“My mother kept me, but she also tried passing me on to others, and that I won’t forget, despite her coming back. But when I needed her to let me go, begged her even, she wouldn’t. Not because she loved me, but because she needed company on her self- guided journey to misery.”

Sixteen-year-old Lara Montoya- Borislava and her mother Yevgenia rent a home at Oasis Mobile Estates after driving up from Nevada. Lara’s life lacks stability. Her mother Yevgenia is eccentric and lives life as she pleases, often leaving her daughter in the care of others while she is off with a new flame. When she does return, Yevgenia is constantly on the move, uprooting Lara time and time again. This time Lara hopes that they can settle down but she knows deep down that Yevgenia cannot be trusted. Yevgenia is erratic and self-absorbed and does not hesitate to use sex to get her own way. She is superficial and does not share much about herself and Lara acknowledges that she truly doesn’t understand her mother.

As the narrative continues, we follow Lara as she tries to settle down in her new home, deal with her mother’s alcoholism and neglect and forms new friendships in school and within the trailer park. The trailer park community in which she lives is rife with hardship, poverty and despair which often manifests in alcoholism, violence and substance abuse. But Lara also makes friends with people whose lives are very different from her own. In flashbacks, we get to know more about Lara’s life. Lara is biracial - her mother is a Russian immigrant and her father, with whom Lara has no contact, was a Black Cuban immigrant. Lara is used to questioning looks when people meet her and Yevgenia for the first time. Lara is also conscious of Yevgenia’s embarrassment in such situations which widens the divide between mother and daughter and deepens Lara’s curiosity about her father. Yevgenia rarely if ever expresses any affection or concern toward her daughter and her parenting mostly consists of quoting Russian literature and her very own maxims on life, sex and relationships that she writes in her notebook.

“The multicolored spiral- bound notebooks, their torn pages like slim fingers slipped through prison bars, taunt me. In these notebooks live my mother’s authoritarian edicts, philosophies, and communiqués, mostly regarding sex and men and politics and reading habits. The notebooks will be the sum total of her legacy and my meager inheritance.”

We can sense Lara’s longing for stability and desire for a better future but at the end of the day, she has no illusions about her life and situation. She is the responsible one among the two of them and is grounded in her reality which she knows is a harsh one. When Lara falls victim to a brutal act of violence, will this be the wake-up call Yevgenia needs? Will she take a stand for her daughter? Can Lara trust that her mother will be there for her or will this incident permanently fracture the relationship between mother and daughter?

A Country You Can Leave by Asale Angel-Ajani is a hard hitting debut. The author is unflinching in her description of a complicated (to put it mildly) mother-daughter relationship narrated from the PoV of a sixteen-year-old girl. At times you will be taken aback by how cynical Lara sounds, but given that she has Yevgenia for a mother that her bitterness would have an impact on Lara’s worldview is not surprising. Lara’s protectiveness towards her neighbor’s son Brody who she often babysits is an interesting dynamic that the author explores as are her friendships with Julie who belongs to an affluent family and Charles who is also a resident of the Oasis like Lara but aspires to break free. Her friends’ fascination with her mother and her home not only provides a few brief moments of levity but also surprises and frustrates Lara while also making her more conscious of her situation. Though this is a coming-of-age novel, what strikes you immediately is the lack of melodrama or teenage angst. Each chapter begins with Yevgenia’s words of “wisdom” and you can get an idea of what is to follow. The writer touches upon themes of racial identity, immigrant experiences, poverty, class distinction, sexuality, mental health, child neglect and much more with brutal honesty. In turn, you will feel heartbroken, shocked and angry as you turn the pages but you will keep rooting for Lara. Excellent writing, superb characterizations and fluid narrative render this a powerful debut that is as disturbing as it is compelling.

“The system may start outside, but it gets in. It’s a parasite, and we, the people of the Oasis, are its hosts. The system is in the cellular makeup of our bodies. It’s part of our psychology, our inherited traits, our human origins. We, the prostrate people of the Oasis, excel in the work of the system. We domesticate our suffering, neuter our aspirations. We detonate our fury so often at one another that we are depleted by the time we even think to look at the system. And yet, in small, fleeting moments, we may find the way back to our gaunt and ragged selves. We make grand declarations, vow to change the lives we think we steer. Then when we aren’t looking, we’re defeated. And for a few moments we’ll be stunned. How did we forget? Defeat always comes. In the drink we promise we won’t touch. The child we say we won’t beat. The job we vow to show up for.” ( )