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by Zalika Reid-Benta
Issa Rae's Insecure with a magical realist spin: River Mumma is an exhilarating contemporary fantasy novel about a young Black woman who navigates her quarter-life-crisis while embarking on a mythical quest through the streets of Toronto.
Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won't stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store.
Then, one evening, the Jamaican water deity, River Mumma, appears to Alicia, telling her that she has twenty-four hours to scour the city for her missing comb.
Alicia doesn't understand why River Mumma would choose her. She can't remember all the legends her relatives told her, unlike her retail co-worker Heaven, who can reel off Jamaican folklore by heart. She doesn't know if her childhood visions have returned, or why she feels a strange connection to her other co-worker Mars. But when the trio are chased down by malevolent spirits called duppies, they realize their tenuous bonds to each other may be their only lifelines. With the clock ticking, Alicia's quest through the city broadens into a journey through time—to find herself and what the river carries.
Energetic and invigorating, River Mumma is a vibrant exploration of diasporic community and ancestral ties, and a homage to Jamaican storytelling by one of the most invigorating voices in today's literature.
"Stunning debut... that marks the emergence of a powerful new voice." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A race-against-the-clock page-turner with friendship and diasporic community building at its heart, this book is a winner." —Booklist (starred review)
"Fans of magical realism, Jamaican folklore and culture, and the rediscovery of ancestral roots will enjoy this novel from the author of the award-winning Frying Plaintain." —Library Journal
"Mixing Caribbean folklore with downtown Toronto's modern melting pot ... Reid-Benta deftly weaves pertinent details about Jamaican folktales and Canadian immigrant experiences throughout the narrative." —Apple Books Review
"River Mumma is a propulsive read filled with captivating characters, page-turning mystery, and a thoughtful examination of kinship and ancestral ties." —Toronto Life
"... Reid-Benta writes powerfully of the diasporic experience, the connections between family history and community, and the role and importance of lore and mythic history." —Toronto Star
"River Mumma is a blessing and Zalika Reid-Benta's talent is a truly special gift. This is a quest novel that maps Jamaican folklore across modern-day Toronto; three young people are sent on a mission by a goddess and if that doesn't pique your interest then something is very wrong with you." —Victor LaValle, award-winning author of The Changeling
"Wholly original, remarkably crafted, and unmatched in voice, atmosphere, and action, River Mumma should be on every must-read list this season." —Cherie Dimaline, bestselling author of Empire of Wild
This information about River Mumma was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer whose debut story collection, Frying Plantain, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. Frying Plantain was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and it was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the White Pine Award, and the Trillium Book Award. Her second book and debut novel, River Mumma, received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, was the 2023 October Pick for the daytime talk show Cityline Book Club and was listed as one of the best books of 2023 by CBC Books, Indigo Books, Kobo Books and The Walrus literary magazine. In 2025, Tundra Books will publish Zalika's first picture book, The Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas. Zalika served as the 2021-2022 Writer in Residence at Western University and was the chair of the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She received an M.F.A. in fiction from Columbia University, was a John Gardner Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and is an alumna of the Banff Centre Writing Studio.
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