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A Memoir
by Theresa Okokon
For fans of Aftershocks and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, a gripping and deeply honest memoir in essays, this debut collection sets out to answer the universal question of: Why am I like this?
When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother's funeral…and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family's world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to explore the ripple effects of that profound loss and the way heartache shapes our sense of self and of the world—for the rest of our lives.
Using her grief and her father's death as a backdrop, Okokon delves deeply into intrinsic themes of Blackness, African spirituality, family, abandonment, belonging, and the seemingly endless, unrequited romantic pursuits of a Black woman who came of age as a Black girl in Wisconsin suburbs where she was—in many ways—always an anomaly.
"Honest, vulnerable, earnest reflections that stop somewhere short of compelling." —Kirkus Reviews
"Who I Always Was is a coming-of-age memoir, where the narrator struggles to find her place in a new land, a place that also happens to be where she was born. A central wound haunts these pages, that of a father who returns to his homeland and never returns. This is an immigrant memoir that asks the deepest questions of identity, of home, of belonging." —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
"Theresa Okokon is a gifted storyteller, and her gift is on full display in Who I Always Was. Each essay holds the heady mix of truth, humor and vulnerability that, for millennia, has kept us seated at the storyteller's feet, asking for just one more story. Just one more." —Neema Avashia, author of Another Appalachia
"The narrative voice in Okokon's memoir is a stunning example of excellent writing and storytelling. With remarkable skill, the author emotes honesty, vulnerability, desire, and determination in an unapologetic style that is both lovely and enviable. Okokon addresses issues of belonging, love, loss, and family with a deft touch, making the book impossible to put down. A stunning debut." —Michelle Bowdler, author of Is Rape a Crime?
This information about Who I Always Was 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.
Theresa Okokon is an award-winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Elle, midnight & indigo, Hippocampus Magazine, and much more. Her first book is the essay collection Who I Always Was.
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
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