Chicken Hero

Chicken Hero by Uyi Osifo begins with young Uyi (called Zack in what is otherwise an autobiography) playing with his siblings, half-siblings, cousins and neighborhood kids in Nigeria. The shifting political situation is in the background, in a way that’s appropriate for the narrator’s age, but almost guaranteed to arouse the reader’s curiosity for more. How did the naira drop so fast? Which jobs were safe, and which were risky? I mostly know about Nigeria through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah, so I was excited to learn more.

Mostly, this book is a collection of vignettes about everyday life. The focus isn’t so much on a typical narrative arc, just on showing these typical days and the usual activities in the family. There’s a slightly gross part about the preparation of bush meat. My students often talk about freshly hunted or freshly killed meat in their home countries, usually comparing American refrigerated, packaged meat unfavorably. I understand students missing their home food, but I could barely handle the Xinjiang halal butchers, let alone the meat side of a Chinese wet market…

Zack wins the Green Card lottery, and is able to come to the US. He compares the American education system favorably to the Nigerian one, and talks about how much he enjoyed college in the US. Again, he’s focused on showing every day moments, not on connecting the stories into a large narrative, but when “Zack” meets his future wife, you can see how his childhood and his parents’ marriage affected him.

This book is an interesting look at growing up in Nigeria.