Blessings and Disasters

From a New Yorker staff writer and PEN Award winner, a blend of memoir, history, and reportage on one of the most complex and least understood states in America.

"In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster...."

Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery, Alabama--the former seat of the Confederacy--as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Here, she weaves her family's story with her state's, from Alabama's forced removal of the Creek Nation, making room for enslaved West Africans, to present-day legislative battles for "evolution disclaimers" in biology textbooks. She immerses us in a landscape today dominated not by cotton fields but by auto plants and Amazon warehouses. Defying stereotypes at every turn, Okeowo shows how people can love their home while still acknowledging its sins.

In this perspective-shifting work that is both an intimate memoir and a journalistic triumph, Okeowo investigates her life, other Alabamians' lives, and the state's lesser-known histories, to examine why Alabama has been the stage for the most extreme results of the American experiment.

Alexis Okeowo has reported on conflict, human rights, and culture across Africa, as well as from Mexico, Europe, and the American South for the New Yorker and other publications. Okeowo is the author of A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, which received the 2018 PEN Open Book Award. Her work has also been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Travel Writing. Okeowo was named journalist of the year by the Newswomen's Club of New York in 2020 and received the Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award in 2022.

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company (August 05, 2025)
• Language: English
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781250206220
• Dimensions: 5.38 x 8.25 x 1.0 | 1.11 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black, United States - State & Local - South (AL, AR, FL, GA, etc), Social Classes & Economic Disparity