I am invested in how women juxtapose the day-to-day with the bizarre. I am curious about how women balance their lives with the insoluble and how this contributes to the fluidity of their identities. I live with women, I work with women, I shop with them, eat with them, sit next to them on the bus, I am friends with women, laugh with them, I pray with them, I am these women. In whichever format my work takes shapeāwhether subtle or direct, either as a performer, writer, designer, or community catalyst, I am committed to intentionally making space for womanhood. Please enjoy my book list.
Iāve read this book at least twice. The specificity of Sefi Atta's language makes me feel like I can reach into the pages and sit next to the characters as their lives unfold.
Her writing is very immersive, drawing you in and making everything in that world real and imaginable, painful yet livable. In this book, she explores the complexities of womanhood, even with certain privileges and regardless of status.Ā
Everything Good Will Come introduces an important new voice in contemporary fiction. With insight and a lyrical wisdom, Nigerian-born Sefi Atta has written a powerful and eloquent story set in her African homeland. It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military ruleāthough the politics of the state matter less than those of her home to Enitan Taiwo, an eleven-year-old girl tired of waiting for school to start. Will her mother, who has become deeply religious since the death of Enitanās brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautifulā¦
I am in love with Lesleyās writing, and everyone should be. Period. I will recommend this book a thousand times. The first time I read it, I was left feeling hopefulāhopeful that stories are soft, intentional, deliberate, magical things that can shift people and places enough to make a difference or change minds. With each story in this collection, Lesley peels away the layers (sometimes softly, sometimes jarring) of lives, relationships, and women.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE LEONARD PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.Ā
In āWho Will Greet You at Home,ā a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker, A woman desperate for a child weaves one outā¦
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesāall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueā¦
I am convinced nobody writes about female friendships in an aching, warm, and complex way better than Elena Ferrante. I have returned to pages of this book again and again.
The relatability, the precision with which you can see yourself so clearly on certain pages. It has helped me find language in navigating my own friendships.
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From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor butā¦
The thing I love most about this book is how Lola weaves the story expertly in a way that you sympathize with each woman.
I loved the women in this book. Each one has its eccentricities, and each woman defines and redefines her autonomy. Only fantastic storytelling can center a patriarch and have the women crowning the day.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is a scandalous, engrossing tale of sexual politics and family strife in modern-day Nigeria. Lola Shoneyin's bestselling novel bursts on to the stage in a vivid adaptat ion by Caine Award-winning playwright Rotimi Babatunde.
"Men are like yam, you cut them how you like."
Baba Segi has three wives, seven children, and a mansion filled with riches. But now he has his eyes on Bolanle, a young university graduate wise to life's misfortunes. When Bolanle responds to Baba Segi's advances, she unwittingly uncovers a secret which threatens to rock his patriarchal household toā¦
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist momās unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellieās gymnastics andā¦
If minds were gardens, Okwiri Odourās would be lush and strange, monochromatic, and with a tinge of color. I loved the absolute tenderness with which she wrote her characters.
I loved that the strangeness of things in this book made me both chuckle and question the possibility of worlds.
'Magical, beguiling... Carries echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved' Guardian
A Vulture 'Book We Can't Wait to Read in 2022'
They had not lost anyone that year, or the ones they had lost were not worth remembering...
Set in the fictional Kenyan town of Mapeli, Things They Lost tells the story of four generations of women, each haunted by the mysterious curse that hangs over the Brown family. At the heart of the novel is Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, twelve years old and the loneliest girl in the world.
Okwiri Oduor's stunningly original debut novel sings with Kenyan folklore and myth asā¦
My book is an audacious and illuminating collection of interconnected short stories that explore the complexities of familial bonds, romantic encounters, and sustaining friendships through the lives of todayās Ghanaian youth. Men like Opoku Sr., not yet forty and struggling to keep his familyās business afloat after his fatherās unexpected passing. When his new girlfriend tells him sheās pregnant, he knows he has nothing left to give.
Years later, that girlfriendās son, Opoku Jr., now faces his own troubles, including his girlfriend Boatemaa, who suspects he is sneaking around, and Amoafoa, the woman heās seeing on the side. Ama Asantewa Diaka captures the deeply humane experiences of characters whose lives clash with one another in friendship, passion, hope, and heartache.
Haunted by her choices, including marrying an abusive con man, thirty-five-year-old Elizabeth has been unable to speak for two years. She is further devastated when she learns an old boyfriend has died. Nothing in her lifeā¦
In an underground coal mine in Northern Germany, over forty scribes who are fluent in different languages have been spared the camps to answer letters to the deadāletters that people were forced to answer before being gassed, assuring relatives that conditions in the camps were good.Ā
