United States of Ambivalence

Prize-winning Nigerian American novelist, filmmaker, and physician Iweala (Beasts of No Nation; Speak No Evil) delivers three outstanding essays, musing on his life, his family’s life, and life in the United States, particularly in the Trump era. The longest essay traces U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s, emphasizing its anti-immigration tendencies, specifically targeting non–European immigrants. It reflects on Black Africans’ journey to the Americas, particularly the U.S., and on the identities formed as they became Americans. It considers both Black immigrants’ acceptance of Americanness and America’s acceptance of them. It also adds a new father’s meditation on his newborn son’s future as an American citizen. The second essay mulls over issues of dating, developing intimacy, family pressure to marry and bear offspring, and a man’s inner thoughts on an unplanned pregnancy and the abortion of his would-be child. The final essay, studded with biblical references and allusions, considers societal apocalypses and personal revelations in pivotal events such as George Floyd’s brutal killing and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests, and the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

VerdictFor readers who appreciate incisive, introspective, and literate analysis and commentary on the deep love and unrelenting anger churning in and around the U.S.

Read the review at Library Journal

This meditative trio of essays from novelist and physician Iweala (Beasts of No Nation) probes the author’s unresolved feelings regarding immigration, race, and protest. Beginning with a rumination on his “visceral” emotional need to obtain American citizenship for his German-born son despite his awareness, as a Nigerian American, of his country’s “ambivalence” toward him, Iweala goes on to explore his family’s experiences as immigrants, including his father sacrificing his career as a neurosurgeon in order to migrate and his uncle’s frightening deportation, driven by one fixated agent who threatened to kill him. Along the way, Iweala tracks America’s evolving attitudes toward immigrants since the 1980s, including racist conspiracies over President Obama’s birth certificate. This timely essay overshadows the two that follow: an exploration of Iweala’s struggle with a girlfriend’s choice to get an abortion and an epic survey of George Floyd’s murder, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the reactionary backlash of January 6 and DEI scaremongering. Still, these latter essays contain sharp observations, such as how white protestors’ humorous signs (“White Parents for the Prevention of Karens”) convey “the ability to not care” rather than “sublime empathy.” Iweala’s critiques are most striking when he interrogates his own inaction, including his “turmoil” over his lack of vocal support for pro-Gaza student protestors. It’s a stirring contemplation of the precarious nature of citizenship in America today.

Novelist, memoirist, and medical doctor Iweala muses on being a stranger in his own land.

Born in the U.S. to a Nigerian immigrant family, Iweala unabashedly calls himself “an anchor baby,” a citizen from the moment he drew breath. Iweala and his German wife nonetheless later chose to deliver own their baby in her native country, so “there could be no questions about our son’s claim to a German identity,” even if his mother fretted about whether the boy could grow up to be president. “Ted Cruz was born in Canada, and he ran for president,” Iweala assures her. A score of pages into his book, Iweala allows that he wasn’t the first person with his DNA to be born in America: An ancestor “who was likely abducted from the area is southeastern Nigeria where my family is from” preceded him. This discovery is the bedrock on which Iweala’s charged meditation on belonging and exclusion rests. An uncle of his, he writes, came to America and attempted to change his immigration status, running afoul in the process of a fed whom Iweala calls “Joe Agent.” It didn’t help his uncle’s case that Nigerians were widely viewed as scam artists or that he lived ostentatiously enough that Iweala’s mother warned him that “in a country allergic to Black success,” it was unwise to flaunt it. Sure enough, Joe Agent got his way, deporting Iweala’s uncle to Nigeria. The lesson Iweala’s father drew from the affair took the form of a pregnant question: “You think you’re American. You think the Americans think you’re American?” Shamefully, too many do not, as Iweala concludes, knowing that with regard to President Trump and company, “there exists a power that surpasses all that our politics hold most sacred—and that power is always white.”

A withering portrait of a nation of immigrants that no longer welcomes them as openly as before.

Read the review at Kirkus