No God Like the Mother by Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining me here on Book Beginnings on Fridays! Share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

“Come close, keep warm." 

Mama whispered through Papa's snoring as it hummed high and low behind the curtain.

-- From the first and title story in No God Like the Mother by Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher (2020, Forest Avenue Press). This book of short stories won the Ken Kesey Award For Best Fiction in the 2020 Oregon Book Awards.

The nine stories collected in No God Like the Mother follow the characters from Legos to Paris to the Pacific Northwest. Ajọsẹ-Fisher's emotionally rich stories deal with people in transition, facing hardships and joys. The theme of motherhood -- mothering and being mothered -- runs throughout and pulls the stories together. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From No God Like the Mother:

“Do you often carry the sun with you?” he asked, in a thick French accent. 

She nearly allowed her rose-tinted pout to curl into a smile before her brain calculated that this had been a weak line.

-- from the story, "Thief."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher was born in Chicago, raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and returned to the United States with her family in the early nineties. She won the Oregon Book Awards' 2020 Ken Kesey Prize for her debut collection, No God Like the Mother. She is also an Oregon Literary Fellow and a relentless student of the human condition. Ajọsẹ-Fisher’s work has appeared in collections such as The Alchemy, The Phoenix, and The Buckman Journal, and one of her stories was recently anthologized in Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher's No God Like the Mother follows characters in transition, through tribulation and hope. Set around the world--the bustling streets of Lagos, the arid gardens beside the Red Sea, an apartment in Paris, and the rain-washed suburbs of the Pacific Northwest--this collection of nine stories is a masterful exploration of life's uncertainty.