Read with Jenna November 2024 Book Title

Jenna Bush Hager’s November read, Read with Jenna, is a retelling of a classic.

Nikki May’s This Motherless Land is a “beautiful” reimagining of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, says Jenna.

For Jenna, part of the book’s appeal was how it connected her to the other women in her life.

“My grandmother Barbara was a big Jane Austen fan,” says Jenna. “Even after she couldn’t see well enough to read, we listened to Pride and Prejudice together.” When I read Jane Austen, I think of her.”

“This Motherless Land” by Nikki May

The book itself “embraces the beauty” of Austen’s novel, combining romance and friendship as well as, with a modern twist, deeper conversations about identity.

May, the author of “Wahala” and a “huge fan of Jane Austen,” told TODAY.com that she was inspired to write “This Countryless Land” by re-reading “Mansfield Park.”

“I think the idea of ​​plucking a young girl from one home, pushing her into another and making her prove herself over and over again is brilliant. I basically stole it,” May says with a laugh.

May says story-making became a way for her to explore identity and belonging, themes she has been “obsessed with” throughout her career thanks to her upbringing in the UK and Nigeria.

She drew on her own life to inform the setting and some of the characteristics.

Like Funke, one of the book’s main characters, May’s mother is English and her father is Nigerian. May grew up in Nigeria and then moved to the UK when she was 20.

“It’s a really personal story because when we meet Funke in 1978, she is essentially living my life – my middle class life in Lagos. She lives in my house. Billy the African Gray Parrot was my sister’s parrot. She rides my green helicopter through the streets of campus with my little brother. She goes to my beach. Her mother is a lot like my mother,” May says.

Funke’s story then diverges from May’s in a most devastating way. Funke’s younger brother and mother, Elisabeth, died in an accident. After this, Funke is sent to live with her late mother’s closed English family.

In England, Funke’s only warmth is her cousin, the freedom-loving Liv. Liv, too, finds in Funk a much-needed friend and the kind of love that is more nourishing than her own mother’s calculated help.

May calls their relationship a love story.

“With this book, I tried to prove that love can be the difference between survival and prosperity—which is something I truly believe,” she says.

She also set out to study how mothers influence the course of our lives. Elizabeth was inspired by May’s mother, and throughout the novel, Funke often remembers her mother. She was constantly stopped on the street by strangers who knew and loved her mother. Meanwhile, Liv’s mother is cruel.

“One of the questions written in big letters on my wall was: what’s worse… a wonderful mother who died, or a terrible mother who lives? – May asks.

Ultimately, May says her goal with the book – which has too many twists and turns and events spanning the years of Funke and Liv’s lives – is to “entertain.”

“I just want them to laugh and ooh and cry,” she says.

But if they get the message, she means it.

“If it helped them realize that prejudice and racism are so ridiculous and irrational, that would be a huge problem for me,” she says. “I also think that privilege can be as big a burden as prejudice. So if it helps people recognize their privilege and understand it better, I think that would be great too.”

May says the writing was therapeutic and helped her understand that she could “belong in two places and belong nowhere.”

“I love both my cultures,” she says. “It wasn’t easy to realize that I both, not half, and it took me a lifetime to get to this place.”