I Want to Be a Writer

Description

She crossed continents to become a writer. Instead, she became the written.

Olanrewaju arrives in England with a suitcase full of optimism, dreams, and perhaps a mosquito that followed her from Nigeria. She sets foot on English soil and becomes Shakespeare—determined to conquer England and, eventually, the literary world.

Instead, she finds herself baffled by English mysteries. The expressionless faces. Birds that prefer walking to flying. And despite endless practice, she still cannot master the British art of crunching an apple soundlessly.

 As Shakespeare navigates life between two worlds, she contends with her Yoruba-English accent, seed offerings that refuse to sprout and the constant negotiation between her Nigerian roots and her new life.

Across borders, she discovers, dreams grow legs. Those who own them sometimes become spectators, quietly watching them wander away. Slowly, she learns that the future is a misty morning—veiled, shifting, and impossible to fully predict.

Warm, witty, and deeply reflective, I Want to Be a Writer is a literary novella about the dreams we carry across borders—and how, whether they survive or die, they can leave us as strangers to the people we once imagined we would become.