by Uwem Akpan
Iya uwei, I chime the last bells of gratitude to my dear friend Edie Hang Nguyen Weathers. Nobody cooks Vietnamese food like your mom! You were the one I turned to when the novel needed a huge infusion of research in 2016, for since 1995 you’d heard of my struggles with this war when we were undergrads at Creighton University. Even back then, you understood instinctively something about the inherited pain of war, because your own parents had fled to America as Vietnam War refugees. You were born and bred in the bitter memories of their war and deep Catholicism that withstood Vietnam’s communism. Like Ujai, my child character, your love for both Vietnam and America is boundless—a perfect example of how any diaspora must balance her Fiddler on the Roof existence.
You sponsored that difficult decisive trip to interview Bishop Umoh and others in the Niger Delta and Igboland. But k’akpaniko, without you keeping in touch from Denver, Colorado, begging me never to give up no matter the obstacles, I would’ve chopped your money for nothing. When I was overwhelmed many times by the pain of my interviewees and the fears for my safety, your calls and emails brought me up for air.
* Indigenous People of Biafra, a pro-Biafra pressure group.
† Read Dr. Nowamagbe Omoigui’s “Biafra Midwestern Invasion of 1967: Lessons for Today’s Geopolitics” and S. E. Orobator’s “The Biafran Crisis and the Midwest,” both online.
‡ https://www.theroot.com/mourningwhileblack-priest-calls-cops-on-black-funeral-1827284231.
ALSO BY UWEM AKPAN
Say You’re One of Them
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Uwem Akpan
All rights reserved
First Edition
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Maps by David Lindroth
Production manager: Devon Zahn
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Akpan, Uwem, author.
Title: New York, my village : a novel / Uwem Akpan.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022378 | ISBN 9780393881424 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780393881431 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Nigerians—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. | Publishers and publishing—Fiction. | Africans—United States—Fiction. | African diaspora—Fiction. | GSAFD: Satire. | LCGFT: Satirical literature.
Classification: LCC PR9387.9.A3935 N49 2022 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022378
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