What is the language used in the text

Ndibe describes himself as having been "a consummate overwriter, a splurger on sentences" at the time that he enters the creative writing program at UMass (123). It is clear that in his memoir, he has refined his style to be much more direct, but as a writer, he remains deeply rooted in a Nigerian tradition of using English "not so much to communicate as to impress, to perform their learning" (141). Ndibe combines a conversational tone with words that are usually reserved for academic or tecnical discourse, such as, on the very first page, "succulent," "castigate," "stalwart," "catechism," and "chassis" (1).

In addition to displaying Ndibe's learning, the use of such words confers nobility on the subject he is describing, which is, in this case, his family. The word "catechism," which originally referred to the Church's standardized instruction of believers, connotes the kind of institutionalized learning that, in colonial times, was regarded as the preserve of White power. Through colonialist eyes, Africans cannot produce such learning because they have no cultural achievements. By using words like "catechism" to describe lessons from his parents, Ndibe suggests that what he learned from them is just as important as British learning.

Ndibe's language is also notable for frequent use of humor and rhetorical questions to address the discrimination he faces in the United States in a generous and forgiving manner. When faced with the way that Americans think of Africans as primitives, Ndibe does not point out their ignorance directly. When Chris implies this, Ndibe responds with a joke. When the woman in the bar in Hartford tells him she would never leave Africa because she loves jungles, he quips, "Then I'd suggest you move to Vermont" (101). He saves his consternation that "Africa remains in the imagination of some Americans a vortex of disease, an area of vestigial darkness and residual mystery," for later (102).