ÌRÒNÚ
ee-ROH-noo — a thought. a reflection. the interior made visible.
Some people process life by living it.
I process it by writing it down.
I have always communicated most honestly in writing. Not because I lack the words in person, but because writing demands clarity. It cannot be interrupted. It cannot be misremembered. It asks you to mean exactly what you say and say exactly what you mean.
Every significant thing I have ever needed to express to a husband, to a child, to myself, I have written first to create precision. So that what I feel becomes something that can be returned to, referenced, held.
Writing is how I think. It is also how I survive.
And at some point, the private writing became public. The interior became pages. The pages became a book. And now the book is becoming something longer, deeper, and more honest than anything I have written before.
Welcome to the archive of those thoughts.
Get Your Foot Off My Neck
A memoir.
A memoir. Published February 29, 2020 — a leap year, Black History Month, three days before Women's Month began. Nothing about that timing was accidental.
This is the story of a Nigerian-American architect who learned early that the rooms she entered were not built for her — and entered them anyway. It is a book about taking up space. About what it costs to shrink, and what it costs to stop.
Substack Reads
The Quiet Death of Softness
Dear Fatherless Child
In My Own Pleasure
Tòkunbọ̀