Dr. Olaocha Nwadiuto Nwabara: A labor of love for the community

Photo courtesy of The Geneseo Website

Nwabara’s hard work can be seen through her current project and through the impact she has made on students at Geneseo as a professor over the past six years.

Dr. Olaocha Nwadiuto Nwabara is an assistant professor of West African literature and cultures in the English Department. She has been at Geneseo for six years and has a background in Black Studies, African Studies, and Africana Studies. Nwabara is Nigerian-American, and her family is from Umuahia, a city in Nigeria.

Nwabara explained, “A big philosophy of mine is that the way I teach should be an extension of who I am, and also the way I teach should be an extension of what I've noticed I need, and students need, what I don't need, what the students don't need, and that's constantly evolving so that I can encourage students to be their best selves.”

Nwabara stated that as a Black Studies scholar who focuses on literature and film, a big focus is how her work is useful to the lived experiences of Black and African people first and then how it can be useful to the community second. “My work can never just be for the sake of scholarship or teaching. It has to be beneficial to communities. It needs to be much more social justice-oriented because it is a marginalized community that I'm a part of.” 

She continues, “I also see that when non-Black and African people benefit from it, we all benefit from it, so I want to put that out there— that a big thing for me is encouraging each person's journey to self and then sharing knowledge with them about these diverse cultures.”

One of the projects that she has been working on is a documentary for her late father, Dr. Okechi Nwabara, “who is my favorite person in the world, and I owe so much of who I am to who he was and who he was to me, he was someone who always believed it was important to get me through this world because I didn't choose to be in it.” Nwabara explained her father's role as a girl dad and how he treated the women in his life like royalty. “[He] encouraged us along and really supported us. And I think was very much an example of what a male feminist should look like, someone who really honors the woman in his life.”

She explained that as a community man, her father— a medical doctor —would have access to medicine, take full suitcases of medicine to Nigeria, and give them out for free. “It wasn't just medicine he gave. He gave good vibes.” Nwabra shared with me that he called her his twin. “I was always shy when he would call me that. But now that he has passed, I own it…imagine me being a professor, and I'm teaching you, but then at the same time, I'm giving you advice, I'm trying to crack jokes and trying to make you feel good.” 

Nwabara explained that her father was the same way; he had medical advice, but he also gave social advice. “He's the kind of person that people love so much that, during COVID, when he passed, thousands of people showed up to his online burial,”

Nwabara exemplified that her father was not famous but was well-known in his community due to his good faith and work. “The project was inspired by his desire to tell his story.”  Dr. Okechi Nwabra passed due to COVID-19 and his work in hospitals during this time: “He was a doctor over 60, with preexisting conditions, but made a conscious choice to go back to the hospitals, because, for him, he'd been a warrior, soldier his whole life, and he could help in this war.” Nwabara continues, “So for him, I'm taking a step forward, and that was his destiny, and I have so much respect for him as a result of that.” 

She expressed that, “People didn't really get to say goodbye. And I just thought, well, maybe let me get them something that, like, for the same mentality I have with teaching and media and stuff like that. I'm like, why don't I create something that allows us to engage and enjoy him in a way that's not just like a book that people may not read, but he has a visual, and people can interview, and I can find old videos of him dancing and giving advice.”

Nwabara is also working on a documentary on Nigerian women writers, which has given her some experience to work on her father's project. She was asked if she could do a short documentary with some of her father's patients and some of his colleagues. “I'm looking forward to collecting more of those community interviews and putting that together, and then it becomes something that I hope is useful also for academia, but then also it's going to be useful for his friends and family to process the loss of this man.” 

Nwabara gave me a surprising answer when naming these projects. She explained a philosophy from one of her favorite authors, Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian author. “She talked about, like, not giving out, like, titles and too much detail before the project is ready, not to kind of jinx it, she said, that's a cultural thing, and we're from the same culture…So I'm trying to also honor that.” 

In the end, Nwabara has one main goal regarding her work: “For everything to be the best version of you. Hear some stories, but at the very end, it makes you more confident about yourself or reaffirms something about yourself.”

“This is a labor of love for the community, and I know he would have liked it.”

Find the documentary of Dr. Okechi Nwabra here: The Spirit of Okechi: God's Gift to Us

Find the celebration of Dr. Okechi Nwabra’s life here: Celebration of the Life of Okechi Nwabara, MD