{"id":9443,"date":"2018-02-08T14:44:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T08:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=9443"},"modified":"2018-02-11T15:26:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T09:41:23","slug":"chinelo-okparantas-under-the-udala-trees-named-among-the-25-most-impactful-lgbtq-works-of-the-last-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/chinelo-okparantas-under-the-udala-trees-named-among-the-25-most-impactful-lgbtq-works-of-the-last-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinelo Okparanta\u2019s Under The Udala Trees Named Among the 25 Most Impactful LGBTQ Works of the Last 20 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kathmandu\/Pahichan – Chinelo Okparanta\u2019s\u00a0Under the Udala Trees<\/em>\u00a0has been listed as one of the 25 most impactful works of LGBTQ literature in the last twenty years. The list, compiled by\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>under the title \u201c20 Years of L.G.B.T.Q. Lit: A Timeline,\u201d includes such LGBTQ classics and crowd favourites as James Baldwin\u2019s\u00a0Giovanni\u2019s Room<\/em>, Larry Kramer\u2019s\u00a0Faggots,<\/em>\u00a0David Ebershoff\u2019s\u00a0The Danish Girl<\/em>, Alan Hollinghurst\u2019s\u00a0The Line of Beauty<\/em>, Colm Toibin\u2019s\u00a0The Master<\/em>, and Hana Yanagihara\u2019s\u00a0A Little Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Published in 2015,\u00a0Under the Udala Trees<\/em>\u00a0is Chinelo\u2019s first novel and second book of fiction. Beginning during the brutal Biafran war in Nigeria, the novel follows a young woman as she navigates her sexuality in a world suffocated by religion and expectations.\u00a0A finalist for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award<\/a>, it won the\u00a02016\u00a0LAMBDA Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction<\/a>\u00a0and earned Chinelo a place on\u00a0Granta<\/em>\u2018s prestigious 2017 list of the Best of Young American Novelists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The novel was further nominated for the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. A\u00a0New York Times Book Review<\/i>\u00a0Editors\u2019 Choice, it appeared on many lists: NPR\u2019s Best Books of 2015, the\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0<\/i>56 Fabulous Works of Fiction and Poetry for the Holidays, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u2018s 15 Books to Read This Fall,\u00a0The Millions<\/em>\u00a0Most Anticipated Reads for 2015,\u00a0The Root<\/em>\u2018s 15 Powerful Works of Fiction by Black Authors in 2015,\u00a0Autostraddle<\/em>\u2018s Top 10 Queer and Feminist Books of 2015,\u00a0Cosmopolitan<\/em>\u00a0Magazine\u2019s\u00a024 Books to Read This Fall, and\u00a0Gawker<\/em>\u2018s 9 Must-Reads for Fall.<\/p>\n

Here is a description by its publishers.<\/p>\n

Inspired by Nigeria\u2019s folktales and its war,\u00a0Under the Udala Trees<\/i>\u00a0is a\u00a0deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.<\/p>\n

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti\u2019s political coming of age, Okparanta\u2019s\u00a0Under the Udala Trees\u00a0<\/i>uses one woman\u2019s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope \u2014 a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Acclaimed by\u00a0Vogue,<\/i>\u00a0the\u00a0Financial Times,<\/i>\u00a0and many others, Chinelo Okparanta continues to distill \u201cexperience into something crystalline, stark but lustrous\u201d (New York Times Book Review<\/i>).\u00a0Under the Udala Trees<\/i>\u00a0marks the further rise of a star whose \u201ctales will break your heart open\u201d (New York Daily News<\/i>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Chinelo\u2019s first book of fiction is the 2013 short story collection\u00a0Happiness, Like Water<\/em>, which also won the LAMBDA Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction in 2014.<\/p>\n

This recognition is of huge importance and is timely in this period when writers of LGBTQ literature are coming under persecution in her home country of Nigeria which has an anti-gay law prescribing 14 years in jail for perceived offenders.\u00a0Having famously declared herself \u201can activist and an artist\u201d at the 2016 Ake Book and Arts Festival, Chinelo\u2019s prioritization of activism in her art isn\u2019t where her impact ends. Using her position, she continues to do astonishing underground work for persecuted LGBTQ artists in her home country Nigeria.<\/p>\n

Copy :\u00a0brittlepaper.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathmandu\/Pahichan – Chinelo Okparanta\u2019s\u00a0Under the Udala Trees\u00a0has been listed as one of the 25 most impactful works of LGBTQ literature in the last twenty years. The list, compiled by\u00a0The New York Timesunder the title \u201c20 Years of L.G.B.T.Q. Lit: A Timeline,\u201d includes such LGBTQ classics and crowd favourites as James Baldwin\u2019s\u00a0Giovanni\u2019s Room, Larry Kramer\u2019s\u00a0Faggots,\u00a0David Ebershoff\u2019s\u00a0The Danish Girl, Alan Hollinghurst\u2019s\u00a0The Line of Beauty, Colm Toibin\u2019s\u00a0The Master, and Hana Yanagihara\u2019s\u00a0A Little Life.
\nPublished in 2015,\u00a0Under the Udala Trees\u00a0is Chinelo\u2019s first novel and second book of fiction. Beginning during the brutal Biafran war in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[621,492,490,11],"tags":[1106],"class_list":["post-9443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","category-slider","category-world","tag-lgbtq"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9446,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443\/revisions\/9446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}