While writing, I also started thinking about the middle class in Nigeria. When Yejide visits her mother-in-law, there’s a very…

Em uma entrevista, a escritora nigeriana Ayobami Adebayo refletiu sobre os personagens principais (Yejide e Akin) e o contexto sociopolítico de seu romance Stay With Me.

While writing, I also started thinking about the middle class in Nigeria. When Yejide visits her mother-in-law, there’s a very low fence in front of their house. It’s barely a fence. When Yejide and Akin build their own house in the early nineties, they erect a fence that’s higher than the house. You can’t see inside. That was something I observed about architecture in Nigeria—that at some point, probably in the eighties and nineties, when things became quite turbulent and there was all of this insecurity, one of the ways the people who could afford to insulate themselves against what was going on did was to build higher fences, to use money as a shield in a sense. I wanted that political turbulence to play in the background.

(Adaptado de https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/08/08/great-expectations -interview-ayobami-adebayo/. Acessado em 21/07/2020.) 

Segundo a autora, as casas e as cercas na Nigéria representam