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Title details for New York, My Village by Uwem Akpan - Available

New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan
Elnathan John
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Exuberant storytelling full of wry comedy, dark history, and devastating satire—by the celebrated and original author of an Oprah's Book Club selection, Say You're One of Them.
From a suspiciously cheap Hell's Kitchen walk-up, Nigerian editor and winner of a Toni Morrison Publishing Fellowship Ekong Udousoro is about to begin the opportunity of a lifetime: to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry from its incandescent
epicenter. While his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to a colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly—callous agents, greedy landlords, boorish and hostile neighbors, and, beneath a superficial cosmopolitanism, a
bedrock of white cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food.
Reckoning, at the same time, with the recent history of the devastating and brutal Biafran War, in which Ekong's people were a minority of a minority caught up in the mutual slaughter of majority tribes, Ekong's life in New York becomes a saga of unanticipated
strife. The great apartment deal wrangled by his editor turns out to be an illegal sublet crawling with bedbugs. The lights of Times Square slide off the hardened veneer of New Yorkers plowing past the tourists. A collective antagonism toward the "other" consumes
Ekong's daily life. Yet in overcoming misunderstandings with his neighbors, Chinese American and Latino and African American, and in bonding with his true allies at work and advocating for healing back home, Ekong proves that there is still hope in sharing our stories.
Akpan's prose melds humor, tenderness, and pain to explore the myriad ways that tribalisms define life everywhere, from the villages of Nigeria to the villages within New York City. New York, My Village is a triumph of storytelling and a testament to the lifesustaining power
of community across borders and across boroughs.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 23, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781705046562
      • File size: 455694 KB
      • Duration: 15:49:21

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 6, 2021
      Akpan’s ambitious debut novel (after the collection Say You’re One of Them) follows a Nigerian writer in New York City as he navigates myriad permutations of racism and prejudice. Ekong Otis Udousoro has a four-month fellowship in 2016 to understudy with a small U.S. publisher and edit an anthology of stories about Nigeria’s civil war of the late 1960s. Ekong, a member of Annang tribe (a “minority of minorities”), has his visa denied twice before finally securing entry with help from his stateside editor-in-chief. The all-white publishing house greets Ekong with friendly overtures, but his diverse neighbors in Hell’s Kitchen offer only icy stares, leading him to take refuge in Times Square and at Starbucks. While fighting for underrepresented authors and against bloodthirsty bedbugs, Ekong learns that first impressions don’t always reveal true character. Throughout, he strives to bear witness to the atrocities and lingering animosities of the Biafran War among compatriots living in the Bronx, in New Jersey, and in his village back home. Akpan writes as much to educate as to entertain, adding lengthy and lucid historical passages with footnotes to source material along with excerpts from the book Ekong is editing. This layered novel tells more than it shows, but it’s well worth listening to.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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