By Olukorede Yishau
I want to tell you a story about the grit of a Nigerian-American married to a Swede.
In the beginning, fiction writing found Lola Akinmade Åkerström. It was beautiful and marvellous in her sight. Over the years, however, she relegated it and made creative non-fiction and travel writing the darlings of her life. Two non-fiction books— ‘Due North’ and ‘Lagom’— later the jealous lover called fiction staged a comeback. It was while Lola was on vacation in Portugal’s Algarve region and reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Americanah’ that she visualised a novel about three black women and one influential white man. Right there she pulled out her notebook, outlined scenes, descriptions, characters, traits, features, interactions and quirks.
By May 2018, as Lola recalled in a July 2020 piece, the first five or so pages were ready and she was so ecstatic. She had a dilemma: “I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go with the book in terms of prose; whether or not I wanted it to be pure literary fiction which is what mainstream publishing expects from me as an African writer in the diaspora, especially, if I wanted to be taken ‘seriously’ as a literary writer. We needed to keep proving our command of language to primarily white audiences while writing stories mostly rooted in Africa.”
The war between literary fiction and upmarket fiction was eventually won by the latter after she struggled to get into the second chapter of another African author’s literary fiction book. She did not want to write a book that readers will struggle to get into.
“I didn’t want to hide what I wanted to say behind pretentious literary prose,” she wrote. So, she decided to write a novel that is in between literary fiction and commercial fiction. Lola engaged the keyboard and after months of typing away, a character-driven novel with relatable plots was born. She christened it ‘Afroswede’.
For a well-known travel photographer and author of ‘Lagom’, a book already translated into 18 foreign languages, you will expect Lola’s sojourn thereafter to be bump-free. But, in the forest of a thousand daemons that international publishing is, her road was rough, and it only recently ended in praise with publishing deals (in the US, UK, Canada and the Commonwealth) sealed for her debut novel now renamed ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’.
After working with a writing guru, Leigh Shulman, to get the manuscript ready for submission to a literary agent as required for mainstream publishing, nothing prepared Lola for the heart-breaking rejections to come. To get an agent, she participated in a Twitter pitching initiative called #DVPit. Several agents requested her manuscript, but nothing came out of it. Later in 2019, two-times Booker Prize finalist and Booker Prize judge Chigozie Obioma came to Stockholm, where Lola lives, to promote ‘An Orchestra of Minorities’. Obioma’s agent, Jessica Craig, was also on the trip. Lola’s friend, Yomi Abiola, sent Jessica a brief email introduction. Lola and Jessica met for 30 minutes.
“I think it’s a remarkably polished first draft, and I really like your voice and writing style! And you bring a refreshing and intelligent new perspective to women’s fiction,” were Jessica’s words to Lola after reading the manuscript. Thus, she crossed the first hurdle to getting published by mainstream publishers.
But then daemons in the forest of a thousand daemons were waiting for her. How dare she cross genres?
“We were so eager and positive that the book would be snapped up right away in an auction. It was unique, different, epic, genre-crossing, and boundary-breaking. But traditional publishers were nervous about it. My book didn’t fit into a neat category they could easily check off even though many of them liked it.
“The main problem is that most publishers are either literary or commercial. So, my book was too commercial for literary imprints and too literary for commercial imprints.
“We got lots of positive feedback with the rejections which stumped even my agent and she’s one of the best in the business,” Lola wrote.
As time went by, seventy commissioning editors had rejected the book and thirty-five others kept mute. Sourcebooks Landmark came through on June 10, 2020, with a pre-empt book deal to publish it in the United States and Canada.
“Publishing a book comes down to who truly gets you, your voice, and your vision for what you’ve created, not who pays the most at auction for your manuscript. Getting to this point in any author’s life, especially as a debut novelist, is in itself a huge privilege and dream,” Lola said.
On April 8, a deal for the UK and the Commonwealth was announced. Head of Zeus saw the vision and is running with it. On September 7, the American and Canada editions will be out and in February 3, 2022, this tale of three Black women whose lives are intertwined with a wealthy White man will be out in the UK and Commonwealth.
The story follows Kemi Adeyemi, a marketing executive, who is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, the CEO of Sweden’s largest marketing firm. Kemi’s immediate task is to help fix a PR fiasco about a racially tone-deaf campaign.
There is also Brittany-Rae Johnson who meets Jonny on the plane on his way to the U.S. This chanced meeting ushers the former model-turned-flight attendant into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege. An unhealthy obsession develops.
The third in the tripod is refugee Muna Saheed, recently granted asylum, whose day job is cleaning the toilets at Jonny’s office.
These three Black women are shown ‘pepper’ by the man of means.
We can now safely add novelist to Lola’s belt in addition to being the editor of Slow Travel Stockholm, speaker and an award-winning writer and photographer— whose works have appeared in National Geographic, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Sunday Times Travel, The Telegraph, New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Travel Channel, Adventure Magazine, Lonely Planet and many more.
My final take: If Lola Akinmade Åkerström had given up after 70 rejections, the world will not have a taste of the delight (‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’) that has blown the minds of internationally-renowned novelists such as Taylor Jenkins Reid, Imbolo Mbue, Nicole Dennis-Benn and Deesha Philyaw, among others. So, it is not time to give up yet. Get up, stand up; don’t give up the fight. You deserve a place in the sun and will defeat the daemons.
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If Lola Akinmade Åkerström had given up after 70 rejections, the world will not have a taste of the delight (‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’) that has blown the minds of internationally-renowned novelists such as Taylor Jenkins Reid, Imbolo Mbue, Nicole Dennis-Benn and Deesha Philyaw, among others. So, it is not time to give up yet. Get up, stand up; don’t give up the fight. You deserve a place in the sun and will defeat the daemons.
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of ‘ln Name of Our Father’ and ‘Vaults of Secrets’.
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