ABSTRACT
Melatu Uche Okorie's This Hostel Life provided the author with unprecedented success. Since then, it seems that Okorie's work, once forced to remain at the margins of Irish society, a reflection of the institutional isolation forced upon the characters it portrays, is finally achieving the space it deserves in Irish literature. Thus, “Under the Awning” reveals how the acceptance or rejection of fiction written by immigrant or ethnic minorities in Ireland is a reflection of the degree to which Irish society as a whole is ready to accept the many ways in which racism is present in Ireland today, going from the macro to the micro level. Melatu Okorie was born in 1975 in Enugu, in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria. Despite being a very prolific writer, as attested by the abundance and quality of her unpublished materials, Melatu Okorie’s publications are relatively scarce.
