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Communicating across Oceans and Generations: A Climate Chat with Olufunke Grace Bankole

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Welcome to Climate Decoded, the podcast that deciphers climate change communication. We untangle how different narratives illuminate or obscure pathways to climate justice. Our mission is to improve climate media literacy, foster meaningful climate conversations, and spur informed, just action on climate change.

And Welcome to Climate Chats, a series in which we speak to experts, authors, and activists from around the world. These Chats are more unscripted and casual than other episodes like our climate reviews and deep dives. If you like this episode, we’d love if you would share it with a friend, so we can spark more thought, conversation, and action on climate change. Let’s dive in.

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Today, I’m chatting with Olufunke Grace Bankole, who goes by Grace. Grace is a Nigerian American author, writer and novelist, who has recently published her debut novel, “The Edge of Water”. “The Edge of Water” is a work of climate fiction, and it’s also an immigrant story, a story filled with strong female characters, and a story that grapples with the tension between dreaming of more versus being satisfied with what you already have. It is set between Nigeria and New Orleans, with Hurricane Katrina looming. 

The idea of this chat is to give you a sneak peek at the book and a bit of insight into the author herself. You can order “The Edge of Water” at any major bookstore and through the link in our shownotes.

Grace and I spoke over Zoom and unfortunately some of the audio is a bit, well, Zoom-y, but we’re both still understandable. 

We start off with hearing Grace read a passage from “The Edge of Water,” and then go into how Grace came to write this novel.

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Grace: So this is after sort of in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. And just to note to listeners, that nowhere in the novel is Hurricane Katrina mentioned by name, but it is based on Hurricane Katrina, and that was a deliberate choice because of the idea that there are many storms that have similar effects, similar aftermath. And this idea that while you know this book is centered on the historical hurricane, that it could be any storm, anywhere in the world, and many peoples that are in that are impacted, so this is in the immediate aftermath.

“They lie in the dome with the rest, the ones who could not make their way out, too ill, too old, no car, and the others who would not those with a choice, unwilling to trust whatever awaited them outside the only city they had known. Word comes and drifts away with the Bringers of the word, who arrive and depart as quickly as the messages they bear. Help is on the way, food is coming. Neither is true.”

Grace: So I feel like I came to writing a little bit later in life. I was drawn to the stories of the folks I worked with when I was doing my work in New Orleans and on my days off from work, like a lot of people, you know, living in New Orleans, fresh out of school, I would wander into the French market. I would, you know, just sort of look around. And whenever I was in the French market, every now and then I would come across West African market women or women who I kind of knew were probably Nigerian. Sometimes you see each other, maybe something you're wearing the way you talk, and you're like, okay, they're West African, and in some cases, Nigerian. And I would strike up conversation, get to know some of these women. And this was 2005 before Katrina hit. I happen to have moved from New Orleans just a couple of months before, so I, you know, just missed Hurricane Katrina, and when the storm hit, I was watching, along with the rest of the world, I was watching the horrors of the flooding and the aftermath and some of the criticism about the preparation of the officials with the levees and all of those things. And the first thing I thought about was women like the market women, anyone who is new to a community, people who are vulnerable, who are marginalized, when there is a call for an evacuation, where do these people go? I thought about myself having lived in New Orleans recently before the storm hit. And you know. Being new to the city. I didn't know my co workers as well. I didn't have a car, right? And so I thought about those things that when we say, okay, there's an evacuation, where do people go, especially if they're limited with resources? And so I thought about those market women, and that is how I came up with the story of Amina, this young woman who had lived in Nigeria wanted to make a new life for herself. Arrives in New Orleans. She's working in the French Quarter, and, you know, the storm is bearing down on the city. And what happens to her during the storm? What are the implications for her and her family after the storm? And I really wanted, I thought it was important, to reach in time backwards to get a sense of who are these people in this moment, right? Because sometimes we, you know, we tell the story of what happens to people in a natural disaster, but how did they come to live there? How do they relate to their environment? Have they encountered similar storms? How do they go into it? Are they fearful? Are they nonchalant? Are they hopeful? Do they think they can handle it? It's a story about women through the generations. It's about separation, you know, between continents, and attempt to reconcile through familial trauma, familial issues and love between a mother and daughter. So I wanted to tell a really, as much as I could, a holistic story with the storm at the center, but also the human story of who these individuals were throughout. You know, one of the things I also wanted to do with this novel is with the structure to sort of get at the layers of the different identities that are intersecting in the novel. So we have the mother and daughter, we have the cultural aspects of Yoruba traditions, Yoruba religion meeting up with Christianity, and the sort of tensions between that, the tensions between individual desire, right, and sort of what your culture or tradition or religion says is possible for you, and this individual desires coming up against natural disaster and some of the things that are inevitable. And so I wanted to play with those tensions, the layers of characters trying to move between these various worlds of what they want, what's prescribed for them, what is happening in their environment and the ways that all of that, you know, all of those things come together at one time.

Kim: I really felt that tension, specifically with Amina and also with Esther, a bit of dreaming for something more versus what you have or what you're told by your mother or by society or by your local culture of what you should have or what you have right now, but wanting more and coming at a climate lens, I just kept thinking about this culture of consumption that we have and of always wanting more, and this tension of like what is enough and Being satisfied with what you have now, versus or being where you are now versus like, always need to go somewhere else. And I loved those bits were of like confusion or complicated emotions with Amina when she first went to New Orleans and felt this, like she already felt like, Oh, this isn't going to be enough. Or am I ever satisfied?

Grace: I love that you I love that you picked up on that. Because one of the things that you know, there are so many African Nigerian writers writing fiction in different ways, and I didn't want this to be a novel where there's this young woman in Nigeria, sort of having the traditional American dream, where she's like, you know, America, you know, is the economic or socio economic way out of my problems. Amina in Nigeria, would, you know, be characterized as coming from a middle class family? Her mother has a business. She's educated. It wasn't so much that her life is terrible. But I think sometimes all of us can identify with this desire to for life to be more than what it is right now. And we can't always quite pinpoint what it is that's missing or what it is we're wanting. We just know it's not this. And I wanted to write a character who had that inner longing for more, and when she arrives in New Orleans, she sees a lot of the same, you know, evidence of wealth disparity as exists in the city. She. Came from Nigeria, and you're so right that you know, when you think that you want something, and you get there and you know, she comments on the house being bigger, or the car that Rasheed, her cousins and Fatima that they had, it was a nice car. It was a nice home, but it didn't satisfy that longing. It wasn't enough for her, and it still felt like something was missing. And I love the way you tie it to that, the culture of consumption, and in terms over consumption, that it doesn't satisfy that thing that feels missing from our lives. And I think that is a story of Amina, to some extent, reaching for something, not quite getting there. So that's a beautiful way that you approach that.

Kim: I wanted to ask your sense of place in Nigeria. Is there a certain environmental aspect, or could be weather? Do you have a first memory as a kid of going to Nigeria and something natural in the landscape that really make you, made you feel at home.

Grace: So we have this phenomenon known as like the harmonton the harmonton season, where it's really dry and cold, and it's not necessarily as cold as you know, I live in Portland, and I grew up on the east coast here or in the US, it's not that kind of cold, but it's this sort of, it's like a bone chilling cold, where the air really sort of feels like it's in your bones, and it's like the dry season. And I have childhood memories of, you know, your skin is really dry, needing to moisturize your skin, or it's windy, you know, the dust, the sort of like the erosion in the ground. And I think there are, I think there's a part in the novel where I talk about that, and I think that, for me, was a really memorable part of growing up that when that season came up, the dry season that you know, you would make sure you have your skin moisturizer, drinking more water, staying away from being outside when the dust was in the air. And so I was also trying to get, you know, as a storm was looming in New Orleans, for Amina to think about, you know, in the same way that you asked me, What were her experiences with weather before? Because I think the perspective we take into a natural disaster often is influenced by what we've experienced before, where we've lived, how we navigated those times. And I think there's a point where Fatima is trying to get Amina to understand that, okay, you've had some experiences with heavy rains in Nigeria, but this is really different, and the outcomes that you know, Fatima had seen were more dire. But I think even sort of having that sense of, you know, the heavy rains in Nigeria, I think Amina was unprepared for what happens in New Orleans and the aftermath.

Kim: I wanted to ask you about communication in particular. And there used to be this older model of communication, as you have a message and you deliver it to someone who receives it through one particular medium. And it's kind of a one way thing, but now a more nuanced idea of that is that we exist in ecosystems that are communicating back and forth through multiple mediums. So I don't know if it's possible for you to relate this from the US to Nigeria or from the literary world to a more physical world. But how do you see yourself as an author, existing in these communication ecosystems with the messages you're trying to deliver through this novel?

Grace: I think, as I was, you know, sort of thinking about this conversation that I was having with you, I was thinking about myself and the way that even my own thinking around the climate has shifted over the years. It used to feel maybe like 10, 15, years ago, like that thing that was in the future and that you would hear about, and you would, you know, often, only hear about it in this context of, you know, it's coming. It's terrible. It's going to right and just not being more nuanced, even in my own understanding, what does that mean? What can I do now? Are there things that we do every day, and how that has shifted, I think, right with podcasts like yours, telling layers of stories about the climate and different ways that people can relate to, whether it's literature and music film, and you know, I love those sort of framing of the podcast as how we talk talking about how we talk about the climate. I love that, right?

Grace: Because I think I've shifted in the way that I hear conversations about the climate, I think I feel less intimidated, as you know, I think because of the work that so many people have done, and, you know, reaching people about the fact that it is here now. It's not something that's far in the future and that we can see the implications of it in daily life, right? So that I would find it really difficult to believe that, you know, I know there are people who are still in denial about it, but Right? But seeing how we're impacted almost weekly, things that are happening with more frequency with more intensity, that are affecting even areas that maybe were not affected 10, 20, 30 years ago. And so I think of, you know, all of us sort of influencing each other in the way we communicate and we receive information, and having different I sort of, I guess, sort of different roles to play, right? That we can all talk about that climate. Is it just something for scientists or the people who study it formally, that it's this idea that it is a living, breathing part of our daily existence, in writing, in literature, in the stories, and I think the aspect of “The Edge of Water” brings is to look at, you know, the way it impacts immigration, the way it impacts mother, daughter, relationships, people who are separated by distance, decisions people make about where they live, what happens after the, you know, after a storm, how do people piece their lives back together? What happens to relationships?

Grace: I was driving the other day, and I know a lot of Oregonian, Oregonians are made fun of for saying I've heard on OPB, and OPB is our version, or sort of the, you know, the affiliate for NPR. And I was listening to the segment about, and this is sort of a trigger warning for anyone who's listening, but that after storms and after natural disasters, that suicide rates actually go up right in communities that have been impacted. And that was the first time that I heard that, right? This was, you know, shortly after the book had come out, and I was thinking about, you know, that's not something we often talk about in, you know, when we talk about natural disasters and the aftermath, how are people's mental health after, you know, these things occur. And so, just something that, you know, I think about in terms of this book is that it's really a story about a family that tries to make sense of this natural disaster, that tries to stay together in spite of these environmental forces that pull them apart and try to bring their try to reconcile, try to have hope, and in some cases, love coming full circle. And so I think that it's sort of a little, you know, corner of the conversation, another layer to the conversation.

Kim: Could you please tell us about “The Edge of Water”?

Grace: “The Edge of Water” is the story of a young woman, Amina, who is living in Nigeria and hoping for more than the life she's been born into. She dreams of life in America, which happens to be the path for her, and lands in New Orleans, just as Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on the city. And it's a story about how she navigates the storm, the impacts of it on her family and the aftermath. And it's really, you know, even with the storm at the center, it's a story about hope, about love, reconciliation, and how we reach for the love that still exists, even after a natural disaster.

Kim: Beautifully described. Where can people find this book? Where would you recommend going to read it? And what other channels can you be found on? Where can people find your work?

Grace: Yes, so “The Edge of Water” is available wherever you buy books, and hopefully you are somewhere where you can support your independent bookstores. It's at Powell's. If you're in Portland, Oregon, it's at book shop.org you can then buy it from a local, you know, bookstore and an indie bookstore, it's pretty much everywhere online where books are sold. I am on various social media platforms, primarily right now Instagram, so it's, you know, at olufunke dot Grace dot Benkole,, which is my full name on Instagram. Sometimes I'm on what's now called X, I guess, less frequently, so I'm online. I'm always happy to hear from folks who have read the book, who are interested in the book. And yeah, I'd love to communicate with readers. Absolutely.

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Kim: And that’s our episode for this week. Thank you to Grace Bankole for her time, and go check out “The Edge of Water” wherever books are sold!

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Kim:

You've been listening to Climate Decoded’s Climate Chats.

Climate Decoded is produced by Chantal Cough-Schulze, Lara Heledd Davies-Jones, Isabel Baudish, Greg Davies-Jones, Jens Wendel-Hansen, Jamie Stark, Alex Teske, and me, Kim Kenny. To read the transcript, learn more about today's guests and find other resources, check out the show notes. To keep up with the podcast, follow us at climate underscore decoded on Instagram and climate decoded podcast on LinkedIn. To support the show, please write us a review and recommend this episode to a friend. You can donate to the podcast on our Buy Me a Coffee page, which you can find in the show notes. Every little bit helps us bring you more climate content. Thanks for helping us get more people thinking about, talking about and acting on climate change until next time, take care of yourselves and keep up the good work.

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