Read more
The authentic and insightful story of Kemi, Brittany-Rae and Muna, three Black women and their everyday experiences living in Stockholm, a predominantly white city. Three Black women. Three everyday lives. There is no one way to be Black.
About the author
Nigerian-American and based in Sweden, Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and award-winning photographer. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Sunday Times Travel, The Telegraph, New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Travel Channel, Adventure Magazine, Lonely Planet, amongst others. In addition to contributing to several books, she is the author of the following books: 2018 Lowell Thomas Award winner for best travel book, Due North, bestselling LAGOM: Swedish Secret of Living Well, available in 18 foreign language editions; and internationally-acclaimed debut novel IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACK. She has been recognized with multiple awards for her work, including being named a 2022 Hasselblad Heroine and receiving the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award. She was honoured with a MIPAD 100 (Most Influential People of African Descent) Award within media and culture in 2018 and in 2021 with a Newsweek Future of Travel Storytelling Award. She contributed to National Geographic's Image Collection.
Follow @LolaAkinmade on social media.
Summary
A timely and arresting debut novel about what it means to be a Black woman in the world.
Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people.
Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.
A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege – a life she's not sure she wants – as the object of his unhealthy obsession.
And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.
Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society.
Foreword
Three Black women building new lives in Stockholm become linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man.
Additional text
'Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström’s debut novel is as much a liberating battle cry as it is a searing, multifaceted examination of the hearts and minds of Black women navigating white-dominated spaces ... Rather than shying away from or oversimplifying difficult and complex topics, Åkerström has effectively packaged themes of racism, immigration, fetishism and otherness into an engrossing story that will enlighten its readers, regardless of their nationality or race' BookPage.
