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A Novel
by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu
Longing for independence, a young sheltered Kenyan woman flees the expectations of her mother for a life in New York City that challenges all her beliefs about race, love, and family.
Soila is a lucky girl by anyone's estimation. Raised by her stern, conservative mother and a chorus of aunts, she has lived a protected life in Nairobi. Soila is headstrong and outspoken, and she chafes against her mother's strict rules. After a harrowing assault by a trusted family friend, she flees to New York for college, vowing never to return home.
New York in the 1990s is not what Soila imagined it would be. Instead of finding a golden land of opportunity, Soila is shocked by the entitlement of her wealthy American classmates and the poverty she sees in the streets. She befriends a Black American girl at school and witnesses the insidious racism her friend endures, forcing Soila to begin to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the blind spots afforded by her Kenyan upbringing. When she falls in love with a free-spirited artist, a man her mother would never approve of, she must decide whether to honor her Kenyan identity and what she owes to her family, or to follow her heart and forge a life of her own design.
Lucky Girl is a fierce and tender debut about the lives and loves we choose—what it meant to be an African immigrant in America at the turn of the millennium, and how a young woman finds a place for herself in the world.
"A young Kenyan woman in New York City faces an identity crisis while coming to recognize how issues of race, culture, and religion are different for Black Americans than for Black Africans... . A thought-provoking exploration of the complicated experience of an African woman in America." —Kirkus Reviews
"Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu's debut novel, Lucky Girl,is a coming-of-age story about a privileged but sheltered teenager in Kenya, Soila, who is eager for escape... . Lucky Girl is at its strongest when Muchemi-Ndiritu addresses the topic of American racism... . [Soila's] honesty about her 'different brand of Blackness,' and ultimately her ability to drop the idea of it being a brand, make for some of the book's most compelling passages." —The New York Times Book Review
"Lucky Girl is at times tender, at times funny, at times uncomfortably frank... . A fresh look at racism, privilege, and the challenges of coming-of-age and falling in love between two cultures." —Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
"From the leafy suburbs of Nairobi to the buzzing boroughs of New York City and back again, Lucky Girl is a glittering coming-of-age novel and a juicy indictment of the 'tilted society of haves and have-nots.' Muchemi-Ndiritu writes with spirit and nuance about privilege, race, and intergenerational heartache. I couldn't put it down." —Alison B. Hart, author of The Work Wife
This information about Lucky Girl was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu was born and raised in Nairobi and moved to the United States to attend college in 1998. She has an MA in journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University and has worked as a journalist in New York City, Washington D.C., and Boston. She later received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Cape Town, graduating with distinction. Her fictional work has been published in Yale Review and Adda and she has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Lucky Girl is her debut novel.
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