Uzo Aduba thanks her mom: 'I didn't know how many prayers she sent up to heaven for me'

Roughly translated, actor Uzo Aduba's first name — Uzoamaka — means "the road is good" in Igbo. But the Emmy Award-winning Orange Is the New Black actor says the essence of her name runs deeper: "It really means the journey was worth it."

Aduba explains: Imagine planning to meet up at a friend's house at 3:00 p.m., but it's raining and you have a flat tire, and then there's traffic and you run out of gas. So you wind up getting there almost two hours late. But as you arrive, the sun comes out. When the host asks how the trip was, you respond: "It was hard, but it's worth it because I'm here now with you," Aduba says. "Uzoamaka, the journey was worth it.'"

In her new memoir, The Road Is Good, Aduba recounts the winding path of her own life story. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Aduba grew up in the predominantly white suburb of Medfield, Mass.

"My mom used to do green, white, green beads for my sister and I in representation of the Nigerian flag," Aduba says. "I thought those beads were great, and there would always be someone at school who had something to say about the beads in the hair."

Whether it was comments about her hair or, in one case, being called the n-word, Aduba didn't tell her parents what she faced at school because she didn't want to trouble them. "I remember all of the stuff [my parents] had fought through and fought for," she says. "And I didn't want them to have to start fighting again."

Aduba dedicates the memoir to her mother, Nonyem Aduba, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2020. "I knew that I was going to include her story [in the memoir] because so many of the tenets with which I live and motivators that display themselves in me come directly from her," Aduba says. "She poured so heavily into my cup. My cup is ultimately filled with her."

Aduba currently stars in the coming-of-age film, The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat.

Interview highlights

On the lessons she picked up from her mother

My self-talk, the way that I motivate myself into pursuing this business and going to audition after audition, the way I prepare for it, is built out of language that my mother had given me and my siblings since we were children. It's her saying constantly to us, "I've never heard of nothing coming from hard work." … And when we were kids, you hear that you’re like, “OK, She keeps saying that.” But then you grow up and you start to see life and you realize, No. 1, she's living that. You see her through her own conduct, working hard and breeding results. Whether that's keeping a roof over the head of five kids and bellies full, whether that's having moved to this country and achieving not one but two masters in social work. Whether that is showing up and shuttling us to whichever activity that we needed to be at and then coming home after a long day's work and cooking and getting everything ready to check homework, she worked hard and saw the impacts of that hard work. And I know that's how I talk to myself. I say that expression even still.

On the journals her mother left behind

I was just looking at one yesterday I've not read, because I haven't read them all. And I just opened a page and one of them was like, page 252. I’ve seen another one that's, like, 400 [pages]. And she writes small. And then sometimes if she's running out of pages, she takes a ruler and adds, splits the lines and then writes in there, so they're really, really, really, really, really dense. And if she didn't have her journal with her because she was traveling, there's a paper clip held to the page of the entry because she wrote on a piece of paper that day's event and then paper clipped it, so it's sequential.

I'm still on the first one, which is like 500, 400 and something pages long. ... It took me a minute to start. When I read the first page, I could feel her breath come back into her lungs and she was alive again, which felt very woo-woo intense.

On learning how much her mother prayed for her

Before I started working in film and television, I didn't know how many prayers she sent up to heaven for me to have my dreams come true. She was just praying for, like, peace of mind. She was praying for my stability. … I didn't know how much she worried for me, you know, always just that I would be OK.

And that's true for my other siblings. She loved us so much. … I did not have a good mother. I did not have a great mother. I had an excellent mother. She took that pact, that initiation into that sacred circle so seriously, and it was everything to her to be our mother. And I am just so proud to be the daughter of Nonyem Aduba.

On when she realized she was different from the other kids in her town

I think it first started with my hair. My first real core memory is being in the third grade. And we had a neighbor who had really long brown hair, this girl down the street. And I can remember one day we were all playing in front of our house and I don't know if we braided her hair, and then she decided to braid mine. I don't know. But I just know she somehow was now getting ready to braid my hair. And she went to put her hands in my hair and she said, “Ewww, your hair is so greasy.” And there was grease in it because we're laying down the front [for a ponytail] … And it had never occurred to me. To even attach the word "ewww" to it. ... And from that I was also aware that it was different and I had never even thought of it as being different.

On her mom working at McDonalds when money was tight

We were in this community that they were scraping to keep us in and give us everything that they could and the American dream. ... She was there because she's trying to pay the bills. She wasn't there for laughs, she was there to support her family. But me as a kid, I would love when we would go to the McDonald's … right up the road, and we would go through the drive-thru and she would come and meet us there. And I thought it was the coolest thing.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong with working at McDonald's. It's a job you can be proud of and take pride in. My mom was working there and she would come and we'd get Happy Meals. And because she was getting a discount, we would get so many more things than we would ever get [before]. ...

I have a fond spot in my heart for McDonald's because that helped carry our family through some tough times. ... [My mom] was so fiercely protective of her family and would do anything — and I do mean anything — for us. ... [She] was not ever too proud to do any job, and didn't think she was above anything — despite knowing she had graduated with distinction with two masters degrees. She was not too proud to do what she needed to do.

Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.