Happiness, Like Water - Supernormal Reads

No cover — Chinelo Okparanta: Happiness, Like Water (2014, Granta Books)

208 pages

English language

Published 2014 by Granta Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-84708-831-4

(1 review)

Short stories. Here are Nigerian women at home and transplanted to the United States, building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love. Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

5 editions

ralentina reviewed Happiness, like water by Chinelo Okparanta

Sad stories between Nigeria and the US

4 stars

These stories are quite sad, ranging from the melancholic to there is perhaps a dim light at the end of the tunnel to straight up devastating. Domestic violence, tumoultous parents-daughter relations, loaded with guilt, resentment and love. The first stories are set in Nigeria, the other in the States.

It is one of my current personal reading struggles that attempts at reading women of colour in the name of diversity always lead me back to US educated ones, generally who have been to the Iowa writing workshop or Standford, before taking on a teaching position at some prestigious institution. So how diversity do we get in this category? Okaparanto is no exception here but at least it seems to me that her main characters (presumably some form of herself) have gone through different experiences - and overall it does not feels like reading a story I already know. Also, she …

These stories are quite sad, ranging from the melancholic to there is perhaps a dim light at the end of the tunnel to straight up devastating. Domestic violence, tumoultous parents-daughter relations, loaded with guilt, resentment and love. The first stories are set in Nigeria, the other in the States.

It is one of my current personal reading struggles that attempts at reading women of colour in the name of diversity always lead me back to US educated ones, generally who have been to the Iowa writing workshop or Standford, before taking on a teaching position at some prestigious institution. So how diversity do we get in this category? Okaparanto is no exception here but at least it seems to me that her main characters (presumably some form of herself) have gone through different experiences - and overall it does not feels like reading a story I already know. Also, she is at least a bit queer and her description of the challenges for Nigerian lesbians come across as convincing and nuanced.

Diversity goals aside, the writing is convincing and her women character are strong if broken.

America, Grace and Shelter are perhaps my favourites.

Subjects

Fiction