Kid Show

Grace Chikwem was born in Maiduguri, Nigeria in the summer of 1991. Born to a Canadian mother and Nigerian father she never really felt “American,” an issue that comes up quite frequently in her work: the idea of being an American, but not “feeling” American. She grew up in the heart of Amish country, Pennsylvania, which didn’t exactly help with her integration into American society.
She went on to attend the first historically black university, Lincoln, with honors. She studied abroad in Scotland and Spain, where she learned a completely useful skill in the art of comedy: drinking. Drinking is a motif that comes up a lot in her writing.
In her quest to find a place that she can call home, she has found that there isn’t just one place for her. She left her birthplace of Nigeria at the age of four and since then she’s lived in Canada, the United States, Scotland, Spain, and Indonesia. She cannot say which one place is home because she feels a sense of homesickness for all six countries. Each country holds a piece of her, like there’s a part of her body that holds a residence in all of the countries she’s lived in. Spain will forever have her feet, with all the walking and the dancing they had to go through for they sake of her enjoyment. Scotland will forever have her ears, constantly straining to figure out the accent and listening to the proud people sing, “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road!” so many times. Canada will forever hold her lungs, where bursts of laughter would erupt from hearing her hilarious relatives tell ridiculous stories. Nigeria will forever hold the umbilical chord that keeps her forever tethered to her birthplace. She can’t really call herself an American because there’s still so much that she hasn’t seen, but Pennsylvania will always hold her heart.
Now she is a starving artist living in Philadelphia, drinking and writing her way to success… hopefully.