Lucky Girl: A Novel

by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu Narrated by Musu-Kulla Massaquoi

Overview

Longing for independence, a young sheltered Kenyan woman flees the expectations of her mother for a life in New York City that challenges all her beliefs about race, love, and family.

“Readers will find a poignant, memorable voice they'll feel lucky to have met.”-Harper's Bazaar (Best Summer Beach Reads of 2023)

Soila is a lucky girl by anyone's estimation. Raised by her stern, conservative mother and a chorus of aunts, she has lived a protected life in Nairobi. Soila is headstrong and outspoken, and she chafes against her mother's strict rules. After a harrowing assault by a trusted family friend, she flees to New York for college, vowing never to return home.

New York in the 1990s is not what Soila imagined it would be. Instead of finding a golden land of opportunity, Soila is shocked by the entitlement of her wealthy American classmates and the poverty she sees in the streets. She befriends a Black American girl at school and witnesses the insidious racism her friend endures, forcing Soila to begin to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the blind spots afforded by her Kenyan upbringing. When she falls in love with a free-spirited artist, a man her mother would never approve of, she must decide whether to honor her Kenyan identity and what she owes to her family, or to follow her heart and forge a life of her own design.

Lucky Girl is a fierce and tender debut about the lives and loves we choose-what it meant to be an African immigrant in America at the turn of the millennium, and how a young woman finds a place for herself in the world.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu’s debut novel, Lucky Girl, is a coming-of-age story about a privileged but sheltered teenager in Kenya, Soila, who is eager for escape. . . . Lucky Girl is at its strongest when Muchemi-Ndiritu addresses the topic of American racism. . . . [Soila’s] honesty about her ‘different brand of Blackness,’ and ultimately her ability to drop the idea of it being a brand, make for some of the book’s most compelling passages.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Muchemi-Ndiritu is a master of knitting together a narrative and then pulling away at the threads to unravel it . . . In her debut novel Lucky Girl, Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu['s] . . . ability to learn from life’s ordeals on two continents, shed encumbrances, and pack up the positives to carry with her into the future exemplifies the luck she finally forms on her own terms.”—Brittle Paper

“Lucky Girl is at times tender, at times funny, at times uncomfortably frank. . . . A fresh look at racism, privilege, and the challenges of coming-of-age and falling in love between two cultures.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

“From the leafy suburbs of Nairobi to the buzzing boroughs of New York City and back again, Lucky Girl is a glittering coming-of-age novel and a juicy indictment of the ‘tilted society of haves and have-nots.’ Muchemi-Ndiritu writes with spirit and nuance about privilege, race, and intergenerational heartache. I couldn't put it down.”—Alison B. Hart, author of The Work Wife

“Stimulating the heart and mind, Lucky Girl is an irresistible novel that captures the immense pressure—to be perfect, to live on our own terms, to love and be loved—of our times. Fiery conversations around race, belonging, and differing cultures give this debut its vibrant energy, but the hard-won wisdom is what allows it to soar. Most brilliantly, Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu shows us what it means to live in balance, and how duties and dreams don’t always have to be at odds, especially when love is involved. Surprises abound, Lucky Girl is the literary gift we all need, making us the lucky ones.”—Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck

“An incredibly nuanced, character-driven story with a courageous protagonist to root for, Lucky Girl is a powerful exploration of making the most of the hand you’ve been dealt.”—Lizzie Damilola Blackburn, author of Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?

“A beautifully written and illuminating story about parental pressure, undeserved shame, and Kenyan culture.”—Jessica George, author of Maame

“A young Kenyan woman in New York City faces an identity crisis while coming to recognize how issues of race, culture, and religion are different for Black Americans than for Black Africans. . . . A thought-provoking exploration of the complicated experience of an African woman in America.”—Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2023-03-14
A young Kenyan woman in New York City faces an identity crisis while coming to recognize how issues of race, culture, and religion are different for Black Americans than for Black Africans.

As a teen in Nairobi, Soila chafes at her rigid upbringing as the privileged daughter of a wealthy, widowed businesswoman depicted as painfully complex. Despite financial success, Mother has not recovered emotionally since her husband’s suicide years ago. Her extreme version of Catholicism requires that she regularly self-flagellate. An authoritarian unable to accept vulnerability in herself or others, she conveys love to Soila only through strict overprotectiveness. Cowed yet inwardly rebellious, Soila expresses herself in photography, aware that her mother will never let her pursue it seriously. Without her mother’s knowledge, she applies to American colleges and is accepted at Barnard. Unfortunately, when Soila asks her mother’s beloved priest to help her break the news, he molests her. The shame weighs her down until she finally opens up to her first New York boyfriend. Half Black Kenyan, half White American, he criticizes Soila’s judgmental attitude toward Black Americans and educates her on the “cycle of poverty” she has blithely ignored. Similarly, her best college friend teaches Soila to recognize her privilege as a rich Kenyan with a British accent by explaining America’s systemic racism in discussions that veer into the heavy-handed—was anyone really using the term white fragility in the 1990s? Most interesting when she tries to sort out her attitudes, Soila can be wearying as a narrator, often letting readers know how exceptionally smart, pretty, talented, and beloved she is. By 2001, Soila has graduated, eschewed photography to work in finance as her mother expects, and has a Black American lover her mother knows nothing about. But then comes the tragedy of Sept. 11 and a visit from her mother, causing Soila to reexamine what she really wants and where she fits.

A thought-provoking exploration of the complicated experience of an African woman in America.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178072646
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Every morning throughout my childhood, at five forty-­five a.m., Mother knocked on my bedroom door. I climbed off my bed, knelt, and kissed the floor. “Serviam. I will serve.”

Still kneeling, I made the sign of the cross—­Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—­then started on the rosary, repeating the sequence of the Apostles’ Creed: one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, one Glory Be—­altogether five times.

I kept my morning showers short. Mother said many other Ken­yans had no water to drink and most bathed with ice-­cold water. While I scrubbed my feet with the pumice, I prayed for the Holy Father’s monthly intentions—­one month for the church’s deacons to be good servants, another month for the refugees, the next month for world peace, for the sick and suffering—­all year round.

Mother wanted me to do those things.

Everyone in our neighborhood knew Mother for her devotion to the Catholic faith. But she was not one of those Catholics who only had doings with other Catholics; Mother was like the old-­day missionaries. She visited people in need, like the Abdullahs, the Somali family with seven children who rented a cottage at the back of a wealthy family’s mansion down the street. Mother brought them baskets of hot buns covered with a white napkin.

“Those poor children are always so hungry; no sooner am I at their front door than all the bread is flying out of the basket,” she sympathized. “The landlord’s children have more than they can eat, but he won’t give Mr. Abdullah even a cup of beans to feed his children.”

She smiled with the Shahs, a Hindu surgeon and his plump wife who dressed in exquisite saris. When the Shah daughters brought payasam to share with us over Diwali, Mother received it graciously. When Mrs. Shah asked if the five-­day lighting of fireworks was a nuisance, Mother said, “Nuisance? What nuisance? Anything for your gods!”

Mother kept me indoors. “There is too much evil out there,” she said. I longed for a sibling, someone to play with. I read books, practiced piano. I sat by the window of the study where I could watch the children from the neighborhood. Sometimes, they played a game of rounders, dozens of kids swarming around the players’ circle as if they were bees around a broken hive. Sometimes they raced on their bicycles, flying over pebbles and potholes. I saw that they stayed outside until the shadows of the jacaranda trees in our neighborhood disappeared.

I loved the escape of nursery school, all the hours I spent under the shade of the purple flowers of the grand jacaranda trees on the playground. I loved Princess, our housemaid, who raised me since I could remember. She hugged me often, and told me she loved me. She was always at the school gate waiting to scoop me up with arms wide open. She wore a head wrap and kanga and hummed as we strolled beneath the canopy of jacaranda trees that lined our street, and all the gardeners in the neighborhood followed her with their eyes as she walked by. Trailing three steps behind in my checked uniform, I wished I did not have to go home, that I lived at school, where I could play endlessly and without fear.

I didn’t understand it, but I feared Mother. My father died on my fifth birthday. My vague memory of that was a stain I couldn’t bleach out. Mother’s stiffness with me made my fear even harder to understand. My aunts told me that before my father’s death, Mother took me everywhere with her, like a trophy, singing to me while she planted her roses in the back garden, doting on me. After his death, she turned distant. She took on the life of a stern businesswoman.

My father owned a successful biscuit mill that he had grown from a storefront bakery to a household brand sold in supermarkets. After his death, Mother ran the business. She worked furiously, perhaps out of grief or the fear of failure. She sat on the board with men who had answered to my father, and she commanded their respect ruthlessly. By the time I was ten, she’d quadrupled the business’s value, sold it, and invested in real estate and hundreds of acres of land for commercial farming used for coffee and roses. She was a millionaire many times over and for every extra shilling she made, her determination to mold me into a good, humble Christian girl increased. She had to be stern.

Every lesson she taught me growing up tied back to modesty. Though we had domestic workers, as did most middle- and upper-­class Kenyans, Mother insisted I contribute to the household. Cooking, tending to her vegetable patch, and polishing the bumpers of her bright yellow Peugeot until I saw my brown eyes reflected back.

Mother had Musau, her beloved gardener, build a small poultry farm for eighty chickens in our backyard. She also brought in rabbits. Then the chores started. Saturdays at dawn, even before my prayers—­“Kayai, wake up! The chickens won’t feed themselves.”

Kayai, little egg. That’s what she always called me. Her only child, who she overprotected, doted on obsessively so I wouldn’t fall and break, yet for all her care, she struggled to show her emotions. I longed for birthday parties but Mother said they were a waste. Instead, she would buy me a single present, always something practical and useful. I longed for a hug, a kiss. I got none.

Saturdays inside the coop were spent sweeping, changing light bulbs over nests, and picking up eggs. Sometimes, she did these things with me. As we cleaned the barn side by side, I’d yearn for stories of my father, my papai. I wanted to hear about Mother’s childhood: why my four aunts and my kokoi, my grandmother, had come to live with us, why, even though Mother was so smart, she hadn’t been to university. Most of all, I wanted to know the biggest secret: how my papai died. No one ever told me.

Instead of telling me stories, Mother worked in the chicken coop with the same steady focus she always had. She swept steadily, soaked in a strange silence that barricaded her from me.

Kokoi and my aunts, Mother’s younger sisters, and Princess, made my world whole. They filled the house with chaos, dancing, laughter, and gossip when Mother wasn’t home. I loved my kokoi more than anyone. Although she was only in her fifties, a tough life had taken its toll on her body and Kokoi was frail. She looked a decade older than her years. At fifteen, she had been circumcised and married off and soon after, given birth to Mother. Mother was named Nalutesha, born on a rainy day, and Kokoi gave her the pet name Nalu. After that, Kokoi lost five pregnancies and had one stillborn in the span of a decade.

During those years, my grandfather beat her often, though never inside the house, as a Maasai home is a sanctuary of procreation and prosperity, a place where children are conceived, born, and nurtured. Barrenness in women was a sign of disorder. To cleanse the disorder, he beat her more viciously over the years. Kokoi was scolded by her mother-­in-­law too, and her father-­in-­law wouldn’t allow her to serve him a meal.

“If a woman cannot produce children, what then are they there for?” my grandfather’s family asked her.

When her husband took a second wife, Kokoi was glad. He could finally have all the children he deserved. He stopped beating her and beamed with pride while talking about his new wife’s pregnancy. Perhaps it was Kokoi’s relief at seeing her husband finally happy, or the end of the beatings, but suddenly she fell pregnant. This time, she delivered a healthy baby girl she named Naserian, brings peace, or peaceful one. Then she fell pregnant again and had another healthy daughter, and then a third. Naserian, Laioni, and Rarin all came crashing in, one after another, like sheep that had been let out of their barn for morning pasture.

My grandfather, growing restless around two wives with a horde of children, had started to have a dalliance with a woman he met while working in the city as a cook for a British family. Eventually, he abandoned Kokoi and her co-­wife.

As the eldest, Mother had to quit her education to find work. Mother dropped out of her economics degree at only twenty and registered for a six-­month secretarial course. Within a year, she had learned shorthand, dictation, and typing. She said that she could type faster than her mind could think, and she started to become afraid of her fingers, wondering if they had a life of their own. Two years later, as she was working overtime to put food on the table, my grandfather returned home, saying he wanted to atone and bring his family together. Kokoi found herself pregnant again with a fifth daughter. My grandfather, absolutely sure this surprise baby would be a boy, was so gutted that he left Kokoi for good. That was how my youngest aunt, Tanei—beautiful, flamboyant—­showed up like an unexpected thunderstorm nearly a decade after Kokoi’s middle three daughters.

Videos