I wanted to write about extended family systems. You have people you can fall back on, and it’s good. But what if you don’t fit into what is expected of you? If you’re a man, there’s support. If you’re a woman, like Yejide, there’s the expectation that you marry into a family and after a couple of years you have children, and you have a measure of power. I wanted to look at what would happen if you could choose to be what you’re supposed to be, and how the community, in trying to help you become what you think you should be, turns on you.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I wanted to write about extended family systems. You have people you can fall back on, and it’s good. But what if you don’t fit into what is expected of you? If you’re a man, there’s support. If you’re a woman, like Yejide, there’s the expectation that you marry into a family and after a couple of years you have children, and you have a measure of power. I wanted to look at what would happen if you could choose to be what you’re supposed to be, and how the community, in trying to help you become what you think you should be, turns on you." in the context of "On how she portrayed extended family in her novel Stay With Me in “Great Expectations: An Interview with Ayobami Adebayo” in The Paris Review (2017 Aug 8)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.