A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life.
Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school.
Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright.
But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents.
No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift.
Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him.
As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine.
My Review of Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
This book is a beautiful, heart wrenching, coming of age story of a Nigerian boy, Niru, living in the U. S., who is struggling to accept his sexual identity.
Niru is a quiet boy, who is almost suffocated with pressure from within him and without, because there is always a cause of worry that disrupts his peace and makes him feel less of himself.
And it doesn't help that his parents are strict disciplinarians who would rather things go their way, than considering what the poor boy truly feels.
All they want for him is to be like OJ, their smart, brilliant, handsome and everything-a-source-of pride-would-look-like first son.
Niru is constantly in a battle with himself, with the world, trying so hard to fit into OJ's shoes, to be more OJ like OJ.
Because being OJ means you're loved, accepted, cherished. But being Niru leaves you dejected and permanently remaining that dumbbell of a son.
As a student in Washington DC, he also faces the racial discrimination that comes with being an African in an American school, and he has no friends except for Meredith.
Everything changes when he comes out to Meredith.
From his parents finding out he is gay, to him going for deliverance sessions, to things falling more apart, to him meeting Damien, a guy he falls in love with, to the relationship with his parents straining to its elastic limit.
All Niru wants is to be himself. To be loved, to be acknowledged, to be appreciated.
To be loved just because he is Niru and not OJ, and can never be OJ. He wants to be talked to with respect, like he matters.
This book shreds my heart in ways I cannot explain, because I don't expect what happens at the end to happen.
I feel for Niru, for his Harvard dream, for everything he wishes to be, that he is not, and will never be.
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