Interview with Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is the author of Stay with Me which was shortlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript Prize, the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction, the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Wellcome Book Prize. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Stay with Me was also named Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and the Economist. Ayọ̀bámi has received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, Sinthian Cultural Centre, Hedgebrook, Ox-bow School of Arts, and Ebedi Hills. She holds BA and MA degrees in Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife. Ayọ̀bámi also has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for creative writing.

When did you first consider yourself to be a writer?

When I was 16, one of my short stories was accepted for publication in the Weaverbird anthology in Nigeria and that was such a big deal for me. I was just leaving secondary school at the time, trying to imagine what I might do with my life and suddenly a writing career became more than a fantasy.

Where did your love of literature come from?

I grew up in a family where everyone is a reader. There were always a lot of books around and my parents encouraged me to read, it was very important to them. One year in primary school, my class was next to the school library. We couldn’t check out books but some of my teachers would allow me to skip classes and sit in the library, reading all day. So, it was a mixture of both being in a family where everyone was reading and having access to books at school.

Since then, who have been some of been some of your biggest literary influences?

I think it’s a bit difficult to talk about influences. I can talk about writer I admire or whose work I hope has influenced me. Right now, Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta comes to mind, she’s a Nigerian writer whose vivid and brave writing has meant a lot to me.  Nervous Conditions by a Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga was a huge book for me. Writers whose body of work have meant a lot to me include Wole Soyinka and Toni Morrison. This year I’ve been reading more fiction by Elizabeth Strout and the British novelist Sarah Moss.

How did the story in Stay With Me come to you?

I was working on a short story in 2008 when I realized that it was actually a novel. I said to myself, I don’t think I’m ready to write that novel and let the ideas just sit for two plus years. But just before I wrote that short story, I ran into the mother of one of my friends who had passed on a few years before. I was struck by an expression I caught on her face; it was a mixture of yearning and pain that I couldn’t get out of my mind for a while.  I began thinking about what it must mean to outlive a child and what it takes to survive that kind of loss and just keep going. The germ of the novel came from that expression but as time went on many other things went into it.

How did you get into the two voices of the novel?

From the beginning I knew I wanted to write the book from two perspectives, but it took a while for me to figure out what point of view would be effective for each character. In the initial draft, the wife was in first person and the husband in second person. I felt he was trying to distance himself from what was going on in his marriage, Akin is very reticent and this is not a story he wants to tell. I wanted the style to reflect that internal struggle but the second person POV wasn’t working so I decided to explore other options. When I finally came round to writing his narrative in first person, I knew that his chapters would be shorter and his story would take up about 35 percent of the novel rather than 50 percent which I initially intended. That was one of the things I thought would mirror how reluctant he is to reveal all that is happening in his marriage and give a sense of what his agenda is. In many ways, the novel is a conversation and each character has specific intentions that under guard what they say, how they frame their part of the story and why they are saying all of this now in the first place. Once I had absolute clarity about each character’s intent, I had a breakthrough. Their motives helped me decide what each person would say and what they would never actually verbalise.

The story is both relatable and contextually specific. Did you have a specific audience in mind?

I didn’t have an audience in mind because nobody was waiting for this book. It’s a first novel so the audience was nonexistent. The only person whose opinion I really thought about while I was writing was my sister. She was the first person to read it. It took five years to finish and I was frustrated at many points and wanted to give up on it. I even began working on another book. I thought I couldn’t complete Stay with Me because it wasn’t meant to be my debut novel.  The fact that it has resonated with such a wide and diverse audience has been a marvelous shock.

What have been some of the most proud or surprising moments in the life of the book since it was published in the US one year ago?

It’s been an amazing year for the book in the US. I think the most shocking moments actually happened just before it was published here. It was selected as a Book Buzz pick which was a surprise since the list was made up of just five books of all the books coming out in 2017. And then there was the wonderful New York Times review which also came out before it was published. It was totally unexpected and I’m still stunned.

What have been some of your favorite books that have come out this year?

There’s a short story collection that I just finished this morning called If You See me, Don’t Say Hi by Neel Patel. I really enjoyed that.

What is on your reading list?

There’s a novel called House of Stone, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. It’s already out in the UK but I think it’s coming out later this year in the US. I’m really looking forward to that.

Riley Mang is LAR’s Editor-at-Large. Find more of her work here.