was born in 1988 in Lagos, studied English literature and Creative Writing with Margaret Atwood, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and wrote a debut novel that sold immediately in 13 countries. “Stay with me” is the name of this novel. Therein Ayòbámi Adébáyò tells the story of a couple that tries in vain to get a child. It comes to the damage that the male Pride can do to the pressure that women exert in the relationship. And it goes to the sickle cell anemia, those with hereditary disease, which is Adébáyòs large topic. The Interview comes after a long night (of sleep was not to think during the journey from Lagos to Berlin) still awake. If the flight had been turbulent? No, she explains, and ordered two coffees. You have discussed with another Nigerian-born writer on the political situation in the country. It is one of the few moments during the next hour, in the she’s not smiling.
“A childless woman in Nigeria is a tragedy,” is a sentence right at the beginning of your novel, whose action takes place in the eighties. How is it today?
I wish I could say that the Situation has changed fundamentally, but the vast majority of society still thinks so. Childlessness is regarded as a tragedy, anywhere, it is in the cities not much better than in the country.
And this childlessness is still – as in your novel – as a matter of the woman seen?
Mostly Yes. I remember being this way even as a child, has irritated. If in the Church for prayer was called, they asked the childless women to the front, as you would ask for more. And if the parents of Friends, couples languages, had no children, it was always rests with the women.
When you was home it’s different?
Yes. It has, however, in the Phase when I started to notice these things and me to deal with, almost made things worse. It was as if you fell out of the world, which has always been regarded as normal – as my idea of “normal”. But all of the irritating phrases that listened to my sister and I, as Teenagers, were the Norm – and we are the exception. At home, my Cousins lived at times, it was obvious that the boy was made to perform the same tasks acquisitions, and we are in discussions about love or life plans, there is no difference.
you say this even now quite combative.
This is probably a habit. I had to fight in school as a Teenager, the boys in our school, took over the cleaning service as well as the girls. That was the end of the nineties! The boys were a little pissed at me, and the worst thing was that my classmates whose anger opposite nothing.
But?
drew immediately: “Okay, then we do it.”
And you?
I have brought the matter before the Director of the school. After a while of protest, the boys have mitgeputzt. My mother is a Doctor and teaches at the University. So I was always immediately in front of eyes, what is possible and normal – even, in the way that my parents as a Couple. There was nothing, what was the Problem of the one.
