*Uzo Aduba discusses her family’s journey in her new memoir, “The Road Is Good: How a Mother’s Strength Became a Daughter’s Purpose.” The Nigerian-American actress dedicates the book to her mother, who she lost to pancreatic cancer in November 2020.
Speaking to Shondaland, the three-time Emmy winner said, “.. in telling [my] story, I wanted to hold space for the little girls like me who had gone through those rooms, those classrooms, those bus rides, those hair conversations, all of those things. … This one’s for [them].”
Aduba welcomed daughter Adaiba with her husband, filmmaker Robert Sweeting, in November 2023, telling Shondaland “When I first started this book. I didn’t have a daughter. But I did have my mother. And I did have my experiences.”
In announcing her new book on social media, Aduba wrote, “My book. I’m thrilled to unveil the cover of my upcoming literary memoir, “The Road Is Good.” This book is deeply personal, a journey through Black immigrant identity, family, and the incredible strength found in the matriarchal force that shaped my life. My Mom.”
She added, “Growing up as one of the few Black families in our Massachusetts suburb, my siblings and I navigated a world that often felt like uncharted territory. But through it all, my mother instilled in us an unwavering sense of belonging and worth, rooted in our Nigerian heritage. I wrote this book as my mom fought valiantly against cancer, but “The Road Is Good” isn’t about grief or death, it’s about finding my true self and my own path. This memoir is a tribute to my mother’s fierce love and the invaluable lessons she passed down. It’s a celebration of life and finding resilience.”
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Below are excerpts from Aduba’s conversation about her new memoir with Shondaland.com:
MIA BRABHAM NOLAN: The very first line of your book is “As I write this, my mother is dying.” Those words are extremely powerful. You could have started this book in a million different ways. Why did you want to start with this one?
UZO ADUBA: I’ll put it plainly: out of my love of Shakespeare. I had this vision of Romeo and Juliet and the chorus. It’s such a genius piece because the whole play is set in the past. The chorus tells you every single thing that’s going to happen in the beginning, but because of where the story takes you, you as the audience forget that they already told you that this is a tragic story. You fall in love with the characters. They become so vibrant that they come back to life. I was inspired by the exercise of knowing that you could tell people that this is the end. And maybe I could bring my mom back to life.
MBN: When I first saw the subtitle of your book, I knew you’d just had a daughter, so I thought the book was going to be about you and her. It turned out to be about you and your mom, and so much more than that. I keep describing the book to people as “a beautiful family portrait.” Is there anything that you want people to know about the immigrant and Nigerian American experience?
UA: The immigrant experience is one of dreaming. It’s people who come from a place with a desire for there to be more. They want a better life for their kids. That is similar to the dream most parents have for their children. There’s a lot of navigating and code-switching — which I talk about — that happens for Black Americans too and people who are “other” or “the only” in a larger body of people. It’s managing how to hold on to your culture and the place from which you come, and how to marry that with this new place that you live.
When you’re a first-gen kid like I was, it’s figuring out how to keep a foothold in both places even though you just want to be like everybody else: a kid. You’re still managing all of the stuff that any kid does. It’s just like, “I just want to be like everybody else.” Whatever that is for you individually. I think that’s a piece of the immigrant story. It’s two worlds that can sometimes bump up against one another, and it’s figuring out how to manage that.
MBN: Faith is very important to you. I was fascinated with your prayer box that you have and write about. Can you talk a little bit about that and about your faith?
UA: Absolutely. I got this prayer box from my makeup artist, Karen Reuter, who worked on Orange with me. She had cancer, and she sadly passed away while we were working together. I loved her so much. She was such a lovely, bright, beautiful light of a human. She was a woman of faith. I used to sit in the chair, and we would talk about everything. We would pray. She brought me a prayer box from her church one day and had this marker that it came with. Everything that I could think of, anything that I could think of, I would put in that box and pray for it, wish for it, hope for it. I put a pen to paper. I would put it in there and was so happy to have it.
I thought it was magical. I really did, because it felt like it. There was a time when anything that went in there, the prayer got answered. When my mom was sick, I would ask my now-husband to put prayers in there for me when I was in New Jersey with my mom. I would be like, “You need to write it with that marker that’s in there and tear the paper off this way.” I dumped them all out one time and was reading the prayers, and I saw that Robert, my husband, had been putting ones in there too for her, and for us.
Read Uzo Aduba’s full interview with Shondaland here.
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