Inspired by Nigeria\'s folktales and war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
But this story offers a glimmer of hope -- a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love..
Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice.
As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti\'s political coming-of-age, Okparanta\'s Under the Udala Trees uses one woman\'s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood.
But there is a cost to living inside a lie.
When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself.
They are also both girls.
They are from different ethnic communities.
Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and the star-crossed pair fall in love.
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.
Inspired by Nigeria\'s folktales and war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly
