Olufunke Grace Bankole | The PEN Ten
In The Edge of Water (Tin House, 2025), Olufunke Grace Bankole weaves a provocative story of mothers, daughters, and adopted family on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a tale at once timeless and anchored in our recent past. Bankole takes risks in her debut novel, looking at episodes both in isolation and from multiple perspectives. She includes three distinct narrators, letters written and never sent, and images of the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
For this week’s PEN Ten, Bankole discusses her novel, twenty years in the making, and the wry humor that sustains her craft, with Amy Reid, Senior Manager of PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. (Bookshop; Barnes & Noble)
In the prologue to the novel, “Iyanifa: Imole”, you weave Nigerian customs and beliefs into the story, including references to divination and Yoruba gods, without always giving a definition. I think this suggests that you have a lot of faith in your readers, in their ability to navigate the unfamiliar. Do you have a specific reader in mind when you write? How does that guide the choices you make about what to explain and what to leave opaque?
I have faith in the thoughtful reader, the generous reader who is willing to enter immediately into a world with which they might be unfamiliar. I think to a significant extent every novel ushers us into some aspect of unfamiliarity, and we can be trusted to try to make sense of things as we read on.
In the opening of The Edge of Water, I wanted to provide just enough description of the goings-on in the otherworldly Imole to ground the reader, but not so much that they might feel bogged down with details that inhibit their own imagination of the setting.
And too, I hope that readers of African descent, and those with an interest in traditional, non-western religions or ancient systems of divination–in this case, the practice of Ifa that is indigenous to the Yoruba people of Nigeria–might connect with the storytelling in a way that feels like home.
Each chapter starts with an oblique reference to divination by cowrie shells; the first words of the novel are “The shells tell me so,” and every chapter after that has an italicized epigraph, of sorts, for example “Shells in the shape of women” (28). This gives a mystical cast to the novel, but I’m also wondering if it reflects on your approach to writing. Is there meaning in the small details of daily life? How so?
Yes! I do tend to seek meaning in every bit of daily life–sometimes in the ebb and flow of the weather, the uncanny appearance of certain objects. And often, I try to understand the connection between my internal world and the things happening around me. And perhaps I do that for my characters as well. What drives me on the page, maybe more than anything, is attempting over and over again to put the ineffable into words. I think this is why the silence between Esther and Amina, who attempt to reconcile despite the continents between them, is a prominent theme in The Edge of Water. The characters are continually trying and sometimes failing to understand and give voice to the challenging circumstances in their lives.
The narrative voice shifts among three perspectives, Esther and Amina, the mother-daughter pair at the heart of the novel, and Iyanifa, an almost omniscient narrator, who situates the contemporary plot in a timeless cycle of reincarnation, loss and return. Why did you choose to frame Esther and Amina’s stories with that personified spiritual voice?
In the Ifa religion, it is commonly the babalawo who holds the position and power of being the conduit for Orunmila, the oracle of knowledge and wisdom. Although some Ifa historians document the original prowess of the iyanifa (the female equivalent of the babalawo), only to a rarer extent is she sought out by querents for the cowrie shells divination she practices. But because The Edge of Water is primarily a story about women who defy the culture and environment they are born into, it seemed fitting to give this important role of a near-omniscient narrator not to a babalawo, but to Iyanifa who brings her experience of womanhood to the telling of Esther’s and Amina’s stories. As the personified spiritual voice, Iyanifa also lends an overarching cohesiveness to the stories happening simultaneously in Imole, Nigeria, and the U.S.
I think to a significant extent every novel ushers us into some aspect of unfamiliarity, and we can be trusted to try to make sense of things as we read on.
The tension between destiny and self-determination is a consistent theme in the book, with Iyanifya suggesting early on that everything that happens has been preordained. But at one point you write, “Declarations of destiny can cripple dreams” (71). Do you see ‘destiny’ as a help or a hindrance, something that encourages our efforts or limits our horizons?
I imagine that destiny can be both a hindrance and a help, depending on what we believe our own lot to be. If we believe destiny is on our side, then perhaps it can buoy our efforts. But if we think we’re ill-fated, then maybe we act in accordance with that and give up dreaming altogether. For Amina, in particular, she knows from a young age that she wants more than the limiting social circumstances she was born into and the prescriptions of her mother’s religion. And yet, she can’t fully extricate herself from her own faith and doubting in the divine–ultimately, she can’t quite decide what she believes. Throughout the novel, there is indeed tension between desire and fate, as characters grapple with how much control they have over their own lives, and even whether they can negotiate what their culture declares has already been determined.
You structure your novel around connections between mothers and daughters, three generations of only daughters, in fact, from Esther to Amina to Laila. But Oyin (as Esther’s adopted daughter and Amina’s half-sister) unsettles that line of transmission. How would you explain Oyin’s role in the novel?
What an insightful question! The “three generations of only daughters’’ is actually unintentional. Oyin is meant to be somewhat of an agitator in the novel. She is sensitive to the world around her, but doesn’t seem to care too much what anyone thinks; their opinions won’t stop her from living as she chooses. I think Oyin was living her best life before that idea became an expression. And unlike a few of the other characters in the book, she doesn’t believe that love, marriage, or emigration is the way out of despair or discontent. I think she also holds a mirror of self-examination up to Esther, Amina, and Sani. While she often feels excluded from that triad, she is happy existing independently and on her own terms.
Water—whether oceans, rivers, or hurricanes—serves to connect each of the cities that figure in your plot, but it’s also what separates them and the characters. And then there’s the sharpness implied by the emphasis on ‘edge’. How did you decide upon the title, The Edge of Water?
Would you believe the novel was originally titled “Imole”? At one point, I really liked that title and it’s the one we used for submission to publishers. After Tin House acquired the book, we all agreed that “Imole” didn’t fully encapsulate the scope of the novel. My editor and I then went back and forth on new title ideas until we landed on the one that felt right. I think the sharpness implied by “edge” is indeed about the identifiable points of connection and separation between bodies of water and cities in the novel. It’s also about the ways in which Amina and her family straddle identities, homes, and beliefs. And as my brilliant editor points out, water itself has no definitive edge–so I suppose “the edge of water” is also about a place that can never quite be reached.
I imagine that destiny can be both a hindrance and a help, depending on what we believe our own lot to be. If we believe destiny is on our side, then perhaps it can buoy our efforts. But if we think we’re ill-fated, then maybe we act in accordance with that and give up dreaming altogether.
The event that anchors the chronology of your novel is the tragedy that unfolded at the Superdome in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Why did you choose that moment as a pivot for your plot? After this year’s series of natural disasters—from the devastation of Hurricane Helene to the wild fires that have destroyed so much of Los Angeles—it’s hard not to think of our failure to address climate change, but is it also an indictment of the American Dream?
Just days after graduating law school, I moved to New Orleans on the funding of a fellowship (Open Society Foundations) to implement an advocacy program for families of incarcerated children. On my days off from work, I would wander the streets of my neighborhood and sometimes end up in the French Market where I had the joy of meeting and chatting with West African women who sold their wares in the shops. Although we shared homelands, I also understood that we were in fact worlds apart.
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, though I was no longer living there, I couldn’t help but think about the West African market women. Like me, they had been far from home and working in the city’s margins. Where had they sheltered during the storm, and what happened to them in the aftermath? When a natural disaster looms and an evacuation is ordered, where do the marginalized, most vulnerable among us go? And who had these women been back home before arriving in the U.S.? These questions were the genesis for the story of Amina, the novel’s main character.
I think Amina’s “American Dream” is a bit nontraditional in that she isn’t necessarily escaping tangibly arduous or dire circumstances in Nigeria. Certainly, like most U.S. immigrants, she wants to make a good life for herself and her family. But her dream is more about the freedom to come fully into herself despite the cultural pronouncements of destiny. And also, like many U.S. immigrants, she quickly discovers that the America of her imagination is just that. Even more, the treatment that Amina and her loved ones experience, in the aftermath of the storm, underscores the perils of being Black and “foreign” in the United States.
You’ve mentioned that influences on your writing include Tsitsi Dangarembga, of Zimbabwe, and also Mariama Bâ, of Senegal, whose epistolary novel Une si longue lettre (1979; trans. So Long a Letter, by Modupé Bodé-Thomas, 1980) is really foundational for African women’s writing. In Bâ’s novel, the gift of a car means independence for Ramatoulaye, but getting a new car doesn’t work out so well for Esther (although she and Oyin do eventually share a good laugh over it all). To what extent were you responding to Bâ’s hopefulness when you imagined the episode with Esther’s new car?
You know, having read So Long A Letter a few times over the years, I can’t believe that I hadn’t remembered Ramatoulaye’s car while writing the chapter on Esther’s Beetle! Perhaps subconsciously I thought of a car’s symbolic representation of freedom, new beginnings, and transformation–all things that Esther was working towards, after her divorce.
Where I did have So Long a Letter firmly in mind was in deciding on the epistolary communication between Esther and Amina. I hoped to similarly convey the depth of the intimacy that can exist between women, even miles apart.
One of the interesting connections among your characters is that while they are primarily depicted through their flaws, there’s also room for redemption. With the exception, perhaps, of Sani, you draw attention to their efforts, however belated, to apologize to and reconnect with those they have let down, and also to their willingness to accept apologies. Are you calling on your readers to be more forgiving of each other, of themselves?
I don’t think I’m that virtuous! At least not enough to call readers to forgive others. In the final stages of rereading the novel, I did come to realize that this idea of self-redemption weaved throughout. I hoped, through the characters’ actions and interiority, to explore how we might attempt to confront and liberate ourselves from the shame that keeps us from accepting the love that remains after tremendous loss.
Her dream is more about the freedom to come fully into herself despite the cultural pronouncements of destiny. And also, like many U.S. immigrants, she quickly discovers that the America of her imagination is just that.
The novel has a very open-ended conclusion, bookended by the coming together of couples in Ibadan and San Francisco, but also including Oyin’s success and happiness outside of the romance plot. Do you think you’ll be revisiting these characters again, or is that more about inviting the reader to imagine a range of possible futures for them?
It’s more the latter. Having taken the reader through these various worlds and experiences of the characters’ lives, at the novel’s end, I hoped to engage them in deciding for themselves what might come next for Amina and her family. The time from writing the original short story that The Edge of Water is based upon to the novel’s publication is nearly twenty years. I’m satisfied that I’ve given these characters their due and I’m ready now to tell some new stories.
Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review, and Stand. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
