Shantytown (noun) – a usually poor town or section of a town consisting mostly of shanties

Taken from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “You in America”

“They trooped into the shantytown house in Lagos, standing beside the nail-studded zinc walls because chairs did not go round, to say good bye in loud voices and tell you with lowered voices what they wanted you to send them.”

Shantytown was ysed to describe the area that the narrator lives in. Knowing the meaning of this word helped me understand that she grew up in poverty and explains why the peolle in her place yearns for that “American dream”, to get away from their poor situation.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shantytown