It was by chance that I wrote a novel about family. When I sat down to write the first few pages of my novel, Leave the clutter at homewhich was published on April 14, I had intended to write a kind of anti-romantic novel, something like a great unrequited love story that would explore all the reasons why romantic love in its modern iteration seems more like a rare feat than a common occurrence. But from the beginning, I quickly lost interest in the task I had set myself. In hopes of knowing my protagonist more fully and understanding her special way of loving, I will need to know who her family was to her. Each of her siblings seemed to me to be fascinating people, some vying for my attention, while others made quiet but undeniable assurances that they, too, had testimony to the matter of learning to love. Their personalities and voices stood out to me, as did their various struggles, making me wonder what kind of home had produced four children who were each deeply depressed and who collectively struggled to find a safe haven for each other.
The American Psychological Association defines a dysfunctional family as one in which “relationships or communication are weak, and members are unable to achieve closeness and self-expression.” By this definition, the Long family begins the novel in a state of extreme dysfunction. One sibling is the scapegoat, another is a golden child, another is a people pleaser, and the youngest is a lost child. Through these archetypal roles, they each struggle to define what they want, who they are, and who they might want to be for each other. They naturally share some characteristics, such as being second-generation Nigerian immigrants from a working-class background, as well as struggling with sometimes conflicting cultural expectations. They all happened to share, during the two months we met them, love problems. Chaotic families are common, some would say ubiquitous, so what would it take to make a reader stick with them?
As I look back at my journey in crafting this novel, I’m excited to think of the many books that taught me something about how to make a messy family compelling. I read some of these books before I had any idea what specific family they made up of Leave the clutter at home. Others I read well after I finished my novel. But each of them provided the necessary education about how family shapes our personality, how it can be a unit of belonging or a unit of non-belonging, how it can be a refuge from the oppressive systems of the world outside the home or its embodiment within the home. Writing can be a lonely business, and I’m grateful to have these books to turn to as comfort, a nod of affirmation, along the way.