Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Booksmith is proud to host the launch for Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun. Sarah will be in conversation with Daniel Handler. Please join us!

‘Morayo Da Silva, a cosmopolitan Nigerian woman, lives in Cole Valley, San Francisco. On the cusp of seventy-five, she is in good health and makes the most of it, enjoying road trips in her vintage Porsche, chatting to strangers, and recollecting characters from her favorite novels. Then she has a fall and her independence crumbles. Without the support of family, she relies on friends and chance encounters. As Morayo recounts her story, moving seamlessly between past and present, we meet Dawud, a charming Palestinian shopkeeper, Sage, a feisty, homeless Grateful Dead devotee, and Antonio, the poet whom Morayo desired more than her ambassador husband. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun is a subtle and mesmerizing meditation on aging, friendship, and loss. It is also a nuanced portrait of the erotic yearnings of an older woman.

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Like the dusty spines on Morayo’s bookshelves, every character in this novel hides a vibrant, teeming inner world behind an unspectacular façade. […] Ladipo Manyika’s book reminds us of the value of indulgence and delight – in sex, in food, in company, and in reading. – The New Statesmen

Sarah Manyika’s Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun is the rare sort of book that, from the instant you pick it up, you know that you will privy to the most intimate secrets. It is as if Dr. Morayo Da Silva is speaking directly into your ear. A real life-force of a character whose honesty, warmth, energy, and bravery in the face of inevitable loss springs forth on the page. Chekhov once said that the ‘Russian loves to recall living, but he does not love living.” Da Silva manages, in her unique way, to love both, the remembering and life in the present tense. A beautiful, important new novel, and one that will continue to echo in a reader’s mind for a long time after. – Peter Orner

Dr. Morayo Da Silva is one of the most memorable characters you are likely to encounter on the page – intelligent, indomitable, author and survivor of a large life. In dreamlike prose, Manyika dips in and out of her present, her past, in a story that argues always for generosity, for connection, for a vigorous and joyful endurance. – Karen Joy Fowler

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Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and for several years taught literature at San Francisco State University. Sarah currently serves on the boards of Hedgebrook and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Sarah is a Patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature and host to OZY’s video series “Write.” Her second novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize.