Join the Lavender Book Club to discuss Under the Udala Trees by Chinela Okparanta, a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly, on Thursday, October 22nd, 6:30-8:00pm at PGH Equality Center.

About the Book

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, BuzzFeed, Bustle, Shelf Awareness, and Publishers Lunch

“If you’ve ever wondered if love can conquer all, read [this] stunning coming-of-age debut.” —Marie Claire

“[This] love story has hypnotic power.” —The New Yorker

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 they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. But when their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself—and 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 also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

About the Author

Chinelo Okparanta was born and raised in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Her debut short story collection, Happiness, Like Water, was nominated for the Nigerian Writers Award, long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as the Etisalat Prize for Literature. Her first novel, Under the Udala Trees, was nominated for numerous awards, including the Kirkus Prize and Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She has published work in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, the Kenyon Review, AGNI, and other venues, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she is currently an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Swarthmore College.