Speak No Evil Summary
Iweala, Uzodinma

Speak No Evil Overview

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala is a coming-of-age novel that chronicles the senior year of Niru Ikemadu as he comes to terms with what it means to be the child of immigrants and whether he can reconcile his faith with being gay. Told in the voices of two narrators, Niru and his white friend Meredith, the narrative refuses a simplistic representation of the current state of American culture and what it means to come of age in such a culture. Iweala's novel also grapples with important current issues such as violence against of LGBQT youth, police shootings of unarmed black men, and the difficulty of speaking across the divides of race and gender.