New York My Village is a 2021 satirical novel written by Nigerian author Uwem Akpan. It follows the life of Ekong Udousoro, a Nigerian editor from the minority Annang people, who comes to New York City after winning a publishing fellowship. Udousoro is curating an anthology of stories about the Nigerian Civil War from the perspectives of ethnic minorities victimized during the conflict. Udousoro's work on the anthology serves as a backdrop to his experience with prejudice as an African immigrant to America, even in supposedly anti-racist spaces. The book was described as a satire of racial bias in the publishing industry.
It was shortlisted by the Association of Nigerian Authors for the Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature in 2022, and longlisted for the 2025 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
Akpan took thirteen years to write the novel and thirty years of extensive research. It is partly about the brutal marginalization of minority groups in the Biafran War. Akpan has said:
<blockquote>I was born after the war. In 1977, when I began primary school at age six in Ekparakwa, I learnt a lot about the war. And when my family relocated to Ikot Ekpene, we even had more war "memories". As a ten-year-old, I was really frightened by stories of Biafra abducting young minority boys for their army and killing or raping those who escaped and were recaptured. They'd been branded as "saboteurs." Ikot Ekpene was a sad warfront. That was when I first learned that men could be raped. It was quite frightening to us kids because of how the adults whispered about it as absolute humiliation.</blockquote>
New York, My Village follows Ekong Udousoro, a Nigerian Editor who travels to New York from Nigeria on a prestigious fellowship. Central to EkongâÂÂs fellowship is his work curating an anthology of stories about the Biafran War (the Nigerian Civil War, 1967 to 1970). As a member of the Annang people tribe, a minority group caught between larger warring factions, Ekong uses the project to give voice to those often ignored in official historical narratives. The novel weaves together his current struggles in New York with haunting memories and historical passages about the warâÂÂs atrocities back home. Despite his professional credentials, Ekong faces demeaning interviews and bureaucratic hurdles at the American embassy in Nigeria, only obtaining the visa after his American editor-in-chief intervenes. Upon arriving in Manhattan, EkongâÂÂs expectations of a glamorous New York are quicky upended by several challenges.
Tribalism vs. Racism: The novel draws sharp parallels and establishes a comparative framework between the ethnic tribalism that led to the Biafran War and the racial divisions in America. Through the protagonist Ekong Udousoro, the narrative argues that both tribalism and racism function as exclusionary mechanisms designed to maintain hegemonic power structures. In the American context, this is manifested through editorial groupthink and the commodification of African trauma, where the white-dominated literary establishment sanitizes marginalized voices Conversely, the historical collections of the Biafran War highlight how the majority Igbo ethnic group oppressed the Annang minority, mirroring the âÂÂotheringâ Ekong experiences in Manhattan. By bridging these two geographies, Akpan suggests that the âÂÂvillageâ is a microcosm of stratified identity politics, suggesting that both racism and tribalism are parasitic forces that burrow into society like the bedbugs in Ekong's apartment.
The Politics of Memory and Gatekeeping of History: A significant theme in the novel is the danger of a single story. At Andrew & Thompson publishing, Ekong fights to include minority perspectives of the Biafran war, challenging established literary icons and historical narratives like AdichieâÂÂs Half of a Yellow Sun, AchebeâÂÂs There Was a Country and ObiomaâÂÂs The Road to the Country that sideline the suffering of smaller ethnic groups. However, the gatekeeping of history is not just an American publishing problem; it is also a Nigerian one. The novel points to how members of the majority Igbo ethnic group often brand minorities like the Annang people as âÂÂsaboteursâ or traitors. This tribal groupthink acts as a second gate, where the dominant ethnic voices attempt to suppress any historical memories that complicate their own version of victimhood. For Ekong, his anthology curating the voices of oppressed minorities in the war is an effective tool of resistance to break these gates.
Critique of the Publishing Industry: Through acerbic satire, New York, My Village exposes the lack of true diversity in publishing, showing how woke corporate culture can still be exclusionary and elitist. The novel skewers the industryâÂÂs performative progressiveness. While Andrew & Thompson offers Ekong a fellowship in the name of diversity, he quickly realizes that he is a token as his colleagues often treat him with a veneer of sophisticated kindness, but this mask slips whenever he challenges their preconceived notions of Africa. The novel also highlights a white cultural superiority that dictated what makes a story âÂÂmarketableâ as the editors attempt to sanitize EkongâÂÂs anthology about the Biafran War. Molly Simmons, the white Editor-in-Chief of Andrew & Thompson, is one of the most complex characters at the publishing house representing the diverse internal conflicts of the ally. Her character serves as a critique of how even the best intentions can often be paternalistic.
Identity, Trauma, and the Immigrant Experience: In New York, My Village, the bedbug infestation in Hell's Kitchen, New York, functions as a potent symbol for the physical and psychological exhaustion inherent in the immigrant experience, where the trauma of the âÂÂhomeâ (the Biafran War) is mirrored by the hostility of the âÂÂhostâ (Manhattan). For Ekong, the bedbug infestation forces him into a state of perpetual hyper-vigilance that mirrors the ethnic surveillance he fled in Nigeria. This nibbling experience reflects the psychopathology of prejudice because just as the insects are omnipresent, the systemic racism of the publishing industry and lingering tribalism of Nigeria act as persistent, draining forces.
Healing and Human Connectedness: In the novel, healing truly begins when Ekong interacts with his Latino, African American, and Asian neighbors who all suffer from the same systemic neglect and the nibbling bedbugs. Their shared exhaustion eventually breaks down the walls of national identity and ethnocentrisms. The novelâÂÂs resolution suggests that human connection is the only pesticide and counter-contagion strong enough to kill the bugs of prejudice both in America and in Nigeria. Also, New York, My Village emphasizes how effective storytelling exemplified by EkongâÂÂs anthology serves as a bridge between his historical trauma and contemporary healing. For Ekong, the act of curating and editing minority stories about the Biafran War serves as an act of radical reclamation, a communal archive that challenges the way the warâÂÂs memory has been gatekept by dominant Igbo literary voices.
Oprah Daily describes New York, My Village as one of the best 20 books of 2021 stating that the novel: âÂÂsatirizes the self-serious book publishing business,â while also noting that AkpanâÂÂs satiric first novel âÂÂis both hilarious and spot on.âÂÂ
Regarding racism in publishing, Jo Hamya of The New York Times wrote that "Akpan's examination of the publishing industry serves less to mock and more to chart the ways in which narrative is essential in the forming of cultural groups. New York, My Village succeeds in making the too-rare observation that identity exists not as a fixed, individual thing, but in relation to others, and thus is constantly shifting.
Sylva Nze Ifedigbo of The Lagos Review said that the novel "brings something extra to the table of the civil war discussion by travelling a route less taken, shining the spotlight on the experiences of minority ethnic groups in Biafra and bringing to the fore, for the first time, at least to this reader, the bloody ethnic conflict that ragged at this period, the memories of which like the war itself, still haunts and which will continue to shape the dynamics of peace in the country, over fifty years after the war."
Ainehi Edoro of Brittle Paper said of the book that "The official narratives tend to stage the war as an epic battle between the newly formed Biafra and Nigeria, which, when viewed through the lens of ethnicity, corresponds to Igbo, on the one hand, Hausa and Yoruba, on the other. ... Apkan's work is unique in the way it addresses the experiences of the descendants of those who lived through the war, how they grapple with lingering traumas, as well as deal with the silences and competing narratives around the war. For tackling these questions and offering a different facet of the Biafran War, New York, My Village pairs brilliantly with Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Chinua Achebe's There Was a Country".