New York, My Village

By: Uwem Akpan

Narrated by: Elnathan John

A daring first novel in the great picaresque tradition - both buoyant comedy and devastating satire - by the author of the best-selling story collection Say You’re One of Them

Ekong Udousoro is a Nigerian editor undertaking a reckoning with the brutal recent history of his homeland by curating a collection of stories about the Biafran War. He is thrilled when a publishing fellowship gives him the opportunity to continue his work in Manhattan while learning the ins and outs of publishing. But while his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to the industry’s colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly, 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. Haunted by the devastating darkness of civil war and searingly observant about the myriad ways that tribalism defines life everywhere from the villages of Africa to the villages within New York City, New York, My Village is nevertheless full of heart, hilarity, and hope.

©2021 Uwem Akpan (P)2021 Recorded Books

So much promise but ultimately, bugged me

There is so much comedy, tragedy and history to savor here, a la carte. Taken as whole this turns into less than a feast and more an experiment of mismatched plot devices that wind up giving the reader indigestion. The author’s infestation obsession serves not as a metaphorical theme but more as a derailment. I kept reading because, in passages, Akpan delivers beautiful graphic depictions and stories of racism and brutality that must be heard. He deftly balances these parts with experiences, joy, and wonderment in and about his “NYC”. If only the editor in the story had worked with Akpan the author through an aggressive rewrite. That would have scratched my itch. As for the performance, John’s reading is largely resonant but terribly weak in portraying every American woman character’s speech pattern as if she was auditioning to play Blanche DuBois. What started as a thrilling story ended, sadly, as tedious.

Motif gone wrong?

I was initially excited about this text. Initially, I came across it while perusing my local bookstore. I took note of it and decided it was better to purchase it on Kindle, so I did. I began reading with excitement and enjoyed the initial pacing intertwined with so much history that I often supplemented my reading with a history dive. The more I read, however, the less enjoyable this text became. After putting it down for a couple of months, I decided to purchase it on Audible. Even that was a struggle. My weeks-long desire to see this come to an end was stronger than my desire to see what would ever become of Ekong, Caro, Molly, Usen or the crew at Andrew & Thompson. Perhaps the author intended the overdone fixation with bedbugs to serve as a motif or metaphor for the way America's racism sucked the life out of him, left him battered, bruised, and damaged in ways unimaginable. However, the idea that 90% of this text is about bedbugs in Hell's Kitchen and less about one man's journey to diversify the publishing industry and to tell the stories from events on the continent that are only whispered about behind closed doors, left so much to be desired

Tedious, repetitive narrative mars violent storyline

The main character of this book vacillates between naïve to the point of stupid and insightful in wild unpredictable swings.
There are small incidents throughout the story — spoiler alert for bedbugs – which gets treated as more important and life shaking than the violence of traumatic horrific war stories.
There is a structural sophistication to the way in which the story is told, but the torturous duration of the present time story components coupled with the always unpredictable “will he be stupid or will he be smart” questions makes this almost unbearable.
The narrator’s voice is lovely to listen to, but put me to sleep while I was driving.