Happy President’s Day!

Happy President’s Day! I thought I’d rerun a couple of president related books today. I’m going to spend as much of today as I can huddled under my electric blanket reading since it’s a whole ONE degree outside! Brrrr…

Dream Big Dreams: Photographs from Barack Obama’s Inspiring and Historic Presidency by Pete Souza
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: November 21, 2017
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

From former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza comes a book for young readers that highlights Barack Obama’s historic presidency and the qualities and actions that make him so beloved.

Pete Souza served as Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama’s full two terms. He was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else – and he photographed them all, capturing scenes both classified and candid.

Throughout his historic presidency, Obama engaged with young people as often as he could, encouraging them to be their best and do their best and to always “dream big dreams.” In this timeless and timely keepsake volume that features over seventy-five full-color photographs, Souza shows the qualities of President Obama that make him both a great leader and an extraordinary man. With behind-the-scenes anecdotes of some iconic photos alongside photos with his family, colleagues, and other world leaders, Souza tells the story of a president who made history and still made time to engage with even the youngest citizens of the country he served.

By the author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait, the definitive visual biography of Barack Obama’s presidency, Dream Big Dreams was created especially for young readers and not only provides a beautiful portrait of a president but shows the true spirit of the man.

Dream Big Dreams is the children’s version Pete Souza’s book Obama: An Intimate Portrait. It includes some photos that are not in that book. Souza was the official White House photographer for all eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. In this book, he includes photos of Obama interacting with children and other happy photos. There are a few sad photos, like Obama comforting the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook. However, these types of photos are meant to show Obama’s compassion and the captions do not go into great detail about the events. I don’t think it will be too much for most kids to handle.

I have loved looking at Souza’s photographs of Obama on Facebook over the years. He is a truly gifted photographer. Check out his Instagram page. He has been posting photos of Barack Obama that relate to events involving our current president. For instance, he posted a photo the other day with a picture of Obama with his hand over his heart and the caption, “Yes, he knew the words.” You know what he was referring to, I’m sure!

Dream Big Dreams is a nice, quality hardback coffee table book. It would make a great gift for any child interested in a photographic history of our 44th president’s compassion, sense of humor and accomplishments.

(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)

TIME for Kids Presidents of the United States by Editors of TIME for Kids Magazine
Publisher: Time for Kids
Released in 2017
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time for Kids: Presidents of the United States is a brief look at all forty-five presidents of the United States of America. Each president gets a one or two page spread, depending on how major their presidency was, e.g. Jefferson and Lincoln each get two pages. We learn the birth and death date, wife and children’s names and a few tidbits of notable information about each one. There is also a time-line for events going on in technology or popular culture during that president’s time in office. The book does include information about our current president; however, it was written before the inauguration so there is no information about what his “accomplishments” are to date. The writers are probably thanking their lucky stars that they don’t have to try to write that up in an unbiased voice! It does say that during the campaign, “He made controversial remarks about several groups of people,” which I think is fair to say.

Speaking of bias, I think overall, the authors did a good job of presenting the information objectively or making sure they included the opinions on both sides of the issue, i.e. some people thought this, others thought that.

Also included in this book is a flow chart of what it takes to run for president and an explanation of the three branches of government. There is also some information on the more active first ladies.

I think this is a great book for middle-grade readers to get some concise information on each president. It’s very age-appropriate too. For instance, it says that Bill Clinton “faced charges of illegal behavior.” (That made me laugh.) I learned quite a bit from this book too, not being a big history buff myself. This book would be a great addition to a middle-graders library.

(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)

Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: June 5, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. 

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. 

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
 
The only way to survive is to open your heart. 

Eleanor Oliphant has almost no social skills or filter. She works in an office during the week and spends her weekends eating frozen pizza and drinking vodka to escape her loneliness and memories of her troubled childhood. She strikes up a friendship (maybe the first she’s ever had) with her company’s IT guy Raymond when they both come to the rescue of an elderly man who has fallen on the sidewalk.

This book would be horribly sad if not for Eleanor’s deadpan observations on the world going on around her. She reminded me a lot of Don Tillman from The Rosie Project. However, her perspective doesn’t stem from autism but from trauma and loneliness. One assumes that she doesn’t have much in the way of social skills because she never practices by interacting with other people. Her coworkers, except for Raymond, are simply awful to her because she’s different. It’s a vicious circle – she’s awkward so no one wants to be he friend, which makes her even more awkward.

Once she meets Raymond, things start to look up for her a little, even though she resists Raymond’s overtures of friendship at first. As the book goes on, we learn more and more about her childhood. I think the book would have been just fine without the mystery and twist, which I thought was contrived and familiar. Overall, I really liked this book because I love characters like Eleanor who see through all the bull and call it like it is, even when they don’t necessarily know that’s what they are doing. And I love dark, dry humor when it’s done right as it is in Eleanor. Recommended.

P.S. I looked into the status of the movie adaptation of Eleanor that Reese Witherspoon is making and all I could find is that it is “in development”. If I had to guess, I would say that it is on the back burner because of covid.

Book Review: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut.

Gifty is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. She’s a neuroscience PhD candidate at Stanford where her research centers on addiction and depression. She longs to understand why her brother, who died of a heroin overdose, became addicted to opiates in the first place. Her mother comes to live with her while suffering from severe depression. Gifty can’t get her out of bed. She can’t even make her roll over away from the all and face her.

As Gifty performs her research and cares for her mother, she recalls her childhood in Alabama, where she was raised in an all-white evangelical church. The racism all around her family took its toll. Her father came from Ghana a proud man but was soon demoralized after things like being followed around by security while shopping at Walmart kept happening. He eventually couldn’t take it anymore and went back to Ghana. Gifty’s mom worked for people who called her the n-word on a regular basis. And when Gifty’s brother became addicted to OxyContin, church “friends” remarked it was no surprise because “those people” seem to have a taste for drugs. When Gifty goes away to college, her fellow students are mostly atheists. Gifty become disillusioned with religion but its impact on her life is profound and she thinks about it and God a lot.

There is no sophomore slump for Yaa Gyasi. Transcendent Kingdom is about as different as it could be from her first novel Homegoing. While Homegoing (my review here) spans centuries and generations, Transcendent Kingdom focuses on one woman and her family. And they are both brilliant. Gyasi is truly a gifted writer with an incredible range. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Book Review: The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: May 28, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met.

After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art.

Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He’ll only ever be there when she’s at the office. In fact, they’ll never even have to meet.

Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes – first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs, and the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more.

But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea…especially if you’ve never met.

When Tiffy and her boyfriend break up and she has to move out, she needs somewhere to go on short notice that she can afford. She answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, who works nights as a hospice nurse, wants to share his flat with someone who works during the day. It’s the perfect arrangement – Tiffy will work while Leon sleeps and he will work while she sleeps. They never even have to meet. In fact, Leon’s girlfriend prefers it that way, which is why she agrees to make all of the arrangements with Tiffy on Leon’s behalf.

Tiffy and Leon communicate with each other through Post-It notes. Their notes are short and sweet at first – don’t forget to take the trash out, help yourself to the brownies I made, that sort of thing. But as the arrangement goes on, the notes become more and more personal. The Flatshare is a romantic comedy so I’ll bet you can guess what happens next!

The Flatshare alternates between Tiffy and Leon’s first-person narration. The author gave each of them such a unique voice that there isn’t really a need for the chapter headers indicating who is narrating. I love Leon. His clipped, droll way of speaking and note-writing was endearing. Tiffy was fun but she was similar to most female leads in British rom-coms – slightly daffy and unable to fully function without relying on her small friend group every step of the way. I would have liked for her to be a little less needy.

The Flatshare was one of my book club’s January pick. There was a surprising amount of discussion to be had. Probably because there is some substance in this book in addition to the rom-commyness. Leon and Tiffy have some serious stuff going on in their lives apart from all of the note writing. It’s got a good balance of humor and pathos. Recommended.

Black History Month Book Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: June 7, 2016
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Ghana, eighteenth century: two half-sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.

One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway award winner, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

Homegoing is a great book to read for Black History Month because it covers such a broad swath of Black history in such a brilliant way. It starts out with two-half sisters, each born in Ghana, knowing nothing of the other. Effia marries an English slave trader and stays in Ghana, while Esi is captured and sold into slavery. Gyasi traces the lives of the sisters and their descendants through the generations up to the present day. Esi’s family’s trajectory shows very clearly slavery’s legacy in America – convict leasing, Jim Crow, etc. I think it will be eye-opening for people who have trouble understanding the roots of systemic racism in this country.

There are two chapters for each generation, one for each sister’s descendant. Each chapter is a snapshot of a signal moment in the life of the subject. In that way, it’s almost like a short story collection. I still felt deeply invested in each character’s fate, even though I didn’t get to spend much time with any of them. I can’t even imagine the research that went into a work of historical fiction like this – spanning almost 300 years in both Ghana and the United States. It was quite an undertaking, I’m sure. It’s amazing that this is Gyasi’s first novel. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: May 2, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Lilian Girvan has been a single mother for three years—ever since her husband died in a car accident. One mental breakdown and some random suicidal thoughts later, she’s just starting to get the hang of this widow thing. She can now get her two girls to school, show up to work, and watch TV like a pro. The only problem is she’s becoming overwhelmed with being underwhelmed.
 
At least her textbook illustrating job has some perks—like actually being called upon to draw whale genitalia. Oh, and there’s that vegetable-gardening class her boss signed her up for. Apparently, being the chosen illustrator for a series of boutique vegetable guides means getting your hands dirty, literally. Wallowing around in compost on a Saturday morning can’t be much worse than wallowing around in pajamas and self-pity.
 
After recruiting her kids and insanely supportive sister to join her, Lilian shows up at the Los Angeles botanical garden feeling out of her element. But what she’ll soon discover—with the help of a patient instructor and a quirky group of gardeners—is that into every life a little sun must shine, whether you want it to or not…

2020 was the year of Abbi Waxman for me – I read three out of her four books! She was new to me and now she’s made the list of my favorite authors. The Garden of Small Beginnings is her debut novel.

Lilian Girvan is a single mother to two young girls. Her husband was killed three years ago in a car accident. She works as a textbook illustrator and when she’s chosen to illustrate a series of gardening books, her boss signs her up for gardening classes. She takes her daughters and sister with her to the first one. The other students in the class are a diverse bunch of characters. They all become close as the classes go on and end up helping each other with more than just gardening.

Even though Lilian’s husband died a tragic death and she is still grieving, this book was not a gloomy, depressing book. There is humor and lightness – especially among everyone in the gardening class. I liked that Lilian’s journey of working through her grief was realistic and not glossed over. She even spent some time in a psychiatric treatment facility right after her husband’s accident. Her sister had to take care of her children, which is something Lilian still feels guilty about.

I appreciate books that are about the power of community and The Garden of Small Beginnings is one of those books. I enjoyed all of the characters and getting to know them as they get to know each other. I really enjoyed this book and Waxman’s subsequent books just get better and better! Recommended.

Other books by Abbi Waxman I’ve reviewed:

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
I Was Told It Would Get Easier

Book Review: When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan

aWhen Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: October 1, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In 2017, Jeannie’s life came to a crashing halt when she was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor. As the mother of 5 kids — 6 if you include her husband — sat in the neurosurgery department in star-covered sweats too whimsical for the seriousness of the situation, all she could think was “Am I going to die?”

Thankfully, Jeannie and her family were able to survive their time of crisis, and now she is sharing her deeply personal journey through this miraculous story: the challenging conversations she had with her children; how she came to terms with feeling powerless and ferociously crabby while bedridden and unable to eat for a month; and how she ultimately learned, re-learned and re re-learned to be more present in life.

With sincerity and hilarity, Jeannie invites you into her heart (and brain) during this trying time, emphasizing the importance of family, faith and humor as keys to her recovery and leading a more fulfilling life.

When Jeannie Gaffigan noticed that she was having trouble hearing, she did what most busy moms would do – she ignored it. Her children’s pediatrician happened to notice she was having trouble when she was in her office with her kids and wrote her a referral to a specialist. Long story short – Jeannie had a pear-sized benign brain tumor. She went from a mother of five living life at breakneck speed to being bedridden after brain surgery completely dependent on others.

Before her tumor, Jeannie had been somewhat of a control freak, insisting on doing a lot of things herself because it seemed easier to just do everything herself, even if it left her tired and stressed. Can any other moms relate?? During her recovery, she was forced to let other people take over and she found other people were capable of helping her – even her bumbling husband, comedian Jim Gaffigan. (Not surprisingly, he’s not nearly as inept as he makes himself seem in his act.) It also turned out that her children were capable of doing more things for themselves than she thought.

Jeanne’s sense of humor and strong faith got her through her tough journey. She is what her husband jokingly refers to as a “Shiite Catholic” so there is God-talk in this book, but she’s never preachy. I had surgery a few years ago and experienced complications and a recovery process very similar to Jeanne’s and I so wish I had this book back then. It would have helped me a lot to know that I wasn’t alone in what I was feeling.

Even if you haven’t been through a major medical issue, this book has a lot to offer. Busy moms will totally relate. When Life Gives You Pears is inspirational without being hokey. It’s also really funny. She’s Jim’s writing partner so she has street cred in the laughs department. Recommended.

Book Review: Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool

Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool by Emily Oster
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication Date: April 23, 2019
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting. 

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There’s a rule—or three—for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? 

Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they’re ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren’t necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. 

Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent’s guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert—and mom of two—who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions—and stay sane in the years before preschool.

Emily Oster uses the same data-centered approach in Cribsheet that she did in Expecting Better. (You can read my review of that here.) That’s why I loved Expecting Better so I knew I’d love Cribsheet too. Oster wrote Expecting Better after she had her first child and drew on her own experience of pregnancy for that book. She would present the data and explain why she made the choice she did but was never judgmental about it. The choice was ultimately left up to the reader. Cribsheet is the same, only Oster wrote it after the birth of her second child. She knows from personal experience that all children are different and what works for one may not work for another – even if they have the same parents.

Cribsheet covers the most heated topics related to a baby’s first year – sleep training, breast vs. bottle, vaccinations, working vs. staying home, etc. The section on toddlers includes walking, talking, potty training, discipline, education and more. Like in Expecting Better, she presents the various approaches to each topic and then her analysis of the available data, without judgment. My oldest child is 16 years old and my youngest is 18 months old. A lot has changed in 16 years. One example is that it’s now recommended that children sleep in the parents’ bedroom for their first year. This blew me away! My older kids were in their own room within weeks of birth and this was pretty much standard at the time. After reading Oster’s section on sleep, I understood why the recommendation had been put into place and was able to decide how long I thought it was appropriate for my new baby to sleep in my bedroom given the available data.

I hope that Oster continues to write books as her children grow. I’ll be first in line for all of them!

Happy Inauguration Day!

Inauguration Day is finally here! In honor of my good friend Joe Biden, I’m rerunning my review of his audiobook Promise Me, Dad. Check out what I wrote towards the end:

Something about the way he touts his achievements makes me think he may be talking himself up in preparation to run for president in 2020. Do it Joe!

Am I like a psychic or what? Maybe Joe read my review when it first posted and said to himself, “What the heck, I’ll do it!” You are welcome America.

Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose by Joe Biden
Publisher: Audible Studios
Narrator: Joe Biden
Release Date: November 14, 2017
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

A deeply moving memoir about the year that would forever change both a family and a country.

In November 2014, 13 members of the Biden family gathered on Nantucket for Thanksgiving, a tradition they had been celebrating for the past 40 years; it was the one constant in what had become a hectic, scrutinized, and overscheduled life. The Thanksgiving holiday was a much-needed respite, a time to connect, a time to reflect on what the year had brought and what the future might hold. But this year felt different from all those that had come before. Joe and Jill Biden’s eldest son, Beau, had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor 15 months earlier, and his survival was uncertain. “Promise me, Dad,” Beau had told his father. “Give me your word that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right.” Joe Biden gave him his word.

Promise Me, Dad chronicles the year that followed, which would be the most momentous and challenging in Joe Biden’s extraordinary life and career. Vice President Biden traveled more than a hundred thousand miles that year, across the world, dealing with crises in Ukraine, Central America, and Iraq. When a call came from New York, or Capitol Hill, or Kyiv, or Baghdad – “Joe, I need your help” – he responded. For 12 months, while Beau fought for and then lost his life, the vice president balanced the twin imperatives of living up to his responsibilities to his country and his responsibilities to his family. And never far away was the insistent and urgent question of whether he should seek the presidency in 2016. The year brought real triumph and accomplishment, and wrenching pain. But even in the worst times, Biden was able to lean on the strength of his long, deep bonds with his family, on his faith, and on his deepening friendship with the man in the Oval Office, Barack Obama.

Writing with poignancy and immediacy, Joe Biden allows listeners to feel the urgency of each moment, to experience the days when he felt unable to move forward as well as the days when he felt like he could not afford to stop. This is a book written not just by the vice president but by a father, grandfather, friend, and husband. Promise Me, Dad is a story of how family and friendships sustain us and how hope, purpose, and action can guide us through the pain of personal loss into the light of a new future.

Note: this Audible Exclusive includes a powerful interview – only available here – between Joe Biden and award-winning journalist, Mike Barnicle. Their discussion contextualizes the memoir’s wide-ranging themes, while also touching upon the presidential election, current events, and what it means to grapple with profound grief.

Promise Me, Dad is Joe Biden’s memoir about his son Beau’s struggle with and ultimately death from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Biden also interlaces what is happening with his job as Vice President of the United States during that time period. Most of that work was dealing with foreign policy issues, including Russia and the Ukraine.

Biden’s family is extremely close, which makes their journey with Beau that much more heartbreaking. Beau was beloved and admired by pretty much everyone he came into contact with during his life. The title comes from what Beau said repeatedly to Joe, “Promise me, Dad that you’ll be okay. Promise me, Dad.” Beau was the one dying yet he was more worried about his dad his own well-being. Biden narrates the book himself and you can hear the love and emotion in his voice throughout the book when he talks about Beau.

Biden discusses his dilemma of whether or not to run for president in the 2016 election and why it took him so long to decide not to run. When he talks about his interactions with Vladimir Putin and his other accomplishments, it’s clear that he’s proud of his work as Vice President – as he should be. He says that he had much more responsibility than most of the previous vice presidents. Something about the way he touts his achievements makes me think he may be talking himself up in preparation to run for president in 2020. Do it Joe!

I thought Promise Me, Dad was an excellent combination of both a personal and a political memoir. The Biden family dynamic is inspiring – now I want to do everything I can to make sure my kids stay close to each other and my husband and me as adults. Even though it’s probably clear that I’m a Biden fan, I think people of all political persuasions will enjoy this book, because at its heart, it’s about love and family.

(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: May 14, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.

As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.

Ifemelu and her boyfriend Obinze grew up in Nigeria. She immigrates to America for college. Obinze is not able to follow her and instead goes to England on a tourist visa that he overstays and winds up deported back to Nigeria.

Ifemelu becomes a successful blogger while she’s living in America – her blog is called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Her blog entries, which are interspersed throughout the book offer biting, darkly humorous takes on race in America from Ifemelu’s point of view as an outsider looking in. At the same time, back in Nigeria, Obinze becomes wealthy, marries and has a child. After living in America for fifteen years, Ifemelu moves back to Nigeria and reunites with Obinze. They find that they must make some tough choices.

Americanah is about many things – love, immigration and race. Its Ifemelu’s observations on race in America really struck me and have stayed with me. She says, “”I came from a country where race was not an issue. I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America.” Throughout her time in America, she finds that she has certain expectations placed on her, good and bad, because she is Black. Like, when in one of her college classes all eyes were on her when the topic was slavery. When Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, she finds that America has changed her and she can’t easily integrate back into her old life. She is forever changed and now inhabits an in-between state – what her Nigerian friends call Americanah. Highly recommended.