Go figure that I should finish this and then stumble over this thread of people trying to justify why raping children isn't as bad as it sounds...

Anyway, Becoming Abigail is the second Abani I've read, and (partly thanks to a better translation) even stronger than Graceland. Short and to the point: Abigail is born, the daughter of a woman who (she's told) was outspoken, active, fierce... and died giving birth to her. So she's named after her mother, and that's her entire life: fitting into others' expectations of what she's supposed to do. It's not that she can't make her own identity, it's that nobody asks for it. She's asked to live up to what her mother was, but not to what she actually (or allegedly) was but what men remember her as. The worst part is that there's not even necessarily any malice in it; the man she loves graciously allows that she can rise above her "dark" past, the women looking out for her best interests dismiss that she could possibly have a will of her own. Abani could have written a long, complicated novel about cultures and immigration and patriarchs, instead he keeps it short, sketching Abigail's story in beautifully detailed moments, capturing every movement of her hands as she tries to manipulate her world.