Africanish Womanhood, the Body in Between: Esinam Bediako and Itoro Bassey in Conversation

Esinam Bediako, a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit, and Itoro Bassey, a Nigerian American writer born in Houston and raised in New England, are both debut, second-generation African-diasporic authors. Bediako’s debut, Blood on the Brain, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in September, and Bassey’s debut, Faith, was published by Malarkey Books in 2022. Both books navigate the identity-building of young women who are trying to find a place in a world that is far removed from the one they’ve mostly been raised in. In their books, narrators navigate the dissociative tension between a family’s domestic space and their outside world.

Esinam Bediako: Can I start by just asking you a question I had from before I knew that I would ever be talking to you author-to-author, back when I had just read your book and was like, wow, this is amazing? I was just curious, as a child of West Africans, what your process was in terms of allowing yourself, I guess, to be comfortable telling a story about your culture without thinking, What are my parents going to say? or What’s that auntie or uncle going to say?

Itoro Bassey: You know, I’m glad that that didn’t happen until after I published the book. It took me, I’d say, ten years to write just because it started off as short stories. And those short stories, I just felt like, when you have to write it, it has nothing to do anymore with how anybody perceives it because there’s something that you just have to get out. I feel that’s what Faith was. Also, I grew up on Toni Morrison, like Jazz or The Bluest Eye, or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It was more difficult to find Africanish literature that spoke to my experience of living what I would call truly in between. And I don’t want to say that to take away from anybody who wasn’t born in the US to West African parents, but it’s so different. It’s a unique experience. I got more lumped in with Black Americans, which I was totally fine with at first, until some of my Black American friends looked at me and saw how I was different, and then it was just like, “Don’t shun me.”

Bediako: Yeah, I had a similar experience. “I am Black, I promise.”

Bassey: As somebody who has always loved writing, I said to myself, “I think you need to put this on paper.” Hopefully, it will not only help you and your own process but also might speak to other people who have gone through or are going through the same thing.

Bediako: That’s interesting because my sister has read parts of the book, Blood on the Brain, but no one else in my family has yet. But I’m anticipating that people will ask, “Is this what happened to you?” Or “How can you say that about our family?” I’m like, “Well, it’s not really our family; it’s fiction. Also, that kind of did happen, but yeah, it’s fiction.”

I feel like, growing up, I read the same classic books you mentioned and somehow came to the conclusion that, well, I don’t really see myself in these books. I don’t see the story of Ghanaian Americans or even Ghanaians. In high school, we did read books like Things Fall Apart, so I thought, okay, there’s a little plug for West Africa. But I kind of wondered, why aren’t we reading anything more modern? Obviously, it’s a classic and a great book, but I just didn’t see myself fully. And since I didn’t see myself there, I think I internalized this idea that writing something similar to my experience was just not done.

Sometimes I look back at some of the stuff I wrote and wonder, “Why was I writing about white kids that I didn’t even know?”—Esinam Bediako

Subconsciously, I guess, I made my writing less personal. It wasn’t until the end of college that I realized I was just writing stories that were rip-offs of Saved by the Bell or, you know, just what I thought other kids were doing, like what teen life would be like for someone else. Then I eventually realized I should write about myself. It’s okay that there aren’t books about this experience. I guess seeing that there were books about other first-generation immigrant families, like one of my favorites, The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, helped. I told myself, “Well, I might not see these Ghanaian American stories, but there are other stories about this in-between-child-of-immigrants experience.” Now there are a lot more of them, these stories about West Africans out in the diaspora, but at the time, there weren’t any that I knew of.

I had to convince myself it was okay to write about myself and deal with any fallout later. You don’t have to feel like someone’s going to be judging you and asking, “Why did I spend this money for you to go to college, and now you’re writing these lies about Ghana? Or why are you complaining about Ghanaian parents?” It was a strange process for me. Sometimes I look back at some of the stuff I wrote and wonder, “Why was I writing about white kids that I didn’t even know?”

Bassey: It’s always interesting for me to hear how other first-gen writers navigate that situation. I think it’s so interesting that you referenced Saved by the Bell. It’s like we grew up on the same shows in a way. Full House, all those. I remember, before I began to write about my experiences, I was actually writing about a group of teenagers drinking. I was like, what, nine? Thinking this is what teenage life was like in 90210. And they were all white, and none of them looked like me at all. I felt like I could write a white character very well because I also grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. It’s interesting.

I would love to know, when you finally decided it was okay to write about your experience, was there a big moment where you thought, This is a shift? Because I think it takes a shift to move from that.

I think it’s so interesting that you referenced Saved by the Bell. It’s like we grew up on the same shows in a way. Full House, all those.—Itoro Bassey

Bediako: It might have been brewing in me all along. College was transformative for me. I grew up in a Black neighborhood but went to a predominantly white private school. I was a scholarship kid, so I had that weird socioeconomic and racial thing going on in my head without really processing it. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know about Black history and culture.

When I went to college, which was also a predominantly white institution, there was more cohesion within the Black community. It wasn’t always perfect, but I felt like there was cohesion with students from Africa, students born in the US whose parents were from Africa, Caribbean Americans, Black people born in America. I felt a sense of unity with the whole diaspora at my college. Being able to take a class on African American poetry, or hearing my classmates talk about books or moments in history I had never heard of, made me realize that just because I don’t see something written about doesn’t mean I can’t write about it. It probably means I should.

What about you? What was your shift?

Bassey: Similar. It had been brewing for a while. I remember that first story I wrote when I was really young about all those white people. It dawned on me that I would never be white. I had to deal with internalized oppression from being so young in a predominantly white and very conservative environment. Also, in Latinx communities, anti-Blackness is real. All those factors jarred me and jolted me until I realized that I would never fit in. It was kind of liberating. From there, I started to write more about my experiences. Still writing from a kid’s perspective, but from a kid in my particular body, an Africanish kid.

My dad, who was a professor, was very big on Black American studies; he taught African history and African American history. He did a lot around how specifically Nigerian immigrants were weaving themselves into the American fabric. I remember reading his papers at a young age because he had me edit them. I think that’s why I heavily identified with Black American culture.

I remember reading Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and some of Alice Walker’s Meridian. Every Christmas, for whatever reason, we watched The Color Purple. One of my best friends was Black American, and she taught me about the Soul Train line. By the time I went to college, I knew I would most likely major in African American studies. That was when I started to see differences between African immigrants, children of Africans, and Caribbeans. I had to contend more with myself and who I really am, and that’s when more of those stories started to come out.

Bediako: That’s interesting you got that history and knowledge from your dad. My dad was mostly not around, and my mom didn’t know too much about African American culture because she didn’t grow up in that. She taught my sister and me to keep our heads down and work really hard, which often meant assimilating to American culture. She experienced prejudice as a nurse, with people in the hospital saying things like, “Why are you here? Go back to Africa.” At the same time, her feeling of displacement or disorientation was more about being an African woman in a different country rather than being a Black woman.

I kind of soaked up that energy from her experience. I always wanted to be African American. It wasn’t that I didn’t like being Ghanaian, but it felt like it would be easier if I were African American. I felt embraced by the Black American community in college, but sometimes they would say things about, for example, the difference between dressing and stuffing, and I didn’t know. And that’s just a silly example—there were other deeper things I didn’t know. I felt accepted but still had to embrace the differences and learn that there are spaces where I might not feel completely comfortable.

I’m curious: what did you grow up speaking? The language your parents spoke, or did you speak another language? What ethnic group are your parents from? All I know of from Nigeria is Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa.

Bassey: We aren’t one of the main groups. We are Ibibio. We usually get mistaken for Igbo. We are located in the south-south region. The language is Ibibio, or some people speak Efik or Annang, if I’m correct. I grew up hearing my parents speak it a lot, but I never really picked it up. I could say certain things like “Good morning,” “I’m here,” “I’m hungry,” and other survival words, but that was it. I remember being told that my dad stopped my mom from teaching us because he didn’t want us to lose our American accent.

When we talk about assimilation, it’s such a mixed bag for us. As kids, we didn’t fully understand what was happening because adults don’t always explain things. Nowadays, millennials and Gen Z emphasize mental health, self-care, and communication. Back then, it was more like, “Stop crying and go to your room.” We were trying to assimilate.

I remember certain things coming up in my family about hanging out with more white people. Association with whiteness was seen as a way of upward mobility. I grew up with a lot of Puerto Ricans and preferred to hang out with them because I felt more comfortable. They spoke Spanish, and I picked it up. I liked the rice and beans, and who didn’t love JLo and Selena Quintanilla-Pérez at that age?

Not knowing my home language was part of the assimilation process. My mom really tried to teach us, but eventually I shunned it because it was simpler to be Black.

Bediako: My older sister had a similar experience. My parents were teaching her Ewe—which is not the dominant Ghanaian tribe, either, by the way. She asked for water in our language at day care, and they didn’t understand, giving her juice, milk, and pop instead (sorry, I’m from the Midwest, it’s gotta be pop). My mom got scared and stopped teaching us the language to ensure we could be understood by Americans. But my mom still wanted us to feel Ghanaian. She would try to show off our limited language skills around other Ghanaian families, but really, we could only say a few things.

I’ve always thought I would feel more Ghanaian if I knew how to speak Ewe. It’s something I incorporated into my character Akosua, who feels out of place because she can’t communicate in her home language.

Bassey: Have you visited Ghana?

Bediako: Yes, but not in a while. I haven’t been since I was in college, so about twenty years ago. When I was younger, I spent about a month or a month and a half there with my mom. I was eight years old then, and it’s my strongest memory of Ghana. We visited a couple of other times when I was older, but this trip when I was eight was memorable because it was longer, and I even went to school with one of my cousins and got a tiny bit of that experience. Visiting was always such a mixed bag of emotions. I was happy to be with my really large family, because we didn’t have family like that in the US. But sometimes they would other me and my sister, teasing us by calling us white, which to them meant American. It felt like a double rejection, not being Black or Ghanaian. So, while I was happy to visit, I also felt out of place.

You lived in Nigeria for a long time, right?

Bassey: Yes, I was there for three years. It was wild. I don’t regret going, but it was during an interesting time. I got there in January 2020, right before Covid hit. By March, the world was in lockdown, and a few months after that, the End SARS protests happened. I was in Lagos during the protests. Before I left, Nigeria’s current president was elected, and there was a banking crisis where you couldn’t get more than ten dollars from the bank ATMs. It was a lot to deal with, but it gave me a better understanding of my parents’ experiences. Living there was a big reality check. It taught me that Africa, specifically Nigeria, is not a place one can escape to. The people there have the full range of human emotions and face serious challenges. My three years there pale in comparison to those who have lived there all their lives or decided to leave for college.

I realized I had romanticized Nigeria, seeing it as an escape from the racism of the United States. But living there made me see it differently. The people there are trying to self-actualize in countries that need serious repair. I wasn’t living within the expatriate bubble; I tried to live as close to a proper, everyday Nigerian as I could, while recognizing my own privileges as an American.

Living there was a big reality check. It taught me that Africa, specifically Nigeria, is not a place one can escape to.—Itoro Bassey

Bediako: I can’t imagine moving to Ghana for any length of time. I always felt like I couldn’t go to Ghana without my mom because she’s the one who makes me Ghanaian. I can’t speak the languages well enough, and I don’t have that base of knowledge. But I wonder if I could get it by living there.

Hearing about your experience living in Nigeria is inspiring. Most first-gen folks I know haven’t done that. What inspired you to go? Did you always want to live there, or was there a specific work opportunity?

Bassey: Full transparency: I initially thought I would rather live in Ghana. People always told me Nigeria was too politically unstable. But then I got a writing fellowship in Kenya and published a short story that a librarian in Abuja read. She invited me to be a guest author at the American International School in Abuja. I spent ten days there and realized I could make a life in Nigeria. I skipped my return ticket to the US, became a freelance writer, and figured things out. Later, a job opportunity in Abuja came up, and I took the risk. It was a difficult experience, but I’m glad I did it because it taught me so much.

Bediako: When did you come back to the US? How was the experience of coming back, especially after the pandemic? I think sometimes about how places I’ve known well feel so different before and after the pandemic, so I would imagine that might feel like twice the culture clash, to come back to the US and also it was in many ways a different US.

Bassey: I got back in March 2023. I’m still going through reverse culture shock. It’s like I have to come back into my body, if that makes any sense. I left during the Trump administration and returned during the Biden administration, in the midst of another presidential election. It’s a different America. It’s not the same. And even when I left, I felt like I was leaving a country that was just on shaky ground for so many reasons.

Bediako: I’m just realizing we didn’t really touch on the question of womanhood—what does it mean to explore Africanish womanhood within an American context?

Bassey: I do wonder, though, because you grew up in, you said, the Midwest, and your mom, you said, was a nurse. She had her own struggles, and you and your sister were trying to figure yourselves out as well. You said you were in a predominantly Black environment, but you went to a white school. How were you perceived, and did your gender have anything to do with it?

Bediako: I don’t know if I was aware enough about how my gender came into play in terms of how I was perceived. Well, actually, I do know that I felt when I was in public school, which was a predominantly Black school, I could see there was a difference in the way the teachers, many of whom were white, perceived Black girls versus Black boys. I was aware that I had a certain privilege in terms of, you know, once you’re not a cute little child anymore, people start freaking out about these Black boys. These Black boys look like they’re dangerous, like they can do something to you. In that way, I was aware that I had a privilege in that when I was walking around as a Black girl, maybe people weren’t seeing me as a threat in the way that they would the Black boys I knew.

But when I went into private school, like you said, it was predominantly white, and there were also a lot of first-gene kids from India, Pakistan, and other places. And a few Black kids, too, of course. At school, I made an effort to make my identity have little to do with gender, and little to do with race or culture. I was the studious one, the nerd, the writer, I felt more comfortable in those roles. I just wanted to not stick out in any way.

I think where I felt most aware of my gender identity was with other Ghanaian families. Because my household was just my mom, my sister, and me, we didn’t have to think about who was the head of household, woman versus man, because my mom was the head, no questions asked. I remember going to a family friend’s house, and I was confused about why everyone was waiting for the father to get served his dinner first. I was kind of like, “What? But what about ladies first?” My mom was kind of surprised I didn’t know that I had to have this kind of deference, but I just didn’t. I sort of felt like, “Well, what are men? I barely even know any men.”

I grew up with this sense that my mom was a lot more feminist than she really was, a little more liberal in terms of gender roles. But I think there are just some traditional ideas she held about gender roles that I didn’t get to see, since we were in an all-woman household. Once I got married, she kind of started treating me differently, saying things like, “You can’t travel without your husband” or “What does your husband think?” or “Why don’t you have dinner ready for him?” She’s gotten better about it, but even right now, I have my mom’s voice in my head reminding me that I haven’t cooked dinner and my husband will be home soon. I’m rambling, and I don’t have a way to put an end to that statement.

Bassey: I’m following you. No, I get it. I’m going to add myself to this equation that perhaps you and I existed in. There’s that school equation where there are so many ways in which we’re not seen, definitely not as desirable. But because I was smart, I got tokenized in certain ways. This didn’t start until a bit later in high school when I decided that I needed to be on honor roll and all that stuff. I didn’t start off as the nerd. I became the nerd, really, to appease my parents, my community, just to prove to them that I could do it.

There was always that feeling, especially as I got older—like in high school—everybody was dating and stuff. There was a way I wasn’t seen. Also, I think the blackness definitely had something to do with it as well. When I think about the people who were held up as desirable back then, it was Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Selena. I remember all of the Puerto Rican girls loved her. There weren’t really any Black women that were held up. The lighter-skinned Black women would be held up, but nobody dark, nobody unambiguously Black. That taught me a lot about where I stood in the world.

But then there was another sphere of the home world where people who looked like you, you saw that they were in relationships. You saw that perhaps they had been the object of desire at some point, but now they were in a different situation. You also saw that there was a very binary way that a woman, a girl, had to be. Because I grew up in a two-parent household, I saw that a bit more, like with the dynamic between my mother and father.

We had a lot of meetings with the Akwa Ibom Association, because that’s the state we’re from. When people would come to the house, it would be the women, the girls in the kitchen, the children upstairs playing, maybe the under-fives or something, and then the men with the beers and stuff, and maybe the older women would be sitting out with the men. I remember observing, because sometimes I remember cleaning a lot or getting ready because it’s important to show that we have a good home, that it’s clean, that we have a bunch of food even if we can’t afford it.

But I also remember not wanting to clean, not wanting to be in the kitchen like that. I would observe other women and girls who really did uphold that kind of cultural norm. That’s also how I learned a lot about womanhood. When I went to Nigeria, I was like, oh, okay. Those lines are very clear. The fact that I don’t know how to cook anything—obviously not good. But then I also became the object of desire, which was very interesting.

It’s been interesting to navigate that and to see the parts of it that I appreciate and other parts where I’m like, I don’t know if this is something I want to continue about African womanhood.

When you grow up with so much distance from your culture and origins, you realize certain things later. When I was in Nigeria, I thought, “Oh, I get certain things now.” This would have helped fifteen-year-old me. I know many first-gens and second-gens feel lost, not fitting in with Black America. As Black Americans discuss their history more, it becomes more defined and complex for those of us who didn’t come from the enslaved history.

Bediako: You mentioning those family gatherings, that really jogged a memory in me. Because when I was really young, we went to events like that, too, with other Ghanaians, and it was a similar situation with the gender roles all mapped out based on where everyone was sitting in the house and what they were doing. I had almost forgotten about that.

Bassey: The more I speak to other first-gens and second-gens, those of us who came from two-parent households, it was usually our mothers taking care of everything. When talking to people, divorce was a major topic. It was such a shame to be divorced, so people would hold on to a marriage even if it was in shambles, just to say they were married. When I think about my own life and the lives of others, I notice many women, especially our mothers’ age, who have separated from their husbands. They might live in different states, like one in Enugu State and another in Lagos, but they remain married for appearances at gatherings. I saw this a lot in Nigeria. It may not be a formal divorce, but it’s still a separation. I feel like we are the product of that.

I think this is an interesting aspect of African womanhood and how, hopefully, we’ll do things differently as mothers or in whatever roles we take on for the next generation. What does it mean to be in a relationship that’s not working but holding on to it because you feel it defines you as a woman?

Bediako: It’s all a process and just keeps on being a process. I don’t think sorting out these identity issues ever ends.

It’s all a process and it just keeps on being a process. I don’t think sorting out these identity issues ever ends.—Esinam Bediako

Bassey: Yeah, it’s a lifelong thing, it seems. What is the way forward? I think what you’re writing is courageous. After publishing Faith and trying to get it reprinted in Nigeria, one publisher was interested, but I wasn’t sure about the contract. Others questioned why it mattered. Some of the publishers were like, “What makes this compelling?” It made me doubt if it was on the right track, like maybe it wasn’t that compelling. But the story was so close to the bone, so that made it difficult. I thought, Okay, maybe I am out of pocket with this book. Finding one’s niche reflects everything, not only in publishing but in relationships and cultures. I might be rambling, but hats off to you for being a sister in arms. We are writing these stories together.

July 2024