Chinelo Okparanta & Akwaeke Emezi

Greenlight is delighted to welcome award-winning author Chinelo Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees; Happiness, Like Water) for the New York launch of her newest novel, a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute satire about a young white man’s education and miseducation in contemporary America. Harry Sylvester Bird grows up in Edward, Pennsylvania, with his racist, xenophobic, financially incompetent, secret-keeping parents. To Harry, they represent everything wrong with this country. And his small town isn’t any better. He witnesses racial profiling, graffitied swastikas, and White Power signs on his walk home from school. When he's finally old enough to leave, he moves straight to New York City, where he meets and falls in love with Maryam, a young Nigerian woman. But when Maryam begins to pull away, Harry is forced to confront his identity as he never has before—if he can. Akwaeke Emezi (You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty) joins Okparanta in conversation at our Fort Greene store for a reading and discussion of this brilliant, funny, original, and unflinching look at all the most pressing tensions and anxieties of our time—and of the history that has shaped us and might continue to do so.

Chinelo Okparanta photo credit: Kelechi Okere

Akwaeke Emezi photo credit: Vo

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Greenlight Bookstore (Fulton Street), 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, United States