Lesley Nneka Arimah is a Nigerian writer who has lived in the United Kingdom and the United States. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky is her debut collection of short stories, many of which have received literary awards, such as the O. Henry Prize and two awards for African writers: the Caine Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. At the heart of her stories, both realistic and speculative, are relationships and the ways those bonds can hurt or heal a person; the collection explores themes of How Mothers Shape Their Children, How Privilege and Suffering Shape Perception, and Patriarchal Control of Girls and Women. This story collection has won numerous awards, including the Kirkus Prize for Fiction (2017), the Minnesota Book Award (2018), and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award (2018).

This study guide refers to the 2017 Riverhead Books, Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material contains references to and descriptions of sexual assault, domestic violence, warfare, substance use disorder, pregnancy loss, suicidal ideation, and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Plot Summaries

There are 12 stories in What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky. Each story involves family relationships and the presence or absence of a parent.

In “The Future Looks Good,” sisters Ezinma and Bibi are often at odds, largely due to Bibi’s brash and resentful demeanor. They make amends after Bibi’s boyfriend, whom her mother warned her about, beats her. However, as Ezinma fumbles the keys to enter Bibi’s apartment to fetch her belongings, Godwin, Bibi’s ex-boyfriend, mistakes her for her sister and shoots her.

Nwando, the young girl at the center of “War Stories,” gets in trouble at school for revealing another girl’s chest, proving that she’s lying about wearing a bra. Nwando’s father has her explain her actions over a game of chess while he tells her war stories, some including his old friend Emmanuel, who died by suicide. As a result of the war and his friend’s death, Nwando’s father often slips into a fugue state. When Nwando, now a leader among the schoolgirls, has to punish another girl who lied, she overreacts upon hearing that the girl’s brother’s name is Emmanuel and strikes her, losing her followers.

“Wild” sets up a comparison between two cousins who have both disappointed their mothers. After Ada, the American cousin, misses out on being the valedictorian of her high school, her mother makes her spend the summer before college with her aunt Ugo and cousin Chinyere. Though Ada and her mother often fight about Ada’s attitude and substance misuse, it pales in comparison to the vitriol between Ugo and Chinyere, who were unmarried when they had a child. At a fundraising event, the cousins encounter an old friend of their parents—a former fiancée of Ada’s father. Ada realizes that they are the proxies in the battles of this older generation.

In the story “Light,” Enbeli spends three years raising his 11-year-old daughter on his own while his wife pursues a master’s degree in America. His wife’s attempts to parent her daughter from a distance only seem to turn the girl against her, which Enbeli doesn’t mind. However, when his wife gets a job offer in America, she insists that the girl come live with her. Enbeli can only watch as his daughter’s feisty personality dims under her mother’s influence.

In “Second Chances,” Uche finds herself at odds with her father and sister when their mother returns from the dead after eight years. While the other two are pleased to have more time with her, Uche struggles to process the argument she had with her mother right before the latter died.

Fifteen-year-old Amara and her mother live an itinerant lifestyle in America, staging falls to sue companies for money in “Windfalls.” Amara’s assessment of their lifestyle changes when she discovers she’s pregnant and reads in parenting books that babies should have a stable home life. This creates tension with her mother until Amara has a real accident, garnering the largest settlement they have ever received.

The premise of the fairy tale-style story “Who Will Greet You at Home” is that mothers create babies out of different materials that impart particular characteristics to the children they eventually become. Ogechi was made of mud but aspires to have a child who is beautiful and carefree. Each attempt has failed, draining her of joy and empathy. She breaks the rules and forms a baby out of hair, but it turns ravenous and violent until she destroys it to start anew.

Buchi in “Buchi’s Girls” is a recently widowed mother of two girls. She and her daughters have been living with Buchi’s sister, Precious, and Precious’s husband, Dickson. Precious and Dickson treat Buchi little better than a servant; she cleans for them to help pay for her and her daughters’ room and board. Her daughter Louisa has become meekly helpful, fearful that they will be kicked out. Younger daughter Damaris, who witnessed her father’s death, has stopped talking but has bonded with a chicken on the property. Louisa strikes Dickson when he jokes about killing the chicken, and he tells the gardener to kill the chicken. Buchi realizes that Louisa should go live with her friend in South Africa if any of them are to survive this phase of their lives.

In “What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky,” a man’s failed attempt at flying causes the world to question the accuracy of Furcal’s Formula, the equations of which have allowed scientists to do previously unimaginable things, such as removing someone’s grief. Nneoma is a grief worker who works only with wealthier clients. When her mother died, she violated the warnings against doing griefwork on one’s own family, which caused a rift between Nneoma and her lover, Kioni, who does griefwork only with refugees and survivors of the many tragedies that have reshaped the world. When Kioni reappears in terrible shape at Nneoma’s gate several weeks later, Nneoma starts to wonder if the formula that allows them to do griefwork has unforeseen consequences.

“Glory” is the shortened name of Glorybetogod, whose parents gave her that name in hopes she would be the perfect, successful daughter they wanted. However, she is instead a repository of bad luck and poor choices. Working at a call center in Minneapolis, she meets fellow Nigerian Thomas, who seems as lucky and accomplished as she is not. When their relationship turns serious and she meets his mother, Glory realizes that Thomas may have been scheming for a way to please his mother, who expects them to move back to Nigeria and have a family. She considers marrying Thomas as a way of evening out her bad luck, but she’s disappointed that she would not then be the architect of her own salvation. Glory considers her tendency to make the wrong choice and comes to a decision.

“What Is a Volcano?” features the god of ants, Ant, seeking revenge against the goddess of rivers for washing away so many of his ant colonies. His most successful attempt involves damming a river, but River destroys the dam and inadvertently floods half the world. While she is away apologizing to the gods whose lands she flooded, Ant kidnaps her two twin daughters. He hides one in a place River will never look while taking the other to a colony of army ants for safekeeping. However, the army ants eat the child goddess, so Ant puts her bones and his memory of where her sister is into a blue stone and goes to live among humans. River enlists others to help her hunt down Ant, leaving death and destruction in her wake, but eventually she concedes that she will never see the twins again and lies down, turning into hills. Her sister, called Bereaver, is driven by guilt to keep searching for Ant. He knows he must give up his godhood to survive, so he puts his identity into the stone and passes it to a girl. People know when the other twin cries because she is in a volcano.

The narrator of “Redemption” is a young teen girl who falls in love with a tough, bold house girl, Mayowa, after she throws paper-wrapped feces at the narrator’s family’s house. Wanting to know more about Mayowa and get her to like her, the narrator invites her into her house while her mother and their house girl, Grace, are out; the narrator even points out the bag of money the church gave her mother to hold for the week. Mayowa and Grace later run off with the money but are caught in the next town over. Mayowa won’t talk to the narrator because she thinks the narrator told people that Mayowa took the money. The neighbor who employs Mayowa sends her to Brother Benni, the youth pastor at church, to tame her bad behavior, but she cuts him with a razor when he tries to molest her. The narrator had the same experience with Brother Benni years ago, but no one believed her. Hearing that the neighbor will send Mayowa away, she rushes over to see her, only to find this tough, brave person she idolized crying while scrubbing the floor.