Why Book Publishing?

A few years ago, I began to get the itch. It was time to move on from teaching. 

And so I began to think about what I would do next, what dreams would I chase... and this year, I decided to go after one of my very first dreams--reading books for a living. I turned in my resignation in March and my last day as a full-time teacher will be June 1st!

One of the first steps I took to pursue finding a job in book publishing was to apply to some publishing courses. I had to write a person statement explaining my love for books, my interest in working in the publishing industry and what I hoped to do in my career.

It could be no more than two pages. Double-spaced. 

Here's what I ended up with...

In early elementary school, I was one of the few black children in my class. But even though we were the same race, my Nigerian-ness made me “other,” and I was often teased for “talking white” and called an Oreo. When I was seven, my family moved to Nigeria. While there were other Americans living nearby, they were all white missionaries, and we were “natives.” To my Nigerian peers, I wasn’t native enough and this time, I was often called “Americanah.” And then I moved back to the U.S. the year I turned 13 and beginning high school. Though in some ways, I was returning “home,” I was also clearly an outsider—unaware of the social norms and cultural references that were intuitive for my new peers.  I spent my childhood teetering between identities and never truly felt like I belonged to any group, always on the fringes.

Outside of my faith and family, the times I felt completely safe and free of this solitariness was when I immersed myself in a story. Whether it was being read to, or reading on my own, within the words, between the pages, I found solace and belonging. In elementary school, I loved Scholastic book fairs because I could get a copy of a story heard on “Reading Rainbow”—Caps for Sale, Is Your Mama a Llama?, or my favorite, Chrysanthemum, whose name was just as long as my own. When we moved to Nigeria, we were gifted with a treasure trove of pictures books, chapter books, children’s books, adult books, and even encyclopedias. My sisters and I converted our closet into a library; books lined every square inch, instead of clothes. And in 9th grade, I quickly found the library, and had a constant stack of five or more books that helped starve off the loneliness as I walked down the halls or sat in a classroom.

Books were even my entry point to figuring out my place in the working world. My first job was at Waldenbooks, the mall version of Borders (may it rest in peace). I shouldn’t have been hired because I was 17, and they required employees be 18 or older. I got the job because I was persistent. And I was persistent because I couldn’t imagine working anywhere but around books. After graduating from college, when I found myself feeling ill-prepared to enter the world of journalism, I found some reassurance in an internship with World Literature Today magazine. And even when I started teaching, and found myself in a Social Studies class instead of English one, it wasn’t until I decided to read A Long Walk to Water with my students that my insecurities about being educator began to dissolve. And now, seven years later, whenever I feel the weight of teaching, working part-time at a local bookstore helps uplift my spirit. The world of books is where I continue to find myself most at ease. 

I’ll admit, the initial draw to working in publishing is to be able to read for a living. But as I think back over the literary heroines who have shaped who I am today, I have begun to realize something that makes me sad: I didn’t really belong in many of the books I read either. If I had lived in the time of Anne Shirley, Jo March, or Elizabeth Bennett, my life would not have been theirs; in fact, no one who looks like me is even a character within their stories. This is true for most of the books I encountered growing up, and mainstream literature in general. 

I had my first moment of truly recognizing myself in a book when I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. It was my senior year of college. I was 20 years old. I don’t think my first experience should have been in my second decade. I think it should have been a part of my reading experience from the beginning. I’m drawn to publishing because while it would give me the opportunity to contribute to an industry that has shaped me, it would also give me the opportunity to help shape that industry to bring forth a larger diversity of work. 

In publishing lies the power to decide what ends up in book fairs, libraries and bookstore shelves. And I think it’d be nice if all readers had literary heroes and heroines that reflected who they are, who would stand side-by-side with those from the Western canon. So that, if they are anything like me, they could find their place of belonging sooner rather than later.