This tender and earnest story with a family of three at its core – a mother studying in America, the father and daughter left behind – sets up its premise in the first, forceful line: “When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters.” Arimah expertly navigates time and a young woman’s adolescence to talk about the love a father has for his daughter, a disintegrating marriage, how distance and the difference between where we live and where we want to live can change who we are and how we relate to each other.
First published online by Granta in April 2015 and available to read here Collected in What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Riverhead Books, 2017
A Personal Anthology 