Jane Igharo, TIES THAT TETHER
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[1:55]Jane Eggharu was born in Nigeria and immigrated to Canada at the age of 12.
[2:00]She has a journalism degree from the University of Toronto and works as a communications specialist in Ontario, Canada.
[2:06]She writes about strong audacious, beautifully flawed Nigerian women, much like the ones in her life.
[2:11]And the book that she most recently wrote is called Ties That Tether.
[2:15]All right, welcome Jane.
[2:16]Thanks so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss ties that tether your awesome book.
[2:22]It just came out to congratulations.
[2:24]Thank you.
[2:25]Thanks for having me.
[2:26]It's my pleasure.
[2:27]Would you mind please telling listeners who aren't familiar with your book or who perhaps are not book of the month club members and didn't notice that it had been chosen as one of the picks.
[2:36]Congratulations for that again.
[2:38]What ties that tether is about?
[2:40]Ties That Tether is about an Nigerian woman who immigrated to Canada when she was 12 and promised her father back in Nigeria as he passed.
[2:50]So why he was sick.
[2:52]She promised him that when she did come to Canada, she would stay true to her culture by marrying someone who was Nigerian, specifically at all.
[3:00]Years later, she meets someone who is not at all.
[3:04]He's a Spanish descent.
[3:06]And they have a blossoming relationship.
[3:09]And she's so caught between her family's expectations and her heart.
[3:13]Excellent.
[3:14]And I happened to have read the essay you wrote on Shanda Land.
[3:17]So I know where the story came from.
[3:20]But perhaps you could tell us a little more the inspiration for this novel.
[3:25]So the inspiration was my experience as a Nigerian woman.
[3:30]I'm grateful to Canada when I was 11.
[3:33]And I had to deal with what my family, specifically my mother, expects from me and who she expects me to date.
[3:40]And so just dealing with all that and dating guys within my culture and secretly dating guys outside my culture that inspired this book.
[3:49]Yeah.
[3:50]I think what you touch on in the book is something that people in so many cultures that are tight knit or who feel that any external influence is some way a threat can relate to.
[4:02]And it usually comes from the older generation.
[4:05]Right.
[4:06]It's I feel like these days, like we don't think twice about really anything.
[4:09]But our parents and particularly our grandparents are like, you know, no, no, no, no.
[4:14]Yeah, definitely like the older generation for sure.
[4:17]Yeah.
[4:18]So tell me about your secretly dating the first guy who was not Nigerian.
[4:25]And how it was not telling your mom about it and worrying the whole time about her, you know, finding out in all the rest.
[4:34]So that was stressful.
[4:37]So I think it happened.
[4:40]It happened when I was in university and I got a bit more freedom.
[4:44]He was, was he was was he in your class or how did you meet him?
[4:47]I met him on the public transit.
[4:51]No way.
[4:52]Yeah.
[4:53]He was really cute.
[4:54]He was from El Salvador.
[4:56]He was from El Salvador.
[5:00]And we just clicked and I dated him secretly.
[5:04]And I had to like, wait, wait, wait.
[5:06]That's not enough.
[5:07]You told me.
[5:08]You're on the public transport.
[5:10]Then what happens?
[5:11]You start talking to him.
[5:12]You start talking to me.
[5:13]He sat beside me.
[5:15]I can't really remember the conversation.
[5:17]It was a while ago.
[5:18]We exchanged numbers, started dating.
[5:21]And I had to hide my phone and lied to my mother about where I was going.
[5:27]to be living at home.
[5:28]Yeah.
[5:29]I was where you live.
[5:30]No, I wasn't living like on campus university because I didn't live that far from my university.
[5:36]So I was living from home and I had just so much harder to hide when you live in from home.
[5:41]So yeah.
[5:43]Yeah.
[5:44]That was tough.
[5:48]And then you managed to keep that a secret.
[5:51]And then you started dating other nationalities.
[5:55]Somebody from Jamaica.
[5:57]Someone who is white, someone.
[5:59]And you were still that your poor mother is in the dark here.
[6:02]Sure.
[6:03]Yes.
[6:04]I recently told her about this a few like two years ago.
[6:07]I was like when I was dating someone who was Nigerian.
[6:10]And she was very much condensed, very much happy.
[6:13]And I was like, you know, I used to did a lot of guys who went Nigerian.
[6:16]And she didn't believe me.
[6:18]She thought I was joking.
[6:19]And I really had to spell it out for her.
[6:21]Like, his name was this, he worked here.
[6:24]And then she was like, how dare you?
[6:28]She was so shocked what she got over it.
[6:31]Oh my gosh.
[6:32]And now.
[6:33]So this is none of my business at all.
[6:35]So are you dating someone Nigerian now?
[6:37]Yes.
[6:38]Okay.
[6:39]So she's very happy.
[6:40]You know, it's funny.
[6:41]She read my book.
[6:42]And I think she really did change her perspective a lot.
[6:45]And then she was like, you know, a few weeks ago.
[6:48]She was like, you know, if you bring a guy home, a white guy home.
[6:52]My profile, yeah, which is the hero in my book.
[6:55]I will totally be okay with it.
[6:58]Now that's that's progress.
[7:01]That's great.
[7:02]I don't know if it can be like Raphael, but just keep your mind open.
[7:05]That's good.
[7:06]But I love how you sort of came to this conclusion that it wasn't that it was really just fear
[7:13]that drove your mom.
[7:14]And maybe, you know, tell me a little more about the conversation you know,
[7:17]because I found that's so interesting.
[7:18]Because we have all these assumptions about our parents and why they make their rules
[7:22]or why they are the way they are.
[7:24]And you really uncovered the root of it.
[7:26]And perhaps that's what enabled her to like finally let go of what she had held onto you so strongly.
[7:32]Yeah.
[7:33]And sometimes I feel like we don't even care.
[7:35]We don't understand why our parents are coming from.
[7:37]We just get angry.
[7:38]And we don't want to, you know, figure out their perspective.
[7:42]So for me, I gradually realized my mother was coming from place of fear.
[7:48]Like a lot of immigrants when they move to a new country.
[7:51]And they're far from home and they're trying to preserve what they had back there.
[7:57]And it's so different.
[7:59]And so it's just preserving it.
[8:01]Keep in that culture and tradition.
[8:03]So their children can have it and their children can have it.
[8:05]And it can still be strong even in their new setting.
[8:08]It's really what motivates them most of the time.
[8:11]A lot of the time to just say don't get outside.
[8:14]Don't need outside our culture.
[8:16]So I just wanted my readers to understand that as fear not prejudice.
[8:20]And also you talked about how growing up, you know, you're happy to read all the books from school
[8:26]and all the rest, but they typically had white protagonists.
[8:29]And they were not stories that reflected like you're in her experience.
[8:33]Yeah.
[8:34]And you feel very strongly about portraying characters like yourself in fiction.
[8:38]Tell me more about that.
[8:39]Well, grown up.
[8:41]I didn't see people like me.
[8:43]That people are specifically Nigerian characters in books.
[8:47]The first book I ever,
[8:48]the first woman I read was Sumner by Jane Heller.
[8:51]And I love that book so much and I read it multiple times.
[8:54]I could relate to it on some level because, you know, but not completely because the protagonist wasn't like me in any way.
[9:02]She wasn't an immigrant.
[9:03]She wasn't black.
[9:04]She wasn't Nigerian.
[9:05]So there was still that disconnect.
[9:07]And the first book I ever truly connected with was Emory Cana.
[9:11]And that was just only a few years ago.
[9:13]So just really maybe I first read that book.
[9:16]I think two years ago it was published before then, but I only got my hands in it two years ago.
[9:21]And I really felt seen.
[9:23]I love the themes within that book of immigration and identity.
[9:27]And she talked about hair, which people might not get, but for black girls hair is a big deal.
[9:33]And it was the first book I did see very, I felt very seen in that book.
[9:39]So, and I'm really excited that throughout my career,
[9:42]I plan to write about Nigerian women.
[9:45]And a lot of people have been reaching out and saying,
[9:49]this is the first woman that I've seen Nigerian heroine and it's amazing.
[9:52]I don't know if it actually is because I haven't read every single book in the world,
[9:56]but it makes me feel really happy to know that another Nigerian girl.
[10:00]They see myself in the words that I write.
[10:02]It's amazing.
[10:03]So what made you write?
[10:04]What made you start doing this?
[10:05]And what made you write this book?
[10:07]What made me write some text on this before?
[10:10]And the answer is very straight, where I couldn't help it.
[10:13]I couldn't, I couldn't not write.
[10:16]The journey to becoming a writer
[10:17]wasn't incredibly hard.
[10:19]It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
[10:21]I wrote two books prior to this one in different genres
[10:24]and trying to get an agent was incredibly hard
[10:28]and it didn't happen until ties that cover.
[10:30]And even through that entire process,
[10:33]the idea of giving up never occurred to me
[10:35]just didn't seem like an option.
[10:37]Because even through the tears that I cried
[10:40]and the times I wanted to throw my laps about the window,
[10:43]I knew that I couldn't give up.
[10:45]Just wasn't an option.
[10:46]So I write and I will continue to write
[10:49]because I have to, because it's in my blood,
[10:51]it's, I think it's what I'm destined to do.
[10:54]Have you always loved to write?
[10:55]I wouldn't have been a Disney actress
[10:57]when I was younger.
[10:58]And I really wanted to be that black hat in Montana,
[11:03]and I wouldn't have a few additions,
[11:04]but didn't work out.
[11:06]And it was a summer after I met an audition
[11:09]and I was really sad because I didn't,
[11:11]I couldn't progress at the next stage
[11:13]that I wrote a poem called Longing for Spring
[11:17]and it was horrible.
[11:18]I was in elementary school,
[11:20]but it was the first thing I wrote in a purple journal
[11:24]and I kept reading it
[11:25]and writing and it just kind of happened.
[11:29]That's summer after a huge disappointment.
[11:30]I found out that I wasn't meant to be an actress
[11:33]because I could not act horrible,
[11:35]but I can do something else.
[11:39]And so I said I'd to explore that.
[11:41]Well, so I know you felt like it wasn't an option,
[11:45]but when you were crying, how did you get back
[11:47]to your laptop?
[11:48]Like, how did you just say to yourself,
[11:50]like, it doesn't matter.
[11:51]Like, I'm gonna do it eventually.
[11:52]Is it was just this interior monologue you had
[11:54]just this faith?
[11:55]Yeah, it's faith.
[11:57]I'm a Christian and my faith helped me through this.
[12:00]There's a Bible verse that says,
[12:02]a man's gift to make a throne for him
[12:04]and bring it to him before great men
[12:06]and I wrote that and I framed it and I put it in my room
[12:09]and I would recite it every time
[12:11]because it meant to me that eventually your gift
[12:15]to bring you to a place that you're meant to be,
[12:17]if you make room for you in this world where it's crowded
[12:20]in full of so many other talents,
[12:22]or somehow it will make room for you
[12:24]and people, great people will see you.
[12:26]And that was in my head and I said it all the time.
[12:31]And my family was amazing, my mother,
[12:34]and she's an immigrant,
[12:35]but she never pressured me to be a doctor
[12:38]or lawyer or an engineer,
[12:39]which is so many African immigrants
[12:41]or maybe immigrants in general tend to do.
[12:43]And I'm so grateful because I can't imagine
[12:47]being a doctor or lawyer, it's just not for me.
[12:50]And I listened to songs that cheered me up.
[12:54]Like, this sounds really ridiculous,
[12:56]but I always listened to that Hanuman Tana song.
[12:59]It's the Hanuman Tana song.
[13:00]My view side is song, The Climb.
[13:04]It's a really good song if you want to be motivated.
[13:06]So that helped me a lot.
[13:08]I am going to play that right after this.
[13:10]I've probably recognized it from my kids,
[13:12]but can you say the verse from the Bible again
[13:15]that you repeated to yourself?
[13:16]Just say it a little slower
[13:17]because you went so fast.
[13:18]Oh, I just want to hear it more clearly.
[13:20]A man's gift to make a throne for him
[13:23]and bring us him before great men.
[13:25]All right, cool.
[13:26]I like it.
[13:29]It's great to have a mantra.
[13:30]I mean, it's great to have something
[13:32]that you feel like is from, I don't know.
[13:35]I want to say a higher power, but that sounds so hokey,
[13:37]but something that is like grounding in that way
[13:40]and that really means a lot to you and it's great.
[13:43]Yeah.
[13:43]And you know, the Bible in my least, my least ever is, who knew
[13:47]they would be in the same sentence.
[13:48]No, no, no.
[13:51]So if you were to have kids who wanted to date
[13:53]outside the Nigerian world, would you have any issue
[13:57]at all or no?
[13:58]No, I wouldn't.
[13:59]As long as they take the culture
[14:02]that my mother has given me and I have given them
[14:05]and they hold on to it,
[14:07]like my main character eventually learns in the book.
[14:09]You can appreciate many cultures.
[14:12]You can practice many cultures
[14:13]and still stay true to yours.
[14:16]It doesn't take anything away from that.
[14:19]So that's basically what I would tell my children
[14:22]to remember where their mother came from
[14:26]and hold on to that, no matter what,
[14:28]no matter who they love.
[14:30]Tell me about your writing process.
[14:31]What was it like?
[14:32]Did you outline this book?
[14:34]Did you consider writing a memoir?
[14:36]Did it all just come pouring out?
[14:37]What was it like?
[14:38]Well, this is the first book I've ever outlined.
[14:41]As a new writer, I didn't have,
[14:42]I didn't know what I was doing when I started writing
[14:45]initially, like many writers.
[14:47]I just dove into it, standing for my computer
[14:49]and that was a huge mistake.
[14:51]I went to a conference in New York with writers
[14:54]and I learned a lot
[14:55]and I learned how to outline my book
[14:57]and plot points and all that stuff.
[15:01]Very technical stuff that people readers might not realize
[15:03]we'd writers are trying to do.
[15:05]And that really did help me outlining the entire book
[15:09]from beginning to end,
[15:10]even though things changed a lot,
[15:11]but it gave me an idea of what to do
[15:15]and relevant points to hit
[15:17]and sort of just having chapters
[15:19]that were not pushing the plot forward.
[15:22]So my writing process since then
[15:25]has been always outlined in my book.
[15:28]And sometimes I write the whole thing,
[15:30]but right now I'm working on a book
[15:31]and I have whiteboard,
[15:33]but I'm just like outlining things as I go
[15:36]because I don't know what's gonna happen in the story.
[15:39]So outlining is wonderful.
[15:43]Excellent.
[15:44]So can you say any more about your next book?
[15:46]Book number two does not have a title,
[15:51]really struggling with that right now,
[15:53]but it's about a biracial woman
[15:56]who never met her Nigerian father,
[15:59]but then she learns that he's passed away
[16:02]and he's invited her to Nigeria for his funeral
[16:05]because he wants all his children to attend.
[16:07]And he's this incredibly wealthy man in Nigeria.
[16:11]She decides to go to Nigeria to learn about her father
[16:14]and his family and the part of herself she never knew.
[16:17]And she gets there and she meets this unconventional family
[16:21]of his, a first wife, a second wife,
[16:24]a mistress who never made it down the aisle
[16:27]and children who are basically Nigerian royalty
[16:31]and she's tasked into this colorful, insane family
[16:36]and most of the characters are trying to find themselves
[16:39]and as she's trying to find themselves
[16:41]and I explore themes of an equation and identity
[16:43]and class in Nigeria, the rich and the poor.
[16:50]Yeah.
[16:50]Wow, that sounds amazing.
[16:51]Oh my gosh.
[16:52]Thank you.
[16:53]That sounds great.
[16:54]That sounds like a movie.
[16:55]So I'll be tuning into that
[16:57]when that eventually gets options and all the rest.
[16:59]Thanks, sure.
[17:00]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[17:03]Very cliche, but I stand by it.
[17:06]Never give up.
[17:08]If you feel that it's, if you feel it in your gut,
[17:11]that this is what you're meant to do, just don't stop.
[17:14]And not giving up can be many things.
[17:17]It can mean shelf in a project and starting a new one,
[17:21]which is very painful, but sometimes it's necessary.
[17:24]It could also mean taking, writing classes,
[17:28]going to conferences and writing is so isolating,
[17:32]but it's so amazing that you can meet people
[17:34]who are like who are on the same journey and learn from them.
[17:38]It's not giving up also my name joining a book club
[17:43]and just talking to people who are reading books,
[17:45]seeing what is marketable, seeing what publishers want
[17:49]because a lot of the times writers don't know
[17:52]what publishers want and that's very important to know.
[17:55]And yeah, not giving up.
[17:58]That's my advice.
[18:00]And I have to ask, did you record the audiobook for this?
[18:04]Because you have the best voice.
[18:06]It's like, I'm serious.
[18:08]You should like, this should be your side hustle.
[18:10]It's like being an audiobook narrator.
[18:13]Oh my God, I would love to.
[18:15]I didn't record the voice.
[18:17]I really would have loved to, but I did not.
[18:21]The person who did record it,
[18:22]I thought did a wonderful job,
[18:24]but I really hope to do an audiobook for another of my book.
[18:30]Put that in your next contract.
[18:32]Thank you.
[18:33]Yes, put that in writing.
[18:36]Thank you.
[18:36]I will do that.
[18:38]Okay, awesome.
[18:40]Well, Jane, thank you so much.
[18:42]Thanks for coming on Momstone.
[18:43]Have time to read books.
[18:44]Thanks for giving the vantage point of the daughter
[18:47]and the mother in this situation
[18:49]because you can relate to sort of both.
[18:51]I expect as a mom, I can relate to wanting to have my kids
[18:55]keep my culture, but see the point of view of the kid
[18:57]and I can feel myself as the kid too.
[18:59]So I'll just say thank you for your story.
[19:02]Thank you for your time and for speaking with me.
[19:05]This was very fun.
[19:07]Oh, good.
[19:08]And sorry for trumping it around my apartment.
[19:11]No problem.
[19:12]Okay, thanks.
[19:13]Thank you.
[19:14]Bye.
[19:15]Bye.
[19:17]Thanks again to today's sponsor SugarWish,
[19:19]send a surprise SugarWish to somebody you love
[19:22]and check it out yourself, SugarWish.com.
[19:25]Thanks for listening to this episode of Momstone.
[19:27]Have time to read books.
[19:29]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[19:31]at Zebi Owens and at Momstone.
[19:33]Have time to read books.
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[19:41]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[19:43]for the Sound Editing.
[19:45]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[19:46]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.