In My Life as a Chameleon, Diana Anyakwo explores the themes of identity, family and memory with a tender hand. Centred around the experiences of Lily, a teenager of mixed race background growing up in Nigeria and England. Lily’s experience is further complicated by her birth order as…
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“1. Unwelcome Reunion Unwelcome ReunionWhen I was twenty-eight, my stepmother Anabel came to New York on vacation. She was living, at the time, in Pakistan, where she worked for a UN agency. At a restaurant a few blocks from my Chinatown apartment, we ate noodle soup and drank…
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“With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the…
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According to the NYT, The Prophets’ is an exploration of Black Love and Memory in a Time of Trauma. What an apt description of this powerful debut by Robert Jones Jr. In a novel moving across time and space, we are introduced to Samuel and Isaiah, who are…
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“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.”is how Peace Adzo Medie introduces us to Afi and Elikem in her acclaimed debut His Only Wife. A Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick. This book os also a New York Notable Book of…
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‘My book was inspired by my multicultural background – Zambian, Nigerian, Jamaican and British. I wrote it at a time when I was processing the loss of both sets of grandparents, whom I had visited in Nigeria and in my Zambian village, Chinsali.’ Natasha Omokhodion-Kalulu Banda In a…
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“The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.” Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan,…
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“It was a cool evening in late summer when Wallace, his father dead for several weeks, decided that he would meet his friends at the pier after all.” – Brandon Taylor “Jesse’s alarm went off at seven, but he’d barely slept. He was excited, if nervous; he’d been…
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Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and has lived in the UK for eighteen years. She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an M.Sc. in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University of London. The…
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At the Open Book Festival, held in Cape Town in 2019, The Cheeky Natives sat down with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah to discuss his debut collection of short stories, Friday Black. This New York Times’ Best seller explores the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities of life in the US.…
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