Review by New York Times Review
"THE American dream" is an apt phrase, because dreams are illogical. The immigrant lives at a remove from the land of her birth and the land of her choice; if it's not the White House reminding you that you don't belong, it's your kids, the fruition of your American dreams who end up just so, well, American. Niru, the narrator of Uzodinma Iweala's "Speak No Evil," would seem to be his Nigerian-born parents' greatest success: sociable and athletic, cultured and Harvardbound. At the same time, Niru, because of his homosexuality, embodies this particular illogic: His gayness is no particular tragedy in the eyes of his peers, but an absolute betrayal of God's plan in the eyes of his parents. This is the central conflict in Iweala's slender book, one the author handles with admirable cool. Though Niru is still young (he's a senior in high school), he understands his parents even as they fail to understand him: "Our father lives somewhere between the self-satisfaction that his success has made us soft and disgust that we are unacquainted with the brutal intensity of a world that he has effectively tamed for us." Iweala published his first book, "Beasts of No Nation," in 2005, when he was only 23. It's a catalog of horrors narrated by a child soldier conscripted into an armed conflict in an unnamed West African country. It's less a novel than an exercise in voice, told in stylized, ungrammatical sentences. It doesn't add up to much, which is the point; it bears witness to something meaningless, then forces the reader to find meaning in atrocity. "Speak No Evil" is a quite different endeavor. Iweala is still interested in style, this time the kind of clarity we sometimes associate with Hemingway and mistakenly term simple. A characteristic passage: "I can't think straight enough to remember where I put my keys, this pocket or that pocket, this pocket, yes. And my car? I slam my palms against the wall. Again. The skin turns pink. You are not like these white children, my mother says except on my palms that turn pink like their skin turns pink, but only when hurt, or scared or stressed." We meet Niru in the winter of his senior year, at a tony Washington, D.C., private school. Released from classes because of a snowstorm, he seeks refuge at the nearby home of his dearest friend, Meredith, where her attempt to seduce him leads to the confession of his homosexuality. If the scene has the patina of an after-school special (earnestness, a touch of melodrama), Iweala deploys the present tense and an unfussy syntax to hook the reader, and it works well. Meredith, playing the role of understanding gal pal, installs Grindr and Tinder on Niru's cellphone. Of course the boy loses the phone, and the secret comes out. The ensuing confrontation with his father is violent and heartbreaking: "Are you really telling me the truth, that you are going out and gallivanting with the gays, the homosexuals? Where did you learn this kind of behavior? Is it in school? Is this what they are teaching you?" Not long ago, in his column for New York magazine, Andrew Sullivan wrote that "the radicalization of the movement's ideology and rhetoric" is to blame for "a retrenchment in comfort with gay equality." Iweala gives the lie to this claim elegantly; some people just hate homosexuality, no matter how much they love their children. Niru's mother is a cosmopolitan daughter of privilege, now a physician; his father is a "true village boy" who climbed his way to corporate success and American comfort. Upon discovering their son's secret, they turn to faith. "It sometimes seems that every African living in the D.C. area goes to this church, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Cameroonians, Congolese. Some work for embassies. Some are taxi drivers. Some are illegal, but they are all truly welcome." Well, not quite all. Niru's father takes him to his boyhood home in Nigeria, where they visit still another church. This intercession, existing in the realm of the spiritual, seems less pernicious than it actually is; it's not religion but psychological torture, and it occasions a kind of break in the narrator's psyche. His parents replace his smartphone with Bible verses. "I take the cards - Genesis 4:7, Luke 5:32, First Corinthians 6:18 - and put them in my pocket without looking at them. I have a stack on a shelf in my closet. They remind me of all the things I should do." It's not Niru who is closeted any longer; it's his parents' God. Niru's homosexuality is very much the book's subject, and the text is interested in dualities - Americans and Africans, white and black, gay and straight, devout and skeptic, the black immigrant and the black American (a role filled by Damien, a college student with whom our hero has a sweet, chaste fling) - while always returning to the question of what his gayness says about who Niru is. iweala writes with such ease aboutadolescents and adolescence that "Speak No Evil" could well be a young adult novel. At the same time he toys with other well-defined forms: the immigrant novel, the gay coming-of-age novel, the novel of being black in America. The resulting book is a hybrid of all these. If he's something of a remix artist, Iweala remains faithful to the conventions of these forms, a writer so adept that the book's climax feels both surprising and wholly inevitable. Its concluding third is narrated by Meredith, not Niru, a strategy that should feel clunky but doesn't. As with "Beasts of No Nation," Iweala resists offering the reader much in the way of closure or even insight, as though to suggest that's the reader's job, not his. A writer cannot be judged for his project, only its execution. Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist. Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop, but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader. Form ossifies into genre through repetition. Eventually readers - and writers are of course readers themselves - understand that stories about immigrants function in a certain way, that stories about gayness require a moral reckoning, that stories about blackness require the sacrifice of the black body. For all the interest among readers in creating a literature that reflects its readership, so-called "diverse books," there are times that "diverse book" seems itself a genre, bound by convention and largely a matter of the identity of a writer who is different from the thousand or so writers we believe to be the canon. In his smart exploration of generational conflict, of what it is to be a gay man, of the crisis of existence as a black man, Iweala is very much a realist. Perhaps the trouble is my own wish that reality itself were different. Iweala is interested in dualities - Americans and Africans, white and black, gay and straight, devout and skeptic. RUMAAN alam is the special projects editor, Books, at The Times and author of the forthcoming novel "That Kind of Mother."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 25, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When Harvard-bound, Washington, D.C., prep-school senior Niru's parents discover the gay-dating app his best friend, Meredith, downloaded for him on his phone, everything blows up in his face like he knew it would. Although his Nigerian parents are fiercely loving, they are but bound by their faith, his father especially so, to reject Niru's queerness and seek religious therapy for his condition, both locally and in their ancestral home. In his third book, Iweala author of the multiple-award-winning novel Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Our Kind of People (2012), a nonfiction book about people living with AIDS in Nigeria delivers with immediate poignancy Niru's struggles between rejecting his parents' constrictions and yearning for them; between embracing his sexuality and believing there's a cure for it, and that it should be cured at all. Through Niru's narration, which forms the bulk of the book, he, his parents, and his brother, who's away at college but a constant presence in Niru's thoughts, become full and realistically nuanced characters. A later shift in narration allows a different and perhaps more complete picture of Niru, which Iweala also handles elegantly. Portraying cross-generational and -cultural misunderstandings with anything but simplicity, Iweala tells an essential American story.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Uzodinma's staggering sophomore novel (after Beasts of No Nation), the untimely disclosure of a secret shared between two teens from different backgrounds sets off a cascade of heartbreaking consequences. The first of the book's two sections follows Niru, a Nigerian-American high school senior and track star heading off to Harvard in the fall. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his immigrant parents, who are loving but traditional and strict. When they discover Tinder and Grindr messages from boys on Niru's phone-apps Niru's (white) best friend, Meredith, installed on a whim-a shocking, violent event occurs. To "undo this psychological and spiritual corruption," Niru's father beats him, then takes him to Nigeria to rid him of the "evil demonic spirit." When Niru returns to school, he vows to stop his "sinful" behavior and make his father proud. But his desires still torment him-especially after he meets a handsome college-aged dancer named Damien. In the book's devastating second half, a broken and haunted Meredith looks back on that tumultuous time six years later. Her Washington insider parents are moving to Massachusetts, and she's returned from New York to help them move-and take care of unfinished business. The revelation of what happened the last time she saw Niru is devastating and speaks volumes about white heterosexual privilege. This novel is notable both for the raw force of Iweala's prose and the moving, powerful story. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Iweala's long-awaited follow-up to the multi-award-winning Beasts of No Nation, published in 2005 and made into a film released in 2015, a Harvard-bound Nigerian American teenager at a prestigious Washington, DC, school faces escalating issues of splintered identity. Not only is Niru black in a white world and an immigrant in America, but he's facing the realization that he is gay. Best friend Meredith is supportive, but Niru's religious parents explode when they find out; his mother may prevent his father from beating him, but she fully supports the plan to send him back to Nigeria to undergo spiritual cleansing. The trip is torture for Niru not only because his parents refuse to accept him ("What if I don't need help?" he asks them in anguish) but because Nigeria isn't home for him as it is for his father, who serves as heavyhanded escort. Back in America, Niru continues to seethe with doubt and longing as Iweala unwinds crucial issues of choice and the burden of playing multiple parts; says Niru, "It's too confusing for me to live all these lives when I want only one." Throughout a narrative spiraling toward tragedy, Niru's pain is so palpable it will make you gasp. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/11/17.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Niru laughs with his older brother about their father's "Nigeriatoma"-a word they made up to explain the "acute swelling of ego and pride" that turns Obi into a grandiose and aggressive man when he visits his native Nigeria. In the words of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in America, Obi "wears the mask" among the professional elite of Washington, DC. Modest and deferential, he and his wife Ify, a doctor, raise two sons who quietly excel. That is, until Niru, a high school senior, teetotaler, and track star headed for Harvard, admits that he's gay. While Ify surreptitiously schools herself online about parenting a gay child, Obi rushes Niru back to Nigeria for deprogramming by an Igbo priest. But Meredith-Niru's white female American best friend-helps Niru stay out of the closet, calling Obi's emergency Nigerian trip a "kidnapping." Iweala's (Beasts of No Nation) second novel is no less ambitious than his breakout debut. When someone drugs Meredith's drink at a graduation party, Niru must decide whether to risk his own safety to secure Meredith's. This work takes on not only the "beasts" of generational conflict and homophobia but also the hefty price of an interracial friendship in a violent American culture that proves more dangerous to Niru than his father's zipped-up rage. VERDICT A must-have.-Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Iweala's second novel, after Beasts of No Nation (2005), is a coming-of-age tale about immigrant identity and sexuality in America.Niru, an ambitious teenager, is in his senior year at a private high school in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Driven by his demanding Nigerian parents, he strives for success in both sports and academics. As he prepares to attend Harvard next year, trains to impress his track coach, and struggles to make a space for himself among his mostly white peers, he deftly reconciles his conflicting identities as the son of wealthy Nigerian immigrants and as an American teenager. There's turmoil rippling beneath his life's surface, though. When his closest friend, the attractive Meredith, tries to hook up with him, he panics and admits to himself that he's attracted to men. Meredith excitedly tries to help him embrace his sexuality, but Niru's impulses are unacceptable to his conservative Christian parents. After discovering flirtatious conversations with men on the boy's phone, Niru's father, Obi, takes him back to Nigeria to "cure" his son of what he considers "sinful nonsense." The scenes of Niru's clashes with his father are the most affecting moments in the novel: by depicting the fervor and violence of Obi's anger about Niru's queerness, Iweala does a stunning job of depicting the danger that many black youth face in trying to honor their sexual identities. Despite trying to suppress his desires and simplify his family life, Niru meets the seductive Damien. The two begin a tentative and tender relationship, but this is not a triumphant novel about Niru's embracing his sexual identity. Instead, Iweala gives us a novel of keen insight into the mental and emotional turmoil that attends an adolescent's discovery of his sexuality. Unfortunately, the book seems to lose steam toward its conclusion. Niru's relationship with Damien is not explored as fully as it could be, while the implications of his parents' pressure aren't entirely untangled. The novel resolves with the sudden and disjunctive insertion of another character's perspective, sabotaging the development of Niru's own subjectivity.This is a deeply felt and perceptive novel that does not fulfill its promise. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
