Jide Familoni

"Losing my religion", my first novel, is based on my personal experiences of growing up in south western Nigeria, steeped in the native traditions, going to graduate school in Canada, and then immigrating to the United States to work as a professor in a predominantly White institution. The novel adeptly examines the central character’s struggles with assimilation, and for social and professional success compounded by miscegenation. Culminating in his mother’s death, his personal struggles and his sense of betraying his African upbringing are depicted against the background of actual events on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and textured by vivid descriptions of the native traditions. African traditions (polygamy, childbirth and rearing, death and burial, leisure time and politics) are described in rich detail in the context of the very modern and contemporary lives of its main characters. LMR is the story of one person’s identity crisis and self rediscovery; it is also many immigrants’ story at that junction between assimilation and losing their native value system. It is my story, told in a fresh voice and textured by vivid and rich Yoruba traditions and actual events in the U.S.