About this Event
🎟 This event is FREE and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! An RSVP grants general entry, but seating is not guaranteed, so please try to show up early. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us. Can't make the event?
About The Book
After immigrating from Lebanon to Haiti as a young girl, Merjan comes of age in an insular, conservative community, where it seems as though her sole escape is marriage. In the late 1970s, Merjan’s daughter Yvonne also finds herself on the cusp of a marriage of convenience. In the present day, Yvonne’s daughter Eva becomes unexpectedly pregnant and moves back to her childhood home in Miami, only to find her family upended by feuds. An intimate family saga, The Meaning of Daughter explores questions about maternal ambivalence, ambition, artmaking, and how desire resists gendered expectations.
After immigrating from Lebanon to Haiti as a young girl, Merjan comes of age in an insular, conservative community, where it seems as though her sole escape is marriage. Striking a bargain with a young art dealer, she marries and dreams of becoming a painter, only to discover her husband’s support tethered with expectations.
In the late 1970s, Merjan’s daughter Yvonne is a young woman on the cusp of a marriage of convenience. Though resentful of her mother, Yvonne dreams of establishing a Haitian art gallery in New York with the help of a well-connected older man—but her time there ends disastrously, creating a deep rift between her and her family.
In the present day, Yvonne’s daughter Eva is a student whose art draws inspiration from her grandmother Merjan’s largely undiscovered work. When Eva becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she moves back to her childhood home in Miami to sort out her ambivalent feelings, where she finds her family upended by feuds. An intimate family saga, The Meaning of Daughter explores questions about maternal ambivalence, ambition, artmaking, and how desire resists gendered expectations.
About The Author
Alexia Nader’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker, among others. Nader lives in San Francisco, California.
About The Moderator
Fabienne Josaphat is the author of Kingdom of No Tomorrow, winner of the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize. Of the novel, Barbara Kingsolver says "Kingdom of No Tomorrow will bring the fierce vision of the Black Panthers to new generations of readers." Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The African American Review, Decolonial Passage and made the Notable Essays mentions in Best American Essays 2021. She is currently at work on a third novel.
Event venue & nearby stays
Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, United States
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