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A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times: Stories

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A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times: Stories

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Overview

Award-winning Ethiopian-American author Meron Hadero’s gorgeously wrought stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times offer poignant, compelling narratives of those whose lives have been marked by border crossings and the risk of displacement.

Set across the United States and abroad, Meron Hadero’s stories feature immigrants, refugees, and those on the brink of dispossession, all struggling to begin again, all fighting to belong. Moving through diverse geographies and styles, this captivating collection follows characters on the journey toward home, which they dream of, create and redefine, lose and find, and make their own. Beyond migration, these stories examine themes of race, gender, class, friendship, betrayal, the despair of loss, and the enduring resilience of hope.

“The Street Sweep,” winner of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, is about an enterprising young man on the verge of losing his home in Addis Ababa who pursues an improbable opportunity to turn his life around.

Appearing in Best American Short Stories, “The Suitcase” follows a woman visiting her country of origin for the first time and finds that an ordinary object opens up an unexpected, complex bridge between worlds.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize, “The Wall” portrays the intergenerational friendship between two refugees living in Iowa who have connections to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A Best American Short Stories notable, “Mekonnen aka Mack aka Huey Freakin’ Newton” is a coming-of-age tale about an Ethiopian immigrant in Brooklyn encountering nuances of race in his new country.

Kaleidoscopic, powerful, and illuminative, the stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times expand our understanding of the essential and universal need for connection and the vital refuge of home, from the major new talent Meron Hadero.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212226660
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Meron Hadero is an Ethiopian American who was born in Addis Ababa and came to the US via Germany as a young child. Meron’s short stories have won the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, have been shortlisted for the 2019 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, and appear in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, The Iowa Review, Missouri Review, 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, and others. She’s also been published in The New York Times Book Review, the anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. A 2019–2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, and a fellow at Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell, Meron holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale Law School, and a BA in history from Princeton with a certificate in American studies.

Waceke Wambaa is a voiceover artist with a passion for storytelling. She has experience with medical and corporate narration, commercials, documentaries, explainer videos, promos, audiobooks, and more. In her spare time, she can be found dabbling in her backyard, singing, acting, writing books, and volunteering as a reader at North Carolina Reading Service.

Dele Ogundiran is an entertainment professional of Nigerian lineage whose multifaceted talent shines both on and off screen.

As a performer, Dele most recently played a recurring guest star role on a soon-to-be announced show for Amazon. Prior to this, she has played diverse recurring roles, from an upscale magazine editor on ABC's comedy series Ugly Betty to a brassy but endearing addict on Showtime's hit drama series Ray Donovan. Since closing on a successful run in the West Coast premiere of the stage play Her Portmanteau (written by Mfoniso Udofia and directed by Gregg T. Daniel) at Boston Court Pasadena in the summer of 2018, Dele made her stand-up comedy debut at the world famous Ice House Comedy Club, wrapped on the feature film The Infiltrators (directed by Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibara, 2019 Sundance Film Festival Premiere-Audience Award and NEXT Innovator Prize), and guest starred on NCIS and Grey's Anatomy.

A shortlist of her other television and film credits include Wisdom of the Crowd, Anger Management, Brothers & Sisters, Children's Hospital, He's Just Not That Into You, Maniac, and Silent But Deadly. Her stage appearances include roles in Our Lady of 121st Street, Balm In Gilead, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and her voice can be heard in the video games World of Warcraft and Dead Rising. Her credits as an audiobook narrator include Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham and Finding Love Again by Chioma Inwu Ibiam. Dele's beauty has been captured in national and international commercials and print campaigns for well-known brands including Allstate, IBM, Ford, Dark & Lovely, and McDonald's.

As writer and award-winning producer, under her production company, Apphia Productions, Dele starred in, produced and cowrote her company's first film, Bathroom Vanities, which has screened at festivals worldwide. She also produced the award-winning short film The Encounter (Best Short Award, White Sands International Film Festival award). The award-winning feature film Elevate, which is her feature film debut as a producer, made its premiere at the tenth annual Downtown LA Film Festival in fall 2018. Most recently, Dele was the director of photography and producer on Casualty of Time (2020 Veterans Award, The Cinematic Arts Redemptive Entertainment (CARE) Awards) written and directed by Jeremiah Jahi. She is also editing her directorial debut, the short film Last Supper.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Meron Hadero’s dazzling short stories span the diaspora, poignantly portraying characters in search of opportunity and belonging. Rich with insight, compassion, and wit, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times is an unforgettable debut.”

—Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

“With enormous power and wonderful subtlety, Meron Hadero grants us access to the inner worlds of people at moments when everything is at risk. In the stories that make up A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, the emotional stakes are high…. Hadero’s characters are usually out of place, struggling to move backward or forward to a place that resembles home—is waylaid on the street by a man with a terrible burden to relieve..... That closeness to the edge—of safety, of the known and being known—will resonate with all of us whose lives have been marked by border-crossings, whether by choice or, more likely, because of complex political and environmental forces far beyond our control. As we enter a future that will be shaped more and more profoundly by such border crossings, these sharp, humane, beautiful portraits are a gift.”

—Dinaw Mengestu, Achy Obejas, and Ilan Stavans, from the judges’ citation

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

03/21/2022
Ethiopian-American writer Hadero delivers in her illuminating debut collection a series of nuanced perspectives on immigration. In “The Elders,” which takes place during the funeral for an Ethiopian immigrant in Texas, a mourner asks, “Can we really let others define what it means to belong? For any of us?” Hadero excels at creating small moments with high stakes such as these, investigating the minefield of interrelations and frictions her characters face amid competing cultural imperatives. There’s also Getu, the 18-year-old hero of “The Street Sweep,” who seeks an escape from the drudgery of his job in an Ethiopian city and financial stability for himself and his mother. Getu’s hopes are briefly raised by a friendly if deceptive NGO staffer, and the encounter offers a disappointing lesson. In the beautiful title story, two Ethiopian women living in New York City go through recipes from the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, a ritual Hadero describes “as a sort of superstitious offering... to pay homage to this most sacred and difficult task of staying put.” Throughout, Hadero achingly shows how her characters attempt to communicate their regrets, sorrows, and dreams. This assured debut is well worth a look. Agent: Julia Kardon, HG Literary. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times:
“Witty and wistful, complex and heartbreaking, these stories capture lives caught between cultures and continents, past and present, truth and lies. As its displaced characters seek belonging, this collection explores the challenges of connection with empathy and nuance. A thrilling debut.”
—Brit Bennett, bestselling author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers
“This book heralds the arrival of a gifted, stunning writer. A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times held me spellbound, riveted to the compelling characters that walk through these pages, all of them guided by Meron’s revelatory and generous examinations of belonging and displacement. These stories unfold with an intensifying power, each of them a testament to what’s possible when we move through this world insisting on the potential of hope, and love.”
—Maaza Mengiste, author of Booker Prize finalist The Shadow King
"Meron Hadero's collection, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times brims with lives on the margins, collisions that do not fully happen, redemptions thwarted at the last minute. Yet, it is through these moments that the vastness of the modern lives of immigrants (or the "transposed") are examined and fully revealed. This style, which time and time again comes off the page as truly effortless, is what makes Hadero a new master of the form, and this collection a masterful one."
—Chigozie Obioma, author of Booker Prize finalists An Orchestra of Minorities and The Fishermen
“Intricate and precise, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times casts a glimmering light into the most elusive corners of estrangement which all migrants—torn between past and present, home and journey—come to know. To say that Hadero’s style is discreet would be inaccurate; these stories lull, then rip you open. A powerful, unforgettable collection.”
—Ingrid Rojas Contreras, bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree
“Meron Hadero’s dazzling short stories span the diaspora, poignantly portraying characters in search of opportunity and belonging. Rich with insight, compassion, and wit, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times is an unforgettable debut.”
—Vanessa Hua, bestselling author of A River of Stars and Forbidden City
“With enormous power and wonderful subtlety, Meron Hadero grants us access to the inner worlds of people at moments when everything is at risk. In the stories that make up A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, the emotional stakes are high…. Hadero’s characters are usually out of place, struggling to move backward or forward to a place that resembles home.... That closeness to the edge—of safety, of the known and being known—will resonate with all of us whose lives have been marked by border-crossings, whether by choice or, more likely, because of complex political and environmental forces far beyond our control. As we enter a future that will be shaped more and more profoundly by such border crossings, these sharp, humane, beautiful portraits are a gift.”
—Dinaw Mengestu, Achy Obejas, and Ilan Stavans, from the judges’ citation
“Debut books don’t get much stronger than this. Meron Hadero’s remarkable stories explore a diverse cast of people doing their best to find acceptance or at least stability—a 10-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who befriends a German man in Iowa; a pair of refugees in New York determined to learn how to cook classic American food. Hadero is deeply perceptive; her dialogue always rings true, and the regard she has for her characters is apparent. This isn’t just an excellent first book, it’s an excellent book, period.”
— Michael Schaub, NPR Best Books 2022: Books We Love
“In her debut story collection, Addis Ababa–born Hadero addresses Ethiopian Americans' struggles for acceptance, the painful ties between present and past, and the elusive meaning of home…. Hadero sets a tone of dizzying displacement from the start…. A full range of stylistic approaches is on display in these stories…. Hadero's writing derives great power from her nuanced references to Ethiopia's anguished history, including the atrocities of the Derg military junta. As one character says, survival is about ‘letting that past move through you and move with you and move you so that it's you deciding for yourself what you're worth.’ Entertaining and affecting stories with a deft lightness of touch.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“In this impressive debut collection, award-winning Ethiopian American writer Hadero showcases the lives of displaced people trying to create a space for themselves to call home in America and Ethiopia…. Hadero’s powerful stories usher characters along their searches for belonging, often with nothing but hope and a sense of community pushing them forward.”
—Emily Park, Booklist, Starred Review
This richly detailed, subtly impressionistic short-story collection—by the first Ethiopian-born writer to win the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing—pulls at threads of geography, language, generation, race, and gender…Hadero’s page shines. She brings to bear aspects of her own path from Ethiopia to Germany to the United States, expanding instead of narrowing the range and representation of immigrant experiences. If displacement is a story of holding, it’s also, in Hadero’s telling, a holding of hope that readers and reporters, refugees or not, will unpack tropes instead of resort to them.
— Daniel King, Mother Jones
“Hadero’s characters face challenges including racism, crushing misunderstandings, and visits home that remind them of how much they no longer belong, if they ever did…. Despite their difficult circumstances, though, these characters find comfort in places like a single friend and a home-cooked meal. Their experiences may be unique, but their desires to live in peace and happiness are universal. A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times is a heartfelt collection about the highs, lows, and ordinary of Ethiopian life.”
—Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews, Starred Review
Meron Hadero’s A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times is an astonishing debut….If the danger faced by those who live on the anxious edge of societies, whether in Ethiopia or Germany or the United States, is not always—or even often—recognized, Hadero suggests, the signs are present long before they’re understood. In A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, she has crafted a profound collection that identifies this sensibility while also, in its overflow of stories, signaling the hope of a teller that a good listener will be ready to receive them.
— Anita Felicelli, Alta Journal
“It is the dignity that makes this collection a stunner.”
— Lauren Francis-Sharma, San Francisco Chronicle
“Displacement—often by outside force, rarely by personal choice—haunts Meron Hadero’s superb debut short story collection, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, which won the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing…. Hadero creates a remarkable universal resonance, exquisitely illuminating quotidian moments that could, and do, happen anywhere in the world where people long to belong, find community, and be welcomed.... In numerous stories, Hadero deftly examines what it means to be Black in America, especially as a transplant from another country…. In other stories, Hadero empathically and expertly explores living between cultures and countries…. [A] stupendous collection…. From narrative to narrative, Hadero is a wondrously agile writer, whether describing moments of triumphant anticipation (‘that January afternoon that was so steeped in hope that you could feel its warmth despite the numbing air’); shocking devastation (‘“No, no,” she said again, using her fist to argue for her life’); rightful contentment (‘as Yeshi and Jazarah stood ever more firmly on ground that had to be home’). Hadero’s prodigious storytelling is part testimony, part warning, part balm…. Joy—and perhaps a few tears, chuckles, gasps, sighs—awaits readers here, as well.”
—Terry Hong, Christian Science Monitor, 10 Best Books of June
“The dispossessed peoples of the world are explored in Ethiopian-born Hadero’s dazzling new story collection, which was awarded the Restless Prize for New Immigrant Writing. Her characters, many of them refugees, search for meaning, hope for the future and a place to call home. ‘Street Sweep’ won the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing and others were included in Best American Short Stories. Each story has a lyrical power. As the author says: 'To be receptive to what the story needs, I try to step back and almost hear what the story sounds like from a reader’s point of view.’ She is definitely a writer to watch.”
—The Center for Fiction, Bookstore Picks: Summer Arrivals

From the Publisher

12/16/2022
DEBUT In a year particularly rich with story collections, Ethiopian American author Hadero's debut collection stands out for its evocation of the immigrant experience—it is, in fact, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. What's distinctive here are the multiple perspectives Hadero brings to her work. Her stories are set in Ethiopia and the United States, with male and female protagonists struggling in different ways. In Ethiopia, Saba, who has returned from the United States to visit the country of her birth, comes to a generous solution when she finds her bags for the return flight overpacked with gifts from relatives for family abroad. Meanwhile, ambitious, hopeful Getu is sorely disappointed by a feckless NGO staffer who seems to have promised him a big future, but Getu reveals his resourcefulness in the end. In the United States, a teenager from Ethiopia via West Berlin bonds with a German boy who is himself a refugee; they speak the same language in more ways than one, and though they drift apart when the boy's family moves, the significance of the relationship is palpable. Elsewhere, two Ethiopian women in New York discuss recipes as a way to bridge the new country and the old. VERDICT As Saba boards her flight, she looks back, wondering if her relatives "might connect with her one more time," and the need to connect shines throughout this strong collection.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal

★ 2022-03-16
In her debut story collection, Addis Ababa–born Hadero addresses Ethiopian Americans' struggles for acceptance, the painful ties between present and past, and the elusive meaning of home.
Raised in the United States and now based in San Francisco, Hadero sets a tone of dizzying displacement from the start in "The Suitcase," in which 20-year-old American Saba visits her birth city of Addis Ababa for the first time. Far from a romantic family reunion, the trip is full of cultural land mines including the one she nearly steps on when relatives and family friends bicker over which of their gifts Saba will bring back to the U.S. In “Mekonnen aka Mack aka Huey Freakin’ Newton,” set in 1989 in a Brooklyn wracked by racial conflict, sixth grader Mekonnen learns the meaning of pride—and shame—as a member of a group of activist Black kids. And in "Sinkholes," an Ethiopian-born high schooler, the only Black student in his class in rural Florida, is put to an impossible test when his teacher asks students to write racial epithets on the blackboard, thinking this "exercise" is empowering. A full range of stylistic approaches is on display in these stories, from the satirical spin on the odd disappearance of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2012 to the magical realism of mysterious "floating houses." Hadero's writing derives great power from her nuanced references to Ethiopia's anguished history, including the atrocities of the Derg military junta. As one character says, survival is about "letting that past move through you and move with you and move you so that it's you deciding for yourself what you're worth."
Entertaining and affecting stories with a deft lightness of touch.

Kirkus Reviews