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Left Bank Books presents Chukwuebuka Ibeh - Blessings
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Left Bank Books presents Chukwuebuka Ibeh for the launch event to celebrate his highly anticipated debut novel Blessings! Named one of USA Today, Esquire, & Cosmopolitan's most anticipated books of 2024, we are excited to discuss this book by Ibeh who was profiled as one of the "Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction" by Electric Literature. Currently a Washington University MFA student, Ibeh is certainly going to be an author to watch.
Ibeh will be in conversation with celebrated author Danielle Dutton.
Ibeh will sign copies after the presentation! Signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country.
About the Speaker
CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the runner-up for the 2021 J.F. Powers Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award, and was profiled as one of the "Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction" by Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, and Tash Aw, and is currently a an MFA student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Danielle Dutton is the author of the novels Margaret the First and SPRAWL, the story collection Attempts at a Life, and Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other, a collection forthcoming from Coffee House Press in April 2024. She also wrote the text interpolations in Richard Kraft’s Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera and an illustrated nonfiction chapbook on fiction/visual art called A Picture Held Us Captive. Her fiction and criticism has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The White Review, Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, Music & Literature, Harper’s, BOMB, Fence, NOON, etc.
About Blessings
"Chukwuebuka Ibeh's writing has a certain delicacy to it, so wonderfully observant, and so beautiful." --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah
Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this searing debut of self-acceptance, sexual awakening, and first love set in a Nigeria on the verge of criminalizing same-sex relationships
Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family--sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when Obiefuna's father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and another boy, his deepest fears are confirmed, and Obiefuna is banished to boarding school.
As he navigates his new school's strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence, Obiefuna both finds and hides who he truly is. Back home, his mother, Uzoamaka, must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband's cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they've all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna's identity becomes more dangerous than ever before, and the life he wants drifts further out of reach.
Set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2013, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one's truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.
Named one of USA Today, Esquire, & Cosmopolitan's most anticipated books of 2024
"Chukwuebuka Ibeh's writing has a certain delicacy to it, so wonderfully observant, and so beautiful." -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah and Purple Hibiscus
" Blessings is a stunning and exceptionally moving story of love, shame, redemption and fierce familial bonds. In sublime, evocative prose and from alternating points of view, Ibeh tells the story of Uzoamaka and Obiefuna as mother and son come to transformative realizations about themselves and each other. Ibeh has an elegant and passionate way with language, from the depictions of the Nigerian cultural landscape and its tense reckonings with queerness to the gorgeous mundanities of the protagonists' home lives and the various dynamics of religion, class, and schoolboyhood. I'm grateful that this beautiful book exists, and I will return to it again and again as if for the first time." -- Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread
Ibeh will be in conversation with celebrated author Danielle Dutton.
Ibeh will sign copies after the presentation! Signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country.
About the Speaker
CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the runner-up for the 2021 J.F. Powers Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award, and was profiled as one of the "Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction" by Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, and Tash Aw, and is currently a an MFA student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Danielle Dutton is the author of the novels Margaret the First and SPRAWL, the story collection Attempts at a Life, and Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other, a collection forthcoming from Coffee House Press in April 2024. She also wrote the text interpolations in Richard Kraft’s Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera and an illustrated nonfiction chapbook on fiction/visual art called A Picture Held Us Captive. Her fiction and criticism has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The White Review, Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, Music & Literature, Harper’s, BOMB, Fence, NOON, etc.
About Blessings
"Chukwuebuka Ibeh's writing has a certain delicacy to it, so wonderfully observant, and so beautiful." --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah
Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this searing debut of self-acceptance, sexual awakening, and first love set in a Nigeria on the verge of criminalizing same-sex relationships
Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family--sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when Obiefuna's father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and another boy, his deepest fears are confirmed, and Obiefuna is banished to boarding school.
As he navigates his new school's strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence, Obiefuna both finds and hides who he truly is. Back home, his mother, Uzoamaka, must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband's cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they've all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna's identity becomes more dangerous than ever before, and the life he wants drifts further out of reach.
Set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2013, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one's truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.
Named one of USA Today, Esquire, & Cosmopolitan's most anticipated books of 2024
"Chukwuebuka Ibeh's writing has a certain delicacy to it, so wonderfully observant, and so beautiful." -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah and Purple Hibiscus
" Blessings is a stunning and exceptionally moving story of love, shame, redemption and fierce familial bonds. In sublime, evocative prose and from alternating points of view, Ibeh tells the story of Uzoamaka and Obiefuna as mother and son come to transformative realizations about themselves and each other. Ibeh has an elegant and passionate way with language, from the depictions of the Nigerian cultural landscape and its tense reckonings with queerness to the gorgeous mundanities of the protagonists' home lives and the various dynamics of religion, class, and schoolboyhood. I'm grateful that this beautiful book exists, and I will return to it again and again as if for the first time." -- Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread
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