A captivating anthology with a mix of fun and heart-wrenching stories of the African experience.
An anthology of stories from Mukana Press featuring African authors, characters, and settings.
In this collection, the short stories are broken into two parts, the first being generally more lighthearted and colorful and the second focusing more on some of the harsher realities of the world. In the Chioma Iwunze Ibiam short story that gives the anthology its title, Lolo Ezigbo haggles over the prices of goods in a market while telling the seller about the exploits of her daughter, who has moved to America (“My dear, she hung up the phone before I could ask her what happiness had to do with marriage”). The following story, Favour Ahuchaogo’s “Little Woman,” focuses on the strength and perseverance of a short-statured woman and her daughter in a male-dominated culture after her husband dies. In other stories, readers see the maturing of a young woman through the eyes of her youngest daughter (Gloria Mwaniga Odary’s “The Ripening”), unhoused people being kidnapped and having their organs harvested (Christine Coates’ “Body Parts”), and a doctorate-holding, highly qualified woman from Zimbabwe landing a job in an American company only to be called the “diversity hire” (Munashe Kaseke’s “Tsoro”). A family deals with the public murder of the oldest daughter in Okoronkwo Chisom’s “She Lingers,” while in “Half Portraits Underwater,” by Dennis Mugaa,,Olioma loses her twin sister and travels to the beach to find a fitting memorial on the one-year anniversary. In “The Way We Bend,” by Milred Barya, a Black American woman travels to Africa to attend school and finds that while she’s not white enough for America, she’s also not Black enough for Africa. The 10 stories in this anthology will give readers a glimpse into cultures woefully underrepresented in modern literature. Each author has a distinct style, and each tale has some element that will stick with readers.
A captivating anthology with a mix of fun and heart-wrenching stories of the African experience.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mukana Press
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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