There is Rice at Home: Nigerian Parents, Western Hegemony and the Healing of Intergenerational Trauma
Chapter III in the series The Costs of Nigerian Exceptionalism
Part I: Savage or Savant
Nigerian parents get a rough rep. Viral memes like “There is rice at home” and “Put it on my head” sum up the unequivocal parental savagery that has produced this generation of exceptional Nigerians. As rough as they may have been on us, their Africanized tiger parenting has produced a generation of highly influential, globetrotting, high-earning millennials who are as publicly celebrated as we are secretly traumatized. These polarities complicate our relationships with our parents, who are aging to a place where they will need us more than ever. As we contend with how our unique upbringings impacted us, and with our legacies as seen through our children’s eyes, many Nigerian millennials are now either confronting or ignoring the gaping hole in the relationships we have with our parents.
Nigerian exceptionalism, our constant, all-consuming thirst for social recognition irrespective of personal wellness, has wedged a space so deep between “Baby Boomer” parents and millennial children that it would seem we are of entirely different cultural groups. Exceptionalism as a “child-rearing” philosophy results in a profound generational and cultural gap between youth and parents, marked by poor communication, emotional distance and a profound lack of support in both directions. The missing emotional connection with our parents is reflected in the hollowness of our other relationships as well as in our distance from our cultural identity and homeland. This coldness makes it easier for us to pour the entirety of our beings into achievement rather than fulfillment.
The Nigerian [Tiger] Parenting Legacy
In spite of entrenched anti-immigrant racism, Nigerians are the most educated immigrant group in both the US and UK. We’re more likely to hold high-paying positions than any other Black cultural identity. We also have some of the highest IQs in the world, by a distance. We can be found in just about any corner of the world, including places like India and Japan, intermarrying, advancing professionally, and even becoming national celebrities. A former mentor of mine once said to me, “If you give a Yoruba man food and basic education, he will take over your entire village.” Many would agree, due to hyperselectivity, this is true of most Nigerians abroad.
There might truly be something in the Nigerian DNA that makes us to overcome hardship and excel beyond what most people even dream of; or it might be, as others argue, that the idea of Nigerianness emboldens and empowers us such that when we go out into the world with the sense that we are “Nigerians”, this alone is enough to drive us to succeed. Our exceptional prowess and overwhelming presence from “music to sports to medicine” is what has earned us the reputation for being exceptionally high achievers globally. It’s a form of cultural currency that allows us to walk into rooms (read, Nigerian weddings) with our heads held high, knowing that we’ll be accepted because we have accomplished great things. But it’s also a cross we bear, causing us to suppress our deepest needs in favor of appearing more successful, more important and thus “more valuable”.
Our level of social acceptance is determined by our conformity to the ideals deemed to be culturally valuable, vis a vis our obedience to our parents as well as our extended parental community–aunts and uncles of blood or water. But as we’ve grown, we’ve come to more deeply understand the costs of these ideals, causing us to look upon our parents’ generation with disappointment, heartache and a disturbed sense of rejection. I deeply believe that the possibility of a sustainably Liberated Nigeria depends almost entirely on our ability to address the crux of this parent-child trauma, the emotional void analogous with the oceanic distance between us and our homeland.
Part II: Keeping up with the Alakijas
Although this series is anchored in the experiences of millennials, Nigerian youth of most recent generations can attest to these truths. The ideals of exceptionalism are beaten into us early when we are punished for making mistakes and expected to get everything right the first time. And of course when it’s time to bring home grades, choose college majors, careers, spouses, and more.
Youth who feel rendered invisible by their parents’ antiquated ideals of “good behavior” and career aspiration in place of emotional nurturing do find it difficult to maintain an emotional connection with their parents. Parents who prioritize outward appearances and keeping up with the “Alakijas” over their children’s emotional wellbeing later find that they do not truly know their children, nor have the kind of connection with them that would encourage their adult offspring to call and visit home voluntarily.
My parents are everybody’s favorite aunt and uncle. They can be super sweet. Stylish. “Cosmopolitan,” as my dad likes to call himself. They’re very powerful people who’ve been able to accomplish a tremendous amount in their lives, on their own, before you even count what they’ve been able to accomplish through their children.
My mother came to the States when I was five years old. She got a scholarship to go to school in the Midwest. We were reunited after about two years apart, starting a new family with my baby brother and step-father. I grew up in Columbia, Missouri, a college town with a small hippie movement. Brad Pitt went to college there, along with several other eventually-famous people: the creators of The Real World, Sheryl Crow and others. My childhood was in some ways idyllic: many days were spent outside and we had a semi-strong Nigerian community. Our family lived in what would be considered the “projects”. There was minimal crime, though a bullet did come flying through our window one day, forcing us to move.
Oceans of Seven
My parents worked hard around the clock to provide, to keep the roof over our heads, to finish their academic programs. They found stable jobs enabling them to buy a house and give us a comfortable life. We didn’t see a lot of them after school, so it was really me and my siblings much of the time.
We didn’t really know our parents deeply. We got to spend more time with them when we traveled–my stepdad took us on roadtrips quite often. He was a bit adventurous, taking us to different parts of the state and further, Lake of the Ozarks, waterparks, Six Flags, Chicago. I felt like it was in these trips that I got to know him a bit more. He was freer, more focused on fun. And these trips were always amazing.
I felt like I got to know my mom the most when I watched her watch movies. She was obsessed with The Godfather and Al Pacino, even Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone. And it was in these moments, watching her get into these characters, seeing her get excited and scream at the TV, that I felt like I was getting to learn the woman beneath the strong exterior.
Our aunts and uncles would come and visit from Nigeria, from the UK. These were the times when our parents were the happiest. They were less isolated than when going to work and being amongst the “dominant” class, being rejected for promotions, jobs and opportunities, living under the radar out of fear of immigration capturing them. We got the highlights with Nigerian parties, when Nigerian families came over and they got to talk freely, to just be themselves. Those were the moments when I felt like I got to know my parents.
But there was always this space, this tremendous ocean between us. I’m crying as I write this because the ocean is so profound and it’s representative of so many things. It’s like when you’re trying to reach across to somebody, you’re trying to connect. You’re trying to grab their hand but this ocean, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And you’re both really flailing. There’s this desperation to grab onto them, to your rooting, them to their progeny. But the ocean just keeps getting wider.
Part III: Western Hegemony Inside Your Heart
I found solace in television. As the oldest, the proxy for our parents, I usually got the privilege of determining what my siblings and I watched. Television provided for us an eternity of escapism through laughter and vicariosity. What we got from television was fundamentally the opposite of what our parents understood life to be. There were no Nigerian shows. There was nothing on television that taught us about ourselves, about who we were or where we came from. It was all Western hegemony, Western propaganda, and we gobbled it up.
With eyes glued to the tube, we formed identities based primarily upon the ways we understood ourselves in relation to the characters to which we were exposed. The people who took up space in our heads and our hearts for the majority of the day were not Nigerian. Thus our identities evolved largely in isolation from the identities of our parents. We didn’t understand the identities of our parents. We barely knew who they were.
The bits and pieces that we learned over the years in times of crisis, or in times of celebration, alongside the emotional absence, this is what formed our understanding of who our parents were. And so on the occasion that we had time with our parents, or we had time with other Nigerian families, our Nigerian psyches were fed, our Nigerian identities gained some life. But they became peripheral identities, to the dominant identity fed by the Western hegemonic culture that we were internalizing.
There is Rice at Home
So in the context of this ocean separating us, I had to perform for my parents. I knew that what made them happy was when I was able to execute. I had to be successful. In the home, being successful meant that my siblings were fed, the house was clean, my siblings were happy for the most part, they were provided for, I took care of my responsibilities. Defrosted the chicken, cleaned the chicken, started the stew, made the spaghetti, made the rice, pulled out the okra for soup, changed the diapers.
Performing in school meant that I got straight As. Period. If I didn’t get As, I’d better have a damn good explanation why. I had to get As and not get into trouble. And not take time-wasting classes like “art”.
We also got to know our parents when we disappointed them, and when they protected us. Getting into trouble at school and watching my parents defend me against severe punishment was endearing. “Misbehaving” among Nigerian elders and watching my parents defend me, again endearing. Through an embarrassing encounter in which I didn’t greet one of my mother’s closest friends, I realized that my mom didn’t really hold it against me that I couldn’t speak Yoruba or navigate the cultural milieu. It would’ve been hard for her to do so considering she didn’t have the luxury of speaking the language with me at home.
In all the awkward moments in which we didn’t know how to greet an elder, or what posture to take in whatever social interaction, it became increasingly clear that the boat that would traverse the ocean between us and our parents was the very cultural mastery that had eluded us in their psychological transit across the Atlantic. So when my mother did make an effort to teach us here and there, I was very happy for it, I was very into it. But it wasn’t enough to get me back to fluency. I knew that the ocean could be bridged if I learned the language, but the person who was most qualified to teach me the language and the culture was in many ways an emotional stranger to me.
Thus I couldn’t quite connect. Not with the desire for closeness with her, not with the desperate need for her to teach me the language and the culture of our Ancestors. So I floated around…evolving…my identity being rooted primarily in achievement. Not in my cultural heritage, but in my ability to excel. And so it was, until decades after I transitioned out of the household.
Part IV: Twelve Years a Nigerian
I left my parents’ house at the age of 18 mainly because I wanted freedom. I wanted to indulge in the experience of doing whatever the hell I wanted. A definitive hallmark of conventional Nigerian parenting in the West is the very tight grip of control most parents hold over their children. For me that manifested as limited exposure to other children and social opportunities. There were a lot of things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t do. Hanging out at your friend’s house, having sleepovers, going on trips…these are hallmarks of an American childhood. Not so for us.
At the height of our childhood freedom, we lived in a very open neighborhood with a lot of children, and a lot of open land to play. It just so happened that many of the children in that neighborhood had parents who worked a lot. Thus we would hang out outside all the time, and we just took care of each other. But we weren’t really allowed–if our parents were home–to enter our friends’ houses. We weren’t allowed to do sleepovers.
Our parents weren’t friends with our friends’ parents. These were American kids. There was no connection between our parents and their parents to build the trust that would make them feel comfortable letting us stay over or spend more time. There was very much a thing of “You have a home. Remember you have a home, you don’t need to be in anybody else’s house any more than necessary.” So we didn’t socialize intimately, we didn’t interact extensively, we didn’t integrate in the ways that a lot of American kids take for granted. So that was one of the areas where I wanted more freedom.
So I moved out. I moved out for freedom, and I got freedom. Physical, perhaps, but the emotional entwinement with my parents’ ideology, the complexities of my Ancestral identification and self-worth journey only deepened with the increased distance from my parents’ home.
A Seat at the Table
Nigerian exceptionalism is a maladapted expression of love from the Nigerian psychic culture, helping to ensure that one has money, power, status and is accepted by the larger society. We’ve internalized the learned rules for survival in a localized and diasporic state exemplifying the maximally exploitative forces of ongoing colonization and enslavement. Following these rules gives us the proverbial seat at the table, as we obey and prosper.
Nigerian exceptionalism is actually a form of love expression for most Nigerian parents. They are so terrified of the realities of poverty and wouldn’t want those experiences for their children. Many have struggled to understand that we are in a new dispensation in which poverty is not escaped only through the trifecta of “responsible” careers–lawyer, doctor, engineer–and that the gifts of creativity and intellect with which Nigerians have been blessed afford us even more infinite opportunities than most people.
My relationship with my parents exemplified the costs of Nigerian exceptionalism in that we were not emotionally close, and I felt forced to endure a career path that contrasted with my deepest passions. We were not emotionally close because there was no space to be. The traumas my parents carried, alongside the survival mechanisms that they had to employ on this side of the ocean, to make sure that they could stay here and continue to provide a safe and healthy household for us, these created no space in them for the kind of emotional closeness, the emotional connection and cultural transfer that their children needed. And so I didn’t feel that I deeply knew my parents, I didn’t feel emotionally connected to them, so I didn’t care what they wanted. I cared what I wanted.
I know now that it was my desperate need for their approval, subconscious though it was, that pushed me into tech instead of the arts. When I was more influenced by them, more afraid of what they thought of me, I allowed their desires and their fears to really cripple me. To keep me from doing the things I desperately wanted to do. Their fears became my fears, and their disapproval became the tape that played in my subconscious. And it was because of the ideological entwinement with them, the psychological influence they had over me, that I continually sabotaged myself even when on the path that I preferred. It was because of my emotional detachment from them that I found myself in traumatic romantic relationships, hid behind my labor, attracted interactions and experiences that would deepen my trauma and repeat the cycles of familiar pain.
I created this life that reflected my childhood and my parental relationship in order to navigate and heal and find a way out of those traumas of my childhood. It took me meeting Uzomaka the Oracle and being instructed in the way of Ancestral healing to finally be able to confront these traumas. To confront them with my parents, in a way that allowed me to be free of them consciously. To hand them back to my parents, for them to ruminate on them and for us to eventually find a way to process together. And in that process I have found a profound healing that continues to deepen, continues to grow, continues to upgrade and transform and elevate me, and my relationship with my child and others around me.
Part V: Closed mouths don’t get fed
Now all I want, as all Nigerian millennials want, is a relationship with my parents and family in which I maintain my equilibrium, appreciate my own value, and reflect back to them how to love and appreciate my current self and highest self. Of course I want the unconditional love and acceptance that every child needs from a parent, but I have come to a place where I have learned to give that to myself. I want to make sure that the closeness we are able to cultivate in the time we have remaining will nurture us to a place of no regrets, and will create for my daughter a security in her familial lineage that will strengthen her in all that she does in life.
My relationship with my parents blueprints my relationship with my Ancestral indigenous land. I can only embrace my homeland in totality when I am able to embrace my parental connection in totality. The permission my parents give me to access their internal worlds mirrors the permission I need to enter the hinterlands of the multitudes who gave me my name, my eyes, my lips, my fingernails, my hips, my toes, my vocal cadence, my hair coils, my juju, my voice, my dance, my mannerisms, my sweetness, my beauty, my glory, my power.
Embracing my homeland fully grants me permission to dream fully for her. To dream of a Nigeria that is sustainably Liberated by a partnership between my parents’ generation and my generation. That centers the genius of our indigeneity. That empowers us within a deep knowledge of self, heritage and history. That pulls in all other generations to partner and plan towards a vision of a homeland that is safe, nurturing, empowering, and free. I believe that in that intimacy that this permission allows, we will naturally evolve into a people who protect, nurture and infuse our homeland with the very best of ourselves. It is the harm of our recent homeland experience–the colonization of our minds and bodies–that has eroded the instinctive intimacy and connection between us.
Our homeland is only a reflection of us, and it is only a healed people that can produce a healed nation.
So it is from this place of conviction that I come to sharing my journey and experience. I recognize, in all my relationships, the urgent need for this healing. I am hyper-aware both of the many who have come before me with the intention to do the work of Liberation, and of the legacies of their own trauma. Most activists, unhealed from their own trauma, repeat the cycles of harm from which we are called to help free others.
This is why I could not do the work of Liberation without first healing myself, and then prioritizing the cultivation of a new type of relationship, within my own family and immediate community. The family is a microcosm of society, but also the model on which a society is built. The type of families we have determine the kind of world we have, thus we must take responsibility for exemplifying the type of families we wish to see out in the world by healing our own families from within.
I do my own healing work publicly because I am first and foremost a writer-orator, and because my process of healing is a communal one. My community is so wide and so global, that this is the easiest and most productive way for us to have this conversation. So I thank you for reading, I thank you for sharing in this journey with me, experiencing this with me. All the responses I’ve received to the series have been emotionally gratifying, heartwarming and just elevating and life-giving for me. I’m so grateful. I look forward to continuing to dissect this work and this need and to continuing to develop this theoretical process and framework in such a way that it truly delivers transformational healing for all the families that come into contact with it. If you’re serious about healing your family’s intergenerational trauma, join our tribe.
None of us is guaranteed tomorrow, but while we are here, anything is possible.
Read Chapters 1 and 2 of this series right here on Medium!
Ch 1: The Costs of Nigerian Exceptionalism
Ch 2: Gen Z, the Nigerian Diaspora & the Costs of NGN Exceptionalism