So appropriate this last day of April reading about how precious milk is in #Rwanda for #foodandlit. For example, from the BBC: “Unique to Rwanda, milk bars reflect a little-known truth about how intrinsic cows and milk are to Rwandan culture.” I‘ve truly discovered that in this month‘s books. @Catsandbooks
pick(2020) It's a collection of five stories set in and around the Rwandan genocide. It's a gut-wrenching theme, Mukasonga's prose is graceful and restrained, and the stories will break your heart. The last story, “Grief,“ centered on a woman who attends funerals of strangers in search of comfort for the unobserved deaths of her own family, broke mine. This is what stories are for, so much that I found it hard to take more than one or two at a time
You were a displaced little girl like me, sent off to Nyamata for being a Tutsi, so you knew just as I did the implacable enemy who lived deep inside us, the merciless overlord forever demanding a tribute we couldn't hope to scrape up, the implacable tormentor relentlessly gnawing at our bellies and dimming our eyes, you know who I'm talking about: Igifu, Hunger, given to us at birth like a cruel guardian angel ...
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl
Reading Barzakh, a fantasy/SF novel by Mauritanian author Moussa Ould Ebnou. Doing a bit of research on Aoudaghost/Awdaghost, a city lost to the desert in the Middle-Ages, and on the Sahel region is helping a lot w/ timeline & geography.
Pic by Luca Abbate from https://wildmanlife.com/aoudaghost-economic-hub-of-the-sahara/ This page contains pics & detailed info & matches quite closely the descriptions in the book. Useful.
#Mauritania
pick#FeelinTheLove Day 26: #SisterLove - This shared womanity or sense of girlhood is evident in the tagged book I read for #DecolonizeBookshelves - irrespective of one‘s skin color, to be female is to belong to “the ranks of the wretched.” One of the really great titles I read from the list of “Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books.” My full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-opq
pickA strange story of a boy growing up in late 1970s Somalia, and after being passed from his adopted mother to his wealthier aunt and uncle, must choose between the university and fighting in the insurgency against Ethiopia. His mother is originally from Ethiopia, making for some interesting dynamics where the person he is closest to is identified as 'the enemy'. Weirder still is how the close quarters of their housing affects their relationship 👇
“There is a voice inside of you that whispers all day long, I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.”
pickThis poem is about a narrator who listens to the voice inside their head and decides to follow it. This poem teaches the great lesson that kids should listen to their inner voice and trust their instincts
