A vivid account of being given away at three months old by a Nigerian mother that is harrowing, yet anything but bitter.
In 1971 Precious Williams’s Nigerian mother advertised in the back of Nursery World for a private foster mother for her three-month-old baby. Now almost 40, Williams explores in this wryly sad memoir her struggle to reconcile two names, two mothers and two conflicting sets of cultural expectations.
Her white foster mother, Nanny, was silver-haired and 5ft tall and lived on a council estate in rural West Sussex. Inspired by her childhood reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Nanny had cared for several African children and would provide, with her grown-up daughter Wendy, a loving home for the girl she insisted on calling Anita, Neet or Nin — short for piccaninny.
About the Author
Precious Williams is a former contributing editor to Cosmopolitan and her personal essays and celebrity interviews have also appeared in the Telegraph, The Times, the Guardian, Wallpaper, Elle, Marie Claire and the New York Post. She lives in London.
Other Books by the Author
Pitching for Profit: The Bad Bitches
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