Stay with Me insisted on being written —Adebayo

Ayobami Adebayo is the winner of the 2018 edition of the 9mobile Prize for Literature. In this interview held at the upscale office of her Nigerian publisher, Ouida Books, she speaks on the process of writing her winning work, ‘Stay with Me’ and how books have been her life companion, among other issues. Excerpts:

HOW does the 9mobile Prize for Literature rank on your list of honours?

The 9mobile Prize for Literature is unique and special because it recognises first novels by African authors. For me, it means something that literary luminaries from Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda would read all the books and first pick my novel among a long list of nine and when they whittled it down to three, it was still among and eventually it won because the story is very much in some way taken from this place. It’s a very particular story. I think some aspect of it, could only have happened in southwest Nigeria, for instance. There are aspects of it that are universal and can speak to anybody anywhere, but there are things in it that I believe that someone who doesn’t understand, say Yoruba, would not even notice. So, it’s exceptional that there’s an award meant for African writers that recognises that.

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How long did it take you to complete the book?

I started writing it in 2010, and I had what would be the final draft by the end of 2015. So, it took about five years from start to finish; from actual writing. But I had started thinking about it in 2008; the year I left [Obafemi Awolowo University] Ife. I remember I was still in Ife when I got the idea, but I knew I wasn’t ready to write a novel yet so I waited for another two years, and then I started working on it.

You must have had several feedbacks after you published the book, but how did you feel after you read Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times?

I can’t even describe it because she’s probably the most respected literary critic in the world. I first came across the review, I think, on Twitter. It was late in the evening, and I just saw that the New York Times had mentioned my handle. I thought what’s going on and I saw that she was the one that had reviewed my book. For like 20 minutes, I didn’t go to read it because I was like, why did they give this woman my book? Eventually, I got to it, and it was astonishing. It was just stupefying. First, I wasn’t expecting a New York Times review. If there was going to be a New York Times review, I didn’t think that it would be their chief critic, and for it to be such a positive review, even now I’m still astonished by it. I don’t think anybody ever sits down to write a novel, particularly a first novel and dare to imagine that can happen.

What were the influences that formed the crux of the book?

It was a question of several things coming together. First being that one of the threads in the novel is sickle cell disease. Around the time I started thinking about the book in 2008, I just lost a friend to the disease. So, it was on my mind.  I was doing some reading around it; some research about it and observing how her family was coping with the loss. Therefore, I decided to write a short story about a couple whose marriage had broken down because they had a child who was living with sickle cell disease and they didn’t know how to deal with it. When I finished that story, I remember just thinking there’s more to this thing.

There’s something here that needs more. So, for another two years, I kept taking notes. Other ideas would come, I would write them down before I then decided to write the novel. So, it was both a question of something that was bothering me, that I was trying to think through and also working on a short story that felt bigger than the 2,500 words that initially was because I kept getting ideas. In the course of those two years, I would walk into a place, and all I would be able to think of was the characters in the novel. So, it felt like a book that insisted that it had to be written after a certain point.

I was going to ask if you needed to make a case for sickle cell in the book?

No, I didn’t actually. The way the book is structured, you feel everything through the characters, so it’s not academic. There’s a scientific part of it; that’s not the primary concern. The primary concern is how it impacts the lives of these people; their emotional lives, the material realities that they have to deal with because of this disease. What I then had to do was all the medical research, and how to distil it through the characters because it’s not a medical textbook, it’s a novel. It was primarily about the characters, not necessarily the academic or scientific part of the issue.

How in-depth is your knowledge of Yoruba language which you find generously in the work?

I think it’s well above average. I speak, write and read it very well.  In terms of studying it, I stopped at secondary school; most people do. It was my first language; not even just Yoruba. My dialect, Ijesha, was the first language I picked up. I speak it very well.

No wonder the critic Molara Wood, who is also Ijesha, was impressed with your portrayal of Ijesaland in the book

It’s home, and it’s a place that I want to see more and more in literature. That was one of the things I wanted to do with this book; to write about this place that means a lot to me. I was born in Lagos, and then my family moved to Ilesa. I spent like five years there before we moved again. My formative years as a child, when you are picking up language, was in that environment and by the time I was working on the novel, I was back there. I was working at the Federal Research Institute for like a year or two before I then left. And because my family is from there, I go back from time to time.

Margaret Atwood and Chimamanda Adichie have mentored you, what are your plans regarding empowering upcoming writers?

I think it’s an opportunity to do that. Just last week, I had the chance along with Teju Cole and Emmanuel Uduma to facilitate a workshop for writers. I’m interested in doing those kinds of things.

Did writing Stay with Me cost you anything?

I think that any piece of writing that’s going to have any form of impact would probably have caused the writer something;  in terms of pushing yourself to do all the work; to say that I’m not only going to do this, but I’m also going to add all of these layers to this book. That takes time, effort and research. For two sentences, you can spend two weeks researching to get a detail right. So, that’s part of the price you pay. And for a book as harrowing as Stay with Me is, a lot of people talk to me and say I cried. I tell them, I know because it was difficult for me to write because if you’re going to write that in a way that will feel real to your leaders, there’s a sense in which you have to go through everything with the characters and that has its own emotional cost.

Who do you read?

I read a lot of people. Toni Morrison, who just passed on, is a massive influence on me. There’s an American writer called Elizabeth Strout; she writes these very quiet novels about Maine which is not the most popular place in the US. James Baldwin is somebody that I also go back to; Wole Soyinka is a huge influence on me. The first works I came across that were by him were his plays, and this was when I was maybe about 13, and I thought I was going to be a playwright which hasn’t happened so I quickly began to read many of his novels that I could find and I continue to treasure them.

There’s a writer called CheikhHamidou Kane. He has this book called ‘Ambiguous Adventure’ published in the 60s. I think it’s a brilliant novel and everybody should read it: the Senegalese writer, Ousmane Sembene. Yes, I fell in love with books very early. They have been my life companion. It’s an endless list, and it’s ever-growing.

Is this why you studied Literature in English?

Yes. Go to school to read; why not?

People think that persons who pore a lot over books that their lifestyle is uninteresting, would you agree to that?

I think my life is exciting. I don’t know about other people.

What do you do for fun?

I read, and I enjoy baking. It’s very calming.  I like trying new food.

So, is writing your only means of economic sustenance?

Yes, this book has made it possible. It wasn’t possible before I wrote it. I was working full time while I was writing this book, but it’s done so well that that has become possible for now.