Under the Udala Trees
Longlisted for the 2015 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction
A LGBT Sr Q Audiobooks Pick
A Cosmopolitan Best Book of 24 Books to Read This Fall
Longlisted for the 2016 Chautauqua Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
A Bustle Pick for 2015's 25 Best Books for Fiction
A Wall Street Journal Pick of 15 Books to Read This Fall
A Bust Magazine Pick of Top 10 Books of 2015
An Autostraddle Pick of Best Queer, Lesbian, and Bisexual Books of the Decade
A Shondaland Pick of Best Books for Black History Month
Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and the star-crossed pair fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.
When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.
As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti’s political coming-of-age, Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees uses one woman’s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. But this story offers a glimmer of hope—a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.
Praise