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Sankofa Book Club

The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole

The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together.

"In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she'd dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria. Exploring the love of a determined mother and dreaming daughter who do not say enough to each other until it is too late; the detangling of Yoruba Christianity, traditional religion, and folklore; and the tellings of three generations of daring women - through times of longing, promise, and romance, as well as heartbreak - Olufunke Grace Bankole's The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together"-- Provided by publisher.

About the Author

Grace Olufunke Bankole is a Nigerian American writer and novelist. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, Stand Magazine (UK), Writer's Digest, Portland Monthly Magazine, and elsewhere. ​​She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing.  Bankole's debut novel, THE EDGE OF WATER, set between Nigeria and New Orleans, is the story of Amina, a young woman, who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

This Sankofa Book Club series event will be facilitated by Ms. Karen Hoddy, Librarian Specialist of Adult Information Services at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center.

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