I was raised in Apapa, a small port island in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. Growing up, talk of trade floated through the air around me. I’d listen to the banter of hopeful young entrepreneurs who — as they would put it — were into “buying and selling.” Six-year-old me was also an entrepreneur. Each weekend, I wrote a collection of four stories and sold the manuscripts to any person unfortunate enough to walk through the gates of my parents’ house. My creative mind was calibrated to a world of trade and my house was the small port through which I engaged with the world.

Mainstream children’s media arrived at my shores each morning, uplifting, enchanting and educational cargo. However, these TV shows, textbooks, music and more were packed with Eurocentric beauty standards and Western standards of intelligence; toxic values and mindsets that I am still unpacking and unlearning to this day. I was creating and exporting my own art, but even at that young age, I felt the pressure that other African artists feel to translate our stories and identity into Western culture. So my writing followed a strict structure of creating and manipulating. Character name: Funke. Accent: British. Hair: straight. Skin: White. Name correction: Tracy. Now it’s OK for export.

One hot afternoon, my sister’s friend stopped by our house while I was writing. We talked about my work a little, and she lightly suggested that I explore African literature. I didn’t think much of it then, but the thought marinated in my mind for what must have been years. Then, during my time as a Yale Young African Scholar, I was privileged to engage with some of the brightest student leaders in Africa. While attending the program I wrote and shared an essay about perspectives towards identity, which explored brain drain, nationality and the definition of success in Nigerian and African spaces. One good response followed another and the experience inspired me and some other YYAS alumni to found Illino, a nonprofit that encourages culturally-inspired artistic innovation. Illino is where I really honed my process of engaging history and tradition in modern creative work. Exploring history and culture exposed me to the true narrative of Africa’s development, most of which has been corrupted, misplaced or simply stolen and hidden from Africans. I learnt that by writing, I could preserve and share this history. I could validate, empower, educate, unite and even entertain.

“I was creating and exporting my own art, but even at that young age, I felt the pressure that other African artists feel to translate our stories and identity into Western culture.”

— Simi Aluko

Three years and many many stories later, I wrote "How Palm Wine Sours," which is my third stage play. Unlike most of my childhood work, it is a very Yoruba story. It started off as a love story, and it grew into a complex plot-driven narrative that reflects on culture, values and the concept of change and innovation. I started it while on holiday in Lagos, and finished and revised it while at Johns Hopkins University, studying under professor Joe Martin and later, professor Peg Denithorne. Early this year, I worked with 30 awesome students and two professional artists to bring a full production of “How Palm Wine Sours” to life.

Yoruba theater, which has now evolved into the rising genre we know as Nigerian theater, is a complex plait of folktale, drama, riddles, proverbs, song, dance, drumming and poetry. Theater plays a huge role in Yoruba culture, so it was important to understand the Yoruba world and thought to build the world of “How Palm Wine Sours.” In this sense, writing this play was really a process of translating — or exporting — this entire culture into the language of the stage.

When embarking on writing any form of cultural or historical piece, I cannot stress the importance of research. I read work by cultural anthropologists on women in precolonial Yorubaland, traditional government structure, coronation processes and many other elements of culture. Before I wrote the first line of “How Palm Wine Sours,” I had spent two years passively reading about Yoruba culture — mostly because of my work with Illino — and a solid few weeks actively doing research for the play itself. This focused period of learning reflected strongly in my first few drafts, which were very stiff brain-dumps of everything I had learnt. That worked for me as a starting point this time, but in reality it was not the best starting point.

The research is really to help you — the writer — immerse yourself in the world you are trying to build. The elements you learn about must make up the skeleton of your story, not the finishing polish. Your work must be rooted in a very real world that you have to know well. You must understand everyday life, finances, work protocol, religion, taboo and more as your characters’ thoughts, decisions and dialogue will all come from here. After you do this world-building research, then you move to character and plot development. This process will be iterative and therefore a little annoying in the heat of the moment, but really allow the world to build your story. If you are doing it right, it will not restrict but it will open new doors, new words, new conflict and new motives. This process is the key difference between creating an African narrative and an Africa-flavored narrative.

“African art is often produced and mass-exported to the tastes of non-African audiences; in these cases, our art does not represent our whole selves, but only that which is palatable to the market we are serving.”

— Simi Aluko

Another key difference is in choosing your audience. During the writing process, I had a few back-and-forths with my playwriting professor, Joe Martin. One day during our workshop, he pointed out a few phrases that would be confusing to a U.S. audience. I decided and declared that the play was for a Nigerian audience. My professor accepted and supported it, and that was that. African art is often produced and mass-exported to the tastes of non-African audiences; in these cases, our art does not represent our whole selves, but only that which is palatable to the market we are serving. But really, culture is not a business deal.

To me, the best stories are the most truthful ones. “How Palm Wine Sours” taught me that the business of art is really about creating holistic, creative, truthful explorations of life. As storytellers we are often told to write stories that will sell, and in the same breath, that who we are is unstable, unpalatable and unrefined. And no sooner than our identity is burnt in our own fields, it is grown as the major cash crop in another. The practice of tailoring stories to what markets already want is very flawed; our focus should be on adding value through our art. As Mr. Eazi once said, “Where there is value, there will always be profit.”

Simi Aluko

is a storyteller from Lagos, Nigeria who is passionate about the relationship between culturally-inspired innovation and community development in Africa. She is the founder of Illino, an organisation that produces literary work to preserve and celebrate Nigerian culture. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter.