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• Charles Nwadigwe Ph.D.

  Gladys Akunna’s "Please, Adopt Me, America!" is an autobiographical explosion of spontaneous and bottled-up emotions. Akunna leads us on a journey through a maze of historical and psychological encounters and finally berthed at Uncle Sam’s harbor. Indeed, the journey motif reverberates through the composition with powerful allusions to the poet’s traditional Igbo name, Ijeoma—a name laced with metaphorical semiology. On the one hand, Ijeoma wishes the traveler a safe trip; conversely, it celebrates a triumphal arrival. Having taken ‘flight’ from the vicissitudes and frustrations of the motherland and landed in the New World, the poet is submerged in a sea of contradictory emotions and ambivalent imageries: relief and nostalgia, jubilant expectation, and cautious optimism. But Akunna’s plea for adoption by Uncle Sam is not from the beggarly position of an undocumented economic migrant or embattled refugee. The poet demands adoption with a sense of entitlement because the labors of her forefathers who survived the Middle Passage turned the wheels that built America. Hence, like Lenrie Peters in his popular poem, "We Have Come Home," Akunna has also “come home," either as a prodigal returnee or reincarnate of Dunbar Creek heroes of Igbo Landing. Review Comments By Charles Nwadigwe, Ph.D. Professor of Cultural Aesthetics and Entertainment Technology

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