Three years ago, Funmi Fetto sat opposite me in a cafe in Mayfair. She suddenly came across as uncharacteristically taciturn, even nervous. This was not the behaviour I had come to expect from Funmi – the fiercely intelligent and outspoken woman who was once my editor. She wanted, she told me, to talk about a new career move, and her timidity once again puzzled me. Funmi’s career is littered with bold pivots; as an acclaimed journalist (she is currently Style Editor of British Vogue), as a podcaster and author – publishing two books, including the bestselling Palette: The Beauty Bible For Women Of Colour.
“I’m writing fiction,” she confessed, almost clandestinely. That moment was my first introduction to what would become Hail Mary, her startling collection of short stories, one of which has already been longlisted for this year’s VS Pritchett Short Story Prize.
I’m not surprised. For though she admits to being nervous about embarking on a new writing style, Hail Mary belies none of this. It is a dazzling tour de force of unforgettable characters, witty one liners (“He would have slept through Biafra”) and smart, pacey plotting. If anything, her journalistic prowess shines through. As she tells me, when we finally catch up on the finished book: “I like observing people.”
The collection – which weaves together nine tales of nine utterly distinct women, united only by their Nigerian nationality – comes at a fecund and necessary time for foregrounding often-marginalised voices. As mass deportations in the United States cause international outcry and as the lived experiences of minority communities are often cruelly negated in public discourse and legislation, many of Funmi’s narratives – particularly those that centre the diaspora – remind us of the often-ignored humanity behind the immigrant experience.
“I originally was not necessarily talking about Nigerian women,” she says, “I was just thinking about women.” Yet when she did begin writing, she drew inspiration from the many she knew: women she had heard of or seen or (as she says) “dreamed about”, and the result was a celebration of national nuance that Funmi had too often found lacking. “How do you categorise one race or one culture into a person?” She says; “It just doesn’t really exist. Nigeria is a very varied country. It has different states with their own dialects and ways of doing things. I really wanted to show that they weren’t a monolith.”
Funmi’s powerful examination of Nigerian womanhood makes her a worthy addition to this year’s stellar lineup of diasporic literature – not least Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s long-awaited Dream Count and Chika Unigwe’s mesmerising upcoming novel, Grace. The women of Hail Mary are disparate fully realised creatures: young, old, scheming, mournful, funny and desperate. Theirs are stories of abuse and entrapment, of yearning and memory, of the pains of assimilation and the loss of identity. All had a different genesis over the years in which Funmi has been compiling them.
“My husband reminded me the other day that I started writing one, Dodo Is Yoruba For Fried Plantain, right after we got married, which means I’ve been thinking about these women for over 15 years!” She looks shocked as she tells me, before explaining the origins of that particular story, which centres a new widow who realises, after the death of her English husband, that she has sublimated her own sense of self. “I was thinking about how, when a woman gets married to someone from a different culture, they can end up losing themselves,” she says. “I was interested in what happens when you wake up and think: I’ve lost the things that have shaped who I was or who I am supposed to be, and then it becomes that whole journey of trying to rediscover it.”
Another story, Samuel 6: 14 2 – which opens the book – stars a pastor’s wife who has a rather sinister plan up her sleeve for leaving her controlling husband. “I was in a church in Nigeria, and I saw someone get up to do the welcome for the pastor,” Funmi remembers. “I looked at her, and I suddenly saw this whole character in that one moment.”
As the title (which refers to the eponymous character of one story whose ‘miraculous’ gift is evading UK immigration laws) suggests, much of Funmi’s book toys with ideas of faith. “I am a practising Christian. I grew up in the church, and there are a lot of ways that the Black church operates, and anyone who has grown up in the church will find moments they completely recognise that will resonate with them,” she tells me. “I wanted to explore how our cultures shape us and how faith shapes us in different ways and makes us make certain choices that might not be within our control.”
Throughout Funmi’s book there is absolutely an undercurrent of questioning and doubt (she jokes that as a child she was always in trouble for ‘questioning everything’). Much of the impetus within her narrative is this restless urge to escape something – a bad relationship, a dangerous memory or simply a dearth of feeling.
“I’m always really interested in kicking against the boxes that the world wants to put you in,” she explains. “I’m always asking ‘why’? As a Black woman, you do feel that pressure to shrink into certain spaces and conform, but after a while, you’re uncomfortable with that, because that’s just not who you are. I wanted to explore that in these stories; these confines that you are put in, whether it’s by society or by your faith, or by the expectations of your culture. I think all of us need to break free of something.”
