February and its love are here! So, help us in showing our Brittle Paper Writer of the Month some much needed admiration and adoration! Our February Writer of the Month is Mariam Baldeh, an up-and-coming writer from The Gambia, whose fiction piece, “Innocent”, brought tears to our eyes and stole our hearts.

Born in The Gambia but raised by her mom who works for Unicef, Mariam Baldeh has spent time moving to several countries before completing high school in Kenya, and later earning her Master of Journalism in 2017 in Canada at the University of British Columbia. Baldeh is an aspiring writer, and with her journalism background, it makes sense that her non-fiction work has gained traction and appeared in various print and online platforms. Testament to her talent, Baldeh’s writing does not stop there. She also runs a blog called The Real African Story, which aims to deepen the self-identity and self-pride of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Building on her experience as a writer, she is a novelist as well as a short story writer, the latter being well known among our readers. In true artist fashion, she finds joy in a myriad of ways, and nothing nourishes her soul quite like a good story coming together, great music, libraries, country-hopping, J.K. Rowling, Shonda Rhimes, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

 

With introductions behind us, let us get into conversation with our February Writer of the Month:

Brittle Paper

Mariam, congratulations on being February Artist of the Month! We always start with the artist origin question. So, tell us how you found yourself taking up this craft? Was there a specific form of inspiration?

Mariam Baldeh

Thank you so much! Feels a little bit like being back in elementary school and finally getting your picture up on the “Student of the Month” wall [laughs]. To be honest, I don’t know when I first started writing, I just know that I started loving books extremely early on and once you experience that euphoria of simply being in the presence of a book, you naturally gravitate towards wanting to be a source of that same magic, so you write. My mum always made sure we had several bookcases full of Scholastics books at home, so I pored over everything – Goosebumps, The Chronicles of Narnia, Charlotte’s Web, Sweet Valley High, Arthur, Frog and Toad, Jacqueline Wilson books, The Babysitter’s Club, Little House on the Prairie, and on and on. My mum would tell me to go to bed and turn off the lights and I’d still be there under the covers with a flashlight 1 or 2 hours later. So, thanks to my mum, I had the access I needed to develop my love for language and literature.

But it wasn’t until I finally picked up the Harry Potter books when I was around 8 or 9 that I started to wonder whether I could also one day write books. But I would push it to the back of my mind and not allow myself to entertain the idea just because of how intimidating the skill level of the authors I was reading was. And then I put off writing for a while in the 5th grade after an incident with one of my teachers. We were asked to write a short story for an English class assignment, and I remember writing a story about a sorceress and a snake, complete with colourful illustrations and everything, and submitted it feeling so proud of myself! My white male English teacher holds me back after class one day and asks me if I wrote the story. So, I tell him that I did, and he asks me to just be honest and tell him where I copied the story from, and at this point I’m just so confused. He then decides it’s appropriate to call one of my white male classmates (who I’m now horrified to admit I had a crush on at the time) and ask him to read my story while I stood there and tell us whether he believed I wrote the story. My classmate didn’t either. Of course, at the time I was absolutely furious and so hurt but now I realize it was really an unintended compliment given in the most convoluted way.

Brittle Paper

That’s probably one of the most wholesome yet infuriating responses we’ve gotten to that question. It’s so wonderful to see children become enamoured and inspired by the books they read, and it’s upsetting when the people around them don’t nurture that growing potential and passion. Thankfully, you persevered because your writing truly is exceptional.

Having grown up reading the classic childhood books and authors, is there an author who you look up to now that you’re all grown up?

Mariam Baldeh

It’s funny sometimes I’ll read an interview, and someone will name an author they admire, and I’ll cringe thinking could you BE more cliche? Ironically, they’ve named exactly the person I would name too [laughs]. But the fact is that their influence is just that ubiquitous and they are just that brilliant and inspiring. So yes, J. K. Rowling and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie definitely – their humour and wit, their attention to incredible detail, and their capacity for conjuring up amazing human beings that I want to befriend and spaces that I just ache to inhabit. I also absolutely love Yaa Gyasi and for non-fiction work, I would definitely say Malcolm Gladwell.

Brittle Paper

Great, so with the being said, I’m going to put you on the spot. Pick a category and list your top three: books | movies | series. Go!

Mariam Baldeh

What a brutal task! I could name 10 in each category that could arguably all compete for number 1. But for books I would say, Harry Potter by Rowling, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I also think the main character from The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson is one of the funniest and most memorable characters I’ve ever come across. For movies, definitely The Lion King, Anastasia, and Tuck Everlasting. My dad would take us to the video rental store every Friday after school so we could pick out two movies for the weekend (shout out to you, Balagie) so these are still the three movies that are always guaranteed to make me nostalgic and bawl my eyes out.

Brittle Paper

I would try and get you to narrow down that list but too much thought has gone into it to do that to you, so let’s keep all of it.

Now, let’s finally get to the exact reason that led to you being selected as Brittle Paper’s January favourite: “Innocent”. That story is written in such a heart-warming yet heart-wrenching way. What inspired that story?

Mariam Baldeh

So often the way a story begins for me is I’ll have a title or opening sentence or line of dialogue that intrigues me to explore more. Or sometimes it’s just a vague image as was the case with this story. For several weeks I just had this image of a child standing sort of apart from some other children, and they were all in complete darkness, but I had no clue who the children were or why the air around them felt so heavy. So, I stewed on it for a while and then one night I was fiddling around on my phone and came across a news article about gunmen storming a school in Cameroon, killing several children, and that fuelled me to just start writing. I had read an article about how the United States alone has had over 200 school shootings within a decade, which is horrifying, but really, it’s a global problem so I wanted to speak to this universality.

Brittle Paper

Something that really stood out about this piece is that you managed to capture the innocent childlike demeanour and voice so well while at the same time portraying such intense emotion. The absolute darkness of this piece creeps up on you. Do you often write emotional and/or dark pieces? Or is this but one of many forms you like to play with?

Mariam Baldeh

I think I gravitate towards fiction that’s based in some way on reality – maybe it’s a way of trying to make sense of the senseless or an attempt to humanize people who often just turn into statistics. I definitely appreciate levity and less intense stories because that’s extremely important too, but I guess I have always tended to lean more towards darker themes in the things I read and watch (As much as I love a good rom-com, I will probably always choose the thriller/ horror/ mystery option instead). I appreciate stories that force people to confront uncomfortable realities. Not only is it cathartic in a way for the writer, it’s also jarring for the reader because it slaps them in the face with some sort of truth about the kind of world we live in. I think the ultimate goal of life is transcendence – to do better, to be better – and so I like stories that keep us all uncomfortable.

Brittle Paper

That goal has definitely been accomplished with “Innocent”. I’m sure you have seen the comments left behind by some of the readers. How did you find seeing people interact so deeply with your words?

Mariam Baldeh

If you only knew the unhealthy number of times I’ve read the comments. It’s deeply motivating. I’m working to get to a point where readers’ feedback doesn’t affect me so deeply simply because the flip side is being crippled by negative criticism and God knows the inner critic does not need any more ammunition to do its devilish work!

Brittle Paper

Knowing the balance with reading comments, especially in the online world, is a long and difficult journey but it is important for artists to embark on it. The silver lining is that the comments for your story were all positive, which I sure differ regarding on piece and genre. “Innocent” was a fiction piece but as your bio states, you often write nonfiction. When you write nonfiction, where does your inspiration usually come from?

Mariam Baldeh

With non-fiction, I tend to gravitate towards stories centred around health, human rights, gender and social issues, culture, and art. So, because I’m writing about things I’m already interested in, the entire process from researching to the actual writing is fun for me. But my first love will always always be fiction – there’s just so much more freedom and room to have fun in fiction.

Brittle Paper

Since your readers are going to be reading some new work from you on Friday, can you give us any hints about what that piece will be like?

Mariam Baldeh

The piece on Friday is about the unfortunate reality of abusive relationships. When you read it, it alludes to an abusive relationship with another human, but I am really talking about the abusive relationship we often have with ourselves. The ego. We are often our own worst critic and our own abuser so it’s a love letter of sorts to self-love. As for the piece that will be published later on, I absolutely love magical realism, mythology, and the supernatural so the story will definitely have these themes. It’s about a young woman who discovers the truth about her family’s intergenerational curse.

Brittle Paper

That’s a great teaser for the readers and, before we leave them to ponder on that, I have one last question.

Apart from your writing, Mariam, what is one thing about yourself that you want to share with our readers?

Mariam Baldeh

If anybody would like to check out The Real African Story blog. I’ve been travelling so I haven’t posted for a few months but definitely stay tuned for new content coming up!

Brittle Paper

Wonderful! Not only do our readers get a new piece by you on Friday, but they can also spend days leading up to it reading some other work from you on the blog. Mariam, thank you for this wonderful interview and for being our February Writer of the Month!

 

 

Be sure to check out Mariam’s new piece, “A Quiet Kill”, which will be published on Friday, and if you want to revisit our previous artist feature with Linda Thotho, you are welcome to check that out here.