The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina, Zoraida Córdova
My first non-Twilight book of the year (lol) was The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Ecuadorean American Zoraida Córdova. Filled with magical realism and going between the U.S. and Guayaquil, Ecuador, this book follows one family in their quest to understand their progenitor, their grandmother Orquídea. During their lives Orquídea was often cold and declined to answer their questions about most things, and when she did, offered answers that did not make sense to them. When she invites all of her children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren to her funeral, they come bearing questions, which yet again go unanswered. But after her death, Orquídea’s past catches up with her, and her grandchildren and great-granddaughter are the ones who are forced to deal with it to save their family. The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina is a beautiful and engrossing novel well-worth the read.
Suitcase of Memory, A’Eysha Kasseim
Suitcase of Memory is an intriguing novel that tells the story of passing – but in reverse. Bastian grew up as a (white) Afrikaans boy in apartheid South Africa, but always knew that he had been secretly adopted from a Black mother. When he falls in love as a teenager but realizes that they could never be together because of the racial categories in place at the time, he is determined to change his racial categorization and goes before the court to do so. However, he does not realize how much attention the case will draw and everyone it will involve, dredging up not only his past, but also those of both his adopted mother and his birth mother. While one of the weak points of this novel is its inability to interweave all the minutiae together in a notable way (for example, the suitcase in the title), the underlying idea of this book is an interesting one, especially when the stories of an Afrikaans family and a Muslim one are explored in parallel in such rich detail.