What do you think?
Rate this book
Japa and Other Stories
These eight brutally beautiful stories are struck full of fragmented dreams, with highly developed thieves, misadventurers, and displaced characters all heaving through a human struggle to anchor themselves in a new home or sometimes a new reality. This book is about young Nigerian immigrants who bilocate, trek through the desert, become temporary Mormons, sneak through Russia, and yearn for new life in strange new territories that force them to confront what it means to search for a connection far from home.
Japa and Other Stories came out of a struggle Iheoma Nwachukwu faced when trying to orient himself in the United States of 2017 to 2021, when attitudes toward immigrants suddenly shifted. The Japa characters explored in this book are immigrants who have no plans to return to their home country—for voluntary reasons—although they retain a strong connection to home.
Japa and Other Stories came out of a struggle Iheoma Nwachukwu faced when trying to orient himself in the United States of 2017 to 2021, when attitudes toward immigrants suddenly shifted. The Japa characters explored in this book are immigrants who have no plans to return to their home country—for voluntary reasons—although they retain a strong connection to home.
- GenresShort Stories
190 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2024
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 10, 2025
I am proud to call Iheoma a friend after our time as colleagues at Scranton, so there’s no way I can be unbiased as I think about his work here. I’ll let it’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction do the bragging. This has won one of the most prestigious awards in the short story world, and I’m thrilled over that.
I will caution that the first few stories – the Japa stories – are challenging. Iheoma is not working as an interpreter of his Nigerian-American experience; he is not trying to present his world as exotic to us Americans who’ve rarely left our country. Instead, he is narrating in a voice of his own, one that owes something to the Nigerian diaspora community and some to the particulars of his experience. He is not spoon-feeding the rest of us, and that does make it difficult.
I had to look up “Japa,” and that helps as a guide to what’s going on here. From what I understand, it serves as Nigerian slang for the impulse of middle-class Nigerians (mostly men, I gather) to flee the country for opportunity. It also seems to mean ‘fleeing’ in more general terms, the impulse to run when things get difficult.
Both of those meanings adhere throughout this, especially in the first four explicitly Japa stories. (Each has Japa in the title.) In Japa Boys, for instance, we meet Ahamefula, a Nigerian immigrant (seemingly in the country illegally) in Mormon Utah. He and some of his fellows help make ends meet by bootlegging booze from the small city of Evanston, Wyoming, but everything is precarious for them. They are aware that they live as they do under a kind of sufferance. As some make implicitly clear to him, “Don’t fuck up Utah for our small Black population you underage barfly. Come on Behave.”
But, as the opening sentences make clear, Ahamefula doesn’t make the cultural shift easily. He misses family, and he wants a new start. He has, that is, an impulse for Japa in that other sense – he’d like to run if he can.
As a further example of how Iheoma does not make it easy on us, the second story, “Japa Beach Hotel,” features a protagonist who tells us up front that he has assumed a false name. He lives in Zanzibar, yet he tells us he once lived in the same Utah area as Ahamefula. Both name-drop the late novelist Wallace Stegner, and both refer to the bootleg jaunts to Evanston. So, is Ray-Ray Ahamefula? I suspect so, though we can’t be certain since he might be another of the small group from that community.
I hope to ask Iheoma how to interpret that, but my unaided impression is that we are in part supposed to see some of the price that the Japa experience exacts. Characters throughout these stories deal in false passports and assumed names, reinventing themselves to fit the new countries and contexts in which they find themselves. The two may be one and the same, or they may be different, but the ambiguity sends a powerful and troubling message: these men lose something of themselves as they move from place to place.
Before the collection is over, we meet a man who runs a human traffic operation where he brings in “gorillas” with the false promise that he has obtained a position on a professional soccer team for them, and then he gradually robs them through fees and rents before cutting them loose. We meet a Nigerian intent on escaping into Finland during an international soccer game. And we meet a young Nigerian man who, with his father dead, schemes to win back his estate from his stepmother who – pretending that he doesn’t exist – has agreed to marry a young woman and (with the help of secret neighbors) conceive a new heir for herself.
My favorite story for now – I hedge only because it’s the most accessible and therefore I am most confident that I have it in full – is “To You Americans.” In it, we have a frame narrative in which our narrator opens by talking directly to ‘us’ settled Americans. He tells us that he is telling the story of his father, a story that explains in part why he is in America himself.
That story stands as a nice underline for what I see as a central, implicit part of all these stories. These different men have all risked being erased in one way or another. Just as they have all done Japa – have fled in some fashion and become, to one degree or another, new people – they also have stories worth telling.
It is great to have an artist of Iheoma’s power to tell those stories. And, yeah, it’s a flex on my part to call him my friend.
I will caution that the first few stories – the Japa stories – are challenging. Iheoma is not working as an interpreter of his Nigerian-American experience; he is not trying to present his world as exotic to us Americans who’ve rarely left our country. Instead, he is narrating in a voice of his own, one that owes something to the Nigerian diaspora community and some to the particulars of his experience. He is not spoon-feeding the rest of us, and that does make it difficult.
I had to look up “Japa,” and that helps as a guide to what’s going on here. From what I understand, it serves as Nigerian slang for the impulse of middle-class Nigerians (mostly men, I gather) to flee the country for opportunity. It also seems to mean ‘fleeing’ in more general terms, the impulse to run when things get difficult.
Both of those meanings adhere throughout this, especially in the first four explicitly Japa stories. (Each has Japa in the title.) In Japa Boys, for instance, we meet Ahamefula, a Nigerian immigrant (seemingly in the country illegally) in Mormon Utah. He and some of his fellows help make ends meet by bootlegging booze from the small city of Evanston, Wyoming, but everything is precarious for them. They are aware that they live as they do under a kind of sufferance. As some make implicitly clear to him, “Don’t fuck up Utah for our small Black population you underage barfly. Come on Behave.”
But, as the opening sentences make clear, Ahamefula doesn’t make the cultural shift easily. He misses family, and he wants a new start. He has, that is, an impulse for Japa in that other sense – he’d like to run if he can.
As a further example of how Iheoma does not make it easy on us, the second story, “Japa Beach Hotel,” features a protagonist who tells us up front that he has assumed a false name. He lives in Zanzibar, yet he tells us he once lived in the same Utah area as Ahamefula. Both name-drop the late novelist Wallace Stegner, and both refer to the bootleg jaunts to Evanston. So, is Ray-Ray Ahamefula? I suspect so, though we can’t be certain since he might be another of the small group from that community.
I hope to ask Iheoma how to interpret that, but my unaided impression is that we are in part supposed to see some of the price that the Japa experience exacts. Characters throughout these stories deal in false passports and assumed names, reinventing themselves to fit the new countries and contexts in which they find themselves. The two may be one and the same, or they may be different, but the ambiguity sends a powerful and troubling message: these men lose something of themselves as they move from place to place.
Before the collection is over, we meet a man who runs a human traffic operation where he brings in “gorillas” with the false promise that he has obtained a position on a professional soccer team for them, and then he gradually robs them through fees and rents before cutting them loose. We meet a Nigerian intent on escaping into Finland during an international soccer game. And we meet a young Nigerian man who, with his father dead, schemes to win back his estate from his stepmother who – pretending that he doesn’t exist – has agreed to marry a young woman and (with the help of secret neighbors) conceive a new heir for herself.
My favorite story for now – I hedge only because it’s the most accessible and therefore I am most confident that I have it in full – is “To You Americans.” In it, we have a frame narrative in which our narrator opens by talking directly to ‘us’ settled Americans. He tells us that he is telling the story of his father, a story that explains in part why he is in America himself.
That story stands as a nice underline for what I see as a central, implicit part of all these stories. These different men have all risked being erased in one way or another. Just as they have all done Japa – have fled in some fashion and become, to one degree or another, new people – they also have stories worth telling.
It is great to have an artist of Iheoma’s power to tell those stories. And, yeah, it’s a flex on my part to call him my friend.
October 16, 2024
You know you’ve read a wonderful short story when, despite the fact that you’re only with the characters for a short time, you connect with them. This was my first time reading a collection of short stories like this, and with each one I finished, I actually felt the absence of the characters! I wanted more — but in a good way. But then I’d immediately connect with the characters in the next story, and the cycle continued.
I learned so much from this collection. I had never even heard the term “Japa” before, but was quickly able to understand and appreciate its presence throughout these 8 stories. I was particularly fascinated by the references to Mormonism, the character of Radio (the seer), the inside look into being a Nigerian in America, and of course all the allusions to Igbo customs.
Nwachukwu did an outstanding job creating characters with such depth and personality. I was able to picture all of the different settings; from Nigeria, to Salt Lake City, to Russia, to Boston Center Health. He did a fantastic job creating humor through the dialogue, while exploring such deep and important themes.
Very excited to read what’s next!
I learned so much from this collection. I had never even heard the term “Japa” before, but was quickly able to understand and appreciate its presence throughout these 8 stories. I was particularly fascinated by the references to Mormonism, the character of Radio (the seer), the inside look into being a Nigerian in America, and of course all the allusions to Igbo customs.
Nwachukwu did an outstanding job creating characters with such depth and personality. I was able to picture all of the different settings; from Nigeria, to Salt Lake City, to Russia, to Boston Center Health. He did a fantastic job creating humor through the dialogue, while exploring such deep and important themes.
Very excited to read what’s next!
May 13, 2025
In *Japa and Other Stories*, Iheoma Nwachukwu presents an original collection that captures the energy, dislocation, and defiance of the immigrant experience. Through eight human tales, Nwachukwu invites readers into the hearts of young Nigerian immigrants caught in transit geographically, emotionally, spiritually, and culturally. These stories offer portraits of individuals searching for belonging in worlds that often reject them.
From desert crossings and Russian backdoors to religious conversions and awkward job interviews, each story immerses the reader in moments of friction between past and future, memory and reinvention, and home and exile. These are not stories of pity or triumph; they touch on the gradual process of survival, reinvention, and quiet resilience. This collection also acts as a subtle form of resistance, reminding us that immigration is never a simple story and that, for many, “home” is not merely a place, but a memory in motion.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://shows.acast.com/moms-dont-hav...
From desert crossings and Russian backdoors to religious conversions and awkward job interviews, each story immerses the reader in moments of friction between past and future, memory and reinvention, and home and exile. These are not stories of pity or triumph; they touch on the gradual process of survival, reinvention, and quiet resilience. This collection also acts as a subtle form of resistance, reminding us that immigration is never a simple story and that, for many, “home” is not merely a place, but a memory in motion.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://shows.acast.com/moms-dont-hav...
July 8, 2025
At a lecture I attended earlier this year, Iheoma Nwachukwu said that he feels African writers writing for western audiences have a duty to write didactically. And that’s a theme that I definitely found to be present in Japa and Other Stories.
There are plenty of moral lessons the book teaches but beyond even that, it shows just how different life can be on the other side of the world. And, in that way, it is one of more enlightening books I’ve read this year.
But really: what more do I need to say other than it won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction? So if you’re a fan of literary fiction, of short stories or of interesting characters and situations—specifically those that are uncommon to many westerners—it’s worth the read.
There are plenty of moral lessons the book teaches but beyond even that, it shows just how different life can be on the other side of the world. And, in that way, it is one of more enlightening books I’ve read this year.
But really: what more do I need to say other than it won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction? So if you’re a fan of literary fiction, of short stories or of interesting characters and situations—specifically those that are uncommon to many westerners—it’s worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews