Jasmine Nicole

This review contains spoilers

In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström is a powerful read.

It’s a story of 3 Black women who are woven into each other’s lives based on their proximity to a wealthy white man.

Kemi, Brittany, and Muna each deal with the struggles of being Black women in Sweden who just want to find their way. As they search for love, family, power, and acceptance, they realize that Sweden’s beauty doesn’t always extend to those who are different.

KEMI

Kemi is a Nigerian-American marketing genius who has won awards for her work 3 years in a row. Her talents are pulling her to Stockholm, Sweden by Jonny von Ludin’s marketing company to come in and fix the lack of diversity and mend the broken pieces left by a racist ad campaign. She also hopes the transition to Sweden will bring a fresh perspective in her career as well as her relationships as she struggles to maintain a fulfilling love life.

BRITTANY-RAE

Brittany-Rae is a former model and flight attendant who encounters Jonny as he’s flying in first class. He instantly clings to her and she wrestles with her attraction to him. Once she gives in, her life is uprooted and she is instantly propelled into a life with him that she finds herself questioning every step of the way.

MUNA

Muna is a young Somalian woman who was forced from her home as a refugee. Along the way she loses her family, and the one friend she makes while in the asylum. She finally starts to make a new life in Sweden when she begins working as a cleaner in the building that holds Jonny’s company. Her mission to rebuild a new life and family comes with challenges.

My Review

In the Goodreads review of her book, Åkerström said her goal wasn’t to create a book that will be praised for its “exquisite prose”, but to make you feel for these characters and remember their lives. I appreciate that about this book because sometimes you read a book with deep strokes of writing and you get lost in that. Sometimes you just need to hear the stories of the characters loud and clear and Åkerström accomplished that.

One of the main themes throughout this book is power and I want to take a deeper look into how that manifests through each character’s life.

KEMI AND POWER

For me, Kemi is the most relatable character. I also enjoyed her character development the most. I too have found myself in her position looking for love and validation in all the wrong places. For Kemi, power radiates from her. She is the top Marketing Executive at her job, being a recipient of awards for her work for several years and being an overall Boss in the workplace. Not one person denies how great she is at her job. But even so, she notices that her work is still micromanaged at the hands of her white, male boss, Conner. This helps propel her to accept the offer from Jonny who promises her that she will have full freedom in her position.

In her personal life, she knows that her power lies in her body. Her curvaceous frame often attracts white men, including her former boss Conner, who look at her as something to indulge in temporarily, then after they go home to their wives. Or black men who just don’t measure up to the success that Kemi has made for herself and aren’t “suitable” to being home to her Nigerian family.

Her journey in Sweden will allow her to shift the power to her control and you’ll love how she develops in the end. Her story ends on a high note when she realizes that the power that has surrounded her all this time was always hers, she just had to take control. Granted, there are still some questions I have, but Kemi’s development leaves me feeling confident enough that whatever obstacles come up next, she can and will handle them. By the end, all I can do is clap and be proud of her.

BRITTANY-RAE AND POWER

One of the first things we learn about Brittany-Rae is that she is attractive. Now, in this society, that is power in itself. She was a former model, she’s tall and gorgeous, she has a wonderful man, Jamal, who is practically down on bended knee, and life couldn’t be any better. She presently works as a flight attendant, and that is how she meets Jonny von Ludin, who is also very attractive. She is working in first class, which we find out is a usual placement for her at work. It doesn’t say, but I think it’s safe to assume that she gets first-class placements because of her attractiveness.

He begs her to meet him for dinner and from then starts the unraveling of her life as she knew and the beginning of her new life. Jonny has many peculiarities that are a result of a special needs condition, but he hasn’t been officially diagnosed. With that comes the fact that Jonny is very observant and quickly learns how to read Brittany, and therefore gains power over her. We see time and time again how he can bend her to his whim in just the way he kisses her.

While Brittany isn’t a stranger to a lavish lifestyle, her relationship moves quickly with Jonny giving Brittany access to wealth and power that she hasn’t had before. But with it comes isolation as Jonny’s lifestyle demands they build a life in Sweden and she is forced away from her friends and family in Atlanta. Sweden isn’t kind to Brittany because she’s a Black woman, and Jonny’s friends and family are even colder.

Brittany ends up becoming Jonny’s wife and mother to his child. Her story ends with her realization that no matter how much power she had, once she gave it over to Jonny, she will never be able to get it back. I felt for Brittany because I feel like she was true to her heart and her heart got in the way of logic. Unlike Kemi, her eyes were opened too late and now she may be forced to live out a life she was unfairly lured into.

MUNA AND POWER

Muna’s story is tragic from beginning to end. Muna is in Sweden because her home was destroyed in Somalia. She becomes a refugee with her brother and mother, her father having perished in the destruction of her home, but they too meet a tragic end as they are lost at the bottom of the sea. Muna’s brother falls off the boat they are being brought in on, and her mother falls in behind him in an attempt to save him. They never make it to the asylum with Muna.

Once she arrives at the asylum center, of which Jonny is the benefactor, she meets Ahmad who quickly becomes her only friend, and whom she falls in love with. She is accepted to be given asylum in Sweden, and as she prepares to begin anew, she realizes Ahmad is not granted the same and she will have to move on without him. Once again, she will be alone, and even more so as Ahmad commits suicide before she leaves.

Once in Sweden, she moves in with two young women, Yasmin and Khadijah, who quickly become the only family she has now, along with Gunhild, the woman responsible for guiding Muna into a new life in Sweden. One by one, her “family” is taken away from her. First Yasmin who gets caught up in the life of her past, and projected into a future that includes a new family of her own. Then Khadijah whose past also catches up to her as she tries to fight for rights in Sweden. All she has left is Gunhild and just as the woman instills the hope in Muna that she lost, she too is taken from Muna.

Loneliness is what has power in Muna’s story. The power that lies in having anyone to share your life with, no one to come home to at night, no one to love, overtakes Muna. Especially when she was once so rich in family and now left with no one. The power of feeling alone and losing hope leads to her demise as an unfortunate incident causes her to commit suicide to join the ones that she loves.

Muna’s story is so tragic to me because out of the three women, it seems that everything that has happened was just a result of life. Things happened to her. She didn’t do anything but live her life and no matter what she did to try to make the best of what she had, tragedy continued to break her. She was never given a choice and her final decision, while tragic, seemed as if it was her deciding something for herself.

Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström wrote heartbreaking stories, and I truly enjoyed the raw and realness of these beautiful characters. Please go pick up a copy now and enjoy this story for yourself as there is so much more to this story than what I have shared with you. Thanks for reading!