Speak No Evil

October 1, 2017

Iweala boomed into our consciousness in 2005 with his debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, a multi-award-winning and multi-best-booked title that got its author named a Granta Best of Young American Novelists. It was worth the wait for his second novel, featuring a Harvard-bound Nigerian American teenager at a prestigious Washington, DC, school, who wrestles with the recognition that he is gay. His friend Meredith is supportive, but the disapproval of his religious family leads to rapidly unwinding tragedy. Don't miss; there's gorgeous writing, crucial issues, and edge-of-seat emotions. With a 50,000-copy first printing

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Starred review from December 4, 2017
In Uzodinma’s staggering sophomore novel (after Beasts of No Nation), the untimely disclosure of a secret shared between two teens from different backgrounds sets off a cascade of heartbreaking consequences. The first of the book’s two sections follows Niru, a Nigerian-American high school senior and track star heading off to Harvard in the fall. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his immigrant parents, who are loving but traditional and strict. When they discover Tinder and Grindr messages from boys on Niru’s phone—apps Niru’s (white) best friend, Meredith, installed on a whim—a shocking, violent event occurs. To “undo this psychological and spiritual corruption,” Niru’s father beats him, then takes him to Nigeria to rid him of the “evil demonic spirit.” When Niru returns to school, he vows to stop his “sinful” behavior and make his father proud. But his desires still torment him—especially after he meets a handsome college-aged dancer named Damien. In the book’s devastating second half, a broken and haunted Meredith looks back on that tumultuous time six years later. Her Washington insider parents are moving to Massachusetts, and she’s returned from New York to help them move—and take care of unfinished business. The revelation of what happened the last time she saw Niru is devastating and speaks volumes about white heterosexual privilege. This novel is notable both for the raw force of Iweala’s prose and the moving, powerful story.

February 1, 2018
Iweala's second novel, after Beasts of No Nation (2005), is a coming-of-age tale about immigrant identity and sexuality in America.Niru, an ambitious teenager, is in his senior year at a private high school in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Driven by his demanding Nigerian parents, he strives for success in both sports and academics. As he prepares to attend Harvard next year, trains to impress his track coach, and struggles to make a space for himself among his mostly white peers, he deftly reconciles his conflicting identities as the son of wealthy Nigerian immigrants and as an American teenager. There's turmoil rippling beneath his life's surface, though. When his closest friend, the attractive Meredith, tries to hook up with him, he panics and admits to himself that he's attracted to men. Meredith excitedly tries to help him embrace his sexuality, but Niru's impulses are unacceptable to his conservative Christian parents. After discovering flirtatious conversations with men on the boy's phone, Niru's father, Obi, takes him back to Nigeria to "cure" his son of what he considers "sinful nonsense." The scenes of Niru's clashes with his father are the most affecting moments in the novel: by depicting the fervor and violence of Obi's anger about Niru's queerness, Iweala does a stunning job of depicting the danger that many black youth face in trying to honor their sexual identities. Despite trying to suppress his desires and simplify his family life, Niru meets the seductive Damien. The two begin a tentative and tender relationship, but this is not a triumphant novel about Niru's embracing his sexual identity. Instead, Iweala gives us a novel of keen insight into the mental and emotional turmoil that attends an adolescent's discovery of his sexuality. Unfortunately, the book seems to lose steam toward its conclusion. Niru's relationship with Damien is not explored as fully as it could be, while the implications of his parents' pressure aren't entirely untangled. The novel resolves with the sudden and disjunctive insertion of another character's perspective, sabotaging the development of Niru's own subjectivity.This is a deeply felt and perceptive novel that does not fulfill its promise.

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November 1, 2018

Niru laughs with his older brother about their father's "Nigeriatoma"-a word they made up to explain the "acute swelling of ego and pride" that turns Obi into a grandiose and aggressive man when he visits his native Nigeria. In the words of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in America, Obi "wears the mask" among the professional elite of Washington, DC. Modest and deferential, he and his wife Ify, a doctor, raise two sons who quietly excel. That is, until Niru, a high school senior, teetotaler, and track star headed for Harvard, admits that he's gay. While Ify surreptitiously schools herself online about parenting a gay child, Obi rushes Niru back to Nigeria for deprogramming by an Igbo priest. But Meredith-Niru's white female American best friend-helps Niru stay out of the closet, calling Obi's emergency Nigerian trip a "kidnapping." Iweala's (Beasts of No Nation) second novel is no less ambitious than his breakout debut. When someone drugs Meredith's drink at a graduation party, Niru must decide whether to risk his own safety to secure Meredith's. This work takes on not only the "beasts" of generational conflict and homophobia but also the hefty price of an interracial friendship in a violent American culture that proves more dangerous to Niru than his father's zipped-up rage. VERDICT A must-have.-Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY

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Starred review from December 1, 2017
When Harvard-bound, Washington, D.C., prep-school senior Niru's parents discover the gay-dating app his best friend, Meredith, downloaded for him on his phone, everything blows up in his face like he knew it would. Although his Nigerian parents are fiercely loving, they are but bound by their faith, his father especially so, to reject Niru's queerness and seek religious therapy for his condition, both locally and in their ancestral home. In his third book, Iwealaauthor of the multiple-award-winning novel Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Our Kind of People (2012), a nonfiction book about people living with AIDS in Nigeriadelivers with immediate poignancy Niru's struggles between rejecting his parents' constrictions and yearning for them; between embracing his sexuality and believing there's a cure for it, and that it should be cured at all. Through Niru's narration, which forms the bulk of the book, he, his parents, and his brother, who's away at college but a constant presence in Niru's thoughts, become full and realistically nuanced characters. A later shift in narration allows a different and perhaps more complete picture of Niru, which Iweala also handles elegantly. Portraying cross-generational and -cultural misunderstandings with anything but simplicity, Iweala tells an essential American story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)