Maame Blue is Searching for More Humanity

Maame Blue is a Ghanaian-Londoner, novelist and creative writing tutor whose debut Bad Love won the 2021 Betty Trask Award and was named one of the top three debuts of 2020 by Cheltenham Literature Festival. Her second novel, The Rest of You, published in 2024 with Verve Books, Amistad and Ouida Books, follows Whitney Appiah across present-day London and 1990s Kumasi in a story built around the Twi proverb Sankofa: looking back in order to move forward. A former psychotherapist, she now teaches at City Lit, Faber Academy and Arvon, and has recently moved her base to Melbourne. She is in the middle of a third novel she is being deliberately quiet about. We spoke to her on a video call.

Before writing became something you did professionally, what were the stories, books, people or experiences that first made you understand the power of being able to tell a story?

I was a very big reader in school. I was a nerd, for sure, and I spent a lot of time in the library. We didn’t have money to buy all the books, but there were lots of really good libraries around. Growing up I was really into romance stories, and specifically tragic romance. My grandmother used to read Mills and Boon books, maybe in secret, I can’t remember, but I definitely was stealing them from her and reading them. I don’t really write in the romance genre now, but I liked the drama of it and I like relationship stories. I really like relationship stories.

As a teenager, even pre-teen, I was reading a lot of Jacqueline Wilson, who was obviously a big writer in the UK and who spoke to a pre-teen voice really well. It felt very much like being seen. She wrote a lot about young girls in care, which wasn’t my experience, but they were dealing with real problems and also just trying to figure themselves out. I gravitated towards those stories, and then I would end up writing those stories for my friends as well. Stories about my friends, or about our lives, but they always featured some kind of relationship.

Do you see those influences in the way you write now?

I think so. Bad Love featured a romantic relationship, but it wasn’t romance; it doesn’t meet the strict rules of the genre. It’s about a young woman, queer, who falls in love for the first time at nineteen, and of course it doesn’t meet any of her expectations. We follow her on a cross-continental journey as she learns how different types of love shape her identity. There’s familial love, the relationship between her parents, her separate relationship with them, her friendships, her relationship with travelling and with finding new parts of herself. A lot of that comes from the cultural stuff that sits behind being first generation with Ghanaian parents, and the communication or lack of communication in that.

I built on that with The Rest of You, which is much more intergenerational and takes a broader view of family. It has a romantic relationship in it, but it’s really more about the ways that people interact with each other. Those relationships are what I’ve always been interested in writing about.

When you first began writing Bad Love, what were you trying to understand for yourself, and how much of that original intention survived by the time the book was finished?

My original intention was to explore what happens when you get into that first serious romantic relationship and the ripple effect it has on the relationships you have afterwards. I was fascinated by that. I was really interested in the stories I was hearing from friends at the time, dating in my twenties, the ways we connect with some people and disconnect from others.

I didn’t intend for it to be a novel at all. If I had sat down and said I’m going to write a novel, I wouldn’t have written it, because that’s too overwhelming, that’s a very big thing to just do. Instead it was: I want to write this story. I was thinking short story. And then it went off by itself and kept going and became the novel.

About halfway through I started thinking about the predominant question I was trying to ask, which is an important thing to grasp when you’re writing a novel for the first time. It doesn’t have to come at the beginning; sometimes it comes at the end. The question was: is the idea of love itself bad, as we sometimes see it, or is it the way that we treat it that makes it this bad love? It’s not a question I necessarily needed an answer to. It was just the question driving the narrative, and the search for the answer is what became the final book.

“If I had sat down and said I’m going to write a novel, I wouldn’t have written it. That’s too overwhelming. That’s a very big thing to just do.”

From the moment you get the idea to when you start writing, finding the characters, the research, what does that journey look like and feel like for you?

Every book is different. Bad Love began with an idea and I was just writing it for me. I didn’t have a book deal or anything when I started, so it was a really enjoyable experience, and getting to the end was many, many drafts later. Many people have said this before me, but a good rule is that the first draft is just you telling yourself the story. I like to think of it as draft zero. Everything after that is you having something to work with, something to chisel away at.

The Rest of You was completely different. I had an idea of telling some kind of family story, but that wasn’t even the idea that came first. The voice of the main character, Whitney, came first. Just a spark. I wrote a couple of pages in her voice and thought, oh, what’s this? I wanted it to be her story, trying to figure out a family history and memories she can’t quite touch, that are revealing themselves in how she feels in her body even without the physical memory of it. I wanted to explore the psychology of that, and that came as a big influence from my previous life as a psychotherapist. I was thinking about the inner workings of what happens when you can’t remember a thing that happened to you that has a big impact.

That required research. I was looking into Ghanaian history across the twentieth century, trying to work out what time period I needed, because I wanted Whitney in the present day but I also wanted to be able to go back. It kept getting bigger. It was supposed to be two separate books and in the end it became one big book. The first half took me about two years; the second half, which is all the voices in Ghana set in the mid-1990s, took me about three months.

The Rest of You moves across different places, generations and perspectives, from Whitney to Gloria, with memory playing such an important role in how the characters understand themselves. How do you decide what a story needs formally: the structure, the voice, the timeline?

Whitney’s voice came to me first, in the second person. She’s very unsure of herself, kind of watching her life happen to her, and that voice came fully formed. I knew where her story would begin and where it would end. The voices of Gloria, Aretha and Maame Serwaa came later. I knew they were always part of Whitney’s world, but I didn’t know I was going to put them into this one book.

I was speaking to my agent and I was going to go to Ghana to research a second book that would be entirely about Ghana, and she said: I think it needs to be one book. You need to put the two together. And I thought, oh yes, that’s actually a good idea. So when I went to Ghana and I was in the place I was writing about, those other voices came very easily.

Because I’m writing about memory, the structure had to hold that. You could grow up in the same house with your siblings and all have a slightly different perspective on the same event. You might remember it differently to how they remember it. I’m really interested in that, not just perspective but the ways we process really impactful things inside a family unit, and how that mixes with the roles we have. Whitney only sees one piece; she’s in London, that’s all she knows. Gloria brought her to London for a reason and has an overview of everything. She knows all the things Whitney doesn’t know, and Whitney only gets to know the little bit Gloria lets her know, and that gap in her memory shapes who she is. So I had to structure it so that you have many pieces of the same story, and as the reader you get to see the whole picture even when the main character doesn’t.

Across your work, questions of love, family, belonging, identity, memory and the complicated ways people carry their past keep resurfacing. Is there a question underneath all your writing that you’re still trying to answer?

Isn’t there always? I don’t know if I could pinpoint one particular question; I’m sure that’s a question for my therapist. But I’m always searching for more humanity. Whether I’m writing or reading, that’s what I gravitate towards. And when I say humanity I don’t mean humanitarian, I don’t mean this has to be a good person or a saviour character. I mean real human emotion. I’m always wanting to put more of that out.

When The Rest of You came out, a reader at an event asked about writing something traumatic, whether you want to shy away from it, especially writing stories that feature Black characters. Aren’t we tired of the trauma? I think there’s a place for it, because it’s the full scope of humanity. I want to read about the good stuff, but I also want to read about the ways people have triumphed over adversity. What I was really interested in with The Rest of You is what happens after. After a traumatic memory, after you’ve processed something really difficult, after you’ve grieved something. What happens then? I’m really interested in that.

“I’m always searching for more humanity. And I don’t mean humanitarian. I mean real human emotion.”

The Betty Trask Award was significant recognition for a debut, and The Rest of You was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize. What do those moments mean to you personally, beyond what they mean for your career?

It’s always useful, and it’s confidence boosting to be recognised by your peers. But ultimately it’s readers that matter most. You want people to read your work and enjoy it, or even if they don’t enjoy it, to argue with it, to interrogate it. Honestly, what makes me happiest is if someone has read my book and they’re really frustrated with a character, because that means I’ve done my job. Whether you liked it or not doesn’t really matter to me; if it made you feel something, I did something good.

Industry recognition is great and it gets more people to see your books. But I care about the writing and I care about the people reading the writing and having thoughts and feelings about it. It’s not a perfect answer, but that’s my answer.

You’ve built a life around helping other writers find their voices, through teaching, mentoring and editing. Has being on that side of the process changed how you approach your own writing?

I learn so much from working with new writers, people approaching the idea of a novel for the first time. I hope I never get to the point where I feel like I know everything, because that would mean I’ve hit a plateau. I like new stories, I like new ideas, and there are so many really good book ideas out there.

Where it helps me is that it’s a reminder of how much of the work is twenty per cent idea and ability and eighty per cent perseverance. It’s not about telling someone you’re at this level of skill and I’m trying to get you up here. That’s a linguist’s role, that’s not me. If somebody has a certain voice, my job is to help them build confidence in the voice they already have. I find that really gratifying, and it makes me reflect on my own process. If I’m having a day where I’m beating myself up about not being very good at something, I have to give myself the same advice I would give the writers I work with. You’re constantly checking yourself, reflecting on your bad habits and your good habits and the good stuff you can pass on.

Some of the writers I’ve worked with have gone on to get book deals, start an MFA, win a competition. That feels good. I do think it’s part of my role, especially as somebody who has been helped by a lot of people in the industry. I feel the need to give some of that back, and I really enjoy it.

“So much of the work is twenty per cent idea and ability and eighty per cent perseverance.”

Your writing doesn’t seem interested in making its characters or experiences easy to categorise. There’s room for contradiction, messiness, tenderness and difficult truths. Has giving yourself that freedom changed what you believe fiction can do?

Definitely. Fiction has changed my life at various points. There are certain books I’ve read where I’ve thought, whoa, this has changed my view of the world, and that’s always the goal for me. You can’t necessarily change somebody’s life, but you can change someone’s day with some good fiction. It makes people think differently. There’s an element of separation from real life, so even if the story is very real, somebody can read fiction and feel an empathy they couldn’t feel reading something true.

The first time I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett I was just like, whoa, incredible. There are so many books like that which have changed the way I view the world. Octavia E. Butler, I’ve read all of her work now. It has the power to move people in a way that really good art can.

You’ve moved between forms: novels, short stories, essays. Has developing across them changed how you see storytelling, and is there something each form has taught you that you carry into the others?

After novel number three I’m very aware of what writing a novel takes. It’s a different beast and it requires something different from me: a different level of attentiveness, a different level of emotional involvement. Of all of those forms, I feel mostly like a novelist. When I sit down and do that, that feels like the most me that I am.

At the same time I really love writing short stories. Years ago, before Bad Love, I was writing a lot of them. My approach is that the idea comes, I write the whole thing, then I won’t look at it for a while and I’ll go back and work on it. It’s a burst of something. But I also find them quite difficult, and if I’m in the middle of writing a novel I have trouble creating any new story that isn’t in the world of that novel. Recently I had a story in an anthology called Queerphoria, and I’d been asked to contribute ages ago, but I was in the middle of this other novel, so I ended up writing a mini story set in the universe of the novel I’m writing. Once the next book comes out, people will notice the similarities. I couldn’t come outside of it, because my head was in the novel.

Teaching, coming up with creative lessons, requires a different part of the brain again. But all of it helps each other, and all of it feeds into how I approach my novels and how economical I can be. It’s made me a much more well-rounded writer. And my previous life in psychotherapy has really fed into my attention to detail when it comes to character and how people really are. A lot of that draws from that work.

Stepping away from literature for a moment, what other artist or art form is feeding your imagination right now?

I’m a big movie fan. I’m going to the cinema tomorrow by myself, which honestly is a great solo date. You should just do it. You don’t have to talk to anyone and no one’s going to ask you questions.

When Ryan Coogler’s Sinners came out I think I saw it twice, and I’m not a big fan of horror at all, I’m a scaredy-cat, but it’s him, so I had to watch it. Of course it’s much bigger than that, and the storytelling in it is just outstanding. Whether it’s film, TV or a book, I’m here for the story. I was so inspired by what he did and by the screenplay of it that it made me want to return to Bad Love and try to adapt it into a screenplay, which I hadn’t properly considered before because I felt like I was done with that book, it’s its own thing now. Those two stories couldn’t be more different, but the storytelling ability of it made me think, ooh, what would that look like on screen?

Music, of course. I’ve been listening to Mon Rovîa. His sound is very indie, quiet, soft and sultry, but the words he’s saying are huge. He’s talking about life and family, but also the world, power, safety, unity, all of these enormous things inside very small quiet lyrics. That kind of thing really inspires me.

And I’m in Melbourne, which is very artsy; that’s kind of why we’re here. When I first came seven or eight years ago I really liked it because it’s so creative and there’s so much access to art all the time. There are these things called laneways, which we would just call an alleyway, and it’s street art constantly, not painted over, just part of the city. There are new pieces going up everywhere. I love that, where art is in the living life of the city. I always feel like you can learn about a place by engaging with its art.

“The words he’s saying are huge. Life, family, the world, power, safety, unity, all inside these very small quiet lyrics.”

Take us through what a day looks like for you.

No two days are the same, so let me tell you about a recent one. I wake up and make coffee with an AeroPress. Melbourne is for coffee snobs and it has made me a coffee snob; I used to like coffee fine and then I came here and there’s so much really good coffee that you become a connoisseur. I’ll make a coffee, read my book, chat to my partner, get ready for work. I have about ten jobs, so if I’m teaching I’ll look at a lesson plan, answer emails. We live near the Yarra River, which is like the rivers in London but not as big where we are, and not as toxic, so I might do a walk along the trail.

But I can tell you what a writing day is. It’s me waking up, rolling out of bed, washing my face, and immediately writing. If I’m working on a novel that’s the first thing I do. It’ll be six in the morning and I’ll do that for an hour, and then I’ll make a coffee and start the day. Everything else that happens after that is the day. By doing that I’m prioritising the writing, letting it be the very first thing, so however the day goes, I’ve at least done that.

Most people wake up and pick up their phone first. What’s your relationship with social media, and how does it relate to your creative process?

When I’m writing a novel, I don’t write on my laptop, because that way I can’t log on, I can’t see emails, nothing. I have this thing called a reMarkable. The screen looks like paper, like the old Kindles, but it’s a notebook with a stylus and all you can do on it is write or draw. It has Wi-Fi, but only so you can send yourself the thing you’ve done. You can’t do anything else on it. So I write on that, which means I’m just not logged on. I don’t look at my phone. I have my watch for the time. I’m very good at getting into that strict routine.

On the days when I’m not doing that, the relationship with social media is just up and down. Anything I’ve written will go on my social media, that’s mostly what I use it for. In an ideal world I’d have no social media; in a real ideal world I’d have no phone. In a very introverted writer way I think, oh, no one can get hold of me, great. But I understand the need for it, especially as a writer. Everybody feels like they have to be a content creator now, me included, and I’m not, but I’m aware of its uses. It’s how people connect with each other, and it’s how I connected with you. So I see the value. It’s a love-hate relationship, basically.

“I don’t write on my laptop, because that way I can’t log on. All you can do on it is write.”

Looking at the work you’re doing now and whatever is beginning to take shape next, what are you most curious to explore that you haven’t found room for yet?

I’m currently exploring world-building, which I’ve never done before this latest project. I’m being very hush-hush about it because it hasn’t officially been announced, but it will be soon. It’s required me to build a whole new world and to dip into speculative fiction, which I like to read to a certain extent; I’m particular about it, but I’ve enjoyed reading it the last few years and it’s pushed me into that world. The idea of creating a world has been a brand new thing that I did not know how to do, and it’s been really fun. I’m excited about what else is going to come out of that.