In comemmorating World Day of Immigrants all over the world, we at Afreecan Read, celebrate books on immigration. Stories are very integral to humanity because they make humans humane. They sprinkle droplets of nuance that make every immigrant, documented or not, humans, first, before immigrants. They demystify and destroy the single story of immigrants, especially those from Africa and the Caribbean, as those running away from war or hunger.
There is an ocean of amazing books written on immigration. But today, we shall discuss only a teaspoonful of them.
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Source: Rakuten kobo
It’s a story about race in America, hair, love, books, and immigration. Americanah is a love story about two Nigerians, Ifemelu and Obinze. Ifemelu migrates to the United States for studies. Later, Obinze migrates to the United Kingdom (as an undocumented immigrant) because he was fleeing the choicelessness in Nigeria. The oceans and distance widen the gully it creates between them and fills it with the swooshing sounds of longing. They fall apart, but somewhere, deep in that ocean, their love stays glued, waiting for the sun.
2. Small Island by Andrea Levy
Source: loot.co.za
Small Island centres around love, race, and migration. It’s largely about Jamaican immigrants who, for the men fought in the World War II, fled from their impoverished Small Island, and ran to their Mother Country, England. It is told from the point of view of four characters. Queenie, who is married to Bernard—a man who suffers from racial intolerance—opens her home to servicemen after Bernard goes off to fight World War II. She meets Micheal and falls in love with Micheal, a Jamaican, and their love produce a child. Then there is Hortense, a Jamaican, who moves to England with her loaf of England knowledge of how to be prim and proper, until she finds out that theory is different from practical. She then ends up trying to teach the English people how best to be English. Then there is Gilbert, the light and laughter of the book, but wife of the condescending Hortense.
3. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Source: Harper Collins Publishers Australia
It is a story of the games power play on humans. There is Jende and Neni Jonga, the immigrants from Cameroon, who moved to America seeking to get a bite of the American dream. Then there is the family of Clark Edward, Jende employers. Jende is seeking asylum because he wants to remain in America. He cooks up lies and even claims that his father-in-law wants his life, just anything to get him the pity of the Americans. Jende is employed by big-man Clark to be his chauffeur. Clark has the power and the money, and Jende needs just a pinch of money so that he can pay his wife tuition fees and send some money to his family in Cameroon. He would do anything to please Clark including massaging Clark’s power ego by telling him funny stories of Cameroon. Then the financial crisis of 2008 cuts Clark’s wings and shows him “who’s the boss.” In the end, American Dream is not all that, and power is not static.
4. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
Source: Goodreads
This is a story of a family in pursuit of love and togetherness following the death of their runaway father, Kwetu. Kwetu immigrated to the United States with his wife, Folasade, who quit law school to be with him. Kwetu was going to be a surgeon and return to Ghana as a saviour, until he makes a medical mistake and is blacklisted from medical practice. In shame, he runs away from his ambition and his family and returns to Ghana where he stays until he dies. His actions deeply affect his family. His wife, Fola, who had no other plan in life asides being a mother and a florist, finds herself faced with three children and an infant to raise. The novel is well-travelled as Olu returns to Ghana from Boston, Sadie from Yale, Taiwo from New York city, and Kehinde presumably from London. They go home to confront their past and find peace and purpose. In this book, just like in Americanah, love and purpose is found in their Motherland, not the foreign country that promises fulfilled dreams.
5. We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo
Source: Wikipedia
Noviolet writes about a ten-year-old Zimbabwean girl called Darling. Darling lives in a slum called “Paradise” after her home is destroyed by Mugabe’s military police. In Paradise, her friends and she find laughter amidst sickness, death, violence, and dry hopes for elections that will bring democracy. They run around the streets, pluck, steal guava from rich people’s trees. They live their best lives in the midst of the chaos. They dream of going abroad and the new lives abroad will present them. Then Darling finally goes to the so much talked about America. She finds herself, defending the mashy land, which is hers, from the paradise, which is Americas’.
The story shows that even in the middle of the gutter, families hold and protect their dignity. And they defend their poor homes when outsiders say “the truth” about it because they know that “poverty” is not their only story. There is so much more to them than their poverty and their problems, but the outsiders do not know this.
Recent Comments