Louis Chude-Sokei was born in Nigeria, spent his early childhood in Jamaica, and moved to Los Angeles after that. “I’m still working out how I’ve taken to America,” he said. “Much of my work is about how I’ve taken to America and whether I’ve taken to it.” And though his subject and inspiration may come from that move to the U.S., Chude-Sokei always knew what work he wanted to do. “There’s a family story about how I was writing books before I knew how to write,” he said, scribbling in the air with imagined pen and paper. “I spent hours just writing.” Read more about him below.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. I’d like to say my wife but she’s always up ahead of me. So I wake up to noticing she’s not there.
Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Right now, “discombobulating.” Because my wife just discovered that it’s an actual word. She just moved to the U.S. six months ago.
Q. What comforts you?
A. Music…. Particularly music with heavy bass tones. Bass tones are crucial.
Q. What inspires you?
A. Bass tones. Music. Sound. Words and possibilities. I’m inspired by the fact that certain things have not been said or done yet.
Q. If you could live in any other time, past, present or future, which would it be?
A. I would like to live in a world where a black president or a woman president or a whatever president is not a strange thing or something to celebrate.
Q. When are you most creative?
A. After a run, after three or four or five miles, I’m ready to go.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Sushi.
Q. If you could only take one more journey, where would you go?
A. Obligation would take me back to Nigeria. I would say goodbye to everyone, or give them all cell phones.
Q. Which profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Architect, but not one of those architects who works in a huge firm anonymously. I’d want to be like Gehry.
Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. Martin Puryear, the conceptual artist, or David Adjaye, the Ghanaian architect.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. I do remember my father and mother together. My father died before I was two, so people say it’s not possible to have that memory, but it’s my fondest.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I want to say my music collection, but now it’s all MP3s. Is that material? Well, I do still have a lot of vinyl.
Q. What teacher or professor changed your life?
A. Teshome Gabriel. He’s an Ethiopian filmmaker and film scholar. Without him I would have left grad school. He let me know that it’s possible to be who I am and do what I want to do within this sphere of formal academic training.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. Write more often and regularly.
Q. If you could have a beer with any person living or dead, who would it be?
A. Susan Sontag.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.