In a dazzling follow-up to The Icarus Girl , Helen Oyeyemi explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity.
Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja is a singer, in love with Aaron, pregnant, and haunted by what she calls her Cuba. Growing up in London, she has struggled to negotiate her history and the sense that speaking Spanish or English made her less of a black girl. But she is unable to find herself in the Ewe, Igbo, or Akum of her roots. It seems all thats left is silence.
Meanwhile distance from Cuba has only deepened Majas mother faith in Santeria the fusion of Catholicism and Western African Yoruba religionbut it also divides the family as her father rails against his wifes superstitions and the lost dreams of the Castro revolution.
On the other side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, a Santeria emissary, lives in a somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya is troubled by the ease with which her fellow emissaries have disguised themselves behind the personas of saints and by her inability to recognize them.
Lyrical and intensely moving, The Opposite House is about the disquiet that follows us across places and languages, a feeling passed down from mother and father to son and daughter.
Number of Words in Auth: 2
Formats : EPUB
Number of Formats : 1
Has Cover : Yes
All Identifiers : goodreads:883739, isbn:9780385513845
Single Author : Helen Oyeyemi
Original Source : New_Train_Pack_2019-155
Sorted Author by LN, FN: Oyeyemi, Helen
Title Length : 018
Title Parm D : The Opposite House
Title Parm F : The Opposite House
Title Parm A : The Opposite House
Title Parm B : (
ES Lib Name : NIRC 2019-10
Record ID : 13222
Uncomma Author : Helen Oyeyemi
Num of Aut : 1