Volume 1 of the 2 volume novel, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, shares scenes from the life of Shirah Shulamit Ojero, an African American Jewish girl and woman, growing up in Washington, DC. Shirah reexamines and affirms her Judaic ancestry, becomes a graduate student studying epic poetry at the University of Pen Forest, and in the process of writing her doctoral dissertation discovers that hair as nappy as hers has existed only once before - on the...