Vagabon has lived in America most of her life, and still feels like she's from somewhere else. On this episode of Identified with Nabil Ayers, she traces why: born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, moved to Harlem at nine when her mother, a lawyer, brought the whole family along to chase her own ambition, then raised between two worlds in one day: American school by morning, Cameroonian food and language at home by night.
It's a conversation about carrying a place with you: the grandmother who ran the school inside the family compound; the all-girls Catholic school she couldn't wait to escape (and the classmates who now DM her about her music — "you were so mean to me"); the guitar her parents gave her for graduating with honours, and teaching herself on Taylor Swift songs before she knew Joni Mitchell existed; going home after fifteen years to find she could still walk the compound with her eyes closed; the 300-strong group of first-generation Cameroonians in New York who speak like her, joke like her, emote like her; and why the stories of oral-history cultures can vanish in a single uninterested generation.
Her answer to what family means, consistency, is one of the show's best. And then, for the first time, a guest flips the question: Vagabon asks Nabil, and gets the story his whole book is about.
00:00 "I'm from somewhere else" 00:45 Yaoundé to Harlem at nine 04:12 Two worlds in one day 05:48 Her mother's leap 06:51 Catholic school & the ledger of enemies 08:48 A guitar for graduating with honours 11:33 The grandmother's school & stories that skip 13:21 Back home after 15 years 15:00 The 300 Cameroonians of New York 17:30 Family is consistency — and the question, flipped
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