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A Novel
by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Acclaimed children's author Nana Brew-Hammond makes her highly anticipated return with this soaring and profound story about love and understanding told through three generations of one Ghanian family.
Determined to avoid the pain and instability of her parents' turbulent, confusing marriage, Kokui marries a man far different from her loving, philandering, self-made father—and tries to be a different kind of wife from her mother.
But when Kokui and her husband leave Ghana to make a new life for themselves in America, she finds history repeating itself. Her marriage failing, she is called home to Ghana when her father dies. Back in her childhood home, which feels both familiar and discomforting, she comes to realize that to exorcize the ghosts of her parents' marriage she must confront them to enable her healing.
Tender and illuminating, warm and bittersweet My Parents' Marriage is a compelling story of family, community, class, and self-identity from an author with deep empathy and a generous heart.
"My Parents' Marriage is a deeply engaging and gratifying novel that deftly explores the generational cycles we are each born into and offers a moving portrait into the joys—and guilt—of finding our own way. I can't remember the last time I rooted for a character as wholeheartedly as I did for Kokui, a young woman who, having faced shattered illusions around her parents' union, is determined to shape her life and marriage around truth. Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond's is a rare talent." —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Little Monsters and Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me
"The marital realities of patriarchy, class, reproduction, culture, and finances are minutely and exquisitely observed in breathlessly tense exchanges I couldn't look away from. Brew-Hammond has crafted an arrestingly evocative story, which, like Dominicana and Brown Girl, Brownstones, dismantles immigrant cliches and delivers powerfully vulnerable moments that show what we can mean to each other. This thought-provoking and intense novel speaks loudly to a universal desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past and urgently reminds us it is in our ordinary lives that we must be extraordinarily brave." —Vanessa Walters, author of The Nigerwife
"My Parent's Marriage is a thought-provoking and searing examination of how patriarchy can impact marriage customs of all kinds… Through her vibrant, complicated characters, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond explores the downstream effects of a system that benefits a few at the expense of many." —Erica Bauermeister, New York Times-bestselling author of No Two Persons
This information about My Parents' Marriage 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.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children's picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter; and the young adult novel Powder Necklace. Her short fiction for adults has been included in the anthologies Accra Noir, Africa39, New Daughters of Africa, Everyday People, and Woman's Work. Learn more at nanabrewhammond.com.
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