Mama’s Lullabies

A tale of sexuality and diaspora, secrecy and tenderness and barbed belonging, “Mama’s Lullabies” narrates a suppressed queer desire that comes between a Nigerian ex-pat couple living in Toronto. Poised and poetic, riveting and understated, this story handles a domestic tragedy with the subtlety, care, and imagistic density of short fiction at its best. Where light breezes reveal things “ugly and unknowable,” Vincent Anioke takes us deep into the hearts of his characters, mapping the dazzling underworlds of their hurt.