Bibliograph

News from home, stories, Sefi Atta

Type

Label

News from home, stories, Sefi Atta

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

News from home

Oclc number

472791782

Responsibility statement

Sefi Atta

Sub title

stories

Summary

Atta lives in the U. S., and this powerful collection is about the search for home. In the irreverent title story, a young Nigerian gets a job as a nanny for a New Jersey family; she sneers at their African decor, but what dazzles her is the mall (scented toilet paper!). When Americans ask her where shes from, she ends up saying Africa; they dont know Nigeria. As gentle as it is horrifying, Last Trip is about a courier from Lagos who boards a plane for London with a half-million dollars worth of heroin in her stomach; her commission will help care for her disabled son. In Twilight Trek, illegals are on a modern biblical exodus across the blazing Sahara desert; the wry narrator is desperate (Death I could live with), even as he confronts horrific global prejudice (foreign embassies dont grant Africans like us visas).

Classification