World Book Day Recommendations: Chika Unigwe Recommends Five Books
For World Book Day, 2021 and #365DaysOfBookOclock, we asked Nigerian writer, Chika Unigwe to recommend her five favorite books or any 5 books.
Chika Unigwe holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, Holland. She is the author of four novels, including On Black Sisters Street and Night Dancer. Her short stories and essays have appeared in various journals including The New York Times, The Guardian, Aeon, Wasafiri,Transition, Guernica, Agni, and the Kenyon Review. Her works have been translated into many languages including German, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish and Dutch. A recipient of several awards, she sat on the jury of the 2017 Man Booker International Award and is the director of Awele Creative Trust, an NGO she set up to encourage creative writing among young Nigerians.
Her collection, Better Never than Late, is available here. She has a new book, Leaving Mesach forthcoming in 2022.
Read her:
Difficult question but easier to answer with the five books I am reading at the moment (I have more than five favorites ):
Bird by Bird by Anne Lammot
Bird by Bird is the bible of writing guides - a wry, honest, down-to-earth book that has never stopped selling since it was first published in the United States in the 1990s. Bestselling novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott distils what she’s learned over years of trial and error. Beautifully written, wise and immensely helpful, this is the book for all serious writers and writers-to-be.
Chika: Bird by Bird is a book on writing and one of the best I’ve read.
Check out: World Book Day 2021: 30 African Contemporary Writers Share Their Favorite Books
The Bridegroom by Ha JIn
From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, The Bridegroom is a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.
Each of The Bridegroom’s twelve stories-three of which have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories-takes us back to Muji City in contemporary China, the setting of Waiting. It is a world both exotic and disarmingly familiar, one in which Chinese men and women meet with small epiphanies and muted triumphs, leavening their lives of quiet desperation through subtle insubordination and sometimes crafty resolve.
Chika: The Bridegroom is a collection of short stories. I am teaching a story from it.
The Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief —a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut.
Chika: I am really enjoying this so far. I loved her Homecoming.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019; edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
Chika: This is a massive collection and I am dipping in and out of it in doses. I want to understand America better and I can’t without understanding black America.
You may also like: World Book Day Recommendations: ‘Five Books I Love’ — Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu
Do Something Beautiful for God; The Essential Teachings of Mother Teresa
Do Something Beautiful for God is Mother Teresa’s enduring invitation and challenge to the world. This is not an abstract invitation but a deeply personal and intimate one. There is so much happening in the world and so much happening within our own hearts, minds, and souls. All this makes it is easy to lose sight of what matters most and get absorbed in what matters least.
On these pages, you will find the essential teachings of Mother Teresa. They provide remarkable insight into the depths of her heart, mind, soul, and life. They will comfort you in your affliction and afflict you in your comfort. But most of all, in the midst of all this activity and noise of your life, you will hear Mother Teresa encouraging you by gently saying: Do something beautiful for God with your life!
Chika: I got this from church. I am intrigued by people, ordinary people who do extraordinary things. How is one able to be so giving? So kind? So joyful? I want to be a good person.
Chika: I always, always re-read Evaristo and Alice Munro at least a few times a year, just not reading them at the moment. Their writing has taught me a lot about how to write/be a better writer. The range, the prose, the risks they take.
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World Book Day Recommendations is a series of book recommendations made by African contemporary writers for World Book Day, 2021 and Book O’Clock’s anniversary.
