“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”
Maya Angelou
Can I? But, really can I?
These are the questions I asked myself over and over. Can I really write a book? No really, can I? How do I start? Where do I start?
My father was my hero when I was growing up. A self-made man, he came from nothing in rural Nigeria, but somehow won academic scholarships to undertake multiple degrees abroad, returning to Nigeria as a successful entrepreneur, blazing the trail for many that came after him. I adored my father, I immersed myself in the wonderful stories he told of his life, his travels, his successes. All I ever wanted was to be like my Dad.
But then something changed. Something terrible happened and my father retreated from society and became a recluse, hiding away from the world in a mansion that crumbled all around him.
After my father’s death, I gained access to his papers and personal email account and twenty years of secrets were uncovered, horrific secrets that led to his destruction and demise. The revelations were shocking. It’s a tale of hubris, of manipulation, of deception and of great tragedy. It’s a story that breaks my heart.
I buried the story away for years, resolving to get on with my life at work and with my family. But then, one year, whilst recovering from a long illness, found myself thinking about my father in the expanded moments of stillness that I had. Visions of my father in death haunted my fitful dreams and invaded my every waking thought. I couldn’t shake the images of his death mask – his face, rail-thin and so very old, and the lines from years of worry, that furrowed his forehead and clenched the back of his jaw.
I resolved that I wanted to tell his story – to recount what had happened to him. Perhaps this would help others, whose loved ones were vulnerable to the forces that preyed on my father. Perhaps it would help me too, perhaps it would give me some sort of closure.
But where to start?
A few years earlier, whilst working full-time, I completed an MFA in Creative Writing, but at the time I had my heart set on screenwriting. My dream: to write the next Oscar winning best movie. But this? What was this story? Is it fiction? is it biography? Is it memoir? And most importantly, can I write it? Am I capable?
To help me figure it out, I enrolled at Gotham Writers Workshop in NYC, the United States’s largest adult-education writing school. Gotham was apparently founded in 1993 by writers Jeff Fligelman and David Grae. It was one of the first schools to offer online education, launching its online creative writing classes in 1997. For me, largely recovering in bed (and unknown to me at the time, but with COVID just around the corner), this was perfect. The roster of teachers was also super impressive – famous, published authors, journalists and memoirists. Oodles of creative talent to learn from.
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Novice Memoirist 