6 African Literature books that perfectly capture the immigrant/refugee experience

zainab quadri

September 10, 2015 5:59 PM

These African authors share beautiful and real stories that all immigrants/refugees can relate to.

These African authors share beautiful and real stories that all immigrants/refugees can relate to. These awesome fiction and non-fiction books speaks volume about staying afloat in a system that is hostile and unwelcoming.

Read: Ten hot books Africans should read this month

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie (2013)

This is a story about a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the U.S. from Nigeria, leaving her college boyfriend behind, with the hope of a better education and ultimately, a good life. Despite her academic success, she is faced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time.

2. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (1994)

This novel begins as an essay of a young Sophie Caco being sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York at age 12, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There, she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti, to the women who first reared her.

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3. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (2007)

17 years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago.

4. The Refugee boy by Benjamin Zephaniah (2001)

The Refugee boy is a teen novel written about Alem Kelo, a 14-year-old refugee from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Poor Alem became a refugee when his father abandon him in London, England, under the pretext of a holiday to celebrate his fourteenth birthday. He leaves him at the hotel alone in a country with no one to care for him and take care of him.

This book delivers a "universal" message that appeals far beyond those who may relate to Alem or refugees.

See: 10 books by African women everyone should read

5. The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia (2008)

Naser is a young African immigrant who works the carwash in downtown Jeddah. Naser learns to despise and fear the hate-mongering local imam, merciless religious police and powerful men who lust after boys with impunity. When a young woman drops a love letter at his feet, he’s quickly smitten.

6. On Black Sister’s Street by Chika Unigwe (2007)

On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe — and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.

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