It was a regular Thursday evening.
Homework? Check. Dinner? Half-eaten.
Then my daughter walked up to me with her writing journal from Ivoryland’s League of Pen Pushers and said,
“Mom, I wrote a poem… about puff-puff.” Read how to make puff-puff here.
I smiled politely.
“Oh really? Let me hear it.”
And then, she began:
“Golden brown like the sun that warms my grandma’s village,
Round like the laughter of cousins chasing chickens,
Sweet like the hugs I get when we visit Lagos,
This is my puff-puff — soft, warm, and home.”
I. Was. Done.
I cried. Not because I love puff-puff (though who doesn’t?), but because in that moment…
My child—born in Canada—connected to my childhood, my mother’s recipe, our family’s rhythm.
She had written her way home.
The Power of Creative Writing in Identity
When Nigerian children abroad start writing stories and poems, we expect grammar practice.
What we don’t expect?
The emotional bridges they build.
At Ivoryland Support’s creative writing program, writing becomes more than sentence structure.
It becomes a memory vault. A cultural revival. A voice of their own.
Some kids write superhero tales where the hero speaks Yoruba.
Others, like my daughter, write about food — and what it means to belong.
👉Read our previous blog post here.
Why This Matters
Many diaspora kids feel stuck between two cultures.
But when they write in their own words, about their own food, in a space that understands…
They discover that being “in between” is a superpower.
Want your child to tell their own story?
Enroll them in the League of Pen Pushers — the writing arm of Ivoryland Support, where imagination meets identity.
Whether it’s a poem about akara or a story about Grandpa’s keke napep, it’s never just writing.
It’s healing. It’s home. It’s heart.
