traditional Canadian public. 

So, I decided to start the journal in 2008, and it took off. Because at that time I had already held a writing residency at Carleton University as a member of Penn Canada writers in Exile Network,  I already had some contacts in the Canadian literary community. I found people I could work with and decided to start this journal. I had some people I know in the literary community join the advisory board, like George Elliot Clark on the editorial board, Olive Senior, the President of Penn International, John Ruston Saul, the President of Carleton University at the time, David W. Atkinson. We started the magazine to publish “culturally diverse” writing and writers – which is like the BIPOC idea, even if that was not the original intention. I say this because “culturally diverse” means it was open to everyone.

Chinelo
I can relate with a lot of what you said about some publishers’ seeming reluctance to publish “BIPOC” materials. I suspect that things are opening up a bit more for minoritized scholars, but there are still many of those cases where one is asked to re-write or re-frame the writing to fit the imagined “Canadian” audience. I often wonder if the research or writing remains the same after some of those types of changes are made. I also wonder what the publishers imagine Canada to be, whether they have a real sense of the changing landscape of the country. I would say that the prospect of having more outlets that publish “BIPOC” material is definitely attractive to emerging scholars like me and perhaps even the emerged scholars. 

I know we have used the term “BIPOC” already in this conversation, but one of my questions has been to find out what members of our community think about it. I wonder if you could speak to that. 

Ama
For me, it does not necessarily have to be only people of colour, or brown people. BIPOC could mean culturally diverse and can include anybody who shares that common vision. For instance, and as I have noted above, in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, we use the synonym culturally diverse to suggest that it’s not just minorities. The emphasis is on inclusion. 

Chinelo
When you say culturally diverse, in what ways do you mean that diversity? 

Ama
As I said above, “culturally diverse” means that everyone is included. That is, as long as you’re Canadian, you live in this space, and even if you might belong to different communities – White communities, Black communities, First Nation communities, Asian communities, Indian Communities and so on – so it is for everybody. That is the whole essence of cultural diversity. It also means people’s different lived experiences and different vantage points. All those experiences come together to make what you call Canadian.

Chinelo
I see what you mean. I think it supports what I said previously about publishers looking to address the Canadian audience and not realizing or ignoring the diversity of that audience. But I don’t know that I would use BIPOC as a synonym for culturally diverse because as problematic as the term is, not having labels like that could flatten different experiences of historical and continued oppressions, even within research institutions. I and others from our community have shared on this platform concerns about the term “BIPOC” and about labels in general, but I wonder if the notion of culturally diverse from a broad perspective would fill that gap. 

Ama
Both phrases serve different even if overlapping goals; both have political resonance and both value inclusion. The difference, I think, is what you already highlight above – the need to emphasise difference, the better to represent it and to hinder its repression. 

Chinelo
And it is because of those kinds of concern that we devised the next question. What are your biggest concerns about academia/English studies?

Ama
I would say that we need more diverse – by which I mean, BIPOC – scholars in academia who could act as mentors for early-career scholars, who are incoming already employed. We need more scholars to take on more leadership roles in the larger community and within the academic community – not just to be there, but to actively represent BIPOC interests. We need people to actively mentor younger scholars in the BIPOC communities, who, for one reason or the other, might have some institutional barriers. For example, mentors could help people decide the right specialization-specific career entry paths and how to prepare for job talks. In my private circle, we organize mock interviews to help early career scholars through the hiring process. There are probably similar private career mentoring/ mentee- ship situations in the community. But we need to make it more organized and integrated into the ACCUTE BIPOC programming.

Chinelo
You are right, and the mentorship would even continue after the person gets the position, right? In the time that I have been actively volunteering within ACCUTE, there’s been a lot of talk about mentoring and around it because people have been making this request. I consider myself lucky because I had people around me who helped to prepare even my CV. But some may not have access to that type of immediate community. It is a priority now within ACCUTE, not only for BIPOC members. Hopefully, a formal system for that type of mentorship will be in place soon. 

Related to this issue, do you think it is worthwhile talking to early career people about alternative academic careers after the PhD?  I for one still struggle with the idea that the overriding goal of a PhD is the tenure track position. I wonder if it does not minimize the whole research experience and the idea of a PhD. I guess my question is whether someone graduating with a PhD from English can/should also think about other jobs within (or even outside) academia without being made to feel that they were settling for “less.” 

Ama
Yes, I think PhDs can have and prepare for alternative jobs after the studies. Doing the PhD is the ability to take an idea from one end of the street and to the other end of the street, far away, without being overwhelmed or losing one’s energy and focus. That consistency and perseverance can be applied to any kind of situation in industry. The person is trained to think critically, creatively, and in some cases travel to do field work. Put all this together, and then you have a PhD. That is a specialized kind of training that can be diverted into other areas, like consultancy, policy work in the civil service, administration, etc. It is important to recognize this versatility of the PhD experience especially because of the bias against the humanities. So long as human beings need to think and businesses need to communicate and write, the degree in English will be relevant whether the person is teaching or not. So, people who do PhDs should not assume that they can’t work outside or that they must work in academia. There are other possibilities that they just need to research and explore. 

In the US, there is a current anti-diversity war going on, but that is simply a kind of reactionary politics because of the obsession with Trump’s idea of “America First,” forgetting that the world is connected. This is where there is need for situational ethics. He forgets about the context and just thinks about the situation. And his situation is that there are immigrants coming across the border. They are “crazy.” “We need to send away all immigrants.” But he forgets that these immigrants, even if they are “undocumented,” are the ones who pick their fruits. All one really needs to do is to “document” them. It is simple. They pay taxes already anyway. If Trump understood the dynamics and force of the global, things might be different. When you look at all of that, you see the need for critical thinking, and that is precisely why the humanities is important. These types of misunderstandings could be corrected with creative thinking, with the humanities knowledge, right? English Studies could help somebody understand how to give things nuance.

Chinelo
I really love how you broke this down and applied it to a real-life context. If one were to ask me the problems in English Studies, my number one would be the tendency to over theorize and forget some of the purposes of the theories. And that can be both from a sense of complacency and ignorance about other people’s realities. But I also worry that politicians are not the only ones playing the kind of politics that you mentioned. What is the point in calling out a politician when people and institutions are adopting the same kinds of uncritical and one-dimensional approaches to human relations and to research. Outside of the US, we have people talking about being overrun by immigrants or treating people like “diversity hires.” It is all part of the same problem. 

Ama
Yeah, I guess it is. And to your point about practical approaches, one of the ways would be through the writing we teach. In English studies, the type of writing we do is more tailored towards disseminating ideas. We do not specialize in writing, like technical writing. There are institutions where they specialize in technical writing, business writing, and other kinds of different genres. But yes, those are the practical aspects of English studies that can be further emphasized. In my own institution, we emphasize how to communicate your ideas, and that was why I designed the course called Introduction to Electronic Publishing and Web Writing.

Chinelo
The course sounds fun and certainly needed, given that the demographic we teach are spending more and more time on the internet. 
My last question is about the most fun or critically relevant movie you have seen recently or book. We have talked a bit about your magazine, but do you watch movies? 

Ama
Well, I saw Black Panther and liked it because, in pictures, it sort of captures the old struggle of the African diaspora in the space of one or one and half hours. It exemplifies the hopes, aspirations, and fierce defeats of that community, you know, as well as the history. The film is powerful precisely because it operates as a simulacrum: it compresses centuries of history into a hyperreal form that no longer refers to a single historical origin. And that is why if you want to teach a literary text, you can find companion movies that go along with. So, when I was teaching Afropolitanism, I used Black Panther as an example of the kind of African future that Afropolitanism sort of promises or carries within it, more like Afrofuturism. You know, speculative fiction and all of that. There is a limit to what a text can do; movies can be used for illustration. 

Chinelo
I completely agree with you about the usefulness of teaching with movies or video clips. I was intrigued that you mentioned Black Panther because it is one of my all-time favorite movies, plus there is Chadwick Boseman there. I didn’t like Part 2; I call that the EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) version because it’s just too much. I feel like in that one, the producers were merely trying to pander to a performative version of “diversity” that appears to check all the boxes rather than actually making a meaningful movie that also entertains. I guess there could be a balance. I also think the focus should have been more on Shuri and her morphing into the black panther, and not on Queen Ramonda, the Queen Mother. Anyway, it just didn’t work for me. But even in that first movie, the Part 1, I think there was a danger of typecasting “Africa” as the Wakanda of people’s imagination, where people are kings, queens, warriors with spears and machetes, ancestors, magic potions, etc. It’s like Things Fall Apart or even Beowulf. I know it is fantasy, but I often wonder whether the people outside of the African continent realize that. 

Ama
Let me see if I can turn this around. That is the romanticized idea of Africa, right? We know this is disconnected from reality, but that’s why the BIPOC community can be important here. We become like cultural ambassadors to some extent in that you can clarify certain things for people through teaching and research. Yes, there are those who might think that Africa is mostly forest and very dangerous, that you cannot walk around without seeing a lion or tiger. So that is where Nollywood (the Nigerian movie industry) comes in. The movies show a different world that has normal houses and people. This is one of the reasons visual presentation is very useful in terms of teaching with films, because if you were to put a movie, a very good Nollywood movie, beside Black Panther, you would have a point of comparison and use that to discuss the dangers of representation or misrepresentation or to unpack the concept of simulacrum that I gestured at above.

Chinelo
Certainly! A discussion around Black Panther and, as you said, a relevant Nollywood movie ties seamlessly into the broader themes of (mis)representation and the work we do, encouraging audiences to engage more critically with art, writing, or even the world. 
I would love to talk some more about these as well as about Afropolitanism and visual narratives in our next interview. It was wonderful having you here. Thank you for having this conversation with us and for being a part of the BIPOC community within ACCUTE. 

Ama
It is my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. The conversation does not end here.