A review by translatedgems
This Hostel Life by Melatu Uche Okorie
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
This Hostel Life is a collection on the short side with only three stories, but it packed a punch. Melatu Uche Okorie gives us a glimpse of life in a direct provision hostel while discussing racism and discrimination asylum seekers and black Africans face in Ireland. I would say this is a must-read and urge you to read it.
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"Back home, rainfall meant other things to you rather than discomfort. It meant that the flat you shared with your mother’s sister and her husband and your three cousins would not be stuffy. It meant that you wouldn’t go to the well to fill the jelly-cans in the flat with water. It meant that there would be corn sellers lined up along your street selling your favourite fresh roast corn the next morning."
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"It was Aunty Muna who had told you not long after you arrived that the people in the Western world liked Africans the way you enjoyed animals in a zoo; you could visit them, feed them, play with them, but they must not be allowed outside their environment."
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"They asked you where you learnt to speak English so well and if it were true Africans lived in trees and how they could never live in a hot country because they would melt. You muttered an empty response, desperate not to show your real emotions, but the sadness would still come when you got home and you would cry into your pillow."
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"Back home, rainfall meant other things to you rather than discomfort. It meant that the flat you shared with your mother’s sister and her husband and your three cousins would not be stuffy. It meant that you wouldn’t go to the well to fill the jelly-cans in the flat with water. It meant that there would be corn sellers lined up along your street selling your favourite fresh roast corn the next morning."
•
"It was Aunty Muna who had told you not long after you arrived that the people in the Western world liked Africans the way you enjoyed animals in a zoo; you could visit them, feed them, play with them, but they must not be allowed outside their environment."
•
"They asked you where you learnt to speak English so well and if it were true Africans lived in trees and how they could never live in a hot country because they would melt. You muttered an empty response, desperate not to show your real emotions, but the sadness would still come when you got home and you would cry into your pillow."
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