How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S11, BONUS EPISODE How to Fail: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

When I started this podcast, I had a list of dream guests.* At the top was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her third novel, Americanah, is one of my favourite books of all time. I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. I was moved by the power of its epic sweep, the brilliance of its observations and the characters who made your heart break.But although she's an amazing writer, Chimamanda's cultural reach goes much further than the literary world. Her TED Talks are among the most viewed of all time. Beyoncé sampled her words in Flawless. Anything she writes, whether it be fiction, essays or commentary attracts global attention. Her latest book, Notes on Grief, is an essay examining the devastation of her father’s unexpected death in June 2020. In March 2021, there followed a second heartbreak: the death of her mother, on what would have been her father’s 89th birthday.  Chimamanda joins me to talk about those terrible losses, the grief and rage it has left her with and how she is trying to cope. She also talks about being a daughter, motherhood, fertility and her unsuccessful attempts to conceive a second child, her frustration that she can't seem to write more at the speed she would like and...well, Kim Kardashian.NB: This interview was recorded before Chimamanda's recent blog post on cancel culture which is why we don't talk about it. And a further note: this is an emotional listen that explores the raw depths of grief, so if you're not in that frame of mind, maybe leave it for another day. But if you want to hear someone eloquently explain what grief feels like to go through and what to do with the pain, then this is for you.Thank you Chimamanda, for your honesty and your power.*Michelle Obama, Stormzy, Dr Dre and Michael Jordan, since you ask. I've recently added Marcus Rashford to the list. ----Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is out now and available to buy here.---My new novel, Magpie, is out on 2nd September. I'd love it if you felt like pre-ordering as it really helps authors! You can do that here.---This episode is sponsored by Sweaty Betty. Use the code HOWTOFAIL at check out to get 20% off. How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie @chimamanda_adichie    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So if that's not convincing enough, I don't know what is. Well, actually, I do know what is. A 20% off discount code. So you now can go to their website, sweatybetty.com, and you get 20% off everything with my exclusive discount code, howtofail. That's howtofail, all one word, entered at checkout. Thank you very, very much to Sweaty Betty. You're some real ones. very, very much to Sweaty Betty, you're some real ones. Before we start this very special episode, just a kindly reminder from an increasingly frantic author, that's me, that my new novel Magpie is out on the 2nd of September and I would love it more than I can possibly say if you wanted to pre-order it. I'm sure you're all sick of hearing

how pre-orders help authors, but they really, really do. It's a cliche because it's true. And if you want a copy of Magpie and you also want to be entered into a free prize draw to potentially win a night at the Pig Hotel of your choice with dinner and all sorts thrown in i love the pig hotels then head to the waterstones website waterstones.com search for magpie or my author

name and pre-order it before the 1st of september and you'll be entered into that fantastic prize draw and you will also win eternal gratitude from me just as as a matter of course. Magpie is a novel that I wrote with my heart and my guts, really. It's about dysfunctional motherhood, obsession, mental health, what happens when you think you get everything you want, but it's not quite as it seems. And I'm talking about it in quite vague terms because there is a twist in it and I don't want to give it away. But I hope that if you find a way to have a copy of Magpie in your hands, you really, really enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening. I will put a link to pre-order in the show notes and I really hope you enjoy this wonderful guest. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes

and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest today is an extraordinary writer, thinker, and speaker. She is a woman who has revolutionized and made accessible our modern concepts of feminism. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages, and her 2009 speech, The Danger of a Single Story, is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. A later TED Talk, We Should All Be Feminists,

was distributed in book form to every 16-year-old in Sweden and sampled by Beyonce. In a profile in New York Magazine, they said she was the rare contemporary novelist to have earned celebrity status as a result of both her art and her politics, to the diminishment of neither. A recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, she has won numerous literary prizes and was recently voted the Women's Prize winner of winners for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. Her other books include Purple Hibiscus, the short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, Dear Ijewele, a feminist manifesto in 15 suggestions, and Americana, which is quite simply one of my favourite novels of all

time. She is, of course, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Chimamanda grew up in Nigeria, the fifth of six children, and later attended college in America. Her parents were trailblazers. Her father, James, was Nigeria's first professor of statistics, while her mother, Grace, was the University of Nigeria's first female registrar. Her latest book, Notes on Grief, is an essay examining the devastation of her father's unexpected death in June 2020. In March 2021, there followed a second heartbreak, the death of her mother on what would have been her father's 89th birthday. Given the magnitude of these twin losses, I am especially honoured Chimamanda has agreed to come on How to Fail today. I want to tell the truth, she said in 2018. That's where my storytelling comes from.

My feminism comes from somewhere else. Acute dissatisfaction. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you, Elizabeth. It's nice to talk to you. It is such an honour to have you on the podcast. And I don't want to embarrass you, but you have been one of my dream guests since I launched this podcast in July 2018. So I am just beyond thrilled that you are here today. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And if I could start by asking you about that fantastic quote about acute dissatisfaction, how much power do you think there is to be had in dissatisfaction or anger? Oh, I think both are very powerful

because they propel you. I've never quite understood why, especially in Western cultures, anger is often seen as something that one shouldn't feel. And if one does feel, one should be apologetic about, especially if you're a woman, by the way. I find that anger can be channeled in different ways and can propel you. I think of myself really primarily as a storyteller. The thing that I love is writing fiction. The thing that makes me happiest is writing fiction. I didn't really intend to become this person who talks about feminism and political things, but there's a sense in which I cannot help it because my anger and my dissatisfaction just propels me. So there are times when I think, no more talking about gender and race and class and all of that. I'm just going to read my my anger and my dissatisfaction just propels me. So there are times when I think, all right,

no more talking about gender and race and class and all of that. I'm just going to read my poetry and I'm going to write my fiction. But then something happens or I read something in the news or I learn about something and just the dissatisfaction or even just watching the world. And suddenly I think, no, no, no, I need to write this essay because I just have to, I have to try, you know, try and make a difference in some stupid way. I'm a fan of the possibilities of dissatisfaction and anger. You said in the relatively recent past that you are more angry about sexism than racism. Is that still the case? Yes, but it's not so much that, and it's not because I think that one is more serious than the other, because I don't think that these systems of oppression can even be compared, especially because when you're a black woman, you're experiencing both, and

sometimes both at the same time. But it was a comment that came from my own personal experience of having friends and family members and people I care about who all understand the nuances of anti-Black racism. And so with them, I'm never asked to justify why something is racist or to explain. But I find that with sexism, in my very small circle of people I love, there is nearly always a kind of expectation on me to somehow, quote unquote, prove that something really was sexist. It is on the subject of sexism that I have often been asked, are you sure? Don't you think that's a bit, that sometimes also the sort of assumption that one is overreacting? And actually, I think in the wider

world, this happens a lot to Black people when they talk about racism, where they're often told you're overreacting, you're being a bit too sensitive, you're playing the victim, all of those things that are said to diminish the legitimacy of one's own experience. But I find that in my small circle, it's the reverse. It's actually sexism that people I love, people I care about kind of ask me to justify. And so because of that, there's a greater loneliness that I feel in my crusade against sexism, that I don't feel in my quote-unquote crusade against racism. Because really, in the end, it's the people around you and the people who support you that matter the most. And I think if you have that kind of unconditional support, then it makes everything bearable. So really, my saying that that's where that came

from a kind of very personal feeling of just a greater loneliness in talking about in dealing with in trying to combat sexism. Now, one of the things that people often mistakenly, and slightly diminishingly say about female authors is that their novels must be autobiographical. So I'm not going to fall into that trap at all, because I know Americana was informed by your going to the States to study. And you have said that you had to go to the States to learn about race in a way because it hadn't crossed your mind in a way growing up in Nigeria, because it had never been an issue. And I wonder if I can pose you the same question about womanhood. When do you think you realised you were female or you were made to feel less than for the first time as a young girl or woman? Oh, you know, I don't actually know, because I don't think I knew when I didn't know, if that makes sense. It seems to me that I've always known. And it wasn't even necessarily based on my own direct experience. It's that I was a very observant how glaringly obvious it is that the world simply does not give women the same dignity it gives men. To me, it just seems so obvious as to just not even require having to explain anything. community in Nigeria. So it was progressive and a bit different, by which I mean that it was a bit

more open-minded, more forward-thinking than the kind of traditional conservative world of early 1980s Nigeria. So I grew up in two worlds that were kind of intertwined. So a modern world in which my father was a professor of statistics and books were such a part of my life, but also the different world of my Igbo heritage, which meant when we went to my ancestral hometown where my grandmother lived and where my great-grandmother had lived and my great-great-grandmother had lived, you kind of still saw remnants of very sort of starkly patriarchal traditions. And so I remember when I was a little girl, we would go to my ancestral hometown and I loved it. It was just so much fun. You know, children playing, we would go look at masquerades.

But I remember there was a particular masquerade, the most exciting of them. And when it was about to sort of emerge and it was sort of this ceremony, my grandmother then said, all the girls go inside quickly. And I thought, wait, why? And they said, because girls can't see this masquerade. Only boys can. And I remember this now because even then, I must have been maybe seven. I remember just thinking this makes no sense. And I was also a child who wanted things

to make sense and didn't accept very easy answers. So I think if they had said to me, you cannot see it because, oh, I don't know, because it's poisonous and it's going to make you break out in rashes. Then I would think, oh, that makes sense. But to say to me, you cannot see because you're a girl. I just thought, this is stupid. And then there were all these other things that would happen. And they would say, because you're a girl, you need to know how to sweep a room properly using the traditional broom, which required you to really bend down. And they would say, bend down like a woman. You have to sweep it well. And I would think, this makes no sense. I mean, if you said to me, bend down, because

that way you get the room cleaner. And I also recognized very early on how much domesticity was tied in with being a girl. And even though my parents were unusual in not really raising us to think that if you're a girl, you had to do housework. If you're a boy, you didn't. Still, I knew that that was the general expectation. And I knew in particular, because my brother, who is very good at domestic work, because my mother raised him that way, would often get excessive praise from relatives. Oh, he cleaned the room. Oh, he cooked. And they would say, oh, how wonderful. But if I cleaned the room and I cooked, everyone just shrugged.

It also strikes me that when you mention that broom that a woman traditionally swept with, the fact that it was so low to the ground, it required her to bend. I just sort of think, why not make the handle longer and make it less of a chore? You know, but you know, what's interesting, I mean, and this is such a, this comment is, I think, very telling, because I've thought about this quite a bit. There's a sense in which I think in across so many cultures,

girls are raised to kind of tolerate hardship, and often unnecessary hardship. And it's often linked to a kind of worth as a woman. So it starts with things like the broom, which nobody wants to make easier because that's what women sweep with. So bend down and hurt your, you know, if it means hurting your hip or your back, then you do it because, you know, you show your worth, your domestic worth. your domestic worth. But I think it then becomes other things like the way that girls are made to believe that your ability to love is a measure of your ability to sacrifice and to put yourself last. There's a kind of reward in the name of praise and approval that you get if you are seen as loving in a way that is all sacrifice, loving in a way that is all giving rather than giving and taking. And I think that many cultures start very early to prepare girls for this kind of thing,

which then means that they become women who have been so conditioned that it's difficult to even question that. It becomes difficult for them to say, wait, hold on, why can't I also be a person who wants and who takes? Because I think obviously that giving is a lovely thing, you know, that love must involve a certain level even of sacrifice.

But the idea that for many women, that's all it is. You see that across cultures, women are praised, oh, she sacrificed everything for her children and for her husband. And often in Nigeria, people will say when you get married, it means you have another child because your husband is really your child and that kind of nonsense. I don't really have patience for it. I'm going to come on to your failures in a minute. But there's one thing and there's no easy link to this, but I just read somewhere that you studied briefly medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria. Is that true?

It is true, yes, shockingly. It is shocking. You're also good at scientific stuff as well as being this immense creative force. It's just unfair. No, I don't know that I was. Because I did well in school in Nigeria, I did well in primary school, in secondary school. And this happens to really every child who does well academically. They tell you that A, you have to be in the science class. And B, if you're a girl, you have to be a doctor. If you're a boy, you have to be an engineer.

So that's what happened to me. And I kind of went along with it, but I knew deep down that I didn't really care about the sciences. That's not what I wanted to do, but that's what one did if you did well in school. The arts class when I was in secondary school was considered the class that was for the children who were not very bright. But actually that's where I wanted to be. You know, I wanted to take classes in music and art and history, but I couldn't because I had been put in this track where I had to take chemistry and physics and biology. So I started medicine. But a year in, I just thought, my God, I'm going to be such an unhappy doctor. Because before then, I had planned, I had it all nicely planned. I thought, okay, the only medicine I think that I can practice is psychiatry because I'm interested in people and people's stories.

And so my plan was I'll work as a psychiatrist during the day. And then at night, I will use all those stories for my fiction. But then at some point, I thought, no, even that is not going to work. And so I left medicine. I couldn't go to another course that wasn't a science. So I went to pharmacy. And one year in, I thought, no, I cannot do this. I was writing poetry at the back of my notebooks during class. And so then I made the decision to try and leave Nigeria and, you know,

to take the SAT exams. And I hoped that I would get a scholarship and then I could go to the US and study something else. And so that's what happened. And I think it's one of the best decisions that I ever made. Well, I'm so grateful that you failed to be a doctor, and that you have given us the great gift of your writing. And I know that you're married to a doctor. So in a way, it all works out. But let's get on to your failures. And I just want to preface this by saying how grateful I am that you have chosen very profound ones and I want to give them all their due. I realise that it is coming up to the anniversary of your father's death. And I just want to say, I'm so sorry for what you have been through and what you're going through. And I just can't imagine how you're functioning.

And thank you for being here, quite frankly, because I can only grasp at the edges of your pain. Your first failure is similar to your second failure. Your first failure is your failure to save your father. And your second failure is your failure to save your father and your second failure is your failure to save your mother but I want to give them each their distinct time because I want to pay tribute to each of the distinct people so let's start with that failure as you perceive it to save your father why do you see it as a failure? I think one of the things I'm learning is how much guilt is part of grief. When my father died and it was sudden and I was completely undone by it,

and very quickly I started to feel very guilty. I thought, why didn't I call two days before? So I usually would call my parents every day, especially during lockdown. But I had had a fall when I was playing with my daughter, again, a consequence of lockdown, because my daughter and I were both at home. So I had to become not just her mother, but I was her playmate and her personal assistant and her cook and all of these positions unpaid and all of them very demanding. And so we would do a bit of reading and a bit of, and then we were running around the kitchen and I fell and I hit my head on the hardwood floor and I kind of lost consciousness very briefly. And then

I, so, and it turned out that I had had a concussion. And so because of that, I didn't call my parents as frequently as I ordinarily would have. And this happened the week before my father died. And apparently what he said to us was he felt a bit unwell. And then two days later he was dead. And when he died, I thought I should have called. You know, even though I had that concussion, I should have called. And if I had called, I would have known that he needed to go to the hospital right away. I would have sensed something. There's a sense in which I kind of feel as though I could have saved him if only I had called. And I know in a rational way that this isn't very reasonable. You know, when I step back and think about it, I know that,

but I cannot help feeling it. I think it's one thing to know something intellectually. It's quite another to feel something emotionally. And so I've had that guilt. I've had it. I've tried to process it and deal with it, but it's been there. And I think it's also really because I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my father. And I desperately wish I had had that. And so because I didn't have that, I think my guilt comes from a place of, I don't know, maybe my guilt, and this will require a kind of psychotherapy on myself, but maybe my guilt is a way of dealing with that longing. And maybe even, I don't know, I don't know, but I do feel an acute sense of guilt that I didn't call.

And in some ways, I blame myself for not having that goodbye. I wonder if it's when confronted with something so inexplicable and beyond rational control, our human functions try to process it in ways that we know. And because death is so unfathomable, particularly a sudden unanticipated death, as I know your father's was, it's so unfathomable that we don't have the plane of emotional awareness to deal with it. So it's like we throw the things that we have at it. And one of those things is guilt. Yes, yes, I think so. because knowing that the guilt is not very reasonable or rational doesn't make it any less of a real thing that just sits heavily in your heart it's a very real thing and I mean

grief is yeah grief is just such a strange thing you write in notes on Grief, which is an exceptionally powerful essay, about something that I have never seen put into words. And I was so grateful to you for putting this into words. You write about the relief that comes with grief, because you have dreaded something for so long. And when it finally arrives, and this is you writing and among the avalanche of emotions there is a bitter and unbearable relief it comes as a form of aggression this relief bringing with it strangely pugnacious thoughts enemies beware the worst has happened my father is gone my madness will now bear itself how did you work that out and. How did you work that out? Yes, how did you work that out? I didn't. I just felt it. My father was 88, but was in relatively good health. And because he was,

you know, just such a lovely, decent man. And we just felt that we had him for a while longer. We just felt that we had him for a while longer. But at the same time, because I loved my father so much, because I had just absolutely adored him, I always feared the day that he would no longer be here. And so when it did happen, it was just, you know, really, really was just an utterly bitter sense of relief. It was a very angry feeling as well. I thought, okay, so it's

happened, right? And then it felt like this sort of floodgates opening and there was this rage. And I thought, okay, now I'm so angry with the world that my sort of formerly restrained and controlled madness will now unleash itself. I found that this in fact is true and sort of is manifesting itself in my life in all kinds of ways. So I'll tell you something a bit strange. So about four years ago, I got an email from a man asking me to come speak at something. And this was a bit unusual because people don't usually write to me directly, they write to my agent or to my manager. And I didn't know how this man had even found my email address. So I forwarded the email to my agent. And, you know, I just said, please decline this.

So my agent did. And then this man wrote me back again and said, this is disrespectful and in bad taste. Just because you're famous, you cannot respond to me personally. And instead, you send me a mass email from your agent, something like that. And I remember just being completely taken aback. You know, I don't know this man, this German man from Germany, inviting me to Germany to speak at something. And I was so taken aback by that email.

My first instinct was to write him back and say, how dare you? And I also felt that it had an element of race and gender. I mean, I couldn't help thinking. Yes, of know your place. Yes, I couldn't help thinking, would you write this to a writer who was sort of a man and a white man? And also I wondered, would you even write this to an African writer who was a man? And I thought, how dare you? But I was told, no, you can't respond to him.

What he did was outrageous. But, you know, you're a public figure, blah, blah, blah. So I left it alone. And I thought that I had, in fact, forgotten it. Because I don't think I'd really thought about it in the four years. But after my father died, it just seemed as though all of the things that had made me angry in the past came back. And do you know that I actually went looking for that email and I wrote that man back. I love that you did that. Oh, what did you say? I said, I don't know you. I'm at a point in my career where my agent helps me to deal with the

hundreds of requests I get. I don't see why you consider that rude. And I said, and why did you think that it was appropriate to send me this aggressive and completely unacceptable response? And then I said, I really hope that you send responses of this sort to male writers who are in similar positions as me. And I sent it off and I felt so good. And I thought I should have done this four years ago. But I mean, this is the thing about that madness of grief, because suddenly I'm thinking, no, I need to sort out all of the things that haven't been sorted out. Because I think also the sense of mortality, I think using my dad made me start to think about, you know, what matters to me, and made me think about death

being so close, and made me think about I might die tomorrow. And especially when my mother died, it just became so acute, this sense of anything can happen, right? Death can come hurtling at you at any time. And so it made things feel a bit more urgent. Yeah. So I wrote that email and I mean I'm sitting back to think about it of course I can see how it's a bit crazy right and then of course this man actually replies to me four years on okay and what does he look like I hope he apologizes his first line was I'm really happy to finally be directly in touch with you oh Oh, that's enraged me. I'm going to be emailing him.

Oh, I was so annoyed. I thought, really? And then it goes on and on about how I just thought it was such an important opportunity for you to come speak at this conference. And I usually contact very famous writers and they write me back personally. But with you, I had tried two times.

I didn't get any response. And the third time, you then had your agent respond to me. And so I felt personally, but with you, I had tried two times, I didn't get any response. And the third time, you then had your agent respond to me. And so I felt personally, I think he used the expression fobbed off. And I thought, who the hell are you? I don't know who you are. But again, it made me think about, I mean, people have these conversations about expressions that can often feel overused, like male privilege and white privilege. And sometimes it can seem in some ways even overdone. But I remember thinking, reading his message, this is it. This is exactly what so many women and so many Black women talk about when they talk about that they're just nuances of respect and nuances of dignity that just are not afforded them because

they're women and because they're black women. I was just taken aback by this man, but I'm really happy that I wrote that reply. And I know that I would not have done it had I not been grieving. I'm happy that you wrote that reply too. And when you talk in this way about the relief of the worst having happened and grief pushing you to do things that you might not do otherwise, I'm reminded of my own experience, which is very different from yours, and I don't seek to compare it at all, but I've had three miscarriages. And when that happens, it took me a long time to realise that what I felt was grief and it was okay to say that because I felt it wasn't justified because they weren't fully formed people. But there was an element of relief and I've always felt so bad about it. And the element of relief was because the worst had happened.

I was so worried about the worst happening. Then it happened. And I thought, well, thank goodness, I don't need to protect these beings anymore. I'm not capable of doing that. And I just think you've touched on something so profound there. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, Elizabeth. Oh, you're so kind.

Thank you. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I remember my cousin had a miscarriage and only through her just her just agony did I start to see I think that the minute you know a pregnancy is wanted and loved I just feel like it becomes a person in a way when I had my daughter and in a strange sort of way it's not the same thing but desperately wanting to have a second baby and going through horrible IVF oh I'm sorry that didn't work yeah and it's a grief and anger at least it was for me and my anger was directed at all kinds of things at nature

because I thought why do women have to have such a fucking hard time at my husband who was wonderful in every way but you know I think when you I felt I was so pumped full of hormones that nothing he did was good enough and I was angry with myself I was angry with my body for in some ways ways, failing me, you know? So did you have an idea? Because there's sort of the two-week wait. Yes. When you're...

Agonizing. Every single twinge in my body, I thought, what does it mean? Yeah. And I kept notes. I was like, there's a twinge at my left side. And then I would go online on these boards where women were writing about their experiences. I was obsessed. I'm like, that woman says she got pregnant and she had a twinge. So that's what it means. And then the horrible day when you realize, no, it hasn't worked.

I felt myself mourning my embryos as though they had given the baby a name. And sometimes it was sort of, I felt that there were people who sort of felt like you know yeah I mean it's sad but maybe you're making too much of it and it kind of adds to the grief that feeling again of loneliness when the people around you don't really get what you're feeling like my experience is that it can be incredibly lonely I cannot thank you enough for sharing that and I feel really moved hearing you speak and hearing you, as you always do, put the truth of an experience into words. And I'm so grateful to you for doing that. And I'm so sorry, again, that you had that experience of IVF. And I know exactly what you mean by those fertility message boards, because everything in fertility medicine can either mean the best thing or the worst thing. So that twinge can

either mean you're pregnant with triplets or you are destined to miscarry now. It's such a head fuck. It really is. And so surely you can understand my rage at nature because I thought, why does this thing have to be so, I mean, honestly, and often I think even the reproduction, I mean, the idea is that we're sort of bending towards constantly keeping the species alive. Why then does it have to be so bloody difficult? Why do women have to suffer so much? Sometimes I think, my goodness, even childbirth, why does it have to be this violent animalistic process that often has consequences for a woman and her body. I mean, obviously, I know that there's some women who've had wonderful pregnancies and the baby sort of

floats out and everything is fine. But that certainly wasn't my experience. I'm angry at them too. I feel like we should talk about how, you know, how it's actually kind of awful. Sometimes your belly is a mess, your breasts are ridiculous, your back is aching, your vagina is lost shape. I mean, okay, I think I'll stop now. Oh, well, I'm sorry. That was my fault. We've gone off on a slight tangent.

But returning to your beloved father, before we move on to your next failure, I would love you just to say what he was like. I mean, it comes across very strongly in Notes on Grief, but I'd love you just to share a thought or two now to our listeners about the kind of man he was. Oh, he was reserved, quiet. So when he died, people who knew him, who contacted me, used words like calm, strong, quiet, integrity, honest, simple. Those words really captured him.

But as a father, he was very present. I was always struck by how my father remembered things. If he told my father something, he remembered. He listened. He allowed his children to be who they were. And for his time and place, that actually was quite remarkable. And he was so steady. You know, he didn't drink.

He didn't smoke. He didn't go out. My father was a nerd. Yes. But also a kind of, he was a stable and stabilizing force. And we had a lot of laughs. He also had an incredible sense of humor that was often quite dry. And he was a fantastic storyteller. So I heard so much about my past, my history, you know,

his father, his father's father. He just gave me this really rich and beautiful sense of where I came from. And I think it's part of the reason that I feel so comfortable in the world, because I know where I came from, because I know the stories of my grandfather and my great-grandmother, who, by the way, was called a troublemaker in my hometown because she just wouldn't accept a lot of the really misogynistic traditions and ideas. And I like to say that my feminism, such as it is, came from my great-grandmother. It didn't come from reading any books. It came from my great-grandmother. But my father, he was also a deeply kind man. In addition to his sense of humor, he was very curious about the world. But also at the same time, there was something about him that was sometimes, I thought, quite delightfully childlike.

You know, I remember once we were in my hometown and I was watching him watch a goat. So there was a goat sort of wandering around in my grandmother's compound. And my father took such delight in the antics of this goat. The goat was a bit hyper. But my father, I was just watching him take such delight in it. And I was so moved by that. You know, the same way that he would watch the news, he loved Sudoku. So he spent a lot of time doing his Sudoku. But he also really liked to watch Animal Planet and would say things like, these baboons are fascinating. And I just found that really lovely.

So lovely. So lovely. Let's talk about your mother, who sounds equally lovely. And my favourite story about her is the one about her father writing to her at school. Tell us about that. they were, it was to become junior teachers. But her father was different. He was determined that she would be educated. He wanted her to go to university, which was just not normal. And my mother did well in school. So she was in secondary school. Her father was a businessman and he lived in Cameroon, outside Nigeria. And my mother was in a secondary school, in boarding school in Nigeria. And so her father would write her letters. And her father, I think he had a primary school level, Western education. And so most of his letters to her were in Igbo, our language. But one letter he wrote to her was in English

and it started with, my dear son. And so my mother read that and thought, oh, she thought her father had made a mistake with son and daughter, the English words. Because actually in Igbo, there isn't a distinction. The word for child in Igbo is gender neutral. It's mwa. Is it? That's fascinating. Yes, it is. Yeah.

So often people who are new to English will often mix up son and daughter because in Igbo there isn't a distinction. My mother then says to her father, you know, papa, actually the word is daughter. And he said to her, oh, I know, I know exactly what son means. The reason I wrote dear son is I want you to know that you're everything a son would be, and you can do everything that a son would do. And my mother would tell the story. And I just thought how, because what he really was doing is that he was affirming his daughter. And he recognized that he lived in a world that was so heavily sort of male focused and male dominated. And for him, the way to affirm her and to let her know that she was completely worthy and completely valid was to say to her, my dear son.

And my mother says that this for her was such a point of pride. And everywhere she went, she told people the story. When you chose your failure to save your mother as your second failure, does it feel like a different kind of failure from the first, the failure to save your father? Or is it part and parcel of the same guilt? No, it's very different. And the reason it's different is because the circumstances of my mother's death are still particularly painful and difficult for me. There was an element of medical malpractice. My mother did not get the care that she should have. She was on the basic education board of my home state, Anambra, and she loved her job. And after my father died, we had said to her, maybe you should quit the job and just come and just, you know, be with your children. And she said no, because she said the job actually gave her much needed distraction.

distraction. So she spent time inspecting schools, and she was part of the group that would revise the curriculum of primary schools across the state. And so she was at work on Friday, and on Sunday she died. On Saturday, she felt unwell. She went to a hospital, started feeling better the next day. But the doctor then decided to transfer her to another hospital, which was a terrible hospital. And we did not understand the reason for the transfer. And two hours after the transfer, my mother was dead. And when I went to see the doctor, he said to me that because he suspected that my mother had COVID, he did not test her, but he suspected she had COVID. And so he didn't want her in his hospital. And so he just transferred her. And there was no preparation for her at the new hospital. I mean, it was so

shoddily done and so quickly done. And two hours in, my mother was dead. Oh, gosh. I mean, my mother was sitting up and talking and laughing a few hours before. up and talking and laughing a few hours before. And so I feel so angry with myself because I remember thinking when this doctor sent a text message to my sister saying, I want to transfer her. I remember thinking when I saw that text message, this doesn't sound right. And I really regret that I didn't push back, that I didn't call the doctor and say, no, you cannot do that. But again, because in general, we like to be respectful of people who are helping us. So he's giving my mother care and we are thinking you're doing the best thing for her. And my sister, who's a doctor, who's in the U.S., is also particularly sensitive about the sensitivities of Nigerian doctors,

is also particularly sensitive about the sensitivities of Nigerian doctors, who often, a Nigerian doctor in the US or in the UK can sometimes feel a bit superior. So we kind of just didn't want to make him feel that we were being disrespectful of his, oh, I don't know, his expertise. You know, he was recommended to us as the best doctor in his parts and that kind of thing. He was recommended to us as the best doctor in these parts and that kind of thing. And two hours later, my mother was dead. And I deeply, deeply regret not pushing back. I deeply regret really not saving her.

I just feel that. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's so cruel and it's so unjust. And the fact that it would have been your father's birthday as well I just I my heart breaks for you and your family it's just so unfair the unfairness of it is so acute I sometimes feel that I'm living in a in a novel whose plot I don't believe yeah I mean the kind of novel you would never write no never and if somebody wrote it I'd be like this is just that I'm living in a novel whose plot I don't believe. Yeah. I mean, my father's birthday. The kind of novel you would never write.

No, never. And if somebody wrote it, I'd be like, this is just complete nonsense. I'm so sorry. It was his birthday. We had planned that we would do a Zoom call, my siblings and my mother, and that we would just, you know, talk about daddy

because he would have been 89. And instead, it's the day she dies and it's just really been I mean and so it's been much harder for me processing even accepting that my mother is gone just because of how it happened and yeah of course of course I don't even know how you're functioning in a world that has just totally dismantled itself in front of your eyes I just it's unfathomable it really really is thank you Elizabeth I just yes I haven't actually talked about this before so I think you know thank you for talking about it and I also think it's a very beautiful thing to do because it's very important when we lose our loved ones that we keep talking about them.

I know that you were raised Catholic. Is there any comfort in this trauma to be had from faith? You know, I have a very complicated relationship with Catholicism. But since my parents died, and this longing for answers, right, and I've actually found myself going to mass, and I've had long and very useful conversations with two sort of Catholic priests, a Catholic priest and a Catholic bishop, who are just really intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable people, and who are not sort of tied down by dogma, which often helps because if you're talking to people of faith, as they are, but also people who are willing to entertain questions about just the basic foundations of that faith. There's something about it that can bring a kind of comfort. So I've actually found myself in mass. And what I did was I went to the church that my parents went to. When my parents would be here

visiting me in Lagos, every Sunday they would go to church. I wouldn't. So I've now gone to mass at the church that they went to. And just being there, imagining them sitting in a corner, as I'm sure they would have, I found it comforting. And how are you functioning day to day? What is getting you through? What is getting you through? There are days when I don't function at all. In a strange and bitter way, because grief is familiar now from my father, I've come to accept that whatever it is that I'm feeling is what I'm feeling. So there are days when I'm just full of rage. There are days when I cannot get out of bed.

But there are days when I think I'm fine. And I've started to paint my fingernails because my mother painted hers. And so now it's become really important to me that I paint my fingernails. My mother was very partial to red, so I'm doing a mix of red and pink and orange. And I find comfort in things of that sort. I have her handbag in my study here. And just having that, her things are still in it. You know, her little bottle of perfume, her lip gloss, You know, her little bottle of perfume, her lip gloss, her pack of Kleenex, her inhaler because she had asthma. I have them and they're here with me and, you know, they've kind of become necessary objects for me. And also just family. I have my siblings. All of us, I feel so heartbroken for my siblings.

You know, we're all just really trying to just keep going. And we keep telling ourselves, you know, mommy and daddy would want us to keep going. So we lean on each other quite a bit. You know, sometimes my brother and I spend hours on FaceTime. We laugh and we cry, you know. And then there are days when my friends come over and we have dinner and we have lots of wine and I'm being my outrageous self

and asking them about their favorite sex positions and everything seems normal again. And then the next morning I wake up and I cannot stop crying you know I mean I went to the website that I think you and your family have put up in tribute to your parents and there was an anecdote on there saying that once during a routine medical checkup Grace was told that doctors had discovered a growth that needed further investigation. But before she learned that it turned out to be a false scare, Grace told you, I have lived a full and happy life.

Yes. Does that bring you comfort? Sometimes, yes. Yes. I hadn't told my siblings that when she said that. But after she died, I told them. And it gave us, you know, a measure of comfort. Some days more comfort than others, because I think that the way in which my mother died has shaped our grieving. Yeah. But I do try and remember that. Because she said it sort of very calmly and very quietly. And her point was, if they say that I need to have surgery, I'm not having surgery. That's sort of what she, you know, her whole thing was.

And then she said very quietly, I've lived a full and happy life. And it actually broke my heart to hear that. And I kind of shot her down. I said, no, mommy, I mean, you can't say that. Don't say that. Don't talk as though something's going to happen. But in some ways, I'm also grateful that she said that. I mean, I'm grateful to know that she thought about her life like that. And I think she did have a full and happy life. Is it very trite of people to suggest that your parents are now together again?

Yes. I mean, yes. Because, and you know, I mean, there is something to be said for my mother changed after my father died. My mother's light dimmed incredibly. She was very courageous and brave for us, but she had become a different person. You know, her best friend was gone and our whole lives had been mommy and daddy. And suddenly there's no daddy. And my mother really changed. There's kind of a limpness to her spirit that hadn't been there before. And then she started to talk about death much more often. So there is something to be said for at some level, she maybe didn't want to stay on too long without him. I think it happened much sooner that even she would have wanted and in such horrible circumstances. So when people say they're together now, I think my first point is, but we don't know that, do we? I mean, I think that sort of their knowability, we don't know what happens when people die. People who approach death through sort of lenses of faith, there's still an unknowability because nobody knows what heaven

is like if there is a heaven, right? So we can have faith that there is but we don't actually know so what if I mean who knows what if and this is actually a really terrible joke but it just came to me what if heaven also has patriarchy and men and women are in different sections and women are in a slightly less illuminated section no that's a bad joke. Maybe heaven is what each individual conceives it to be, and it feels like your mother and father would have similar takes on what heaven is. This is what I want to tell myself. I think I'll share this with my siblings. I think maybe one of the questions that I have that led me to wanting to attend Mass again is that I think there's a part of me that deeply and desperately wants to know

that they're together and that they're fine. I mean, I'm sure that this is what happens to most people who lose loved ones. You kind of want to know because that part of us, that human part of us that dreams and loves and that part of us, that our consciousness that's so sort of alive, it's difficult to think of it just becoming nothing I have a lot of questions I think and and yeah so when people say that yeah my first reaction is to think oh just stop what do you think is the single most powerful thing you have learned about grief that if someone were going through grieving right now,

you could tell them? I think I would say whatever you're feeling is normal because sometimes you're going to feel things that surprise you. Grief has so many layers. I sometimes would feel guilty on my good days. So the days when I find myself laughing and talking and just sort of being quote unquote normal, I would at the back of my mind start to feel guilty because I would think, you know, dad is gone and mom is gone and you're actually talking and laughing.

And sometimes I would feel as though it meant that I was trivializing this terrible thing that had happened to us. And so for anybody grieving, what I would say is you're actually not trivializing it. It's all part of the process. If you've loved someone and you've lost them, there are going to be emotions that you expect and there are going to be emotions that you don't expect. And I think just keeping your mind open helps because then if it's possible to reduce the burden of guilt that you have, then that's worth doing. Jim and Amanda, thank you so much for talking about something so painful. And I think it just speaks to the core of you, which is truth telling. There are so many people who would have come on this podcast and chosen a different failure to

protect themselves and the act of generosity that you have given to us is really astonishing and such a tribute to the woman you are and to the people that your parents were so here's to James and Grace and thank you so so much for talking about that. Thank you. That's very kind. There is, well, perhaps there is a link to your third failure. I was about to say there is no easy link after that. But your third failure is your failure to write as much and as quickly as you want to. So tell us about that. Has that always been the case? Or is it because you've got so busy being a global icon over the last few years? Yes, it's really because I sort of wake up in the morning, I put on my global icon hat and off I fly on my witch's broom. It's not always been like that. I've been obsessed with fiction writing for as long as I can remember. And when it's going well, it's the only thing that matters. But what I've found in the past, I'm going to say 10 years,

I like to attribute this to age. I feel like when I turned sort of 33, things went downhill drastically. I don't know what it is, but I beat myself up about this and I spend way too much time stressing about not writing, which I think probably also then contributes to not writing. But I often want to write and it just isn't happening. I find it more difficult to get into my creative zone. I do think that really, honestly, success gets in the way sometimes. You know, and I feel very grateful to be read, to be published. It's one's dream happening. But what then comes with it sometimes comes with the territory.

I mean, even just sort of having to do public things, which I often don't mind doing. But the thing is that it does get in the way of going back into your creative space. I'm a person who needs silence and space. Sometimes people will say, oh, just do it for an hour and then you can go back to writing. But that's the problem. If I do something for an hour, I cannot get back to my creative space. It's just almost impossible for me to. And it's a source of just great frustration because it's not even just about I want to publish another book. It's also really what writing does for me personally, mentally and emotionally, that when I write fiction,

I feel transported and really happy, just really happy. And so I miss that and that I cannot write fiction as often as I want to and as quickly as I want to. I'm just so bloody slow now. It's incredible. And when I was younger, I think I sort of used to just, you know, really churn out these stories and hate half of them. But still, I was churning them out. But now, now, good Lord.

I mean, you have become a mother in that time. So has that also had an impact in terms of what you can carve out for yourself? Yes, absolutely. Yes. When I had my daughter, I felt that pregnancy not only made me significantly less intelligent, something happened to my brain. I also think this is something people should talk about more. I felt, I just felt really dense when I was pregnant. And then when I had the baby, there's just so much going on. And I had so much anxiety, which I don't usually have. Until then, I wasn't really a person familiar with anxiety. But suddenly I was, I felt like I wasn't doing anything right. But my gosh, you cannot latch on to breastfeed. Oh my God, I failed, you know, and then it was just really not a fun period.

And so there's no way I could possibly write because I just wasn't in that creative space. And since then, your time becomes limited. And I see this as a person who just has one child. I mean, I know that there are women who have five children and who are also creative, and I think, goodness. And obviously, also recognizing that child care and the responsibilities of it, just because of the way gender norms continue to function, invariably are the mother's responsibility. And even when you have a partner who's very present and very committed, like my husband. My husband is a fantastic father. But the first year in particular, because just biology dictated that I would have to do more because I was breastfeeding her. And then we had complications because she then had a protein allergy. And so I was told

that I couldn't eat a lot of protein. So I had to change my diet, which meant eating horrible carbohydrates and becoming slow and sluggish and just awful. But I was determined to breastfeed her for eight months because I felt that otherwise I would fail her which I know now not to be true so all of those things I think contributed to my being so removed from my creative self that going back to it took some time and when you said earlier that when you write fiction it's transporting and it's where you're happiest. Do you not get the same thing when you're writing nonfiction or when you're writing a TED talk or a commencement speech? Is it a different thing? Oh yeah, it's very different. It doesn't really transport me much as I would like

it to. Nonfiction just feels a lot more sort of utilitarian to me. I'm trying to persuade or I'm trying to change your mind or I'm trying to raise questions about something. And so there's a sense in which my nonfiction for me just feels a lot more self-aware and I kind of know what I'm doing. And so because of that, there isn't a sense of mystery in the way that there is for me when I'm writing fiction. sense of mystery in the way that there is for me when I'm writing fiction. And that wonderful sense of mystery and a kind of journey, I think, I'm going somewhere, I kind of know where I'm going, but also I kind of don't, is what fiction does to me that I love. And nonfiction doesn't do that. And are you a writer who, when you're writing a novel, it has to come to you like there's no timing that you can control in terms of the idea that comes into your life or yes is that the case yeah yeah absolutely yes I have writer

friends who sort of have plans and and it's all are they men yes yes Yes. Thought so. You know, it's so interesting. I hadn't thought about this. But yes, yes, they all are. And I've just never had that. You know, sometimes I find myself feeling a kind of very petty envy because I think, well, you know, it would be helpful and nice not to kind of rely on this sort of more amorphous sort of intuitive thing.

But I don't know that I really mean that because I also do like my process. I think that's also part of what makes me so happy when I'm writing fiction. It feels sometimes like a gift that you have to do something with. And obviously one is not in control of one when one gets a gift, right? That's what it can feel like sometimes. And do you know, I mean, you say that you don't play much as music to my ears, but do you have a vague concept of where your character is going to end up through the course of the novel? Or is that a gift that you give yourself as you're writing it? I usually start off with a vague idea. I kind of know, so, you know, I start something

and I kind of feel like I know this character and what's going to happen. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes what I intend to happen to a character doesn't end up happening to a character. Sometimes it does. But I find that the few times when I have tried to force my fiction to do what I want it to do,

it just doesn't work. I'm just never happy with it. It just doesn't feel right. You're such an amazing writer. And I don't want to put you under pressure, but I'm desperate for the new novel. Because as an author myself, I mean, not of your talent or magnitude, but I am frequently asked what my top five novels are of all time. And Americana is always in in there I just love it so much and it's one of those books I can remember so vividly where I was when I read it the feeling it left me with it's just exquisite and your next idea will come to you when it comes to you and we'll all be so

grateful for it but yes you don't need to feel guilty about it. I'll try. I want to ask you something, and I don't know why I want to ask you, but I just do. And it's completely random, but I really want to know what you think of Kim Kardashian. I'm just going to put it out there. What? Only because I'll tell you where it comes from,

because I just love your take on everything. And I happen to be someone who, reality television has got me through some really dark periods in my life. And so I'm a big defender of it. And Kim Kardashian seems so representative of so much for so many people and is very divisive, but I just know that you'll have a good take on it. And that's why I want to ask you. I actually don't because I don't know. I feel like I don't know enough about. So it's interesting to hear this

about reality television sort of, you know, as therapy, right? In some ways, because I have actually just never watched reality television and the idea of it, I just really find to be, honestly, I just think to myself, this would be an utter waste of time. Why would I want to watch these people? I mean, and hearing it talked about, because you cannot escape it. I mean, I know I have friends who really love the Real Housewives. Yes. And apparently they're housewives of all kinds of places. Yes, I'm one of those.

And they talk about these things. And I just think, my God, I don't care. I really don't know enough about what reality television was. I remember speaking once to some young women in the US in high school and asking them, what is your life like? You know, what are the pressures that you have? What stresses you out? Really, the subject was kind of beauty standards

and body image and that kind of thing. And one of them said, it's really hard for us, black women in particular, because we will never be like, it wasn't Kim Kardashian, though it was her younger sister. Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner, yes, I think. Or the young, maybe.

Anyway. Anyway. But I remember thinking, my goodness, so that, I don't know, it just stayed with me. And I know obviously the question is about Kim Kardashian, but I think for me, it's also sort of how are young women being influenced by beauty standards that require putting things in your lips and whatnot? It's just not my. Yeah, I I don't know I felt really bad for those young women and I thought this doesn't sound very good one of the things that I really love and value about you is that you are a feminist who enjoys fashion as anyone who follows you on Instagram will be only too aware of and it feels like you understand the power of

fashion but as an expression of individuality rather than you must all wear this or look like this and you must all inject your lips with filler. Yes. Yes. So I've always felt very strongly about, I mean, just in general in life, very strongly about diversity and difference. That not only should we not all be the same, but that if we were all the same, it would be so boring. should we not all be the same but that if we were all the same it would be so boring. I think one of the things that social media has caused in the world is a narrowing of what is considered beautiful. I have nieces who are in their early 20s and I'm always struck by how when we're all gathered as we were for my mother's funeral and afterwards you know we all spent time together here in Lagos and you know they would dress up and go out and I was always struck by how similar they all looked I mean

you know how dressing up how sort of the cool look invariably involved long weave you know long talons for nails long lashes and I just thought it would be nice if one of them had that and another had, you know, I mean, I think it also, it feels very unimaginative and not, I don't know. And I sometimes feel that inside of some of those young people, they don't really want to be like that. I feel as though they're individualities that become, I don't know, subsumed by this larger pressure of needing to conform to something. And I like fashion. I like style. I don't much care to be told that this is the in thing for this season, therefore wear it.

Because I just think, no, I think it's a stupid silhouette. So no, I won't wear it. As many of the silhouettes are. And don't get me started about how clothes are cut, not for women with breasts such as myself. But yeah, I think I'm starting to ramble. No, you're not. Well, I just threw you a massive curveball of a question. Well, Kim Kardashian, right? I mean, I'm not supposed to say I'm not Kim Kardashian.

Well, I think she has, I've seen pictures of her children. She has lovely children. I think that's one thing I can say. They're very sweet. They're very sweet. I think that's one thing I can see. They're very sweet. They're very sweet. I am so appreciative that you have come on this podcast, made my dreams come true because you were on my dream list of guests

when I started out and being such a profoundly eloquent, generous, lovely, funny guest. And thank you so, so much for talking to us about the things that really count. It was incredibly moving for me and I love everything that you do. Thank you so much for coming on How To Fail. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you. This very special bonus episode of How To fail is sponsored by sweaty betty sweaty betty are a global activewear and lifestyle brand for women regular listeners of how to fail will know that

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