“In African culture - Wait, no, I don’t want to be presumptuous or in any way nationalistic enough to assume certain Ghanaian customs run true in other African countries. I might in fact just be speaking of what passes as practice in my family, but regardless of who the mores belong to I was raised to keep family matters private. So if my dad has his own bedroom or my mum goes abroad for inexplicable lengths of time, it’s common knowledge within our household that we keep that business, and all matters like it, to ourselves.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and those are the opening lines to Jessica George’s novel Maame. When the story begins Maddie, aka Maame, is the only black person working at the Covent Garden Theater in London. She works as a PA for the director of marketing and publicity...a job she hates. In her spare time she takes care of her father who is suffering from advanced Parkinson’s Disease. She has two long time friends that she stays in contact with..but that’s it. That’s her life.
Her mother lives in Ghana for months at a time running a family hotel. Her older brother is mostly out of touch and of no help. It’s all up to Maddie to insure the bills are paid and her father is taken care of. And then one day Maddie’s life changes...her mother announces she is coming home for a year, Maddie finds a room to rent with two roommates, she now has time to date and, after being wrongfully fired from her job at the theater she lands a job as a PA to an editor at a small publishing company.
If you’re looking for a book that, as the jacket says, deals with themes of familial duty, mental health, racism and the lifesaving power of friendship, then you must read Maame by Jessica George.
