A Squatter's Tale (African Writers Series)

By Ike Oguine

A series of stories within a story, all narrated by Obi, a young, hopeful Nigerian immigrant in America.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0435906550
• ISBN13: 9780435906559
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Heinemann
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.5" x 4.8"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and Enlightening

Sheds light on the trials and tribulations of immigrants. A must read for everyone.

An African Rake's Progress in Foreign Parts

A humourous and painfully accurate account of the sojourn of Obi, a former undergraduate playboy and yuppie Lagos financier who lives on the fast lane as the Nigerian economy caves in, forcing him into exile as an immigrant in recession-racked early 1990s America. Temporarily reduced to minimum wage employment, Obi's sojourn in the San Franscisco Bay Area transverses the faux glitter world of the Nigerian immigrant elite of successful professionals and academics whose advanced degrees, homes in gated communities and BMWs still cannot purchase them assimilation into 'mainstream America' as well as the netherworld of the American inner city which is a rite of passage for many African immigrants. Oguine illuminates the dark recesses of the African immigrant experience in contemporary America with an incisive humour. The harsh glare of his torch spares none from the older immigrants who prey on the ignorance of new immigrants, the insular society in which a foreign accent is a debilitating liability, the American employers of undocumented migrants for whom possession of a college degree is acutely problematic, the constant fear of apprehension which afflicts the illegal alien as well as the paradox of those Nigerian immigrants who actively distance themselves from African-Americans while delighting in the popular culture, music and fashion of black America. Oguine certainly does not spare those Nigerians who, having contributed to the ruination of their own country, now seek succour in foreign lands. The hero of Oguine's first novel evokes reminiscences of another Obi, the protagonist of Chinua Achebe's 'No Longer At Ease' who returns to 1950s Nigeria after years of study in England. Ill at ease in his native land on the cusp of independence from Britain, Achebe's Obi wonders if he was away too long. Oguine's Obi comes to realize that like many a Nigerian immigrant in America, however long he lives in his new homeland, he will always dwell, ill at ease, in a halfway world between America and Nigeria. A must read for all Africans in America and for scholars of African migration in contemporary times.

genius

Wonderful book, and incredibly funny. Apt account of the immigrant's life in the US. A must read for all Nigerians.

Great Book

Wonderful Book. Must read. True Nigerian experience in the US.