Ghanaian writer and author of Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, says her children’s book was inspired by a Bible passage about the furnishings in King Solomon’s temple: ‘Why did it matter that the curtain had blue in it? Seeking the answer to that question led me to books on the history of colour, and a plethora of research papers and articles. I was so wowed by what I was learning.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
My dad had me reading from age three, so after I devoured the fairytales and chapter books in our bookcase, I moved on to adult fare. By the time I was ten, I would be off in a corner of my school playground devouring one of Sidney Sheldon’s fast-paced dramas or a multigenerational Judith Krantz epic. I read them alongside series like Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew, Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High, and Brenda Wilkinson’s Ludell. Even though my dad would recite Kweku Ananse stories, and we had Ayi Kwei Armah and Kwame Nkrumah on our shelves in New York, it was when my parents sent me to live and school in Ghana at age twelve that I started reading literature by African writers. Ama Ata Aidoo’s play, Dilemma of a Ghost, made me realize how hungry I was for more stories about Black people, and about anyone navigating life and identity between multiple cultures.
If your life at this moment was the chapter of a book, which book (fiction or non-fiction) would that be?
Right now, my life feels like a chapter in Michelle Obama’s Becoming. After a decade of rejection, I’ve had three books published in three years. All at once, I am experiencing the exhilaration of change and the awkward fragility of transition.
What’s the last thing you read and disagreed with?
I read an essay about the British royal family which trafficked in tired tropes that beatified one family member and dragged the other. It was already one opinion too many in a rabbit hole of headlines I allowed myself to fall into. The outlet got their click, and I can’t reclaim the time or energy I spent feeling mildly irritated about individuals whom I empathize with as humans, despite having no reason to know so much about them simply because they are associated with an institution I don’t support...
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