Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie thought her writing was 'too dark' for kids — here's what changed her mind

Q28:54Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie thought her writing was 'too dark' for kids — here's what changed her mind

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of those rare authors whose name has the currency of a rock star.

Maybe you've read one of her three internationally bestselling novels (Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah), or maybe you're one of the millions of people who've watched her TED Talk on storytelling. Adichie is also the star of a Dior advertising campaign, the face of the British beauty brand Boots No7, and her voice was featured in Beyoncé's song Flawless.

Now, after writing several hugely influential novels, short stories, poems and essays, Adichie has just published her first children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf, under the pen name Nwa Grace-James. Inspired by her own family, the story follows a little girl on an adventure with her mom's silk hair wrap.

In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Adichie says she wrote the book not only for her seven-year-old daughter, but as a daughter herself who was incredibly close to her parents.

"Before I had [my daughter], people would sometimes say to me, 'Well, why don't you write a children's book?' And I would say, 'I can't, I won't, because my vision is too dark and I do not want to be held responsible for traumatizing some lovely children. I start writing and before you know it, somebody's dying,'" she says with a laugh.

"Then I had my daughter, and in the way that everything changes when you have a child, suddenly I wanted to tell stories for her. And I think I was also encouraged by the fact that my daughter showed absolutely no interest in reading — and it's something we're still working on. So part of my wanting to write for children was really just to encourage her to read."

After Adichie's parents died (she lost her father in 2020 and her mother the following year), she started thinking more seriously about writing a children's book, and consulted the notes she had made for herself about her daughter's life.

"I really remember this day when she was still a baby and she reached out and she pulled off my scarf — I wear a scarf to sleep, like I think most Black women I know," the author recalls. "She wanted to play with it, so she started sort of playing peekaboo with me. And I wrote that down because it was just such a lovely moment, I didn't want to forget it."

"It's the thing that most sort of touched my heart, warmed my heart, remembering her playing with my scarf, and also remembering how my parents just absolutely adored her. And so there are bits in the book that actually happened and bits that didn't, but could have happened. So I've kind of based it on a day in our life in our home in Lagos, where my parents would often visit."

Adichie jokes that she's proud of herself for writing an innocent story for a change. Not only that, she believes her book will hold a special place in the larger canon of children's literature.

"I grew up on a university campus surrounded by books, but most of those books were not about me or my experience — and I loved them. I'm happy that I read them — but I think that the impression that I had as a child was that the book was something that happened somewhere else. And I think this book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf, will join this … very beautiful, very multifaceted movement to diversify children's books."

The full conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, including her thoughts on facing rejection, is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie produced by Vanessa Greco.