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A Novel
by Bisi Adjapon
Book Reviewed by:The acclaimed author of The Teller of Secrets returns with a gut-wrenching, yet heartwarming, story about a young Ghanaian woman's struggle to make a life in the US, and the challenges she must overcome.
Lola is twenty-one, and her life in Senegal couldn't be better. An aspiring writer and university graduate, she has a great job, a nice apartment, a vibrant social life, and a future filled with possibility. But fate disrupts her world when she falls for Armand, an American Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Her mother, a high court judge in Ghana, disapproves of her choice, but nothing will stop Lola from boarding a plane for Armand and America.
That fateful flight is only the beginning of an extraordinary journey; she has traded her carefree existence in Senegal for the perilous position of an undocumented immigrant in 1990s America.
Lola encounters adversity that would crush a less-determined woman. Her fate hangs on whether or not she'll grow in courage to forge a different life from one she'd imagined, whether she'll succeed in putting herself and family together again. Daughter in Exile is a hope-filled story about mother love, resilience, and unyielding strength.
There is an irony in how we as a society speak of immigrants and their courage while admiring them from afar, and the tropes that portray their resilience in a fantastical way. We don't necessarily examine what they experience hour after hour or see their daily lives clearly, but we lavish heroism upon them. Daughter in Exile is, in a way, a classic story of the American Dream. It is an aspirational tale with a heroine who takes on great risks, suffers incredible losses and stitches herself back together again. But to define the novel as only that is to minimize what Adjapon has delivered to us. In the many things Lola must manage — language, culture, employment — pressure and trauma are forever hanging over her head. In this way, Daughter in Exile is riveting as a cautionary tale, powerful with a raucous pulse and a vulnerable character...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
Lola, the likeable and resilient protagonist in Bisi Adjapon's Daughter in Exile, finds herself in multiple difficult situations over a matter of years. At one point, pregnant without a partner after her husband dies, she is left to manage a toddler, her grief and an unborn daughter.
An active member of a parish community, Lola looks to her church to give her the strength to continue. It is there that she is slipped tapes of the American evangelical psychologist Dr. James Dobson arguing that it is better for children to be raised by two parents. Fellow parishioners send Lola messages urging her to not be selfish and give her child a "good home." Guilt coupled with self-loathing gives her the motivation to agree to adoption, and the ...
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Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Alka Joshi, author of The Henna Artist and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur
Fast-paced. Riveting. Heartbreaking. Far from the madding crowds of immigrant novels, Adjapon's Daughter in Exile highlights the cultural differences that divide us and, ultimately, the shared humanity that brings us together.
