Mary-Alice Daniel has created a radiant, multi-faceted, multi-genre narrative. Part myth, magic, memoir, remembrance, and whispered quilt, this book tackles lineage, fear, and difficulty with a hard-won elegance and grace. A powerful debut from a brilliant and gifted writer." — Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas and Smoking the Bible
"Mary-Alice Daniel's memoir is an introspection on the meaning of home and family and identity and race. Deeply personal, yet so relatable, especially to those who've had to leave a country. In places it brings to mind the best writings of Jhumpa Lahiri. Mary-Alice is a major talent to watch." — Helon Habila, author of Travelers and The Chibok Girls
“Mary-Alice Daniel can make a story shimmer with life; she can make an image leap off the page; she can make you want to read a sentence out loud just so your mouth can feel its sounds. Make room on your bookshelves: a dazzling new voice has arrived.” — Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and The Wine Lover’s Daughter
"A powerful memoir...Throughout the enchanting narrative, Daniel vividly shares her and her family’s traditions, customs, and religious views...An absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In her incandescent debut, Nigerian poet Daniel recounts her life on three continents, surrounded by stories that made up the fabric of her African upbringing...This is a gem." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Wondrous...One can’t help but be overwhelmed by the exquisiteness of [Daniel’s] prose, which we sense has been pulled from the deepest regions of her heart...Mary-Alice Daniel is an exquisitely elegant young writer.” — New York Journal of Books
"...writing so beautiful it's worth the price of admission...Readers who enjoyed memoirs like Albert Samaha's Concepcion (2021) will love this.” — Booklist (starred review)
“The poet Mary-Alice Daniel’s scholarly parents left Nigeria in their 20s; to her boisterous family, the U.K. looked ‘like all color had been boiled out of it.’ Their resettlement set off a strain of restlessness in Daniel’s life, one she mines for insight in her memoir. Her account of their continued moves, and of West Africa’s knotty postcolonial scene, is lucid and poetic.” — Vulture
“A melodious exploration of Nigeria . . . A breathtaking story of tracing history and finding home.” — People (Book of the Week)
“Striking, discerning and haunting….Read this book once for the furious beauty of Daniel’s prose. Read it again for a master class in how we might finally come to tell our stories on our own terms.” — New York Times Book Review
★ 2022-09-14
A powerful memoir of a life driven by “a spirit of…extreme exophoria—that uncontrollable tendency of eyes to gaze outward.”
In her debut book, Daniel, a duel citizen of Nigeria and the U.S., tracks her life across Africa, Europe, and North America. In pursuit of a better life, her parents, who were professors at the university in Maiduguri (“birthplace of Boko Haram, the terrorist militia that specializes in kidnapping the girl child”), moved Daniel and her siblings to England, which she found “blanched, like all color had been boiled out of it,” compared to the “angry red” of her native land. Throughout the enchanting narrative, Daniel vividly shares her and her family’s traditions, customs, and religious views. However, in order to assimilate to English culture, she and her family had to forego many elements of Nigerian culture, including those of her tribe, Hausa-Fulani. The author writes potently about being “acutely wounded by the separation from my culture.” After nearly 10 years in England, her parents decided to move again, this time to Nashville. Daniel chronicles the racism she experienced and describes how she changed her first name to Mary-Alice in order to further assimilate. During return trips to Nigeria, the author began to feel embarrassment for being “noticeably Westernized,” while in the U.S., she felt “embarrassed by being identifiably African.” Overall, she believed she “no longer belonged anywhere.” Daniel writes memorably about how her religious views have changed over the years and ponders how different she might feel had she stayed in Nigeria. “My immediate family and I have shared a dozen residences across three continents,” she writes. A few pages later, she reflects that “because I come from nomads, I have a tenuous, less tactile relationship with place.” Daniel also acknowledges how, as immigrants, she and her family are “integral, even when we are not integrated.” Today, the author is “semi-settled” in California, a place that she has chosen for herself.
An absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller.
