‘The Tiny Things Are Heavier’ follows a younger lady caught between worlds : NPR

There is a singular pleasure in studying immigrant novels that interrogate the thought of house, particularly when explored as an ache or reminiscence one returns to and remakes to go well with wishes. Migration, displacement, and the seek for a spot to belong are sometimes the soul of those tales, particularly when written with care and complexity.

With her debut novel The Tiny Things Are Heavier, Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo takes her place among the many writers who’ve executed it properly.

At the middle of this story is Sommy, a Nigerian graduate pupil who has simply arrived in Iowa, carrying the guilt of leaving her brother Mezie behind within the aftermath of his suicide try. She is homesick, disoriented, and straddling two geographies with a deepening sense of dislocation. She develops a complicated bond together with her Nigerian roommate, Bayo, and begins a romance with Bryan, a biracial American man estranged from his Nigerian father. Sommy’s relationship with Bayo materializes as she clings to the familiarity of house, particularly as her brother refuses to speak together with her when she tries repeatedly to succeed in out to him. She sees plenty of her brother’s ambition in Bayo as he eagerly consumes all the things America has to supply, whereas Sommy appears to flail aimlessly. Sommy, Bayo, and Bryan’s relationships grow to be a framework by means of which the novel explores race, grief, and the fragility of household and intimacy. Their interactions are sometimes rooted in longing, estrangement, and cultural rigidity.

Okonkwo’s prose is measured and deliberate, echoing the rhythmical storytelling model of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The comparability is sort of inconceivable to disregard within the early chapters, the place the tone, narrative restraint, and contemplative interiority really feel unmistakably Adichie-esque. But because the story deepens, Okonkwo’s voice begins to claim itself in her personal model of being very managed, observant, and emotionally exact.

One of the novel’s strengths lies in its portrayal of how Black immigrants encounter race anew in America. Sommy’s arrival within the nation is marked not by pleasure, however by rupture: A racial encounter with a white lady and her youngster that immediately marks her as “other.” It’s a scene that pulls a line within the sand between her romanticized concepts of America and the nation’s extra jarring realities. Sommy’s notion of sophistication, race, and selfhood is additional upended by probably the most informal exchanges, like when a white classmate tried to “translate” Sommy’s argument in one among their lessons. “Glad that someone here speaks African,” Sommy snaps on the brunette, wishing that she reacted that strategy to the white mom who scolded as properly. By then, Sommy is disillusioned and sees virtually each interplay she has with one other race as a attainable fight area, as many Americans do. These moments accumulate like time weights, dragging her farther from the understanding she as soon as had about her and the world.

Her relationship with Bryan finally turns into the crux of the narrative. Bryan, regardless of being biracial, is American in posture and perspective, steeped in a privileged model of Black identification that usually feels inaccessible to Sommy. He can’t converse her language, actually and metaphorically, and his understanding of Nigeria is filtered by means of distance and avoidance. He would not perceive her household ties and sees her relationship, or lack thereof, with them in shades of Black or white. Bryan additionally has his points with being acknowledged as a Black man in America. Their dynamics are sophisticated, tender at occasions, however by no means fairly balanced. Sommy is caught between desirous to belong, even to Bryan, and resenting what that belonging would possibly require her to sacrifice.

Sommy finally convinces Bryan to go to Nigeria to seek for his father and discover his personal sense of belonging. This journey, the second a part of the novel, is the place the variations in Black tradition are laid naked — American vs. Nigerian — and the place Sommy begins to note simply how a lot America has subtly affect her mind-set: “Had Mezie become one of the Africans who referred to Africa as though it were a country? Or had she become one of those people who read power imbalances in every interaction?”

Okonkwo’s characters are daring, generally even theatrical of their makes an attempt to adapt — Sommy attempting to slot in in school, Bryan trying to shed his privileged background to appear extra “Black.” Bayo is particularly fascinating on this regard. He is sociable, performative, seemingly relaxed in white areas, but in addition deeply insecure, continuously searching for validation. Through him, Okonkwo explores the subtler humiliations of assimilation, such because the small methods one should contort oneself to suit into a rustic that hardly ever makes room for distinction.

While The Tiny Things Are Heavier would not push the style in radically new instructions, it affords an intimate, resonant portrayal of a younger lady caught between two worlds she desperately needs to be part of. The “tiny things” of the title aren’t merely metaphorical, they’re the unstated tensions, cultural misunderstandings, emotional burdens, and quiet betrayals that accrue in each immigrant story. Okonkwo writes with a relaxed confidence, the place she refuses to hurry her revelations. And by the top of the novel, we’re reminded that what weighs us down most is not at all times the trauma we left behind, however the identities we attempt to construct or abandon within the identify of survival.