Helen Oyeyemi | What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
6:30 PM at Politics & Prose @ Busboys and Poets Takoma, in conversation with The New Yorker‘s Margaret Talbot
The last Spring 2016 PEN/Faulkner and Politics & Prose reading will be Helen Oyeyemi, who is the author of five novels, including Boy, Snow, Bird; White is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award; and Mr Fox. In 2013 she was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She will be reading from her new story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In “Books and Roses” one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?” an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” involves a “house of locks,” where doors can be closed only with a key—with surprising, unobservable developments. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don’t You Think,” a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).
Oyeyemi’s tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.