When Yomi Adegoke was a child, she used to draw Disney princesses on her school workbooks. A friend suggested she charge 20p per princess when others began to request their own drawings. “I remember hating it so much because it completely removed the enjoyment from this process,” she says. “I went back to doing it for free!”.
Yomi Adegoke, photographed by Ogaga Blessing
While her parents were keen that she pursue a career as an artist, Adegoke pushed back, instead studying law. But while taking a year out from her course, she began a pop culture blog “for absolutely no other reason than the bants”. It turned out to be the first step on a writing career that would make the 33-year-old from Croydon one of the UK’s hottest literary talents. Turning first award-winning journalist, then celebrated non-fiction author – publishing Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible in 2018 with fellow writer Elizabeth Uviebinené – Adegoke reached new heights with her debut novel The List published in 2023.
Telling the story of an Insta-famous young couple whose relationship is shattered when one of their names appears on an online list of men accused of sexual misconduct, The List was highly topical and offered sharp commentary on accountability, cancel culture, the murky morality of social media and structural racism. The book became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and the TV rights were jointly snapped up by HBO, the BBC and A24.
Today, Adegoke is working on her second novel and on a Zoom call from her home, where her walls are adorned with works by the likes of Charlotte Edey and Shannon Bono, she tells CULTUR.ART about her love of opera, why writing fiction was her biggest challenge yet and the importance of creating art purely for self-expression.
How important is art to your everyday life?
Oh my god, I feel like it’s crucial! I absolutely adore art. I surround myself with art very intentionally in my house because it makes me feel good about myself and my surroundings and life generally.
I started out my journalistic journey in music – I’m from Croydon which is where Stormzy is from, and Krept and Konan. I grew up listening to UK rap and grime and I’ve always been a huge afrobeats fan. Being from a British Nigerian background, it makes me feel very connected to my heritage, to my culture. But I’m also really into opera which I guess to some people might seem random, but to me it doesn’t. I grew up watching a lot of Nollywood films, (which is the Nigerian film industry) and they’re really dramatic, over-the-top and almost quasi-Shakespearean. Operatic just by virtue of them being so extra. What I love about opera is that I like mess – I like reality TV! Opera is just insanity but with loads of beautiful singing and fantastic acting. I could sit here and talk about how important art is to me forever. I just think that it’s a mood-lifter, immediately, but it’s also such a brilliant medium to understand different types of people and different times.
Growing up, did you feel that the world of art and culture was open to you?
What I struggled with was understanding that things that I enjoyed were art. My dad was really big on classical music and that was always understood as an artform. But the music that I liked – rap, grime, afrobeats – because of what I was told was considered ‘art’, I didn’t necessarily see that way…There was so much debate over how we see these artforms and whether they should be held to the same standard as literary works, about whether Dizzee Rascal should be included in the school curriculum and whether his work should be unpacked in the same way as Shakespeare. To me, I’m just looking at it like ‘well, obviously!’. It makes complete sense. These are wordsmiths.
I do think that there is something about going into spaces, looking at artwork and not ever seeing people that look like you or anyone that you know on the walls…The first ballet I went to was The Nutcracker at university and you’re not seeing anyone that looks like yourself. Now, I think that’s changed so much. I’ve seen Ballet Black three times consecutively at The Barbican and it’s so incredible to not only see an entirely BAME ballet troupe but down to the pointe slippers matching their skin tones. Even when it comes to the English National Opera, there was an opera I watched called Blue that was about police brutality. It’s far more diverse. It’s very different to the landscape that I grew up with.
You’ve been quite open talking about mental health. How does art impact your mood?
I started my blog around the time I was depressive at uni – I took a year out. It was such a fantastic distraction but also a means of expressing myself. Once I monetised it, it has changed my relationship with writing. I’m so grateful that this is something I get to do and be paid for but it’s different because I’m on deadlines constantly. I have other peoples’ opinions to contend with and their wants from my work.
From quite a young age, I maintained that art – painting at least – was something I wanted to do just for me. It means that it feels like it’s been kept pure in some sort of way. When I’m painting, it’s so fun to create for absolutely no reason.
Painting by Yomi Adegoke.
But I feel like if I wasn’t told at school and by other people that I could paint, I wouldn’t have been encouraged to do it because people aren’t encouraged to do things that they’re not good at. Writing fiction was nerve-wracking for me because I haven’t had to do something I’m not good at since I was like 15. When it comes to art – painting, singing, acting – people aren’t told it’s worth doing unless you’re good at it…I used to work with a charity called 64 Million Artists and it basically believes that everybody is an artist. I love that concept. Because I feel that just as a means of expressing yourself, not all art needs to titillate and make people think and be beautiful. There’s so much value in art that we don’t appreciate. We don’t often think of what we can get from it when we are creating it, regardless of whether it’s good or not.
What does fiction writing allow you to do that other types of writing do not?
Initially I wanted to write The List as a non-fiction longread that was basically a piece of investigative journalism. I had the idea probably in 2017 or 2018. I remember opening the document to start mind-mapping and thinking ‘it’s too early’. I didn’t want to complicate a conversation that we were only just starting to have about accountability. So I shelved it but it wouldn’t leave me alone as an idea. I’d come back to it every year. At some point there was a doomed attempt at a play: the less said about that, the better.
Then it was lockdown and I was painting all throughout. I’d never sculpted but I sculpted a wig head because I’d basically exhausted all my options: I’d run out of canvas. But now I was experimenting with sculpture and all these different ways of storytelling, I thought maybe I could try this idea in a different way. I had nothing to lose. I thought I’d have a go at it and if it’s rubbish, who gives a shit? It felt really free. In the same way that I was painting for no reason – I don’t sell my art. I just put it on my wall and give it away. Same energy. When I’m writing non-fiction and journalistic work, it almost feels like maths to me. But when I’m writing fiction, it feels like the painting part of my brain is activated.
Painting by Yomi Adegoke.
Under what conditions do you do your best creative work?
I got really scared actually because during lockdown, I was going through a horrible time, as everyone was. I was also going through a break-up. And I was writing so much. I remember being really scared that I would have to be miserable in order to write a good book. I don’t think that’s the case because now I’m fine and I’m still writing!
I’m going to sound so ridiculously, cartoonishly boujis but I went to a chateau with Deborah Frances-White, of The Guilty Feminist – ha, that sentence! But she invited me and some other amazing writers to the south of France and paid for everything and we had a private chef. It sounds so ridiculous but I will say it’s a lovely lesson in paying it forward. I’ve never done so much work!...I need to be secluded. I need to be in nature. And I need to be away from everyone but not have FOMO of London events. I basically need a castle in Italy!
What would you say to someone who feels like arts and culture isn’t for them?
I would say it is for them because there’s no way they’re not consuming it, do you know what I mean? It’s impossible that they’re not. If you listen to music, if you walk past a bit of street art – there’s so much stuff that we are consuming that we don’t consider to be “the arts”. We have a very myopic and rigid view of what the arts are. And it’s not self-inflicted because we have been told for so long that “the arts” are only one kind of thing.
Yomi Adegoke- Photographed by Mollana Burke. Rachael Sigee. Check out all of her amazing platforms! https://rachaelsigee.com/
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