When Tolani Akinola set out to write her debut novel Leave Your Mess at Home, she did not anticipate that the story would center on family dynamics. Published on April 14, 2024, the novel follows the fictional Longe family, a second-generation Nigerian immigrant household navigating cultural expectations, personal identity, and complex sibling relationships. Akinola has described how the process of developing her characters led her to explore the roles each sibling plays within the family unit—such as the scapegoat, the golden child, the people pleaser, and the lost child—archetypes often discussed in psychology and family therapy literature.
To better understand how to portray these dynamics authentically, Akinola turned to a range of literary works that depict familial dysfunction with nuance and emotional depth. In reflecting on her writing journey, she compiled a list of ten books that helped her grasp how family shapes identity, belonging, and emotional survival. These novels span genres, geographies, and generations, offering varied perspectives on what makes a family both fractured and enduring.
Among the works she cites is Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, a novel that explores the Belsey family’s transatlantic tensions, academic rivalries, and racial identity in a contemporary American setting. Another is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which draws on the biblical story of Cain and Abel to examine multigenerational trauma, moral choice, and the struggle to escape inherited patterns of behavior. Rachel Khong’s Real Americans traces three generations of a Chinese American family, interrogating how parental expectations and societal pressures around success and assimilation reverberate across time.
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things presents a lyrical yet harrowing glance at how caste, politics, and forbidden love fracture a family in postcolonial India, while Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon follows Macon “Milkman” Dead III as he uncovers his family’s buried history and confronts the legacies of slavery, gender expectations, and spiritual dislocation. Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, a linked short story collection, portrays a Jamaican immigrant family in Miami grappling with identity, displacement, and the emotional toll of assimilation and economic instability.
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer blends dark humor and suspense to explore the extreme lengths of loyalty between sisters in Lagos, Nigeria, raising questions about complicity, protection, and moral ambiguity. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, set in colonial Rhodesia, examines how education, gender, and colonialism reshape familial bonds and self-worth through the eyes of a young girl seeking autonomy. Xochitl Gonzalez’s Olga Dies Dreaming delves into the aftermath of parental abandonment and political activism, as two siblings in New York confront inherited trauma and the cost of pursuing the American Dream. Finally, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice remains a foundational text for understanding how societal pressures, gender roles, and economic dependence shape family dynamics, particularly through the Bennet sisters’ varied responses to marriage and autonomy.
These works, though diverse in setting and style, share a common thread: they illustrate how family can simultaneously serve as a source of deep wounds and profound connection. Akinola’s own novel contributes to this conversation by portraying the Longe siblings’ attempts to understand one another amid silence, expectation, and the search for love in its many forms.
How Literature Helps Us Understand Family Dysfunction
Literature has long served as a mirror for the complexities of family life, offering readers insight into patterns that may be difficult to name in real life. The concept of a “dysfunctional family” is often defined by psychological frameworks, such as the one from the American Psychological Association, which describes such families as those where relationships or communication are impaired and members struggle to achieve closeness or authentic self-expression. Still, fiction allows readers to experience these dynamics emotionally, not just intellectually, fostering empathy and self-reflection.
Novels like On Beauty and East of Eden reveal how ideological differences—whether political, religious, or philosophical—can become fault lines within a household. In On Beauty, the Belsey family’s liberal values clash with the conservative beliefs of their rivals, the Kipps family, creating tension that affects the children’s sense of identity and belonging. Similarly, East of Eden illustrates how favoritism and unresolved parental wounds can echo across generations, shaping how sons and daughters view themselves and their capacity for love and aggression.
Other works highlight how external pressures—immigration, racism, classism, and colonialism—intensify internal family struggles. In Real Americans, the pursuit of upward mobility in a capitalist society leads to emotional estrangement, as parents push their children toward success at the cost of authenticity. Nervous Conditions reveals how colonial education systems can alienate children from their cultural roots, creating internal conflict and fractured relationships within the family. Meanwhile, The God of Small Things demonstrates how societal rules around caste and sexuality can turn familial love into something dangerous and forbidden, with tragic consequences.
These narratives also explore the roles individuals often unconsciously adopt within families—such as the caretaker, the rebel, the invisible child, or the high achiever—and how these roles can limit personal growth. Akinola’s reflection on her own writing process underscores this idea: to understand her protagonist’s capacity to love, she needed to first understand the family that shaped her.
Why These Stories Resonate Across Cultures and Generations
The enduring appeal of these novels lies in their ability to balance specificity with universality. While each story is rooted in a particular cultural, historical, or geographical context—whether it’s postcolonial India, 1930s California, contemporary Lagos, or Regency England—their explorations of love, loyalty, betrayal, and identity speak to shared human experiences. Readers often find themselves recognizing aspects of their own family dynamics in these fictional portrayals, even when the settings differ significantly.
For example, Song of Solomon uses the journey of Milkman Dead to explore how uncovering family history can be an act of liberation. His search for gold becomes a search for self, as he learns about his ancestors’ resilience, trauma, and flight—both literal and metaphorical. Similarly, Olga Dies Dreaming portrays how siblings who were separated by parental absence and political activism must rebuild trust and understanding in adulthood, showing that healing is possible even when the past is painful.
In If I Survive You, the character Trelawney’s struggle to experience “Black enough” or “Jamaican enough” reflects a common experience among children of immigrants navigating dual identities. The story captures how economic hardship, parental separation, and cultural displacement can strain family bonds, while also highlighting moments of connection and resilience. Likewise, My Sister the Serial Killer uses a provocative premise to examine the depth of sibling loyalty, asking how far one should go to protect a loved one, even when their actions are harmful or dangerous.
These stories do not offer easy answers. Instead, they invite readers to sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and the reality that families are rarely purely functional or dysfunctional—they are often both at once. As Akinola noted in her reflection, writing about family can be isolating, but turning to these books provided her with comfort and affirmation during the creative process.
The Role of Storytelling in Healing and Understanding
Beyond entertainment, literature about family dysfunction can serve a therapeutic function. By seeing their experiences reflected in characters, readers may feel less alone in their struggles. Novels that depict characters overcoming inherited patterns—such as the cycle of favoritism in East of Eden or the silence around abuse in The God of Small Things—can offer hope that change is possible, even when We see difficult.
these works often challenge readers to question societal norms that contribute to family strain. Real Americans critiques the idea that a family’s worth is tied to its members’ economic success, while Nervous Conditions challenges the assumption that education automatically leads to liberation, particularly when it comes at the cost of cultural identity. Pride and Prejudice, though often read as a romance, also offers a sharp critique of how limited options for women can distort family relationships and prioritize marriage over personal fulfillment.
By presenting family as a site of both love and wounding, these novels encourage a more nuanced understanding of how we are shaped by our origins—and how we might choose to redefine ourselves in relation to them. They remind us that while we cannot change the past, we can change how we carry it forward.
Where to Find These Works and Related Resources
All of the books mentioned in Akinola’s list are widely available through major publishers and retailers. On Beauty by Zadie Smith is published by Penguin Books and can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook formats. East of Eden by John Steinbeck is also published by Penguin Books and remains a staple in literature curricula worldwide. Real Americans by Rachel Khong is published by Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is published by Random House and has received international acclaim, including the Booker Prize in 1997. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is published by Vintage and is frequently studied for its lyrical prose and deep engagement with African American history and identity. If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery is published by MCD, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is published by Vintage and has been praised for its sharp wit and gripping narrative. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga is published by Graywolf Press and is considered a foundational text in African literature. Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez is published by Flatiron Books and became a bestseller upon its release in 2022. Finally, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen remains widely available through Penguin Books and continues to be adapted for film, television, and stage.
For readers interested in exploring the psychological concepts behind family dynamics, resources from the American Psychological Association provide information on family systems theory, attachment styles, and the long-term effects of childhood emotional environments. While fiction cannot replace professional therapy, it can complement it by offering emotional insight and reducing stigma around conversations about family pain.
As discussions about mental health, intergenerational trauma, and cultural identity continue to evolve, literature remains a vital tool for understanding how we come to be who we are—and how we might choose to grow beyond the roles we were assigned in childhood. The next step for readers is to engage with these stories not just as narratives, but as invitations to reflect on their own family histories, patterns, and possibilities for healing.