A Conversation with Onyi Nwabineli
“I don’t actually think about the way I write a lot of the time. I write the way I speak. I have a wonderful relationship with language. I adore language. I adore words.”
For those who haven’t read the book, could you tell me a little about the plot, and perhaps also the inspiration for the book?
Sure! Allow Me To Introduce Myself follows 25-year-old Anuri Chinasa who has grown up as the child of a lifestyle and parental influencer, and she’s been made into a child influencer herself. As you could probably guess, it hasn’t been a very positive experience for her, and she’s resented it from a young age. She’s done her best to break away from that lifestyle, so she has a complicated relationship with her family; however, she loves her much younger half-sister, Noelle, who’s being pushed down the same path of child influencing and social media fame. So, Anuri’s doing her best to try and provide another option for her younger sister.
The book also deals with friendship, community, and chosen family – all that kind of stuff. A few people have asked me about my inspiration, and do you know what it is? I used to love and consume that kind of content a lot when I was younger – family vlogging, mummy blogging etc. And I started to think about whether we understood the impact of having their childhoods being presented to strangers on the internet, often for financial gain. It’s something I started thinking about and researching, and this book is the result of that reflection.
Wonderful, thank you. In terms of your writing process, did anything change between your debut and this book?
Well, Someday, Maybe took me six years to write, and Allow Me To Introduce Myself took me six months to write!
Wow!
I mean, don’t ask me how… I wouldn’t recommend writing so quickly! I put myself through a lot in order to meet that deadline. On the other hand, with Something, Maybe, I didn’t have an agent when I started writing and I didn’t have any kind of publisher lined up – it was just a passion project I was working on. And I’m an overthinker, so I did seven drafts. Again, I don’t recommend it! I didn’t have any kind of structure, I just wrote.
For the second book, I learnt that I can’t do that. It doesn’t actually work for me, otherwise it would take me another six years to write the next book. This time, I utilised things I found helpful, such as chapter outlines, writing a clear synopsis at the beginning of the process, creating character profiles where needed, and organising all of my snippets – you know, all of the things that come to us writers in our sleep, in the shower… So anytime I felt that I had writer’s block, having that material in one easily accessible place really helped me to shorten the writing process.
Did your own thoughts about social media change during the research and writing process?
I don’t think so. My relationship with social media is a weird one, I think. If we’re all honest with ourselves, we’re all probably addicted to social media in some way. Although a lot of aspects of social media are positive, I would probably say that it has a net negative effect, and that’s my opinion partly because of the research I did for this book.
When I first started writing and researching this book about two years ago, there was barely anything out there about the impact of social media on child influencers; however, now, especially over the last 18 months, there has been article after article and study after study coming out. Jennette McCurdy’s book brought about a massive explosion of discussion about how parents and caregivers need to take another look at how they’re approaching social media in regard to safeguarding children because, unfortunately, our laws and the people in charge are very slow to catch up with the digital age.
We don’t actually have laws or protections for child influencers, and there are still quite limited protections around social media in general; child actors, for example, have unions, laws, and safeguarding around their finances. Social media stars, however, especially children, don’t have that in this country.
Because I’m an adult, my personal relationship with social media differs greatly from that which a child would have, and what I really wanted to explore was what it means when the parent/child relationship turns into an employer/employee relationship when a child is at a very young age; I wanted to perhaps give people a little bit of pause and reflection on how the very cute and oftentimes completely innocent media we consume contributes to the – there isn’t really a prettier word – exploitation of children online.
Well, it definitely made me think. Sometimes, I find myself just following people online and then almost starting to feel like I know these children when I really don’t. I also think exploring this topic through fiction is a great way to give readers food for thought, as it’s more likely to reach an audience that may not read scientific studies or non-fiction literature on this topic.
I also wanted to touch on your style because, although the book is a very contemporary novel, it doesn’t adhere to a lot of modern literary fiction that can be quite sparse, with often fragmented prose. Your prose, on the other hand, is so rich and beautifully elegant. Did you have any particular inspiration in terms of your style? And how did you develop your voice?
When people tell me I have a very distinctive voice, I’m always a little bit taken aback because, when I’m writing, I don’t actually think about the way I write a lot of the time. I write the way I speak. I have a wonderful relationship with language. I adore language. I adore words.
That really comes across, there were some sentences that took my breath away, which I underlined. So good!
Thank you so much! I love language so much. The sentences that come out of me have been swirling around in my head for a long time.
I think it would be a little bit remiss or misleading for any writer to say that what we consume, what we’re reading, what we’re watching, etc, has zero influence on how we produce work. I know certain writers that won’t read other books while they’re writing their own, but I don’t believe in that because reading, being out in nature – particularly by the ocean – and even watching dramas on TV is fantastic escapism. It helps to bring me out of myself, as sometimes I will be hyper-focused and I know what I’m putting down on the page is not fantastic, so I need that distraction in order to be to see things in a new light.
Although the novel is centred around social media, there are so many other fantastic themes you draw on, particularly that of connection and a pull to a homeland. The book features being raised in the UK but having a parent who moved to the UK from Nigeria as an adult. I really loved that, when Anuri needs a reset or guidance or some kind of escape, she returns to Nigeria. How was this important to Anuri’s plot and how does that link to your own lived experience?
Absolutely. So, Anuri has never met or had a relationship with her biological mother as she passed away when giving birth. Because of that, she feels that the deepest connection that she can have is with Kainene’s homeland, which is Nigeria, specifically Onitsha, where she was born and raised. She does that through a number of ways; immersing herself in the culture, the traditions of old, and also with her relationship with her maternal grandparents who still live at home.
It was extremely important that Anuri had a soft landing place and a support system as well, which is why her grandparents were such important characters for me when I was thinking of the plot. She needed to find kinship with home and be able to develop a relationship within her soul and her heart with her mum. As her father was so closed off, she wasn’t being provided that at home, so that’s probably part of the reason that she had such a strong relationship with her grandparents, and they’re very much grounded at home.
But also, in any book that I write, because I am a Nigerian, I was born in Nigeria and I’m Igbo and that is my culture and heritage, it flows through me. There’s always going to be some Igbo or Nigerian element in anything that I write because that’s who I am. I left Nigeria at such a young age, but I have parents who made it a huge priority for me to stay connected to our heritage through food, language, and traditions that have cultural significance. It’s not something that I can separate and take out of myself because that’s who I am.
Anuri has a strong support network, including her friends, and you’ve talked about the idea of a chosen family, which really came across. The group of friends feels like a really natural and relatable group of characters, with specific personalities that interact together so well. How did you go about building those characters and bringing them to life? And what was it about this community that was important for you to convey?
Because Anuri hasn’t had a conventional childhood, she’s been placed in situations and afforded privileges that a lot of other children don’t have. So, for instance, meeting Loki at Camp Montana, which is a real camp by the way! She comes into contact with these characters because of the circumstances she’s in and how she grows up. I needed to make sure that she had a support system that would lift her up but would also keep her grounded. Part of the insidiousness of fame, money, social media, and capitalism is that it does tend to bring out the worst in people. So yes, Anuri is far from perfect. She’s a very messy character, which was important for me to convey. But at the same time, she’s a good egg, and that’s in part because of her auntie, grandparents, and these wonderful people that she’s met.
So, I needed a Simi, because she is the straight talker and wonderful, but I also needed a Loki who is marshmallow soft but steadfast in what Anuri needs. Elements of my own friends and my own support system have their way into these characters because that’s what I have. I know how important my people are to me and I needed Anuri to have that because I couldn’t have her be completely alone. She needed people who could keep her on the straight and narrow when she sometimes became a little bit too ambitious.
Definitely, and then you have Ophelia too – Anuri’s stepmother. You include sections in the book from Ophelia’s perspective, which grants the reader access to both sides of what is quite a murky, difficult situation, giving us a little bit more insight into her questionable motives. How did you approach the characterisation of Ophelia?
It was tricky, but I didn’t want Ophelia to be a villain. I wanted all my characters to be human. Yes, they make huge, terrible life-altering mistakes, but they are, at their core, human beings. I wanted a way for readers to see that, yes, Ophelia has made these choices and continues to make these choices; you may not agree with them, but there is a reason for them outside of money or attention. Yes, she does want attention, she does want validation. But why? What’s happened in her past? Does she not love these people that she’s thrusting in front of the camera? I needed to get it across that, yes, she actually does, and yes, they do have a complicated relationship, but so many of our relationships are complicated at times. And I think any parent influencer has a complicated relationship with their children, despite what they present to us, so I needed to get that across.
I loved the hair theme running throughout Allow Me To Introduce Myself and that it’s so important to Anuri. I’ve been listening to Miquita Oliver’s new podcast which I love, and she’s talked a lot about her hair and its importance to her throughout her life, particularly in relation to her own heritage. Is hair something that’s also personal to you? Did you also find it to be a fruitful way of talking about other things?
As you can see, my hair is currently blonde and curly at the moment. I love experimenting with my hair and it’s one of my personal forms of expression. So, this was twofold for Anuri; she needed a job and we, as black women, often have a negative relationship with our natural hair. So, I wanted Anuri to be led by and encouraged by her auntie, Nneoma, to cultivate this idea that our hair is beautiful, and it can do all kinds of weird, wonderful, and magnificent things. But also, I wanted to give Anuri a little bit of independence through being able to earn a wage – it’s a skill.
For me it’s definitely personal because I love doing wild things with my hair. It was in braids before this, and I don’t know what it will be next. It might be short, it might be black, it might be green. I’ve had all kinds of colours on my head.
I love it. It really does come across that that space was one of the only places that was really hers, her safe place, I guess.
Yes, and Anuri chooses to cut off her own hair in, you know, defiance of her stepmother. Also, it makes her feel strong when she’s reminded that, in the act of cutting off her hair, she kind of took a little bit of control back from her family.
Hair is important!
It really is.
You have a content warning disclaimer at the beginning of Allow Me To Introduce Myself which is becoming a lot more commonplace. I was wondering whether you think content disclaimers affect a reader’s relationship with a novel?
Back in the day, I used to be opposed to content warnings. And I can’t even understand why now because I’d like readers to go into the book, not necessarily knowing exactly what’s going to happen, but knowing what they can expect. I recognise that people have different triggers and have experienced different levels of trauma, so the last thing I want is for a reader to head into my book smiling and happy, and then I write something in the book that sends them to a place that they weren’t prepared to go. From the very first page almost, I’m talking about death and then graphic descriptions of what could be suicide. When I wrote Someday, Maybe, the feedback that I got from some of my readers was that it was very triggering. I don’t want to do anything that will upset people, so I wanted to give people the option of opting out if they’re not in a place to continue reading that kind of content. I think it’s a courteous thing to do, but I’m not going to lambast any writers who choose not to. It’s a personal decision. But for me, I’d rather give readers the option.
Our last question is, do you judge a book by its cover?
I don’t think I judge a book by its cover and, especially since I travel so much these days, I’m very much a kindle reader at the moment. If I see a cover that grabs me, I am more likely to turn it over and read the blurb. And if that if that draws me in, I’m going to buy the book.
For my covers, I have fantastic publishers who always ask me what the vision I have for my covers is and they always take my thoughts into consideration, which I’m so grateful for. As you can see with the UK version of Allow Me To Introduce Myself, it’s so striking. It’s a stunning cover, I love it so much. If I walked past that cover just by the spine and the colour alone, I’d pick it up. So, I don’t judge books by their covers, but I’m more likely to pick it up if it’s an interesting or striking cover, absolutely!
Editorial Picks
