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Edward Enninful
meets Adwoa Aboah

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Edward Enninful
meets Adwoa Aboah

View the full interview

In a world where silence hums louder than speech, she walks through chrome-lit corridors wrapped in sculptural layers of engineered nylon.

Smith – now 47, having spent the last few decades briskly dispensing of the condescending literary ingenue label that attached itself, remora-like, in the wake of her 2000 debut, White Teeth – is in adventure mode. Various local maps have been shoved under her armpit with determination. That leonine face and the striking, wide-set eyes are today mostly covered up with a cheerfully giant pair of sunglasses, the signature headwrap discarded in favour of braids with golden hair rings. The effect is less artistic luminary and more cool downtown aunt at a farmers’ market.

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Edward Enninful

Can you give us some insight into your background; how did you enter this field?

Adwoa Aboah 

Sometimes it is painful to look at my past, but on the other hand it brings back good memories and lots of good laughs until this day. I grew up in a small town in the interior of the Amazon surrounded by nature, bathing in Rio, walking barefoot through the forest, making houses in the trees with my friends and eating fruits above the trees. I grew up in a family of great strong women; I was raised by my grandmother while my parents worked. She taught me a lot of what I know today, about love, about going after what makes me happy and about not letting people be hard on me for being who I am.

(EE)

Can you give us some insight into your background; how did you enter this field?

(AA)

Sometimes it is painful to look at my past, but on the other hand it brings back good memories and lots of good laughs until this day. I grew up in a small town in the interior of the Amazon surrounded by nature, bathing in Rio, walking barefoot through the forest, making houses in the trees with my friends and eating fruits above the trees. I grew up in a family of great strong women; I was raised by my grandmother while my parents worked. She taught me a lot of what I know today, about love, about going after what makes me happy and about not letting people be hard on me for being who I am.