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So much has been said about African parents. There are several social media trends that satirize them, and it seems every other day someone online has a story to share about their parents. Sometimes they are hilarious stories, but there are also sad stories. But whether funny or sad, these stories underscore the fact that many young people feel disconnected from their parents because they don’t truly know them. They only see the looming parental figures rather than the actual humans that these parents are.
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of books to that will explain why your parents are the way they are. From an extended letter that details a mother’s decision to stay in her marriage after her husband takes a second wife to a novel about a renowned chef who chooses her career over her daughter, the books on this list will help you see your parents in a new light and begin to understand them.
Read our recommendations below:
DREAM COUNT
author: CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
Genre: FICTION
Although Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel mainly explores the intersections of love, longing and the quest for authentic happiness, it also has strong themes of parenthood, exploring the relationship between mothers and their daughters.
In Zikora’s story, for example, Zikora, a successful lawyer, has a very fraught relationship with her mother. But when she herself becomes pregnant and is delivered of a child, during which period her mother stays with and supports her, she begins to see her mother in a new light, finally understanding the woman that she is.
There is also Kadiatou and her daughter Binta, who, though constantly at loggerheads, always find a way to make peace and love each other. The book has been described as, at its core, ‘gloriously about mothers and daughters and the contours of their relationships.’
SO LONG A LETTER
AUTHOR: Mariama Bâ
GENRE: Fiction
Senegalese author Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter is a groundbreaking novel that takes the form of an extended letter written by Ramatoulaye, a Senegalese woman, to her childhood friend, Aissatou, during the traditional Islamic mourning period following her husband’s death. Through this intimate correspondence, Ramatoulaye reflects on their parallel experiences as educated Senegalese women navigating marriage, motherhood and betrayal in postcolonial West Africa.
Both women married for love but faced devastating betrayals when their husbands took younger second wives. While Aissatou chose to divorce and rebuild her life independently, moving to America with her children, Ramatoulaye remained in her marriage despite the humiliation, choosing to endure.
MY PARENTS’ MARRIAGE
AUTHOR: NANA EKUA BREW-HAMMOND
GENRE: fiction
My Parents’ Marriage is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s compelling novel which follows Kokui, a young woman who would do anything not to end up in a marriage like her parents’. Her father, a wealthy, powerful man, is a philanderer with many wives and children, forcing her mother to leave the house. However, the couple never truly divorces, and they see each other only for one week each year.
When Kokui decides to marry, she chooses a man very different from her father and vows to be as different from her mother as possible. But when she and her husband leave Ghana to make a life in America, her marriage starts to fail, just like her parents. It will take returning to Ghana when her father dies, and confronting the ghost of her parents’ marriage, understanding why it was the way it was, for her to truly heal from the trauma it caused her.
Cassava Republic Press is proud to announce the launch of their inaugural $20,000 Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize dedicated to exceptional works by Black women. Deadline: 30th June 2024. Learn more here.
TRANSCEnDENT KINGDOM
AUTHOR: YAA GYASI
GENRE: fiction
Gifty is a PhD student of neuroscience at Standford University. For her research, she is studying addiction and depression circuits in mice, to better understand her family. Her brother, a gifted high school athlete, died of heroin overdose after he became addicted to OxyContin following a knee injury. This tragedy devastated their small family unit and sent their mother into severe depression, leaving young Gifty feeling abandoned and questioning her faith.
Gifty’s research becomes deeply personal as she tries to reconcile her childhood faith with her scientific mind. When her mother comes to stay with her during another bout of severe depression, Gifty must confront their fractured relationship and her own unresolved trauma.
HOW TO READ THE AIR
Author: DINAW MENGESTU
Genre: FIction
As his relationship with his wife crumbles, Jonas, an Ethiopian-American man, becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about his parents’ early years in America, particularly a mysterious road trip they took from Illinois to Nashville shortly after immigrating from Ethiopia. He sets out on a journey to retrace their footsteps.
What he finds are stories of displacement, cultural alienation and the psychological toll of leaving one’s homeland behind. He discovers that, just like his own marriage, his parents’ marriage was built on secrets and misunderstandings.
THE CHEFFE
AUTHOR: MARIE NDIAYE
GENRE: FICTION
Born into rural poverty, the titular Cheffe begins her career as a domestic help in an aristocratic household, where her exceptional cooking talents gradually emerge, elevating her from servant to kitchen commander.
Over the years, she rises to become a world-renowned chef, celebrated as one of the best in the world. But though the Cheffe loves the career she has built, she remains secretive about her life. When she becomes pregnant, she refuses to say who the father is, and eventually, when her work becomes too demanding, she leaves her daughter with her family to focus on her career. This makes the relationship with her daughter so fraught that, many years later, it threatens to destroy everything the Cheffe has built.
Narrated by the Cheffe’s doting former assistant and unrequited lover, this book details the Cheffe’s experiences in her journey from poverty to global renown, helping us understand why the Cheffe made the choices she made.
ghana must go
authOR: taiye selasi
GENRE: Fiction
When Kweku Sai suddenly dies of a heart attack one morning, his estranged family is forced to reunite for the first time in years. Though the novel opens with his death, we are taken back in time, over the course of the following chapters, to learn about his life. Kweku was once a successful surgeon in the United States, in a happy marriage with Fola, his Nigerian wife, with four children: Ola, the twins Taiwo and Kehinde and Sadie, the youngest. But when a devastating professional scandal destroys his reputation and career, he abandons everything, including his family, to return to Ghana alone.
Many years later, when the family gathers in Ghana for Kweku’s funeral, long-buried secrets surface, and the children will have to come to terms with who their father really was⎈
