Who I always was A memoir

Okokon's memoir in essays is a deceptively lighthearted roller-coaster ride that takes readers through laughter, tears, and deep reflection. Imagine the wit of Nora Ephron colliding with the raw honesty of Roxane Gay, and you'll get a sense of Okokon's brilliant storytelling. At the heart of this account is Okokon's journey as a first-generation Nigerian and Ghanaian in America. She tackles cultural identity, politics, and the often-complicated search for belonging with such ease, it feels like chatting with a close friend, one who isn't afraid to get real and who can make you laugh at the absurdity of life's harsher moments. Whether she's talking about family expectations, family secrets, or the painful reality of being caught between cultures, Okokon's voice is refreshingly honest and, at times, heartbreakingly relatable. This a gift for anyone who's ever felt like they don't quite fit in. It explores the immigrant experience with a warmth that makes readers feel seen, and the humor will keep them hooked from start to finish. Readers will revel in the humor and pathos and be unable to set this down. Who I Always Was is a gem that will leave readers reflecting long after the last page.

Essayist Okokon debuts with a tender exploration of how her Midwestern childhood and the death of her father have shaped her. In nostalgia-tinted essays, Okokon discusses growing up as one of the only Black children in lily-white River Falls, Wis., struggling to sustain romantic connections in her 20s, and staying in touch with her Nigerian roots. At the center of the collection is the death of Okokon's father, who went to visit his home village in Nigeria in the early 1990s and died there during a possible flare-up of his seizure disorder--though the specifics remain murky. While the narrative is rooted in loss, Okokon avoids excessive gloom by charting her personal growth: she writes of how she learned, in adulthood, to celebrate her mother's unwavering support after her father's death, and draws on the Ghanaian concept of "sankofa" (meaning "go back and fetch it") to reckon with her past. "I am responsible for living the life I want to live, and for living it on and with purpose," Okokon writes, and it lands not as a cliché but as a hard-won insight. Readers will savor this stirring self-portrait. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (Feb.)

The challenges of coming-of-age as the child of African parents in suburban Wisconsin. Okokon's debut essay collection gets off to a rocky start with a prologue titled "Borrowed Context" that uses extensive footnotes to elaborate on basic information about the author's family's geographical roots: mother from Ghana, father from Nigeria, author born in Chicago, raised in Wisconsin. The footnotes are voluminous and printed in a way that makes the essay difficult to follow. It is a relief to find that this technique is dropped in the next section, which introduces one of the major themes of the book, the author's relationships with the opposite sex, kindergarten through early 40s (she remains single). She weaves in a second throughline, about her emerging sense of herself as Black. So, in high school, when the author is rejected by a clique of American-born Black girls and gets involved with what she calls "Ghetto Whiteboys," she tells us, "consciously or not, their desire to date me was likely related to their fetishization of Black women or their desire to create proximity to a culture they coveted." Elsewhere: "Playing into the unquestioned cisgender binaries and presumed straightness of the nineties, we lined up boy, girl, boy, girl." To that, LOL, as Okokon might say. This is a very millennial book, not just in its application of an identity politics lens, but also in its use of "tbh" and "::hard shrug::" and other textisms, in thanking Facebook and Instagram in the acknowledgments, and in its frequent recourse to Google. ("I was just your average second child--and a quick scroll through Google will tell you that we are rebellious peacemakers.") A fascinating storyline about her father's mysterious death on a trip to Nigeria remains as frustrating to the reader as it is to the author. How can it be that with all her investigation and with her mother's stated willingness to answer questions, "I still wonder what story she believes about his death." We do too. Honest, vulnerable, earnest reflections that stop somewhere short of compelling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.