Zainab Take a Bow An interview with Zainab Boladale
Zainab Boladale is a household name in Ireland. She made her TV debut on RTÉ’s children’s programme, news2day, as a presenter in 2017 – the first Afro-Irish woman on Irish TV news. She’s currently presenter and reporter for Ireland’s long-running factual feature programme, Nationwide. Zainab deserves recognition in the UK now too, as the author of a sparkling new coming of age novel for teenage readers. Braids Take a Day is the story of Abidemi and what turns out to be a momentous last summer at home before she heads off for college. Like Zainab, Abi is Nigerian born but has grown up in Ireland. With her father away on business for a few weeks, her best friend Sinéad is keen for the two of them to spread their wings a bit, with a trip to the disco in the next town high on the list. There’s a burgeoning romance with former schoolmate Jack to enjoy, and Abi’s growing understanding of the pressures Sinéad faces in her home life, but most dramatic of all, is the new friendship Abi strikes up with a cool fellow Nigerian woman, recently moved to County Clare. The two connect when Abi offers to braid Folake’s hair for her, but their relationship is tested when Abi discovers that Folake has been keeping a huge secret. With a thoroughly engaging central character, a lively, believable supporting cast and a plot that gently explores the experience of growing up in a different culture, the book has a great deal to interest and entertain readers wherever they live.
Zainab decided early on a career in journalism, moving from Clare to study it at college in Dublin, but story writing is something that she’s always loved doing too. ‘Whenever I had downtime, I’d write ideas in my notes app on my phone, and sometimes I’d flesh them out. During COVID when I had more time on my hands, I found a draft for what became Braids Take a Day and there were elements in it I really liked.’ She contacted author Sarah Webb who in turn put in her touch with the O’Brien Press. ‘They gave me steering points for how to develop it and then they left me to take it further.’
Zainab is a film maker as well as TV star and successful author – her CV puts all of us to shame – and the very first starting point for her book was as a film scene, with a young woman doing another woman’s hair, the two of them chatting, before a big reveal. As many young readers now understand, hair is culturally significant, something made clear throughout Braids Take a Day. With no mother or family around, and after a ‘string of bad experiences with hairdressers who didn’t understand how to handle my curls’, Abi watches YouTube videos to learn how to do her own hair, including Fulani braids. Impressed, her friend Sinéad asks her to braid her hair as well, though first acknowledging that she doesn’t want to do anything “offensive”. Another girl, Clara, ‘one of the most “crushed on” girls from St Enda’s’ also asks Abi to braid her hair and once again, Abi has to explain the significance of the braids, though she’s not sure that Clara really understands the point she’s making. Zainab always knew that this would be a big part of the story but was careful about the way she approached it. ‘Folake arrives in a small town and she needs to find someone who can do her hair. I knew that would be strange to someone who doesn’t understand that there just wouldn’t be any hairdressers she could go to in the area, and I knew I had to provide more information on that. But I was also super-conscious not to be too didactic about it all. Thinking back to myself at the age Abi is, I’d have still been trying to figure things out, so to expect her to have all the answers about the politics of hair felt wrong. I wanted to provide information for someone who may just be realising, “Oh, there’s actually a whole conversation to be had around hair, especially Black hair.” I wanted to open people’s minds to that and for this to be the kind of book that anyone can pick up and feel that they’ve learned something from it.’
Putting herself into Abi’s shoes, and those of her friends, is something that Zainab does a lot, and which gives the story so much of its
immediacy and appeal. ‘She’s at that time when you are really trying to figure things out for yourself, and of course you feel like you’re the only one, unaware that there are other people having moments when they haven’t a clue either. I wanted to show that there are people in our lives who look like they have it all together but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t going through all sorts of things at home. Abi’s friend Sinéad is far more confident, and seems far cooler to Abi, but she’s still just a teenager.’ Sinéad’s home situation is very different to Abi’s. She lives with her mum, who owns the local launderette, and has two big sisters. Money is tight – witness the family’s car, a rusted grey Toyota with a very dodgy clutch – and Ms Quinn is the subject of local gossip having fallen pregnant with Sinéad’s big sister ‘out of wedlock’ and then divorcing Sinéad’s father five years into the marriage. This is highlighted in two scenes, one with wealthy Clara and her equally privileged friends, and in another in the town’s dress shop, where the assistant is suspicious of and rude to both girls. It takes Abi until almost the end of the book – and the shock bursting of the bubble she has been living in – to realise quite the struggle Sinéad has. ‘I wanted to subtly highlight the role class plays in teenagerhood and friendships as well’, says Zainab.
As one of a very few YA writers of colour in Ireland, did that create additional pressure to get the representation of her characters correct? ‘I was conscious that I didn’t want to alienate any audience, but I also didn’t want to be untrue to my own voice. When I was younger, I read authors from all backgrounds, Malorie Blackman, Judi Curtin, Jacqueline Wilson, and everything they wrote was true to their own voice, so when I’m writing, it’s to that younger Zainab. I wanted to write what I knew she would have picked up in the library.’ She read so much as a young person she says because, one, she was ‘incredibly bored’ and two, because it was a way of jumping into other experiences.
And now, having completed her first book, will there be more? ‘That’s the hope. I’m thinking about what I want to write next, and I do have ideas, but it’s about finding the time. But I feel really comfortable in this space, it feels true to me and what I want to do. I feel like I’ve done a full circle to get back to what I’ve always wanted to do.’
On the strength of Braids Take a Day, readers will certainly be waiting for more.
Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.
Braids Take a Day by Zainab Boladale is published by the O’Brien Press, 978-1788494427, £10.99 pbk.