Oindrila Mukherjee
In Olufunke Grace Bankole’s debut novel, each year as soon as the visa lottery for the US opens, Nigerians of all ages rush to internet cafés to submit their applications. One of the lottery winners is Amina, who has had a dream since she was a young girl: “I closed my eyes and saw an America I could reach.” This longing seems ironic in these times when the American Dream for immigrants is particularly fragile. It is a longing born not out of a life of poverty, as is often depicted in stereotypical representations of developing countries, but of a desire to explore other possibilities, to live a life different from her mother’s, to carve out a destiny of one’s own.