Teju Cole

Teju Cole
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Born	Obayemi Babajide Adetokunbo Onafuwa (1975-06-27) June 27, 1975 Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Occupation	Novelist, Photographer
Alma mater	Kalamazoo College Columbia University
Notable works	Open City
Notable awards	2012 PEN/Hemingway Award 2012 New York City Book Award for Fiction 2013 International Literature Award
Website
www.tejucole.com

Teju Cole (born June 27, 1975) is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian.

Personal life and education

Cole was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Nigerian parents, and is the oldest of four children. Cole and his mother returned to Lagos, Nigeria, shortly after his birth, where his father joined them after receiving his MBA from Western Michigan University. Cole moved back to the United States at the age of 17 to attend Western Michigan University for one year, then transferred to Kalamazoo College, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1996. After dropping out of medical school at the University of Michigan, Cole enrolled in an African art history program at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, then pursued a doctorate in art history at Columbia University. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Career

Author

Cole is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day is for the Thief (Nigeria: Cassava Republic, 2007; New York: Random House, 2014; London: Faber, 2014), and a novel, Open City (New York: Random House, 2012; London: Faber, 2012). He is currently working on two new books: Known and Strange Things, a collection of more than 40 essays, expected to be published in 2016, and Radio Lagos, a non-fictional narrative of contemporary Lagos. Salman Rushdie has described Cole as "among the most gifted writers of his generation". He is currently the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. From June to November 2014 he was "writer in residence" of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich.

Open City

Written in 2011, the novel focuses on "Nigerian immigrant Julius, a young graduate student studying psychiatry in New York City, has recently broken up with his girlfriend and spends most of his time dreamily walking around Manhattan. The majority of Open City centers on Julius’ inner thoughts as he rambles throughout the city, painting scenes of both what occurs around him and past events that he can’t help but dwell on. Ostensibly in search of his grandmother, Julius spends a number of weeks in Belgium, where he makes some interesting friends. Along the way, he meets many people and often has long discussions with them about philosophy and politics. He seems to welcome these conversations. Upon returning to New York, he meets a young Nigerian woman who profoundly changes the way he sees himself."

Open City was translated into ten languages and has received generally positive reviews from literary critics. James Wood in The New Yorker calls it a "beautiful, subtle, and, finally, original novel". According to The New York Times, "the novel’s importance lies in its honesty." The Independent characterizes Open City as "hypnotic", "transfixing", and a "striking debut" for Cole, while Time referred to the novel as "a profoundly original work, intellectually stimulating and possessing of a style both engaging and seductive."

Journalism and social commentary

Cole is a regular contributor to publications including The New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Granta, The New Yorker, Transition, The New Inquiry, and A Public Space. He is the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine.

Cole has been credited with coining the term White-Savior Industrial Complex with a series of Tweets followed by an article published in The Atlantic titled "The White-Savior Industrial Complex". The original series of Tweets that precipitated the article elicited a response from NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof whom Cole named as an example of a White Savior. Kristof mistakenly referring to Cole, a Nigerian-American, as a Ugandan, said that he believed Cole was part of a backlash against white humanitarians from middle-class African scholars. Kristof said that he felt uncomfortable because he thought that Cole was saying that "white Americans should not intervene in a humanitarian disaster because the victims are of a different skin color." Cole responded, saying that he was concerned by Kristof's sentimentality and his lack of analysis of the context of humanitarian need in Africa: "All he sees is need, and he sees no need to reason out the need for the need."

Alongside Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Peter Carey, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, Cole was one of six writers who protested the PEN American Center gala honoring the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with its "Freedom of Expression Courage" award in April 2015 by withdrawing as co-hosts of the event.

Social media

Cole's innovative use of social media as a creative platform has been widely acknowledged.

Awards and honors

• 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Open City
• 2012 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner for Open City
• 2011 Time magazine's "Best Books of the Year" for Open City
• 2012 Ondaatje Prize shortlist for Open City
• 2012 The Morning News Tournament of Books finalist
• 2013 International Literature Award for the German-language translation by Christine Richter-Nilsson of Open City
• 2015 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Fiction) valued at $150,000

Bibliography

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Books

Every Day is for the Thief (2007, 2014)
Open City (2012)

External links

• Official website
• "The Arrival of Enigmas", James Wood, The New Yorker, February 2, 2011.
• Interview with Aleksandar Hemon in Bomb (magazine)
• Two-part essay on Cole's construction of sight and vision in Open City: Part 1, Part 2
• Cassava Republic Press website