To me, the best (read: most honest) part of this book comes after Jende abandons (or maybe re-defines) his hope of achieving the American Dream, which he always clung to in a way that seemed a bit ignorant for a grown man who would have seen the rare successes and countless struggles of many immigrants just like him.

However, this switch is his thinking comes at the end of the novel, and never is given enough time. I think a novel with more about what happens when his family returns to Cameroon would've been all the more capable of really showing what his family gained back home by giving up everything they had supposedly worked to achieve abroad, which surprisingly (and fortunately) becomes the heart of this story.