Oyinkan Braithwaite

Oyinkan Braithwaite (born 1988) is a Nigerian-UK novelist and writer. Braithwaite was born in Lagos in 1988. She spent most of her childhood in the UK after her family moved to Southgate in north London. She had her primary school education in London then returned to Lagos when her brother was born in 2001. She studied law and creative writing at Surrey University and Kingston University before moving back to Lagos in 2012.

Quotes

• Writing for me is an act of discovery, I am learning about the characters even as I am writing them. In reality, we rarely know why people do the things they do. I think it is enough, sometimes, to simply point to something and allow the readers to reach their own conclusions.
  • On the intentions for her novel My Sister, The Serial Killer in “Stuck with Them: An Interview with Oyinkan Braithwaite” in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Jan 11)

• As an individual I’m attracted to strong female characters – my characters have always been people who own themselves. Even if they’re strongly doing something wrong, they’ve always been powerful people.
  • On her character preferences in “Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 15)

• We have a wide divide between classes and we have a wide divide between cultures because we’re from different tribes, we have different religions. You don’t have to walk very far to see someone who has a really different life from you...I wouldn’t want to write a novel and people feel that I’m speaking to a Nigerian experience – I’m speaking to my experience, to the things I’m interested in, and that’s all I can do.
  • On how varied the Nigerian experience is in “Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 15)

• Here in Nigeria, being the first born is a huge, huge role. It's a huge responsibility. It's a big deal. You're treated - from the get-go, you're treated differently. You know, there's a kind of proverb here. I'm not sure what language it's in, but where they say, the eldest child is the one that opened the womb.
  • On the cultural beliefs surrounding the eldest child in “Author Interview: 'My Sister, The Serial Killer'” in NPR (2018 Nov 17)
    

My Sister, the serial killer

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.

• • [1]

• It’s because she is beautiful, you know. That’s all it is. They don’t really care about the rest of it. She gets a pass at life.
  • [2]

• I know better than to take life directions from someone without a moral compass.
  • [3]

• It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul, especially if you don’t want to leave any evidence of foul play.
  • [4]

• She does not cry for me,” he says, his voice hardening. “She cries for her lost youth, her missed opportunities and her limited options. She does not cry for me, she cries for herself.
  • [5]

• Is there anything more beautiful than a man with a voice like an ocean?
  • [6]

• That’s how it has always been. Ayoola would break a glass, and I would receive the blame for giving her the drink. Ayoola would fail a class, and I would be blamed for not coaching her. Ayoola would take an apple and leave the store without paying for it, and I would be blamed for letting her get hungry.
  • [7]

• We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.
  • [8]

• There is music blasting from Ayoola's room, she's listening to Whitney Housten's I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It would be more appropriate to play Brymo or Lorde, something solemn or yearning, rather than the musical equivalent of a pack of M&Ms.
  • [9]

• Love is not a weed, It cannot grow where it please…
  • [10]
• “For the average male, this wouldn’t be all that peculiar—but this man was meticulous. His bookshelf was arranged alphabetically by author. His bathroom was stocked with the full range of cleaning supplies; he even bought the same brand of disinfectant as I did. And his kitchen shone. Ayoola seemed out of place here—a blight in an otherwise pure existence.”

• (Chapter 5, Pages 7-9)
• Ayoola is draped across my bed in her pink lace bra and black lace thong. She is incapable of practical underwear. Her leg is dangling off one end, her arm dangling off the other. Hers is the body of a music video vixen, a scarlet woman, a succubus. It belies her angelic face.”

• (Chapter 8, Page 19)

External links

• Sister, the Serial Killer