By Olukorede Yishau
It was the middle of October, the day your copy of Lola Akinmade-Akerstrom’s debut novel ‘In Every Mirror She Is Black’ arrived via Amazon, and you met Muna, Kemi and Brittany-Rae, the three amazing women in this debut novel; it was on that day you became soaked in their plights and empathised with them; it was that day you realised you were on to a beautifully complex journey; it was the day— thanks to Lola and the characters she breathed life into— you realised that we live in a world full of pretence; it was the day you realised you will not forget, in a hurry, that most times when people talk about diversity and inclusion, it is just to save face and make the public see them in a light other than the one they truly represent.
It was also that day you disappointingly discovered that the Sweden on these pages is one where black women are not allowed to thrive, where they are given crumbs, where they are isolated and sidelined, where it is assumed that there is one specific culture, and where suicide is announced as “an accident on the green line”. It was the day you had a knowing in the body that you would begin to see issues such as classism, tokenism and so on from a slightly different prism.
When you opened the book, the first line “America had decimated Kemi’s love life” raised a question: How? And the search for the answer induces a race across the pages. You found out that as successful as she is, love has been unfair to her. Some pages in, it becomes clear that more decimation lies ahead.
As you followed these women and Jonny— the man whose life is intertwined with theirs— around, you discovered that Lola explores the politics of asylum-seeking and conflict-induced immigration in gritty details. She also explores beings of special needs and the need to embrace this instead of denying it.
Kemi, Muna and Brittany-Rae are three different women from different backgrounds: Kemi is Nigerian-American, Muna is Somali, and Britanny-Rae is Jamaican-American. Jonny, the man who is connected to them all in different ways, is White and Swedish, and sits atop an empire. On the surface, the novel seems just about these four people.
Kemi is working with a marketing firm in the U.S. at the time Jonny’s company runs into trouble over a marketing campaign and so he headhunts Kemi who has won the best marketing executive award in the U.S. consecutively. Because she is tired of America for a few reasons, Kemi takes the plunge and heads to Sweden to start a new life as inclusion and diversity director with Jonny’s firm. She soon realises that altruism is not a factor in her employment.
Brittany-Rae, a former model, enjoys her globetrotting as an air hostess until Jonny comes around, sweet talks her, makes her believe he is incapable of lying to her and within six months, he has changed her world in ways she did not bargain for. Time soon reveals she is just a pawn in the mind of a man with an undiagnosed mental issue.
Muna, on the other hand, finds herself in Sweden after her family was wiped out in the war in her country. Sweden opens its door to her and others as asylees. The camp where she and others are camped exists on the generosity of Jonny in whose marketing firm she will later find herself as a cleaner after she is granted the right to stay in Sweden.
Set in Sweden, U.S. and London, the author brings alive the sight and smells of these countries, but none comes alive in all its nakedness than Sweden. Through her diction and syntax, you feel these locations, breathe them and somehow have the feeling they are familiar. You also feel that sense of familiarity in the ways characters speak. For instance, it seems easy to see the American influence on Ngozi, Kemi’s friend, from the brutally frank way she speaks. When Kemi complains about her boss, Ngozi screams: “Fuck him or report him— just make a decision”. And when Kemi is reluctant to call a prospective lover, she shouts: “Call him or die single. Your call”.
The author’s presentation of the internal conflicts of the female characters works well to maintain the pacing. Brittany, for instance, feels something is not right about Jonny but she still follows him and realises late that as much as she wants out, achieving her goal may be possible. The author brilliantly paints this with words that keep the reader engaged and infested, and the twists and turns in this book are mesmerising such that you never, for example, saw the final push in Brittany and Jonny’s story coming, and it got you howling, albeit silently.
With several topical issues such as racism, classism, diversity, inclusion and so on, this book offers foods for thought. You were disturbed, for instance, that Africans and Arabs suspect each other, and Kurds and Syrians backbite, even in a camp where each nurtures wounds of having to leave their homes unplanned. You were also amazed that Sweden considers citizens of some other countries as having “strong culture” and as such may find it difficult to get full citizenship and may have to live with tokenism. The culture here is religion: Islam versus Christianity.
Many novels have brought to life what it is to be Black or African in the U.S. and the UK; this book will rank among the first to bring out what it is to be black and living in Sweden and the picture is not rosy. In fact, it is gory and suggests that the authorities there must do better to make all, irrespective of colours, have a sense of belonging.
All in all, ‘In Every Mirror She is Black’ is a timely novel, which is told through the perspectives of Muna, Kemi and Brittany in third person. It breathes life into what women, especially black ones, face in their quest for a share of the pies of life. Bold, compelling and lively, this is one hell of a book with memorable characters. It is a sharply written story with messy encounters and questions whose answers are not as easy as they seem. It is a disturbing, easy-to-access tale with the potential to stay with an average reader long after page 394 is closed.
Your prediction: Soon and very soon, Muna, Kemi, Brittany and Jonny will grace the big screen with other flawed folks who populate this debut novel, which 70 commissioning editors were blind to its promise. They sure will be good to see screaming their lungs out on the big screen!
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of ‘In The Name of Our Father’and’Vaults of Secrets’.