Writers are the most enlightened minds you will ever encounter. They are also the most dangerous. I told this to a friend once, and I meant it. We wield articulation like a weapon, dress up our egos in beautiful sentences, and call it wisdom. Pride runs through our veins thicker than ink. And pride, as they say, brings about the downfall of a people.
But there are exceptions. Leila Aboulela writes fiction, “looking for a place of compassion, a place in which the traveller can share the baggage they carried with them”. Her work radiates a humility that books cannot teach you. Haruki Murakami says simply, “I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books”. You believe him because he also thinks “the sum of all misunderstandings is what makes up true understanding.” These writers have achieved something rare — balance. Not the sort you learn from craft books, but the kind that comes from actually living with your head down and your heart open.
This essay exists because I watched that equilibrium die in real-time on Nigerian literary Twitter.
The tweet that broke the camel’s back
On November 3rd, Akpata Magazine posted: “Listening to audiobooks whilst doing dishes isn’t reading, it’s multitasking with podcasts that have chapters. You’re not ‘reading’ 50 books a year, you’re half-absorbing them at 1.5x speed. Real reading requires focus. It demands intentional engagement with the subject.”
The response was immediate. Vicious. Personal.
Romeo Oriogun, winner of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLGN)-sponsored 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature and Iowa MFA graduate, responded with just six words: “You are just an unadulterated idiot.”
Not an argument. Not a counter-point. Just an insult.
And suddenly everyone found their “-ism.” Ableism. Elitism. Gatekeeping. The literary equivalent of pointing and screaming “witch!” in Salem. No one wanted to engage with what was actually said. They craved blood.
What the science actually says (and why it matters)
Here is the uncomfortable truth that pride would not let us acknowledge: Akpata Magazine was right about the core claim.
Not completely right. Not right in a way that makes audiobooks invalid. But right where it counts. The research is clear and consistent: multitasking destroys comprehension.
Daniel Willingham, one of the world’s leading reading comprehension researchers, states it plainly: “If you’re trying to learn whilst doing two things, you’re not going to learn as well.” His personal practice mirrors his findings: “I listen to audiobooks all the time whilst I’m driving, but I would not try to listen to anything important to my work.”
Studies confirm what anyone honest with themselves already knows:
- Multitasking students take longer to complete assignments and score lower on tests
- Working memory becomes overloaded when attention is divided
- Information gets “shallowly encoded”, making it harder to retrieve when needed
- A 2018 study of 187 university students found that multitasking during lectures significantly impaired their ability to memorise content
The difference is not between reading and listening. It is between focused attention and divided attention. For focused listeners in ideal conditions, comprehension is similar to reading. But here is the critical distinction that psychology PhD student Cody Kommers articulated perfectly: “Reading is something you do, where listening is something that happens to you.”
Reading demands participation. The words would not read themselves. Audiobooks, conversely, continue whether you are paying attention or not. Your mind wanders. The narration keeps going. This is not a moral failing — it is how human cognition works.
The ear vs. the eye: A personal contradiction
I want to say something that might seem to contradict everything above: I believe the greatest reading can be done with the ear. Not whilst washing dishes. Not at 1.5x speed during your commute. Not whilst your attention is split between the story and the traffic. But when you sit still, close your eyes, and let a masterful narrator guide you through Purple Hibiscus or Things Fall Apart — when you give that performance your complete attention — something magical happens. The language becomes music. The story becomes embodied. You are not just reading words — you are experiencing them in your blood.
This is not the same as claiming all listening is equal to all reading. Context matters. Attention matters. Purpose matters. The problem is not audiobooks. The issue is our collective refusal to acknowledge that not all ways of engaging with books produce the same results.
The death of nuanced literary discourse
When did we become so fragile? Akpata Magazine noted in their response that they suggested “different modes of engagement produce different kinds of understanding” and proposed “that reading, in the traditional sense, requires a particular quality of attention that multitasking naturally dilutes.”
This is not novel. It is not controversial outside Twitter. It has “been proven by dozens of academics in the reading and psychology scholarship.” But somewhere along the way, literary discourse acquired an allergy to judgment. The suggestion that one approach might yield deeper comprehension became “gatekeeping.” The notion that Ulysses might reward focused attention more than distracted skimming became “elitist.”
As Akpata correctly observed: “The term has become a convenient cudgel used to shut down conversations without engaging with the substance of the argument.”
The ableism accusation is particularly dishonest. Nobody, literally nobody, suggested that people with visual impairments or reading disabilities should not use audiobooks. The leap from “focused reading offers something different from listening whilst washing dishes” to “people with disabilities should not engage with books” requires “a level of gymnastic interpretation that would impress Olympic judges.”
True ableism would be denying audiobooks as valid accommodations. Noting that multitasking reduces comprehension is neuroscience.
The poet who shared his prize money
When Romeo Oriogun won the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature, he announced he would share $20,000 of his $100,000 prize with the other two finalists — an act of generosity that moved the entire literary community. He has written powerfully about being a queer writer in Nigeria, about how “spaces dominated by heterosexual writers have rejected and pushed queer voices into the dark.” His poetry collection ‘Nomad’ tackles displacement and exile with what judges called “fresh language.”
This is an important context, not because it excuses anything, but because it makes what happened more painful. A writer who has fought against silencing voices called someone “an unadulterated idiot” for expressing an opinion about reading practices. A writer who has experienced literary gatekeeping weaponised accusations of gatekeeping to avoid engaging with an argument. A writer celebrated for generosity chose personal attack over a generous interpretation.
The contradiction is stunning. And it reveals something rotten in how we do literary criticism now. We have replaced argument with accusation, analysis with attack, and nuance with tribal loyalty.
The writer’s disease
This is where pride comes in, that writer’s disease I mentioned at the start. We spend our lives crafting the perfect sentence, the devastating argument, the unassailable position. When someone disagrees — especially publicly — it feels like violence. Our ego, that thing we have spent years polishing and protecting, suddenly feels exposed.
The mature response is to engage. To say, “I see your point, but here is where I think you’re wrong.” To acknowledge: “You might be right about X, even though I disagree about Y.”
The immature response, the prideful response, is to attack character instead of refuting argument. To find an “-ism” rather than articulate disagreement. To shut down conversation rather than risk being wrong.
Murakami once said, “People who are too decent can’t write novels.” Perhaps. But people too proud to acknowledge when they are wrong cannot sustain a literary culture.
Aboulela started writing after she “failed at getting a PhD in Statistics”. She learned from that failure rather than letting pride destroy her. She writes to find “a forgiving place where people can be given a second chance,” even in her fiction. This is the kind of grace that builds community.
Calling someone an idiot for making an argument you do not like? That is the kind of pride that tears it apart.
What both sides get wrong
Akpata Magazine was right about attention and comprehension. But they were tone-deaf about context and accessibility. Their framing invited the backlash it received. Their critics, on the other hand, were right that audiobooks are valuable and legitimate. But they were dishonest in transforming a claim about multitasking into an attack on disabled people. Both sides abandoned nuance for certainty. Both chose performance over persuasion.
Here is what should be uncontroversial but apparently is not:
- Audiobooks are real reading. Full stop. They engage with the same literary content, activate similar cognitive processes, and deserve respect as a legitimate way to experience books.
- Different modes of engagement produce different results. Focused attention — whether reading or listening — produces deeper comprehension than distracted attention. This is cognitive science, not value judgment.
- Accessibility matters. Audiobooks provide crucial access for people with disabilities, busy schedules, or different learning preferences. This does not make all forms of engagement equivalent.
- Context is everything. Listening to fiction during a commute enriches your life. Trying to learn complex material whilst doing dishes is demonstrably less effective than focused study. Both can be true.
- Literary culture needs honest debate. A community that cannot discuss the nature of reading without accusations of bigotry is a community in trouble.
What African literary culture needs now
We need fewer insults and more arguments. Fewer accusations and more analysis. Fewer reactions and more reflection. We need writers who can disagree without impugning character, who can hold strong opinions without shutting down conversation, who can acknowledge when they are wrong without feeling it diminishes them.
We need the kind of balance that Aboulela and Murakami exemplify, not as craft techniques you can workshop, but as ways of being in the world. The humility to listen. The confidence to disagree. The wisdom to know the difference.
Akpata Magazine wrote: “A literary magazine that’s afraid to have opinions about literature is useless. If we can’t say that some approaches to reading offer more than others, then what exactly are we doing?”
They are right. But here is the corollary — a literary community that cannot tolerate opinions without turning them into personal attacks is equally useless.
The way forward
The science is clear: focused attention produces better comprehension and retention than divided attention, regardless of whether you are reading or listening. This is not gatekeeping. It is neuroscience.
Audiobooks are valuable, legitimate, and essential for accessibility. This is not a concession. It is a fact.
The ear can provide the greatest reading experience you have ever had: if you give it your complete attention. This is not a contradiction. It is nuance.
We can love audiobooks whilst acknowledging that listening to ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ at 2x speed whilst meal-prepping probably would not produce the same understanding as reading it slowly with a pen and notebook. We can advocate for accessibility whilst recognising that not all contexts of engagement are cognitively equivalent. We can be kind and inclusive whilst refusing to pretend that all opinions about literature are equally valid.
The alternative — the world we are currently creating — is one where every opinion is either unquestionably affirmed or violently rejected. Where nuance dies in favour of tribal allegiance. Where writers compete not in the quality of their arguments but in the fervour of their outrage.
If African literature is to have a vibrant critical culture, we must learn to disagree without destroying. To critique without character assassination. To argue without anger. To hold strong convictions whilst remaining open to being wrong.
This requires swallowing that pride — the very pride that makes writers simultaneously enlightened and dangerous. It requires recognising that someone can be wrong about one thing without being an idiot about everything. That good-faith disagreement is not a personal attack. That “I disagree” is not the same as “You’re a bad person.”
Romeo Oriogun is a talented poet who has contributed meaningfully to African literature. He is also someone who, in this instance, chose insult over engagement. Both things can be true.
Akpata Magazine makes important contributions to literary criticism. They also sometimes communicate in ways that invite misinterpretation. Both things can be true.
Audiobooks are legitimate ways to engage with literature. Focused attention produces better comprehension than divided attention. Both things can be true.
The question is: can we be mature enough to hold both truths simultaneously? Or will pride continue to murder nuance, leaving us with nothing but tribes shouting accusations across the void?
