Over Christmas I read A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah after receiving it as a gift from my sister. If my sister reads a book and thinks it's profound she loves to buy it for everyone she knows. Which tells you two cool things about my sister. She doesn't like to give gifts she wouldn't want to receive herself and she wants to expand your view of the world through meaningful literature. I like that!
This book is not for the faint of heart, in fact you should probably not read this book late at night in order to avoid dreams of being in the jungles of Africa running for your life. Which is what happened to me. I will say that I usually avoid reading books about Africa. I'm probably like a lot of people. I would like to ignore modern Africa with it's child soldiers, AIDS, malaria, struggling economies, government embezzlement and the mess that has been left behind by colonialism...because it's too tragic.
But I can't ignore Africa, because when I read a book like A Long Way Gone in the middle of the mind boggling violence there is also life and culture. There are villages untouched by violence where you can glimpse what life would be like in Africa without war and disease. Women cook, they care for children, they gossip. Men hunt or farm. People gather at night for village meetings and storytelling around fires. And while my ultra-American lifestyle doesn't exactly equate with life in an African village, there are overlaps that reveal the common things we share as human beings. I can't ignore Africa. The people are just too much like me. And when I am reminded of that, it makes the violence and disease all the more tragic. It also makes it real. And it reminds me that it could happen anywhere.
Prior to reading this book I also read another article about Africa. It is utterly fascinating and well worth reading:
Matthew Parris Africa Article.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment