Unexpected Joy at Dawn

Résumé du livre

Unexpected Joy at Dawn received a commendation in the Best First Book Prize, Africa Region, of the Commonwealth Writers Prize "Fifteen years ago," Mama said, starting her story, "I came to Lagos from Ghana. I came to Nigeria because I was considered a alien in that country. The government of Ghana passed a law asking all aliens without resident permits to regularize their stay in the country. You see, my great, great grandparents had migrated to Ghana several years before, and regarded Ghana as their home ... as for the reason, possibly it was because the opposition party then had hyped to monstrous heights that aliens was ruining the country; or the government of the time...blamed their failure to do things right on us 'alien' scapegoats. ... It was difficult to start life all over again, and even more difficult to learn that we were unwanted in a country we had come to regard as our own." This story of migration, identities, and lives undermined by cynical and xenophobic politics pushed to their logical and terrible conclusion by the Ghanaian orders of "alien compliance" issued in 1970-1971, which were designed to force all non-ethnic Ghananians, so-called illegal immigrants, to return to their--so stipulated--"homes." The novel touches on concerns of deeper relevance to the politics of race and migration in the twenty-first century.