Hope and circumstance define a young woman’s life in this heartbreaking tale of lost innocence, set in politically volatile 1990s Nigeria. Abi Ishola-Ayodeji brings us an exciting and fresh voice in global literature.
For as long as she can remember, Patience Adewale, the eldest daughter of Chief Kolade Adewale, has felt like she doesn’t belong—an outsider to both her family and those around her, with a distant father and a stepmother who doesn’t care to hide her disdain for her. Her mother, the one-person Patience felt loved by, was banished from the family compound by her father and uncle long ago, never to be seen or heard from again. More than her desire for a sense of belonging, Patience yearns to know where her mother is. She’s heard rumors that her mother fled Nigeria for America, and when she moves to Lagos to attend university, free from her father’s watchful gaze and compound, she’s determined to discover the truth. When she connects with her cousin, Kash, and her mother’s old friend in Lagos, she begins to find answers. But answers costs money. When Kash and his friend Emeka bring forth an opportunity to make money, and a lot of it, Patience and Emeka’s brother, Chike, sign on reluctantly. The stakes rise as the jobs continue, and Patience finds that the price she must pay for her dream of reuniting with her mother might be too high.
We’re excited to bring Abi Ishola-Ayodeji to the Busboys screen as she delves into her impressive debut with poet and writer Arao Ameny
This event is free and open to all, accessible through our Facebook and Youtube pages (@busboysandpoets).
The program will begin at 6 PM with an introduction from a member of our team.There will be time for Q&A with the audience before the end of the program, and you can purchase a copy of PATIENCE IS A SUBTLE THIEF through Eventbrite before and during the program.
We recommend that viewers RSVP in order to receive direct links to the event from Busboys and Poets Books.
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji is an award winning journalist who has written for several publications including ELLE.com, Essence, The Huffington Post, and Ebony. In 2017 she was named among Essence Magazine’s Woke 100 Women for launching Beyond Classically Beautiful, a photo series that celebrates the diverse beauty of Black women. For Channel 75 in New York, she’s produced several documentaries, including one on the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and a four part series titled “Enter West Africa” for which she covered different issues plaguing Nigeria and Ghana.
Arao Ameny is a Maryland-based poet and writer from Lango, Northern Uganda. She is a multi-genre writer with a focus on poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is currently a biography writer and editor at the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine. She earned her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Baltimore in 2019. She also earned an MA in journalism from Indiana University and a BA in political sciencewith minors in international relations and communications from the University of Indianapolis. She is a former fiction editor and copyeditor at Welter, a literary journal at the University of Baltimore. Her first published poem, “Home is a Woman,” won The Southern Review’s 2020 James Olney Award. In 2021, she was a finalist for the United Kingdom-based Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a nominee for the Best New Poets anthology (USA), and a winner of a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship.
