Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené are the co-authors of one of this Summer’s hottest new releases, Slay in Your Lane – they spoke to Nicole Vassell about the journey to the bookshelves
It shouldn’t be a newsflash to anyone reading this that black women can struggle when it comes to navigating the professional world – not for lack of ability, or an absence of drive, but for there being little prior, readily available sources of guidance for getting through these mazes.
And like many black women in the workplace, Elizabeth Uviebinené’s job in marketing had thrown up enough microaggressions and culturally-insensitive annoyances to last her a lifetime, in just a small matter of months. And one day, she’d reached an absolute limit to how much she was able to endure – and turned to life improvement literature as a way to figure out her path. However, she found that something was missing.
Elizabeth Uviebinené
‘Slay in Your Lane was borne out of exasperation and optimism,’ she explained. ‘Though I read a lot of self-help books, I couldn’t find anything that was tailored to me, in helping me to get ahead at work and deal with these specific stresses.
‘So, I called Yomi, and said, “Gosh, there seems to be a real gap in the market. You should write a book!”’
Hearing her best friend’s pleas, journalist Yomi Adegoke agreed and knew instantly that this was something that the literature landscape was in desperate need of – and knew that it was something they needed to do together.
‘When Elizabeth brought the idea to me, I saw pound signs, I saw Naira, I saw dollars – I knew that this was an idea that would work,’ Yomi laughed. ‘There’s probably an alternate reality where we just didn’t do it – lots of people have great ideas and never pursue them. But something really stuck for us, and we realised that there was nothing like that here or necessarily even in the States. It became this thing of, “okay, clearly we are the people to do this.”’
And so, they got to work on putting together a book to help women like them.
Coining it as the ‘Black Girl Bible’, Slay in Your Lane is a fully-realised and refreshingly specific guide book for Black British women to make the most of their experiences in a climate where there’s little hard guidance to help them along.
Speaking to more than 40 prominent Black British women across creative, business and media industries, Yomi and Elizabeth got to work at sourcing the best gems of wisdom to help women on their way up. From catching participants such as June Sarpong at panel events, to reaching out to others via social media, Yomi and Elizabeth conducted hours and hours’ worth of interviews with willing contributors, who were just as excited as they were about the project; women like Clara Amfo, Dawn Butler MP, Patricia Bright and Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock MBE could see the value in a book like this, and how much they would have appreciated something like this, themselves.
‘When we’d speak to some women, we got the sense that we were giving people something they didn’t know they wanted; I guess that’s when you know that you’re really onto something,’ admitted Elizabeth.
Though it started as a toolkit for avoiding the landmines in the workplace and for general career advancement, Slay In Your Lane soon developed into being a guidebook to provide insight into a variety of areas; chapters focus on education, representation in media and entertainment, health and dating, as when putting the book together, they soon realised that for Black British women, there’s little specific guidance out there for any aspect of our lives.
Yomi Adegoke
‘When we did research, we realized that there was literally nothing on anything – not within the Black British context anyway,’ explained Yomi. ‘If you looked at dating books dealing with black women’s dating experience, it would be from an African-American woman’s perspective – which is different. Things like health, media representation, education: there are differences between African-American women and Black British women.
‘So, this went from being like a black Lean In [the career advice book from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg] to a black girl bible; we wanted it to be comprehensive and cover everything.’
Over the past three years both Elizabeth and Yomi have juggled full-time jobs to make their vision come to life – and more than the tough job of researching and writing the book themselves, they’ve spearheaded the social media campaigns, spoken at panel events, and have been incredibly hands-on with establishing the SIYL brand as a new forum for discussion of black girl magic, and empowerment.
With all this work, you might imagine that it’d really test the limits of any relationship – but for these two, the pressures and peaks of manifesting their dream has only made their friendship even stronger.
‘There was no apprehension about going on this journey together with Elizabeth,’ explained Yomi. ‘This genuinely would never have been half of what it is today without her. I can’t imagine doing it on my own, and I cannot imagine doing it with anyone else. Like, the book would genuinely not be as good – and by the time we started writing, we’d been friends for about six years. We’d been through so much already that we didn’t ever think that the stresses of writing a book would end our friendship. We respect each other’s opinions so much that if we get to a point where we differ, we really take the time to unpack why, and see how we can make it work.’
Whether just starting out on your way as a black woman in the world, whether you’re already at the top of your own game, or whether you’re somewhere in between, Slay In Your Lane is a book that deserves a place on every black British woman’s shelf. Laced with personal anecdotes as well as hard proof of frustrating experiences that many black women have felt, this deserves its subtitle as the Black Girl Bible – and we’re thankful it exists.
Slay In Your Lane is out now; £16.99, 4th Estate Books
