Discovering Culture: Mayen and the Unexpected Gift and the Children Who Recognized Her

The Amazon #1 New Release Book Knew Something I Didn’t

On a fateful Tuesday, I woke up to Mayen and the Unexpected Gift at the #1 spot for New Releases in Children’s Explore Africa Books and on the Bestseller list for books on Africa (Diversity and Multiculturalism) – this embrace was an unexpected gift for me.
For most of you, Africa has lived behind glass cases, portrayed in specific ways in museums and exhibitions. Even with technology, social media, and exposure, many still have a myopic view of our continent – our actual length and breadth, economic and social growth, contributions to the global community, and the simple fact that while we have forests and safaris, we also have zoos. So, no giraffes, panthers, or non-domesticated animals stroll in my yard.

My Africa, and specifically Nigeria, has streets, freeways, malls, libraries in homes, country clubs, mansions, nosy aunties, and the particular chaos of a family that measures love in how much of their expectations of excellence you had to accept. The Africa in books — the one I found in libraries, in classrooms, in the pages of things written about us rather than by us — was a diorama. Huts. Loincloths. A solemn caption. People arranged for viewing, as interesting as a beetle pinned to a card.

You can learn a great deal from a display case. You cannot recognize yourself in one.

So when I wrote Mayen, I gave her a birthday party. I gave her a city — Lagos, loud, modern, and entirely ordinary to the children who live in it. I gave her a green dress she was proud of, a cake she had feelings about, and a grandmother in a village she had to travel to, the way children travel to grandmothers everywhere. And I gave her a very small problem: she did not want to share.

That was the whole ambition. A story about generosity and a hope that some children might see a face like theirs on a book cover.

The Parent Bridge – Are you a Cultural, Values, or Identity Connector?

Then a mother left a review, and I realized I hadn’t fully recognized my book’s impact.

“What stood out to me the most in this story was that Mayen’s mom and dad chose to introduce her to her culture for her birthday instead of doing a traditional birthday celebration like most kids. I think we often forget where we come from, and sometimes our kids don’t get the same opportunities to interact with and learn about their culture the way we once did. It’s got my daughter asking more questions about some of our own traditions… it has her exploring our family tree more and most importantly, it has her so motivated it’s keeping her off screens!”

— Mommabear1619, Amazon review

Read that again, because I have, roughly forty times and counting.

She didn’t say her daughter learned about Nigeria. She said her daughter started asking about her own family. A book set in a small dusty village outside Lagos sent an American child to her own family tree — and away from a screen, which I’m told is harder than winning any list.

And notice what she saw that I didn’t. She wasn’t watching Mayen. She was watching Mayen’s parents, who chose to give their daughter her heritage instead of the party she expected. I wrote those parents almost by instinct, because that is what our parents did to us — the trip you didn’t ask for, visiting the relatives you didn’t remember, the piano practice that was non-negotiable, the food you were made to eat. I thought I was writing setting. She read it as the gift.

Recognition comes first. Curiosity is what recognition makes possible.

I’ve been sitting with that for some days. I assumed you teach a child about a culture and then, if you’ve done it well, she comes to care. But it doesn’t work that way. Not for children, and I suspect not for any of us. We don’t get curious about strangers. We get curious about people we’ve already decided are like us – with a shared DNA, values, beliefs, experiences, hobbies, etc.

No matter what we want to teach, what a child actually needs is a door—and the door will open if she believes there’s someone on the other side she’d like to meet. The lesson, hopefully, can then evolve organically.

So the children didn’t read Mayen as a lesson about a faraway place. They read her as a girl. A girl who liked her birthday too much, exactly the way they like their own birthdays too. They weren’t observing her. They were arguing with her — telling her, out loud, that she should share the cake.

And having recognized her, they turned around and got curious about themselves.

I keep coming back to the small ordinariness of it. Balloons. A hanging piñata. Other children running about. A table with far too much food on it. Nothing in that scene explains Africa to anybody. It’s just a birthday party somewhere in the world, which turns out to be the most radical thing I could have put in a children’s book, and I didn’t fully know it when I was putting it there.

Because there are children right now growing up in Los Angeles, Houston, and Toronto with Nigerian names they’ve stopped correcting people on. Children who love their grandmother’s food and wouldn’t say so at school. They aren’t waiting to be educated about their heritage. They’re waiting for permission to find it interesting.

It turns out one pretty Nigerian girl with a birthday problem can give that permission.

I didn’t build it. I wrote a story about sharing because it was the truest thing I had to say to a child, and the book went on to do something bigger than I intended. That’s the part I’m still holding. We make our small offerings as carefully as we can, and then they leave our hands entirely, and what they become in the hands of a stranger is not ours to plan. Only ours to be grateful for.

So thank you. To every parent who read it aloud. To the mother whose daughter is somewhere right now, off a screen, drawing a family tree. Due to requests, we are developing a Mayen Wonders YouTube Channel for our growing number of culturally curious readers – watch this space.

If you carry a story about a home that has only ever been described by visitors—Rewrite it. Give it warmth, write it ordinary, write the balloons, the cake, and the perfectly unremarkable event. Put no one behind glass.

Somebody out there is waiting to recognize themselves in it.

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Mayen and the Unexpected Gift is an Amazon #1 New Release in Children’s Explore Africa Books—a story about sharing, culture, and unexpected joy for readers ages 6–10, and a lovely read-aloud. The storybook is part of the Mayen Creative Series, with coloring and drawing books that deepen the cultural experience. For parents and teachers, a bonus learning guide is included. 

Available on Kindle, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble – paperback and hardcover. For Nigerians, it’s on Selar. 

If Mayen’s story finds its way to a child in your life, I’d love to know what she asks you afterward.