Who I Always Was: A Memoir (PB) (2026)

When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother's funeral...and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family's world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to explore the ripple effects of that profound loss and the way heartache shapes our sense of self and of the world--for the rest of our lives.

Using her grief and her father's death as a backdrop, "gifted storyteller" (Neema Avashai, author of Another Appalachia) Okokon delves deeply into intrinsic themes of Blackness, African spirituality, family, abandonment, belonging, and the seemingly endless, unrequited romantic pursuits of a Black woman who came of age as a Black girl in Wisconsin suburbs where she was--in many ways--always an anomaly.