Maame
Jessica George's debut novel follows Madeleine, called Maddie, a young British Ghanaian woman who has been the primary caregiver for her father, who has advanced Parkinson's, while her mother works in Ghana and her older brother avoids the family. When her mother returns and Maddie moves into a flat-share, she begins to try out everything she has put off, including dating, drinking, and friendship. The book is written in close first person, with Google searches, work emails, and family WhatsApp threads built into the prose. George works through grief, racism in the workplace, and the daughter-of-immigrants pressure to be good without losing the novel's comic timing. Maame is the family nickname for the eldest daughter, the one expected to hold things together.
What you might want to know about Maame
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Maddie, a twenty-five-year-old British Ghanaian woman in London, finally moves out of her father's flat and tries to start an adult life of her own.
Jenna Bush Hager named Maame the February 2023 Read with Jenna selection on the Today Show, describing it as a warm, funny, deeply human debut and welcoming Jessica George on for a conversation about caregiving and Ghanaian British family life.
Maame is a Twi word used in Ghanaian families to mean mother, and within Maddie's family it is also her nickname as the responsible eldest daughter.
Maame was written by Jessica George, published in 2023 by St. Martin's Press.
Maame is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Maame takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Maame is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.