I look for books by West African and diasporan writers on the new books shelf at Loutit Library, and this one stood out from the ever-growing number of new books by new writers. Chukwu is Nigerian-American ("half Nigeria, half Detroit" says her agency's blurb) and sets this novel in an unnamed university -- a prestigious one, and an overwhelmingly white one, we are told. (But there are many clues that point to the University of Chicago, where she earned her BA.) Few students of color are admitted to the narrator's graduate program, and the obstacles they face are formidable -- so much so that they seem to disappear, one after another, slipping away from the university without notice and leaving no trace. The novel is cast as a series of drafts of an undergraduate thesis that challenges the racism and insensitivity of the university, and its apparent lack of interest in doing anything about it. And the thesis takes shape as an interior dialogue with the narrator's "Life Partner," her recurring and inescapable depression, as she contemplates withdrawing not just from ir elaborate sort of academic suicide note, leading to the narrator's withdrawal not just from the university but from life itself. In the end she pulls back, and there are moments of light in the company of friends. The book is a blend of memoir, psychological confessional, and broadside against the self-importance and racial insensitivity of higher education. Strange, surprising, and sometimes moving.
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