What Will My Mother Say

A Nigerian-born college English professor in California, Ugwu-Oju offers an intriguing if overlong portrait of an unusual life and culture. Despite her accomplishments after six years of American higher education, the author returned to find that her value, in eastern Nigerian Ibo culture, would be measured only by the husband she would wed and by the male child she should bear. Ugwu-Oju then proceeds chronologically with a lengthy account of her mother, who had the strength to carve some independent identity, even giving the author a Celtic Irish first name. The author's energetic childhood was interrupted by the Nigeria-Biafra war. Thanks to an older brother, she moved to the U.S., where she gained both a feminist identity and a broader awareness of herself as black. Even though she felt her selfhood cramped when she went home, she accepted an arranged marriage--love in her culture being ``synonymous with duty.'' With her family now in the U.S., Ugwu-Oju worries about installing both Ibo and American values in her own daughter. Author tour. (Oct.)