About this item
Okey Ndibe's funny, charming, and penetrating memoir tells of his move from Nigeria to America, where he came to edit the influential - but forever teetering on the verge of insolvency - African Commentary magazine. It recounts stories of Ndibe's relationships with Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and other literary figures; examines the differences between Nigerian and American etiquette and politics; recalls an incident of racial profiling just 13 days after he arrived in the US, in which he was mistaken for a bank robber; considers American stereotypes about Africa (and vice-versa) ; and juxtaposes African folk tales with Wall Street trickery. All these stories and more come together in a generous, encompassing book about the making of a writer and a new American.
About the Author
Okey Ndibe (first name is produced as "Okay") is the author of two novels, "Foreign Gods, Inc." (named one of the best books of 2014 by, among others, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, National Public Radio, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Mosaic magazine) , and "Arrows of Rain" as well as the memoir, "Never Look an American in the Eye: Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts and the Making of a Nigerian American" (winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for non-fiction) . He is also a co-editor (with Zimbabwean writer, Chenjerai Hove) of "Writers Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa." His career as an author began after he responded in the affirmative when African American writer John Edgar Wideman asked, "You're working on a novel, right? " Ndibe was a 2015-2016 Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has taught at St. Lawrence University, Brown University, Trinity College, Simon's Rock College, Connecticut College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar) . He served as the founding editor of African Commentary, a US-based international magazine published by the late novelist, Chinua Achebe. He was a member of the editorial board of Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the US, where his journalism won national and state awards. Ndibe's essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, BBC online, Financial Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera online, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa) , Fabian Society Journal, www.saharareporters.com, and www.thisisafrica.me. For more than fifteen years he wrote a widely syndicated weekly column on Nigerian politics and culture. He is currently working on a novel titled "Native Tongues".
