Month: August 2022

Ukrainian herself, Yemchuk was born and raised in Kyiv before the fall of the Soviet Union. “When I think of my childhood, it is filled with beautiful memories of nature, fields and forests, my grandmother and my cousin, snowy walks in Park Shevchenko and attending ballet performances at the opera house with my aunt. I was a very happy kid,” she recalls. She adds how strong the women in her life were when she was growing up. “My grandmother, my aunt, my cousin… They really shaped me at that young age and I think I am very much who I am today because of them.” When she was 11 years old, Yemchuk was told by her parents that they’d be immigrating to America. “They said that we would never be returning to Ukraine, and that was the end of my childhood.” read more

Just how mad are the men in Lagos? It’s a question Nigerian author and actor Damilare Kuku explores in 12 short stories in her first novel,Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad. With relationship themes spanning infidelities, sexting and ‘situationships’ sons and mothers, serial bachelors (and married and engaged ones), to infertility and sexual assault, Kuku’s provocative debut is a brilliant, witty, punchy account of the messiness of relationships. From the young woman who tries to find her ‘oyibo’ soulmate on the streets of Lagos, the pastor’s wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery to the wife who threatens to cut off her husband’s penis, Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad is told mainly through the eyes of Nigerian women who are all grappling with the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship, and, for Kuku, at its core, is a “love letter to women.”  “Each story is based on women’s experiences, women I know,” shares Kuku to Unbothered UK ahead of the novel’s release. “There’s so much we don’t talk about as women.” read more