Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's epic origin story is a beautiful and devastating portrait of a family of women: who they are, what history has taken from them, and--most importantly--how they find their way back to each other.

A Girl Is a Body of Water

Heather Margaret

“And did all the women shrink?’ Kirabo steered Nsuuta away from Grandmother. ‘With that kind of perversion, who would not shrink? Who would want to be huge, or loud, or brave, or any of the other characteristics men claim to be male? We hunched, lowered our eyes, voices, acted feeble, helpless. Even being clever became unattractive. Soon, being shrunken became feminine. Then it became beautiful and women aspired to it. That was when we began to persecute our original state out of ourselves.”
  

Every character in this book is taking with such care that you can feel and see exactly what they are going through. I love the storytelling about how women are often routinely pitted against each other, even their own families. It's a beautiful story of the deconstruction of social perceptions of women's roles. We should also all dance in the rain naked.

Emir Andrés Ibañez

Esta novela está ambientada en Uganda, a principios de los '70. La historia arranca con Kirabo, una niña de trece años que está buscando información sobre su madre, pero su familia se niega a darle respuestas.
Es una saga familiar y un coming of age. Una historia de crecimiento, de búsqueda de la identidad, de secretos y rivalidades, de mujeres haciéndoles frente a una sociedad que las quiere calladas.
No me salen las palabras en este momento para hablar de semejante libro, y siento que no sabría hacerle justicia tampoco, aquí por escrito.
Esta novela se va a quedar conmigo. Me recordó por qué amo leer y me puso muy muy muy feliz.

Rachel

This book yall. It was so good! A family saga set in Uganda during challenging times of change and Kirabo is learning to live in it. 

This is a long book, but it has to be. There are several generations and connections of families that echo each other in different times, it explores traditions of Ugandan families and how education women challenges those traditions. Well worth the time it takes to read!

Lamia Hajani

“Makumbi is such an honest, truthful writer. . . . I loved every single page.” —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage A Best Book of the Year at TIME; The Washington Post; O, the Oprah Magazine; BBC Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta—her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts—but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Seeking answers from Nsuuta, the local witch, Kirabo learns about the woman who birthed her, who she discovers is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also helps Kirabo understand the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her—this, says Nsuuta, is a streak of the “first woman”: an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women. Kirabo’s journey to reconcile these feelings, alongside her desire to reconnect with her mother and to honor her family’s expectations, is rich in the folklore of Uganda and an arresting exploration of what it means to be a modern girl in a world that seems determined to silence women. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s A Girl is a Body of Water is an unforgettable, sweeping testament to the true and lasting connections between history, tradition, family, friends, and the promise of a different future.

A Girl Is a Body of Water

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