Robert Ness, Chair of Africana Studies, Dickinson College, USA

“Imitation Whiteman is a frequently comic though far from cheerful story of the fitful and feckless pursuit of ‘big man’ status by Martin Tebi. Martin is a book-proud young man…. The author, Vivian Yenika, is a welcome voice, since we have little writing in English by Cameroonian women. She describes Martin’s advancement from field foreman to wound-dresser and sick-attendant in the company hospital, his unwed domestic complications with two sisters on whom he has fathered a child, his aspiration to master the ‘White man’ arts of grammar and ballroom dancing, indeed his yearnings to clear a little space, find some peace, and be somebody, like the rest of us. Her tale is effectively told in a pidginized English which often splinters normative syntax and disrupts traditional associations of meaning and value. The result is often a syncretic, hybridized writing characteristic of the so-called ‘new Englishes’ emerging from the residue of the Anglo-American colonial past.”