Chinamelum Menakaya

In 2002, fifteen-year-old Chinaemelum leaves America, to go to Nigeria for summer break. Months later, she fights for her life against malaria. Summer is over and her father refuses to give her back her passport to return to America with her mother. She is kept in Nigeria against her will, he puts her in a all girls boarding school, where she struggles to adapt to life, in a 3rd world country. Two and a half years later, she and her siblings escape out of their fathers house to the American Embassy in Lagos for hopes of leaving Nigeria. She is adamant about expressing her trauma of abandonment, abuse, and her survival mechanism then and now. Out of this tragedy, she's able to overcome and be of a success today.
She voices the portrayals of her childhood and teen years growing up Nigerian American in America to Nigerian parents.
Raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, by a Christian Pastor and wife, life is portrayed in public as a God fearing couple, but behind close doors chinaemelum witness her father often beating her mother. He eventually begins to physically and emotionally abuse Chinaemelum, by calling her a whore and a prostitute at age 13. Chinaemelum had high hopes when she heard she was going to Nigeria for the summer. She had no idea the gravity of the horrific adventure about to take place.Chinaemelum has been writing for more than 12 years. She is the author of her first book called "Mangoes in the Rain".