New York, My Village (2022) by Uwem Akpan

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

New York, My Village (2022)

by Uwem Akpan

Hell's Kitchen, New York

Manhattan: 25/33

New York: 74/105

   New York, My Village certainly qualifies as what I call a "Novel POV" novel, where the perspective of the author is likely a first for a likely American audience member.  Here, the POV is that of the non-Igbo Nigerian nationalities who suffered at the hands of the Biafrans during the Biafran war.  It is a long, fairly complicated history, but basically the Biafran war was an attempt by the Igbo minority to rebel against the majority-Muslim ethnic groups of the North, who, it was felt, held a privileged position within the post-colonial state.  Unfortunately, Igbo territory was not populated solely by Igbos and other ethnic groups, here it is the Anaang, were treated vilely by the Igbo rebellion because of their lack of loyalty to the secessionist cause.  These crimes were covered up both inside and outside Nigerian by a generation of Igbo apologists, and because the Igbo themselves came out badly as well.  The most notable Igbo apologist is also, arguably, the most famous African author, Chinua Achebe.  Achebe never came to terms with the violations committed against the Anaang and other groups.

   Unlike many POV novels, New York, My Village doesn't have the typical permanent immigrant struggling to adapt to life in American while dealing with the trauma of the past.  Rather, the narrator is a well-off publisher who wins a fellowship to stay in New York City and work on an anthology of Anaang short stories about the Biafran war while working inside a mainline New York City publishing house.   Akpan covers some of the recurrent themes of African diaspora literature: The failure of most Americans to have any understanding of one's particular ethnic experience prior to arriving in America, difficulties mastering the social customs of a new land and the difference between people from Africa and African-Americans. 

  I ended up learning plenty about the Anaang and their trauma, but Akpan is also a funny dude and the subplot involving bed bugs in his illegal sub-lease injects humor and dramatic tension into the narrative.