This turning point in life Darlings also the novel is divided into two parts. At the beginning we see them with their comrades roam through the area, stealing guavas and other mischief, and look through children's eyes to a country that has been ruined by corruption and violence. Nothing works, poverty, alcohol, AIDS and violence characterize the everyday, and the children are more or less left to themselves: The school is because the teachers are cut down across the border, like most of the fathers also, and the mothers have better things to do than to deal with their offspring.
And then Darling is suddenly in their Promised Land, looks through the window at the bleak, cryogenic Detroit, and nothing is quite as she had dreamed. Now she does have enough to eat, but they must learn that immigrants who have to penetrate in legal gray areas that have not an easy life. And otherwise America offers numerous pitfalls on a young girl can trip from Africa.
The first part is a little work of art. The description of horror, from a little child, who manages quite well to establish themselves in this view of life is extraordinary. Even the fact that the chapters hardly related, but rather represent a kind of checklist of evil, which has to deal Darling, is not a problem if one accepts that there is no action in the traditional sense.
The second part has even his strong points fall, in my eyes but something from. Maybe that's because neither one America's problems and its immigrants are quite alien even the fact that young people like to beat pubescent times over the traces. To that we, that the book has no real conclusion, but just stops.
A comparison with "Ghana Must Go" by taiye selasi and "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes to mind, because they both have indeed a very similar African-American setting. However, they are written from the perspective of educated, wealthy adults, have quite different problems and address these very different, and who speak a different language than the street smart Darling, making a comparison impossible. Worth reading they are all three.
