Away from Africa

This was my review on Goodreads: This novel's storyline follows a young girl, then teen, then woman from post-independence Zimbabwe to the United States.The tone may seem flippant. But the underlying pain is real: whether back in the home country, or in the diaspora.  In Zimbabwe, it is sad to find the descendants of people who fought the Rhodesians, who had their own style of Apartheid, suffering at the hands of those who won back the country. Life is often untenable but people are helpless. In the United States, an exilee tries to fit in without losing their identity, but it's not easy. The heartbreak of leaving your home remains no matter what. And your children will have another take on life than you do. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/17624883-diane-chehab">View all my reviews</a> Below we can read that the author is writing a memoir; I can't wait to find out about her own life! From Goodreads: About the author NoViolet Bulawayo 12 ...

These past months, I read five novels, all written in the last ten years by African women from different English-speaking countries/regions. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf Doubleday, 2013) Ghana Must Go  by Taiye Selasi (New York Penguin Press, 2013) Behold the Dreamers  by Imbolo Mbue (Penguin Random House, 2016) Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Penguin Random House, 2016) The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) They were all interesting and engrossing, and cover a large swath of issues, especially the relationship between Africa and the United States of America (more directly in three of the novels).     Americanah and Ghana Must Go both feature protagonists who live and/or have lived in the United States and in their African home country, in the United States for a long enough time to have enjoyed American success stories. Americanah describes especially well the tensions in the relationships: betw...