Oyinkan Braithwaite at Seattle Public Library

Author of My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite, visits the Seattle Public Library for a discussion of her new novel, Cursed Daughters, a wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition, in which a young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin.

Registration is required.

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.

Oyinkan Braithwaite is the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised there and in the UK. She currently lives in London with her family.

Order your copy of Cursed Daughters here.

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