Nigerian author Abi Daré on her bestselling book, ‘The Girl with the Louding Voice’
Last week, I had the great privilege to interview Abi Daré, the author of the bestselling book, “The Girl with the Louding Voice.” The novel tells the story of Adunni, a 14-year-old girl in Nigeria who just wants to be heard — but a life of servitude, abuse, early marriage and rape prevents her from reaching her full potential. Despite all these challenges, Adunni still uses her voice to fight for her right to learn. She knows she can only achieve her dream of becoming a teacher with a good education.
Being a young female teacher in Nigeria, this book brought me to tears. I saw so much of the girls in my classroom in Adunni, who is discriminated against because of her gender. Abi really captures what a typical girl in Nigeria goes through, especially those marginalized by their socioeconomic background. I think people will learn so much from this book — from the challenges girls face to the important role of female mentors. I love that Adunni was so unrelenting and strong. It gave me hope for every girl in Nigeria.
After my conversation with Abi, I realized that like Adunni, we all have a “louding voice” and we cannot afford to keep quiet about the issues facing our communities. Solutions arise as we speak up! We all have a voice and we must use it to challenge the injustices we see.
Aramide Akintimehin (AA): My name is Aramide, I am a teacher in Nigeria. I teach at a public primary school in Ota, Ogun state and I teach primary three. It’s so nice to meet you. When I read your book, I was so emotional. I cried at first. I think it is incredible. Big well done for you.
Reading your book, I had so many insights into things around girls’ education. I learned more about what girls go through in Nigeria — abuse, sexual harassment, rape, early marriages — and they don’t have the mind to dream as large as girls who are free. For me, that book was everything. It gave me so much courage and motivated and inspired me to continue doing what I do. Well done, ma. Well done.
Abi Daré: (AD): It means so much to hear you say that. I’m actually almost emotional hearing you saying these things. Because when you write, you are sort of alone. You sit down and write this thing for years and you don’t know the impact. To hear you, as a teacher, you know Adunni wants to be a teacher as well, it’s just amazing hearing you say these things — I really appreciate it. Thank you.
AA: Okay, well let’s jump right in because I’ve really been waiting for this! Adunni is very passionate about completing her education. What is the impact education has played in your own life? What did it do for you?
AD: I was raised by my mother. She was raising myself and my brother in Lagos, and she had to work very hard to educate us. Seeing her putting a lot of her effort and for her to give up so much to educate us told me there was something about education. I was quite young then and I didn’t understand, but I thought there must be something about this that is making this woman sacrifice so much. So I started to study and I have a few degrees and I realised that education has given me a voice. It has allowed me to write the book that you read. It has allowed me to be confident. It has allowed me to be able to stand up for my rights as a woman and for the young girls who are coming after me. It has allowed me to fulfil my destiny. It has allowed me to be everything...it breaks my heart that not a lot of girls have the same opportunity around the world, that education is a luxury sort of speak, depending on the family you are born into. It should be a basic right for every child. And for the girl, for me, especially around Nigeria from what I’ve seen in the northern parts, I’ve seen that many girls are being sold off into marriage. Girls are seen as a commodity. It’s so heartbreaking that we’re killing talent. We’re killing intelligence. We’re killing future leaders. We’re killing brains, inventors. We’re killing so much by not allowing these girls to be educated. Imagine if I wasn’t educated, if you weren’t educated. Look at the lives you’re touching. Look at the lives my book is touching. So the power is incredible, I can’t even quantify it.
AA: There are different professions, right? Everybody wants to be a banker, everybody wants to be a doctor, everybody wants to be an engineer. But the percentage of Nigerians that want to be teachers is low, really low. I’m just really curious, why did Adunni want to become a teacher? Of all careers, why a teacher?
AD: I know, I know! I was trying to show that the profession of a teacher is so powerful. When I was in secondary school, I went to an all-girls independent school in Lagos, and there was a teacher there that touched my life. And he was a man and he showed me the power that I had in storytelling. He was one of the first people that identified that talent in me and he kept on saying, “Abi, you can do this!” He put me at the forefront so when I was shy and I didn’t want to do certain things, he’d say, “No, go and do it!” And so I was in drama. I used to write plays, all because of this teacher. And this teacher left Nigeria and went to America. I never heard from him or saw him again so he doesn’t understand what he’s done in my life.
I think teachers are often not appreciated as they should be, especially in Nigeria. I believe teachers in a child’s life can either make or break that child. The words that you get from your teacher can either make or break you. And Adunni is someone that has been taught by her mother and she knows that she also has that passion in her. She knows that she can change a life with the words that she speaks and throughout the book — that’s why she’s called “The Girl with the Louding Voice” — she uses her words in many ways. Sometimes it puts her in trouble and sometimes it doesn’t. And so because she knows she has that power, she wants to use that to help children. She starts it in her village. She starts it before she goes to Lagos. And so I just wanted to reflect that, that teachers are so powerful and what we see is that she wants to celebrate. She wants to become one so that she can keep on teaching others and raising a great generation after her.
“We teach our young girls to internalise pain, to not talk about things that affect them. We need to let girls know that it’s OK to speak up.”
AA: What lessons do you think teachers should pass along to girls? We know that in Nigeria, we don’t have equality in education between girls and boys. The southern parts are trying, but the northern areas still need improvement. In the southern parts where girls are actually going to school freely, what do you think teachers should tell these girls? What kind of information, what kind of influence do you think teachers should have on these girls?
AD: I think that teachers should let them know that they can be anything. They should achieve greatness, aspire for greatness. They should refuse to be silenced. We teach our young girls to internalise pain, to not talk about things that affect them. We need to let girls know that it’s OK to speak up. And that’s when many girls suffered sexual abuse and they can’t speak up because they feel that it’s their fault and if they speak up it’s against them.
AA: Adunni has a very, very strong personality. It’s that of a fighter. Is she based on anyone you’ve known in real life?
AD: Not really, no. I just wanted to create a character that shows that a girl can be a fighter. That a girl can be like that. She can be feisty and she can be smart and funny. And even though she doesn’t speak great English, it doesn’t matter because she’s still intelligent and she’s still smart. And I wanted her to be a role model. So if you create a character and you want that character to be a role model, she has to be able to stand up for something. If you don’t stand up for something, you fall for everything. And so that’s why I wanted to create this character that young girls could look up to her, older women, even I looked up to Adunni when I was writing the book.
AA: When I started reading the book, I was lost because I was wondering, “What’s happening here?” Like, “Should I write to the author and let her know there’s an error in this grammar or should I tell the author there’s something wrong?” But I got to know that that was your choice, and I got to know that you chose to write in nonstandard English. I just want to know, were you afraid that people wouldn’t accept the English? Why did you write Adunni’s voice in nonstandard English?
AD: Thank you, that was a great question. You see there’s a thing when you’re telling a story that a lot of people have heard, that people think, “OK, whatever it’s just another story of another girl in poverty.” I didn’t want it to be that. I wanted people to listen. As a writer, it forced me to listen to Adunni. I wanted to make sure that every single thought of Adunni, every sight, every smell, everything she heard was well-recorded. I couldn’t write it in Yoruba because that would just kill accessibility but I thought if I could at least break it down a little bit into nonstandard English, it’s not pidgin English. It’s her own voice, her own words. It forced me not to describe things in generic terms, not to use the same metaphors and similes that I was used to, that I learned in English language. I really wanted her story to be authentic, to be her own story.
AA: In her own voice. And I think I got that point because when I was reading the book, I just imagined how Adunni looked, how she must have communicated, how fearless she was. I just had that picture because last year, I had a child in my classroom that was just the way Adunni was, but I couldn’t follow up with her successfully because her aunt and her uncle didn’t like her at all so they took her back to the village and that wasn’t under my circle of influence anymore so there was nothing I could do about it. So I could relate with, you know, the kind of look Adunni had because that girl kept coming to my mind. Trust me, she was a fighter. The girl in my classroom was a fighter. And every single day I’m so pained that, I know it’s not in my circle of influence but I’m so pained that I couldn’t do anything about it. I’m so pained that I couldn’t allow that girl to live the life she really wanted to live, just because our aunt and our uncle didn’t just give her the chance. It’s so painful that we have to go through all this emotional rage in Nigeria, because this is our reality.
AD: I was so angry writing the book. I was so angry writing it, sometimes I would finish a chapter and I would be breathing really fast after writing it because I really packed in a lot of emotion into the book because I really wanted to get the point across. At the time I was writing, I didn’t know if it would get published, I was really writing for myself because I really wanted to hear the voice of the house girls that I knew growing up in Nigeria. I wanted to hear their voices, to understand what their dreams were.
Aramide with some of the students in her class. (Courtesy of Aramide Akintimehin)
AA: Your book talks so many issues that are daily realities for girls in Nigeria, especially girls marginalized by their socioeconomic background. You talk about lack of education, gender discrimination, child marriage, child abuse. What do you think can be done, what do you think we can do to address that?
AD: I would say that we just need to keep on raising our voices. I raised my voice by writing this book. In a way, this book is my “louding voice.” Malala, for instance, has raised her voice by nearly losing her life in her fight. You’re raising your voice by creating your school and educating. We all need to raise our voices, we need to do what we can. Everyone can raise their voice and your voice doesn’t have to be writing. It can be speaking, it can be through songs, it can be through your Twitter posts, it can be anything. And I hope that if we shout loud enough, we’ll be heard. Policy will be changed. But we can’t keep quiet, we can’t keep silent. We need to fight.
AA: Adunni’s relationship with Ms. Tia is central to the story. Do you have a mentor in your life who helped you follow your dreams?
AD: I don’t have a personal mentor like that but my mom made a very strong influence in my life. I dedicated my book to her. She was the first female professor of taxation in Nigeria. She’s highly educated and fought for my education and sacrificed a lot. So I have that, but one thing I don’t have is a personal mentor apart from my mother. What I always say to people is that somebody doesn’t need to be a personal mentor to you. In these days of internet, Oprah Winfrey's my mentor. Michelle Obama, Ibukun Awosika. I have so many that I look up to so. Malala is an example. I never met these women, these wonderful women doing great things. But I see what they do. I hear their voices. I follow them on Instagram or Twitter. I apply the things I think would benefit me into my life. And so that’s what I was trying to show, that even though, yes Ms. Tia is there, but there are other people around you that can mentor you and they don’t even need to know you exist. You can find mentorship in books, read the books that these people have written.
AA: For me, I think I leverage social media to try to get a lot of mentorship. I follow a lot of insightful women and I follow you as well. And you know, I get a lot of insight. For me going through my social media feed is a learning time for me. Every time I open my Instagram page, I have a journal beside me, picking out things that I can apply in my life that would work. I think a lot of people need to leverage their social media for girls.
We have a 17-year-old Assembly reader from Nigeria. Her name is Hauwa and she is such a fan of you and really loved the book. We invited her to submit a question to ask you so I’ll just go straight to asking that question. She wants to know what inspired you to choose the title, “The Girl with the Louding Voice”?
AD: Obviously you know Adunni speaks in a certain way, but I also wanted to show a few things. I wanted to show that girls are generally silenced. I wanted to show that many girls are not allowed to use their voices. I wanted to show that we don’t want our girls to be silenced. I didn’t want Adunni to be quiet. But the word “louding” to me means more than one thing. For Adunni, it meant how to be educated because she believes education will give her a voice, but she doesn’t just want to have a voice, she wants to have a legacy. Adunni wants to be able to depart Earth and people should still talk about her many years after.
AA: I think I was really the girl with the “louding voice” [both laugh]. Everybody should be people with the “louding voices!” So your book has a lot of characters, quite a lot of funny characters. And for me, the character I hated the most was Adunni’s father. I was just thinking, “How can you do this to your daughter?!” So I just wanted to ask you: If you could spend some time, a few hours, with one of your characters, who would it be and what would you say to him or her? What kind of conversation would you have with him or her?
AD: I think it might have to be Adunni’s father because he was the catalyst for everything. He started this journey for this poor girl. He could have been like Malala’s father...but sadly, he falls into the majority of men that are not educated, that don’t understand the value of education. He was greedy and he thought Adunni was a means to an end, which is really sad. So I want to educate him on the power of the girl child, on the gem of a child that he has and the great star that she is so that he can understand and appreciate that and push that. Because he could’ve gone out to work. He didn’t. He could’ve gone out to fight and slave for his child but he chose because his wife was the one fending for the family. And this is something that is quite common in Nigeria sadly. So if I had my chance, it would be Adunni’s father. And some of the men in the book, to be honest. Have a real chat with them and reeducate them and enlighten in [sic] their minds and hopefully change their way of thinking.
AA: Did you ever expect that your book would receive so many awards and recognitions? How did you feel about them now?
AD: Thank you! That’s such an interesting question. I have been writing for a long time and this is the first time I was trying to do something quite so risky with my writing. It’s just incredible! I’m so grateful. I’m grateful to God. I’m grateful to everyone who read my book and loved it. I think it just shows that this is something that needed to be heard and I’m so glad. I feel so grateful. I can’t think of anything other than gratitude and humility.
“I wanted to show that girls are generally silenced. I wanted to show that many girls are not allowed to use their voices. I wanted to show that we don’t want our girls to be silenced. I didn’t want Adunni to be quiet.”
AA: When we learn a life lesson, sometimes we learn them easily and sometimes we learn them the hard way. We go through deep challenges, we go through very deep situations and we learn lessons from it. So I just want to ask, what’s your greatest life lesson? What has life taught you, either easily or hardly?
AD: I think life has taught me that a little kindness goes a long way. I’ve been in positions where I’ve been down and it was the kindness of another person that lifted me up. And they didn’t even know. They just extended their kindness to me. And if you see it in the book, Adunni is offered kindness. You see Ms. Tia leading her. If you look at Adunni’s mom, Adunni’s mom gives Iya food and look at how that came back after Adunni’s mother passed away many years later. So I think the power of kindness to people, regardless of who they are, what they look like, what they believe in. Just be kind because you don’t know what can happen out of your kindness. And even if nothing happens, it’s just good to be kind.
AA: Thank you so much. I’m so grateful that I read your book. I’m so grateful to you for having the courage to write this book and for your time.
We have edited and condensed this interview for clarity.
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