Sakui W.G. Malakpa's book, Black Professor,White University, feels fortuitous in the current sceneof the American university consumed by its politics of diversity andrepresentation. Darrell Thomas, a Southern African-American, and hiswife Vanessa, embark on a very dark journey towards an academiccareer in a predominantly White University. The story is almostcliché, and so it might seem indeed its outcome, because it is veryfamiliar to ‘faculty of color’ whose experiences in these Americaninstitutions is the general leaven of Malakpa's story. At firstglance, just with the title, the book might seem like a memoir; asort of witnessing into the transactional relationship between theAfrican or Black academic struggling towards tenure and a fulfillingintellectual career in one of what might just be the last bastionsof institutional racism in America, the Academy. But Malakpa chosethe mode of fiction – and it is realistic fiction; nothingallegorical or symbolic. This choice is interesting in itselfbecause at the very core of Malakpa's strategy is the need to mask,or direct attention to crucial events and real people byfictionalizing the events. Darrell Thomas by this account thereforeis a highly qualified, very accomplished young African-American inthis story. By the time we meet him in the first pages, he isreturning, after a tumultuous academic career to his belovedhometown of Ghetahzia – a fictional ‘small, hot, Southern town’ –where he was at least highly regarded. He is returning to familiar,and consoling roots; to the embrace of his last surviving siblings,and the deep memories of his parents, Clara and Dwayne who livedtheir lives out in Ghetahzia and are buried there. In this fictionaltown, whose name has been taken by the author from his own Lomalanguage to mean, ‘we have endured a lot’, Darrel Thomas is seekinga form of respite after his many years of ‘rocky’ endeavour at aMidwestern University also fictionally called SAU – the SouthwestAchval University. As the story goes: