Nneoma Onyinyechi Onwuegbuchi

New York, My Village is the best immigrant story I have read so far. The novel is visceral and makes me think deeply about human consciousness: how we all claim to be different but are basically the same. I loved the humor and the novel's biting exposé of racism through bed bugs which was paralleled with tribalism. I also loved Akpan's first of its kind narration of the discrimination against minority ethnic groups by Biafrans during the war. Regarding style, I loved that this book had little code-switching as it forces us (readers) to appreciate other languages in their raw form without subjecting them to the undue scrutiny of English translations that could water down meanings. Akpan's decision to do little code-switching shows that he's not only writing for a Western audience but for his own people, which for me, depicts his originality and humanness. An excellent novel!