There’s a brand-new book sitting on my shelf—

Chimamanda’s Dream Count.I haven’t read it yet, so fear not. There are no spoilers here.

I’m saving it. Like some kind of special occasion meal. Like I’m trying to delay the moment before I inevitably get wrecked, rebuilt, and sent into an existential crisis.

Because Chimamanda’s books don’t just entertain me.

They change me. And I know the minute I crack open that first page, something in me will shift.

It always does.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was my first love in African literature. Before I discovered her books, I was already a reader. A proper, obsessed, can’t-eat-lunch-because-I’m-saving-money-for-books kind of reader. From as young as eleven, I devoured Mills & Boon and Bernardine Evaristo novels, even when they got me in trouble. The covers alone were scandalous enough to make any Nigerian mother give you a side-eye, but I didn’t care. I read them anyway.

I would sneak into the market, past the stalls of dried fish and ankara fabric, to this tiny bookshop overflowing with paperbacks and hardcovers and everything from bibles to scandalous romance. It was here I made an arrangement with the bookseller’s daughter: I’d pay a small token, borrow a book, read it as fast as humanly possible, and return it in pristine condition so she could still sell it. That was the deal. That was how I read my way through childhood.

My mother eventually caught on and God bless her started buying the books for me. She didn’t always understand my obsession, but she fed it anyway.

Fast forward to secondary school. When Chimamanda entered my life.

Purple Hibiscus: The Book That Confused and Broke Me

I can’t remember the exact year, but I know I must have been in my senior year of secondary school. SS1 or maybe SS2, when I read Purple Hibiscus. And the first thing I remember was my feelings.

It left me unsettled. Bewildered. Confused. I finished the last page and sat there, staring at nothing, feeling so many things I didn’t have words for..

Why would Jaja take the fall for a self defense? Why was Papa Eugene, a man so deeply religious, so monstrous to his family? I didn’t get it. Why has'nt the mother left? I didn’t understand why  Kambili's relationship with Pastor Amadi was controversial. My young, naive self had never  encountered a book that made me feel this much. Question so much.

There’s a scene I’ll never forget. The one Kambili gets her period, and in a simple act of love, her mother and brother make her cornflakes before church.  It was such a soft, beautiful moment. And of course, it landed them in hot water, literally. Papa punished them for it.

I was shocked.

I had never heard of fathers like this. I couldn’t process it. My father was the kind of man who bathed me when I was little, sang me lullabies, told me ridiculous stories about tortoises outsmarting lions, bought me pears, promised me sweets if I stayed still at the hospital. My father, fathers loved their daugthers right?

So what was I reading?

What was this world where a father’s love came with conditions and cruelty?

That book was my awakening. It was the first time I realized there were things about the world I didn’t know. It sent me searching.

That was the beginning.

Americanah: The Book That Made Me a Blogger

Years later, I was in university when my mother gave me another book. Americanah. Inside the cover, she had written:

"From Mom, with love."

And this book? It brough with it another feeling. One of curiousity. One of daring. Of wanting to be. More.

It was the first time I met a protagonist who was a blogger. I remember pausing and thinking, what is a blogger? What did that even mean? How did someone turn writing into a thing?

I went online. I researched. That night, I found Blogger.com and created my first-ever blog.

I named it Total Drama Queen (because, of course). I had no idea what I was doing, but I poured my heart into it. Soon, I started collaborating with other young Nigerian girls who had lofty dreams of being writers. We wrote about womanhood, change, the things that mattered. Us. Women. And the things that mattered to us.

And then, like many young writers, I got distracted.

Over the years, my blog evolved, disappeared, came back to life, died again. I went from being the drama queen to simply dearsalmah. I’ve been blogging since 2017 and yet, for the last three years, I haven’t written a single post.

Until now.

Life Happened. And Then, Chimamanda Happened Again.

Adulthood crept in. Bills needed to be paid. The writing that once made me feel alive was not paying me, so I had to focus on the work that did. And by the time I was done with the work that drained me, I had nothing left to give to the work that fed me.

I stopped.

I told myself I would return when I had more time. But time never came.

I moved to England. I started over. School. Life. Navigating immigration.

And somewhere along the way, I met someone.

Someone who saw me, not just for who I was but for who I had forgotten I could be.

He reminded me of the writer I used to be. Encouraged me. Pushed me. Poured into me. And even though I started writing again tentatively, in private, with self-doubt shadowing every word, I started nonetheless.

Then, Chimamanda announced a new book. Dream Count.

With it came press releases and interviews and thoughts pieces. She confessed falling into despair, she announced casually that she too had suffered from writers block, from crippling fear, from paralysis.

She admitted that after becoming pregnant with her first child, she experienced a terrifying disconnect from her writing—a paralysis that made her question if she would ever return to fiction again.

And as I read The New Yorker posts and The times and The guardians and watched The BBC interview and Vougue and Vanguard I read, new feelings started to stir in me. If Chimamanda, Chimamanda could feel this, if even she could be trapped by doubt, then what was I so afraid of?

So I went back home.

Back to Nigeria. Back to where it all started.  I needed to reconnect with myself, my roots, my family. I hadn’t seen them in almost a year, and I was running on empty. I needed to feel again.

And my mother—my ever-supportive, book-hoarding mother—brought out the cartons and cartons and cartons of books I had left behind. The ones she had bought me. The ones I had been gifted. The ones I had borrowed and never returned.

And there it was.

My very first copy of Americanah. The one she signed.

I held it in my hands, and I felt. I knew, this time will be different.

I will write again.

Why I’m Saving Dream Count

So here we are.

I have Dream Count sitting on my shelf, untouched. And I know why I’m saving it.

Because Chimamanda’s books don’t just entertain me. They change me. Every single one of her books has pushed me into a new era of my life.

Purple Hibiscus made me ask questions.
Americanah made me a blogger.
Dream Count made me feel again.

So in truth, I want to sit in the moment before the change. Before I turn the first page and something in me shifts, because I know it will.

I will read it soon. And I will return here to tell you what it did to me.

But for now, I’m just sitting with the weight of what’s to come.

And as I write this, I prepare to publish my first book, I realize something:

I don’t know Chimamanda. She doesn’t know me. But she has shaped me in ways I cannot fully explain.

And that’s the power of words.

That’s the power of storytelling.