This read more like autobiography than fiction and I wish the author had categorized it as that. I find immigrants stories interesting. In the US, all of us come from immigrants. I thoroughly enjoyed this and recommend it.

I loved Tope's book. It resonated with me on a very emotional level. I followed Tunde's adventure and didn't want them to end. Wonderful job.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
I thought this was an interesting and enjoyable story.
I would definitely read another book by this author.

I’m not in favor of long books, but this one felt like it needed to be longer and more developed. Periods of Tunde’s life were passed over as the book skipped from episode to episode. It wasn’t the image of an African immigrant family that I was expecting. There was sadness, but no grit. I kept waiting for something that never came. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

In A Particular Kind of Black Man, Tope Folarin uses the narrator's unreliable memory as a device to create the same sense of confusion & lack of grounding/foundation in the reader. This dips a toe into surrealist fiction without clearly diving in, which keeps this an enjoyable read. I read this late at night, which made the experience feel even more unmoored, because of the way time seems interminable very early in the morning.

The character remixes lyrics, TV jingles, and his memory (actual memories? fantasy memories?) to try to create a sense of identity and home. His mother, though absent or most of the book, is present in that he's always looking for the sense of home she created when he was young.

If you enjoy books about finding one's identity, especially ones with an unreliable narrator, you'll like this book.

*I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.*

Tope Folarin, who was born to Nigerian immigrants in Utah, has written his first novel, about the son of Nigerian immigrants who lived in Utah. A Particular Kind of Black Man is a novel, but even the most cursory look at Tope Folarin's bio tells you that there must be a strong streak of autobiography in the book. It reads like a memoir of Tope's childhood, through the character of Tunde Akinola.



Tunde and his family are the only black family in a small Utah town. It's a strange place for a Nigerian family to end up, and Tunde struggles with being so different from everyone else. He is hopeful that a move to Texas will bring him into contact with other black kids, but he is still the "other" as an immigrant. Even in college, on a campus where virtually everyone is black, he continues to struggle to find his place and identity.



Folarin has a strong literary voice. The realism is certainly expected, given the (apparently) autobiographical content. But Folarin adds some elements that, to me, distracted from the narrative. He has a recurring theme where he questions whether he is remembering things as they were, or as he hoped they would be. I thought he might be taking the story in a sci-fi, parallel universe, sliding doors sort of direction, but, no, it was just an insecure guy. Also, at times he drifted in the second person narrative while he's talking about himself. Most of the book is told in the first person, but at times he starts that second person memoir style, which I abhor.



This is a memoir with heart, and captures the half-way existence of immigrants, who feel not wholly American, and not wholly Nigerian (or whatever their home country is). But the lack of drama and direction, along with the weird two-reality sidelines and the second person narrative, made this a just OK memoir/novel to me.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

A PARTICULAR KIND OF BLACK MAN by Tope Folarin is a distinctive reading experience. Although it is possible to read this debut work in a few hours, Folarin raises life issues and creates characters who will haunt his readers for much longer. The story is told by Tunde Akinola, born in 1981 to parents who had immigrated from Nigeria due to a college scholarship for his father. The family (including a two years younger brother, Tayo) live in Utah for several years, but, despite optimism and effort, his father never capitalizes on the opportunity. The reader must ponder to what extent that is due to some basic character flaw and/or the challenging circumstance of being one of the few black men in the area. It is all too much for Tunde's mother who returns to Nigeria, leaving Tunde with deep-seated feelings of abandonment. The many vignettes presented here range from 1987 to 2004, paralleling Tunde's time at middle school, high school, and college; they are interspersed with transatlantic telephones calls to his grandmother in Nigeria. The writing feels so immediate and intimate that the reader cannot help but appreciate and relate to Tunde's struggle for a sense of identity and belonging. Tope Folarin, a Rhodes Scholar and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, is most definitely a writer to watch.

A PARTICULAR KIND OF BLACK MAN received a starred review from Booklist and is on Time magazine's list of "32 Books You Need to Read this Summer."

A deceptively simple, rather affecting tale of growing up African American, caught between cultures and further afflicted by a mentally ill mother. The novel reads transparently, seems autobiographical, but then grows wings as its narrator leaves home and begins to confuse reality and imagination. It’s a short book but a potent one, from an interesting writer.

An interesting debut that is not only a coming of age story but also the tale of a young man looking for himself. Tunde's father brought his family to the US from Nigeria in hopes of a better life and without thinking about it at any length, settled them in Utah where they had no tether- no community that looked like them or with similar experiences. HIs mother's mental illness is exacerbated and ultimately, after some harrowing incidents, she returns to Nigeria. His father also makes a trip home but he returns with a new wife, compounding Tunde's problems. The family moves around the US but things never really get better. This sags a bit toward the end but it's a slim volume. Folarin has tackled many issues- the immigrant experience, racism, mental illness, the challenges of being a young man. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

**********3.5 Stars**********

I'll admit this began as a page-turner but, somewhere around the halfway mark--when it became clear there was some confusion developing within the core of the main character (which I won't go into detail, due to its importance)--I temporarily lost interest as it became difficult to know what was important.

Tunde painfully longs to understand who he is, and where he fits, in a world he's inherited only by virtue of birth.

His parents, Nigerian-born, arrived in Utah with hopes of attaining the American dream of success and great fortune. Tunde's father eventually comes to the realization that whatever "dream" he's assumed was his wasn't actually meant for him. This realization leads to disillusionment for his wife-- which manifests itself as a darkness that breaks her psychologically--and she decides to escape the disappointment, along with her children, and return home.

Tunde's father eventually finds his wife and children holed up at a women's shelter. However, once it becomes clear his wife is no longer fit to raise their children, due to the mental issues exacerbated by her overall sadness, he brings the boys home.

His wife, too emotionally broken and physically tired to continue to live in a place where their Blackness is viewed as a negative, goes back to Nigeria, leaving Tunde and his younger brother alone with their father.

What follows from there is Tunde's attempt to understand how to live in a world where different women are left to fill the role his mother was unable to play. In time, and with knowledge of how unforgiving America can be to Blackness (no matter its origin), his father attempts to vicariously live the American dream through his sons: pushing them towards education and assimilation.

Hoping the former will open the door, to the success he never had, while the latter will ensure they're allowed to remain.

Tope Folarin weaves a captivating story of one man's search for acceptance in a world where his Blackness is considered a) a novelty, b) a crime, or c) an inconvenience. Tunde is a complex character where each layer uncovered only leads to more discussion.

Tunde constantly feels he doesn't belong, no matter how hard he tries-- a feeling that phone conversations, with the Nigerian grandmother he's never met, only serves to complicate-- and since his father has seemingly abandoned the idea of fostering familial connections to Nigeria, in favor of encouraging his sons to focus on American success, Tunde's turmoil over this genealogical unmooring are palpable; it's clear that much of the disconnect is about the lost relationship with his mother.

It was painful to see him search for maternal connection in every woman he met.

Any woman who thought him worthy of more than a passing glance.

While the relationship with his father was consistent, it was built upon Tunde's ability to be "a particular kind of Black man", which only added to the deficiency he felt within himself.

How can you be any kind of man when you're uncertain of the origins of that man? How can you understand who you are if a whole part of yourself is left unseen and unheard (i.e. his mother's sudden painful exit)?

By the end, Tunde begins to understand how important the answering of some of the lingering questions will be to his healing--via the coaxing of a new love--but the abruptness of that part of the journey, via an ending which felt, at best rushed left me unsatisfied; to have traveled so far with him, only to see the journey end in such a frustrating manner, was what decreased the rating for me, personally.

It's understood that a neat and tidy finish was not a probability because there was so much to sort out but there was too much left unresolved: conversations not had, relationships left unresolved, etc.

Where exactly could he go from where Folarin chose to end it?

The void left by the sudden ending didn't highlight the uncertainty of life, if that was the author's intention, rather it made it clear Folarin was more comfortable with the reader figuring it out than finding a way to do so himself--this reader felt Tunde deserved better than whatever I could imagine.

Overall, a strong offering, and one I am certain will find it's way into the hearts of many but one which fell short for me due to the way the author chose to bring things to a close.

Reads like a memoir but it’s not.

A Particular Kind of Black Man by Tope Folarin is a coming of age story that follows Tunde Akinola and his family who migrate from Nigeria to United States in the 80’s. The eldest of two, Tunde lives with his family in a small town in Northern Utah. His father struggles to hold down a job and his mother soon has a mental break. She physically abuses Tunde and on several occasion attempts suicide.

With no other family to help her Tunde’s mother returns to Nigeria and his father returns with a
new wife and her two sons. As the story unfolds, throughout his child and adulthood Tunde continues to seek out a connection to his mother, his homeland of Nigeria and his current home, America.

I’ll be honest I didn’t read the synopsis, I went in the book based on the title & cover and I wasn’t disappointed. I am a child of immigrants, so I know first hand what’s it like to live in an area where your kinky hair, brown skin and accent aren’t accepted from the black or white side. The first half of the book will pull you in, but as you get towards the middle/end it fizzles out a bit. For a debut Folarin did an amazing job, I honestly thought this was a memoir.


Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for the digital galley in exchange for my honest review.
4 out of 5 stars.

The stark voice of a young man who desires for a feeling of racial integrity after as his world and family is stripped away and America remains, staring directly at him.

As the son of a Nigerian immigrant, Tunde experiences the shockwaves of frustration and disappointment of the American Dream. His father found his way to study at a college in Utah and brought his young wife with him. The promise of a grand start in a new country, yet the reality of the racist barricades hinder any sort of upward mobility. A string of dead-end jobs and a failed marriage turns his father parts bitter and resentful. This makes him knowledgeable of the proper way to achieve success: to become "a particular kind of black man."

The hallmark of this work is the creative manner in which Folarin tells the story. He breaks the novel up into sections by switching Tunde's perspective. The immediate 1st person as he experiences an abusive period in his youth to the directive 2nd person that is used to speak to his naive younger self. And finally the 3rd person when he finds himself removed emotionally from circumstances that are out of his control. These shifts are not aggravating and they don't trip up the reader at all, but it's feels like a natural representation of his evolution of growth.

Each step in his education, each move around the United States... gets Tunde closer to that turning point. The final expression of who is supposed to be. Is it the silent, yet malleable black man, the educated, strong, compassionate man, or the Nigerian-American who is biding his time in America until he is able to go back home? It may just be a combination of all three. At what point will the demand for confusing code-switching stop for this young man?

Overall, A Particular Kind of Black Man is a powerful reading experience that creates insight into the internal and external racial tensions of growing up as the son of African immigrants. 

4.5 out of 5 stars.

When the very hard decision is made to move to America in search of a better life, it is the hope of immigrants that their children will benefit from such an uprooting by assimilating into the new environment. Tunde's father made such a decision before he was even born, not realizing how wrong the decision to move to a small town in Utah would be for the native Nigerian and his increasingly fragile wife. Tunde does not even realize how different he and his family are until he goes to kindergarten, as the family lived hermetically, so when other kids rubbed his skin raw trying to get the color out, he really didn't understand. Thus began his life of search for identity, and increasingly, for memories of his past. Tope Folarin, a Rhodes Scholar and writer, has deemed this to be a novel, but he has mined his own life's journey for inspiration. From the departure of his Beatles-loving mother, the struggles of his father to provide for the family, through the experience of trying to win the love of a homesick stepmother and her sons, this sensitive man with the soul of a poet shares a story that rings with heartbreak and hope and ultimate redemption.

Thank you @simon and @netgalley for the digital galley in exchange for my honest review,

Before I re-read the synopsis I thought this story was the author's memoir. It isn't. I'm sure a good amount of information in this book was inspired by SOMEONE'S real-life coming of age tale. The details were so specific and the events so raw in Mr. Folarin's book that the reader cannot discern the shift between fiction and nonfiction. That's the work of an amazing author, in my opinion.

The book follows a young Nigerian American child named Tunde as he came of age first in Utah with his family and then in other cities in the US such as Dallas and Atlanta. In THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, Malcolm ended up at Mecca which was a major turning point in his life. On the home videos that were played at Nipsey Hussle's funeral, it showed him going back to Eritrea as a teen. Tunde ends up making the same type of pilgrimage during his college years to his native Nigeria towards the end of this book and it really brings the story to a whole.

I was born in the United States and I can not directly relate to the experience a young child, like Tunde, from a whole different continent, goes through when traveling from Africa to America for more opportunity. The author highlighted these very events amongst Tunde's parents during this time and was so careful to present the reader with the honest truth no matter how uncomfortable it might make the reader.

A Particular Kind of Black Man is an apt title for this novel. Tunde, the protagonist, is the oldest son of two Nigerian parents who have immigrated to Utah. The mother suffers from mental illness and is violent and unpredictable and the father switches jobs frequently and is just barely able to keep the family afloat.

This debut is sensational and I loved every page, and read it In onesitting. It’s searing,and honest, and is an unflinching look at being an immigrant in America. This deserves to be on every list and the winner of prizes. I’m going to tell everyone.

I read about 10% of this and then set it aside. The characters just didn't hold my attention. I really wanted to like it, but I didn't.

It wasn’t just the striking cover that attracted me. I’ve always liked immigration stories. Something about trading in one world for another, driven by pure ambitions, aspirations and desperations, hoping against all odds, striving to survive, to fit in, to prosper…I mean, that makes for some great stories. And this is one such story told by a young man who grew up in a Nigerian family in Utah of all places and as such Tunde becomes a person without a clearly defined character. Driven by his father to become the eponymous person, the kind of black man accepted and appreciated by a largely white society and yet at odds with his Nigerian legacy, Tunde grows up a man torn and this duality invades even his very memory until at the urging of his girlfriend he finally completes a journey to sort of unify all the aspects of his person. This was a compelling story. I especially enjoyed the more straightforward narrative of Tunde’s childhood. When it gets into adulthood, the author utilized some more experimental storytelling, both conceptually and narratively, and it made for an interesting, but not equally compelling read. Something about the stylistic change up made the book seem disjointed in a way. Maybe it’s because it’s been written over such a long time or maybe because of its autobiographical nature. Actually, the author’s bio doesn’t provide enough to speculate on the latter and one obviously mustn’t think one Nigerian American experience is very much like another. Like most kids, Tunde is thoroughly and mostly inadvertently mostly screwed over by his parents…his mother fails to adjust to her new country and goes violently insane, his father’s lack of any forethought or research lands then as the only black family for miles around time and time again as he hops from career to career, barely getting by. So Tunde grows up with great many challenges and yet acquits himself admirably, the book ends with him well on his way to becoming a kind of black man he can be proud of. Engaging, smart (albeit slightly uneven) story about race, memory and a complicated concept of self. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.