Critical Praise

"This ambitious first novel begins like the voice of an ancient tribal storyteller, poetic and mysterious, and we are led through an intricate tale involving the lives of several generations of Mother Africa's daughters. The novel combines myth and reality as it both strings the story beads and weaves ancestral tales of various women such as Proud Mary, a captive slave who is savagely punished for her refusal to give her daughter up to slavery, and Alma, who is compelled to live out her destiny by returning to the place where blood is born."

——Today's Black Woman

"That is the great gift of The River Where Blood Is Born. Whether in Ghana or Chicago, Barbados or Nigeria, the resonance of these voices rings so true that you think, 'Don't I know you?' And enmeshed in the web of their stories we come to a perception of the divine aspect of these women's lives, their link to the Queen Mother, The Goddess in Everywoman."

——Afrique Magazine

"Jackson-Opoku's first novel is an expansive tale that exquisitely melds mythical realms together with an historical family saga spanning centuries and continents."

——Booklist

"Jackson-Opoku displays an intimate knowledge of African and Caribbean culture cultures. From African tradition she creates two powerful narrators to serve as guides. One, Kwaku Ananse, the spider, will be familiar as the antagonist in 'trickster' tales. The other, the Gatekeeper, welcomes the souls of mothers who cross over from life to the Village of the Ancestors. The Gatekeeper mediates between the ancestral mothers and the daughters they watch over. . . . In its rivers, beads, webs and quilts, the author's story weaving is abundant. . . . The threads of each story are as easy to follow as brightly colored stitchery. . . . Besides its sheer literary beauty, Jackson-Opoku's story-weaving will give readers a new spiritual dimension from which to consider the meaning of life."

——Chicago Sun-Times