Rivers of Memory

Rivers of Memory is a generational saga of resilience, identity, and survival-an epic novel that begins on the shores of 18th-century West Africa and flows across oceans, plantations, city streets, and centuries of buried truth. When Akosua is stolen from her village in 1789 and forced aboard a slave ship, she carries with her a sacred kola nut and a river song-a melody passed down from her ancestors to preserve the soul amid inhuman bondage. Her voice, her memories, and her lineage endure against all odds, echoing through seven generations of daughters who refuse to be broken. From the brutal plantations of the American South to the jazz-fueled streets of Harlem, from whispered names erased by history to the fierce reclaiming of forgotten bloodlines, Rivers of Memory weaves together the stories of mothers and daughters who fight to remember who they are in a world determined to make them forget. Haunting, lyrical, and profoundly moving, Jojo Penwood‘s novel is a tribute to the strength of Black women, the power of ancestral memory, and the unbreakable song that carries us home.