Blessings and Disasters
A Story of Alabama
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ISBN10: 1250206227
ISBN13: 9781250206220
Hardcover
272 Pages
$28.99
CA$40.99
From a New Yorker staff writer and PEN award winner, a blend of memoir, history, and reportage on one of the most complex and least understood states in America.
“In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster….”
Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery, Alabama—the former seat of the Confederacy—as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Here, she weaves her family’s story with her state’s, from Alabama’s forced removal of the Creek Nation, making room for enslaved West Africans, to present-day legislative battles for “evolution disclaimers” in biology textbooks. She immerses us in a landscape today dominated not by cotton fields but by auto plants and Amazon warehouses. Defying stereotypes at every turn, Okeowo shows how people can love their home while still acknowledging its sins.
In this perspective-shifting work that is both an intimate memoir and a journalistic triumph, Okeowo investigates her life, other Alabamians’ lives, and the state’s lesser-known histories to examine why Alabama has been the stage for the most extreme results of the American experiment.
Reviews
Praise for Blessings and Disasters
"In this extraordinary book, Alexis Okeowo examines Alabama as only someone who grew up there could, with care, with criticism, with hope. Here, our much maligned state, the butt of the joke, the example of what not to do, looks much more like what I knew it to be growing up—complex, yes, but also, simply, just like every other state in a union that continues to grapple with its sordid past."—Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom
"Timely and engrossing—Okeowo's exploration of 'outsiders' in Alabama sheds light on the divided face of our nation and lovingly charts the push and pull of the places we call home."—Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My Monticello
"I have never wished that a writer was from Mississippi as much as Blessings and Disasters made me wish Alexis Okeowo and I shared a home state. Instead, Alabama, you got one! The majestic ruptures Okeowo finds in Alabama will be written about for decades. Okeowo is showing out in this layered offering, and we are so lucky for it."—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir