REVIEW: The Words That Made Us by Andrea Busfield

 

Synopsis

After fleeing their home in Romania, Mala and her family travel to the South of France to make an offering to Sara e Kali – patron saint of the Roma whose statue rests in a small church in Saintes Maries de la Mer. Once the family’s pilgrimage is complete, they seek refuge among their own to consider their future during a time when anti-Roma sentiment is running high.

As the government begins to expel hundreds of foreign-born ‘gypsies’, a local man arrives at the travellers’ camp eager to learn their history, and it falls to Mala to speak to him.

Beginning in India she recounts the fall of Kanauj and the relocation of tens of thousands of Indians to Ghazna as prisoners of war. Mala then speaks of the Roma’s flowering in Constantinople, before the plague forced them westwards – into 300 years of slavery. After recounting the horrors of the Second World War, Mala ends with her own story – of her life in present-day Romania, and the tragedy that stole the smile from her young daughter’s face.

Five stories covering one thousand years, The Words That Made Us chronicles the mistrust, misunderstandings and monstrous cruelty that has followed a scattered nation whose only crime was that of being different.

Format 371 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 18, 2024

About the Author

The author only humbly and simply states on Goodreads that she's a "journalist and writer". I will add that she's a bit of a nomad who's lived in numerous places, she loves cultural diversity, she's a vegetarian, and a momma to horses, dogs, cats, and literally has the birds eating from her palm. She currently resides in Ireland.

My Thoughts

I have a name though it's unlikely you've heard of it. Instead, you'll recognise and claim to know me through words of your own making such as gitano, ijito, gjupci, sipsiwn, and yiftos. In England - the birthplace of Shakespeare and Dickens - I'm known as gypsy, my people as gypsies. In other places, at other times, there have been other names, most of them stemming from a medieval belief that we were Egyptian. Sometime later, when this was clipped to 'gypcian, we lost not only the truth, but also entitlement to a capital letter - something the rest of the world's nations appear to enjoy.

I was introduced to author Andrea Busfield through her book Born Under a Million Shadows, and thus began my love affair with her. So, this time I decided to explore her lesser-known book The Words That Made Us.

This book is essentially a series of short stories within a story as Mala, a keeper of Roma history, shares their stories with a couple of outsiders referred to as gadje (essentially "peasants" in Romani). 

I am just as familiar with anti-Romani propaganda as the next person. We've been taught that they are all thieves and con artists; they abuse, sexualize and exploit their children, and are unclean. They're "gypsies".

This book has helped to open my eyes to my own bias, to the larger picture explaining why many Romani in America seem to skirt around the fringes of society, and even why those we see in grocery store parking lots pulling things like the violin-playing scam may have to resort to such things just to survive in a world where they have repeatedly been victimized, persecuted, hunted and run out of towns-- for a thousand years. A proud people who are dedicated to their culture, who have had to evolve to adapt to the environments they've found themselves in as they have spread across the globe seeking safety, peace, and a place to call home.

While some Romani still live as outsiders as a nomadic people seeking labor in the housing and metalworks industries, or running violin scams in parking lots and selling flowers at streetlights, others have become well-assimilated into American culture. Here in America, we have had renowned Romani like Rita Hayworth and Tracey Ullman who have succeeded in Hollywood, and others have succeeded in public service and politics. Bill Clinton is even said to have the blood of the Romani running in his veins.

Romani Americans have served as experts on official delegations to meetings and conferences in the U.S. held by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). At an OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Roma issues in November 2013, Nathan Mick, who is Romani American, delivered the U.S. delegation's intervention and participated in working sessions on improving respect for the rights of Romani people. Another American Roma Dr. Ethel Brooks served as a moderator at this same event; she also spoke at the UN Holocaust Commemoration in New York in 2013 in commemora- International Efforts to Promote Roma Rights 79tion of the Romani genocide during World War II. In January 2016, former President Barack Obama named Dr. Ethel Brooks to serve on the Holocaust Memorial Council, making her the only Romani American on the council since President Bill Clinton appointed Ian Hancock in 1997.  (Wikipedia)

All this to say that the Romani are a complicated people, just like the rest of us. They have suffered hardships and persecution, they are proud of their heritage, and they want peace and safety for their children just like everyone else. 

The author takes the reader through the origins of the Romani, a thousand years of distrust, hatred, misunderstanding, enslavement, abuse, and slaughter. But through it all they have persevered and never lost sight of who they are or where they came from. The author does an admirable job of bringing humanity to an oft-reviled people, of portraying them as a prideful people without making them feel cold, of explaining why so many Romani still hold themselves apart from general society, and shares with the reader a history that has helped form who the Romani are today as they have been continually chased out of towns through the generations, or worse.

Five words: Insightful, humane, heartbreaking, determined, inspirational

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My final word: Andrea Busfield's The Words That Made Us is a thought-provoking exploration of the power of words and the persecution of the Romani people. Busfield masterfully takes the reader through the historical and cultural impact of bias and bigotry against a race of people who refused to bow to societal expectations and have held fast to their culture and history. Andrea always knows how to stir me, to reach a place that not many can touch. Her writing is well-researched; nothing is ever shallow or without depth. There's always a feeling of reading someone's private diary, being privy to their deepest hopes and fears and suffering. If you want a story within a story, an inspiring journey through history, well-researched and well-crafted, pick up this one! And then afterwards, grab her book Born Under a Million Shadows. You'll thank me and will quickly find yourself a Busfield fan, too!

Warnings:

Cruelty and violence

My Rating:

---

The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

REVIEW: Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement

Synopsis

A haunting story of love and survival that introduces an unforgettable literary heroine

Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they “make them ugly” – cropping their hair, blackening their teeth- anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight.

While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there. But when a local murder tied to the cartel implicates a friend, Ladydi’s future takes a dark turn. Despite the odds against her, this spirited heroine’s resilience and resolve bring hope to otherwise heartbreaking conditions.

An illuminating and affecting portrait of women in rural Mexico, and a stunning exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN is an unforgettable story of friendship, family, and determination.

Hardcover, 224 pages
Published February 11th 2014 by Hogarth (first published 2014)
ISBN 0804138788 (ISBN13: 9780804138789) 


About the Author

Jennifer Clement's new novel Prayers for the Stolen was awarded the NEA Fellowship in Literature 2012 and will be published by Hogarth (USA and UK) in February 2014. The book has also been purchased by Suhrkamp, (Germany), Editions Flammarion, Gallimard (France), De Bezige Bij (Holland), Cappelen Damm (Norway), Hr Ferdinand (Denmark), Bonniers Förlag (Sweden), Laguna (Serbia), Euromedia (Czech Republic), Ikar (Slovakia) Lumen (Spain/Mexico), Guanda (Italy), Like (Finland), Libri (Hungary), Bjartur (Iceland),Rocco (Brazil),Israeli Penn Publishing (Israel, Muza (Poland) and Sindbad (Russia).

Jennifer Clement studied English Literature and Anthropology at New York University and also studied French literature in Paris, France. She has an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.

Clement is the author of the cult classic memoir Widow Basquiat (on the painter Jean Michel Basquiat) and two novels: A True Story Based on Lies, which was a finalist in the Orange Prize for Fiction, and The Poison That Fascinates.
She is also the author of several books of poetry: The Next Stranger (with an introduction by W.S. Merwin); Newton's Sailor; Lady of the Broom and Jennifer Clement: New and Selected Poems. Her prize-winning story A Salamander-Child is published as an art book with work by the Mexican painter Gustavo Monroy.

Jennifer Clement was awarded the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Fellowship for Literature 2012. She is also the recipient of the UK's Canongate Prize. In 2007, she received a MacDowell Fellowship and the MacDowell Colony named her the Robert and Stephanie Olmsted Fellow for 2007-08. Clement is a member of Mexico's prestigious "Sistema Nacional de Creadores." 

Check out the author's website


My Thoughts 

Now we make you ugly, my mother said. 

Ladydi lives in a small mountain village in Mexico. The men have all left for work in the US, their families abandoned and left behind. Drug traffickers rule here, and young girls are in constant danger of being stolen for the slave trade. Because of this, mothers try to “make their daughters ugly” any way they can, to make them less desirable to the kidnappers. Ladydi was named thus by her mother in honor not of Lady Di the woman, but of the shame and sorrow Di bore by her husband’s infidelity-- something that Ladydi’s mother understands.

Her mother is quite the character, being a vengeful, alcoholic kleptomaniac. She swears if she ever sees Ladydi’s father again, she will kill him dead!

Then there are Ladydi’s friends-- the other girls from the village: her harelip best friend Maria, beautiful Paula, and Estefani.

I loved Maria. Out of everyone in that godforsaken-godforgotten-hottest-hell-on-earth place, as my mother liked to call our mountain, she was the kindest person of all. She would walk around a big red fire ant before she'd step on one.

They live their lives on alert: on alert for kidnappers, stinging scorpions and ants and venomous snakes, evading helicopters dropping the herbicide Paraquat, which can cause permanent damage when it hits living flesh rather than poppy fields. There is always a sense of urgency to their lives conflicting with the slow, heated, languid pace of Mexican life.

Life on the mountain is hard. There is never enough of anything, except heat and humidity, ants and scorpions.

Ever since I was a child my mother had told me to say a prayer for some thing. We always did. I had prayed for clouds and pajamas. I had prayed for light bulbs and bees.

Don't ever pray for love or health, Mother said. Or money. If God hears what you really want, He will not give it to you. Guaranteed.

The only outsiders to ever come to the community are the teachers, volunteers who are required to serve a year in community service. They come with little understanding of mountain life, and are received with resentment by the likes of Ladydi's mother.

After a while we learned not to get too attached to these people who, as my mother said, come and go like salespeople with nothing to sell except the words you must.

I don't like people who come from far-away, she said. They have no idea of who we are, telling us you must do this and you must do that and you must do this and you must do that. Do I go to the city and tell them the place stinks and ask them, Hey, where's the grass and since when is the sky yellow?

He said, How can you all live like this, in a world without any men? How?

My mother took in a breath. It seemed that even the ants on the ground stopped moving. Jose Rosa's question stood in the hot wet air, as if spoken words could be suspended. I could reach out and touch the letters H and O and W.

They live in a world of women where women don't matter.

A missing woman is just another leaf that goes down the gutter in a rainstorm, she said. 

My final word: This book is really hard to review. On the one side, I liked the easy-to-read style, the lovely little metaphors thrown in here and there. I liked most of the characters, particularly Ladydi. Some characters like Mike seemed almost pointless, shallow and one-dimensional, created solely for a single moment. Some events preposterous or improbable. After I finished the book, I found myself unable to discern my feelings. I think I liked it, but then I kind of questioned at moments while reading it "What is the point?" Effective writing, likable characters, a tragically charming story. Overall I liked this story, but I just fear that it will be forgotten all-too-soon.

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Disclosure:

I received a copy of this book to review through Blogging for Books, in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel.

QUICK REVIEW: Daughters Who Walk This Path by Yejide Kilanko

Synopsis

Spirited and intelligent, Morayo grows up surrounded by school friends and family in busy, modern-day Ibadan, Nigeria. An adoring little sister, their traditional parents, and a host of aunties and cousins make Morayo's home their own. So there's nothing unusual about her charming but troubled cousin Bros T moving in with the family. At first Morayo and her sister are delighted, but in her innocence, nothing prepares Morayo for the shameful secret Bros T forces upon her.

Thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her, Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister from a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike—once shielded by her own mother—provides Morayo with a safe home and a sense of female community that sustains her as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

Paperback, 329 pages
Published April 10th 2012 by Penguin Canada
ISBN 0143186116 (ISBN13: 9780143186113)


About the Author
from Goodreads

Yejide Kilanko was born in Ibadan, a sprawling university city in south-western Nigeria. She read just about anything she could lay her hands on and that love for reading led her to poetry writing when she was twelve. It was the best way she made sense of the long, angst-filled teenage and young adult years that followed.

After a big, loud, African wedding, she joined her husband in Maryland, USA. For a decade she stayed home to raise their three children, moved to Canada and went back to school to become a social worker.

Yejide started writing her debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, in 2009 and it was published in Canada (2012) and in the USA (2013). Prior to 2009, she didn't think she could write a novel, so she’s living proof that life can bring new dreams when least expected.

Yejide currently lives in Chatham, Ontario, where she's working hard on her second novel. Set in Nigeria and the USA, the novel will be released spring of 2014.

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My Thoughts

My first memory was of Eniayo. I was five years old. 

Town/Environment/Setting:

This story takes place in the city of Ibadan in Nigeria.

Attribution: Dassiebtekreuz at en.wikipedia

This story follows the life of Morayo, a young girl growing up in the city of Ibadan. Her little sister Eniayo is albino, and she has to deal with a certain amount of ridicule and discrimination due to her condition, especially since it is believed that albino children bring bad luck, or are a symbol of God's punishment on the family.

There is a tragic event involving Morayo and her cousin Bros T which leaves her world shaken, but she recovers with the help of her aunt Morenike, who herself suffered a tragic event as a teenager.

“Run away the instant a stranger offers you a smile,” Mummy would tell us. But no one told us that sometimes evil is found much closer to home, and that those who want to harm us can have the most soothing and familiar of voices. (p.23)

I loved the way this book gave me a taste of the culture and lifestyles of the people of Nigeria. There is a formality to relationships, in the way that the younger people bow down and prostrate themselves in greeting and respect to their elders. Even the way that wives and husbands refer to one another…

...while her mother laughed happily and knelt in front of her husband. “Daddy Ibeji, thank you. May you live to enjoy the fruits of your labour over these children.” (p. 137)

My final word: A sweet and tragic exploration of the Nigerian culture through the eyes of a young girl growing into a woman.

Aunty Morinike had explained that the sentence carved in the plaque was a quote from Nadine Gordimer. I whispered the words under my breath: “The truth isn’t always beauty. But the hunger for it is.”

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 My Rating: 

Disclosure:

I received a copy of this book to review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers, in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel. The book that I received was an uncorrected proof, and quotes could differ from the final release. 

REVIEW: The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Synopsis

Over the course of his career, New York Times bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian has taken readers on a spectacular array of journeys. Midwives brought us to an isolated Vermont farmhouse on an icy winter’s night and a home birth gone tragically wrong. The Double Bind perfectly conjured the Roaring Twenties on Long Island—and a young social worker’s descent into madness. And Skeletons at the Feast chronicled the last six months of World War Two in Poland and Germany with nail-biting authenticity. As The Washington Post Book World has noted, Bohjalian writes “the sorts of books people stay awake all night to finish.”

In his fifteenth book, The Sandcastle Girls, he brings us on a very different kind of journey. This spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012—a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author’s Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date.

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke College, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The First World War is spreading across Europe, and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There, Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British Army in Egypt, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.Flash forward to the present, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents’ ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed the “Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura’s grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

Hardcover, 320 pages
Published July 17th 2012 by Doubleday
ISBN 0385534795 (ISBN13: 9780385534796)


About the Author
from his website

Chris Bohjalian has called The Sandcastle Girls the most important book he will ever write.  Published in July to great acclaim, this story of the Armenian Genocide debuted at #7 on the New York Times bestseller list, and appeared as well on the Publishers’ Weekly, USA Today, and national Independent Bookstore bestseller lists.

USA Today called it “stirring. . .a deeply moving story of survival and enduring love.”  Entertainment Weekly observed, “Bohjalian – the grandson of Armenian survivors – pours passion, pride, and sadness into his tale of ethnic destruction and endurance.”  And the Washington Post concluded that the novel was “intense. . .staggering. . .and utterly riveting.”  The Sandcastle Girls was also an Oprah.com Book of the Week.

He is the author of fifteen books, including the other New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before Your Know Kindness, and Midwives.

Chris's awards include the New England Society Book Award in 2012 (for The Night Strangers), the New England Book Award in 2002, and the Anahid Literary Award in 2000. His novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publisher's Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work had been translated into over 25 languages and three times become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers).

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
 
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My Thoughts

When my twin brother and I were small children, we would take turns sitting on our grandfather's lap. There he would grab the rope-like rolls of baby fat that would pool at our waists and bounce us on his knees, cooing, "Big belly, big belly, big belly."

A modern day woman learns of the love story and horror kept quiet in the history of her grandparents. We discover along with her of how her grandmother Elizabeth Endicott traveled to Aleppo, Syria with her own father to offer relief to Armenian refugees. What they find when they arrive is a genocide in progress as Turks and Syrians attempt to erase the Armenian race from the earth. While in Aleppo, Elizabeth meets Armenian engineer Armen and falls in love. The novel follows their stories as their modern day granddaughter unravels their past decades later.

I am ashamed to admit that I was unaware of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians between the years of 1915 and 1923. It's heartbreaking to think of what happened to these people, the suffering of those who died, and the haunting memories carried by those who survived.

I thought the format of this book was an interesting concept. Instead of simply telling the story of Elizabeth and Armen, to have it told through their granddaughter as she discovers what happened to them in their youth. Elizabeth and Armen were very believable. The granddaughter was sort of forgettable-- a bit of a quiet voice narrating and guiding the story, but Elizabeth and Armen were meant to be the stars of the story, and I found them to be real and solid and moving. They brought the horrors of the Armenian genocide to life.

Caught up in Elizabeth and Armen's story are the stories of many other characters, including an Armenian refugee by the name of Nevart and her young charge Hatoun. Two survivors of the genocide (at least they survived during the period that Elizabeth knew them), their own story is beautiful and stirring and heart wrenching. And then there is the underlying story of the images of the refugees, captured on film plates and being smuggled to safety to assure that they survive the slaughter, to reveal to the world the truth of what is going in Aleppo. And let us not forget the tragic story of Armen's wife Karine and infant daughter.

My final word: This story was a mixture of sweetness, tragedy and horror. Elizabeth and Armen were characters that I could really care about. This novel wraps a history lesson up in an intriguing story. A robust novel full of flavors, and I will undoubtedly be tasting of author Chris Bohjalian's other works. Definitely recommended!

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My Rating: 

 
Disclosure:

I received this book from Random House in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel. 

REVIEW: The Civilized World by Susi Wyss

Synopsis

A glorious literary debut set in Africa about five unforgettable women—two of them haunted by a shared tragedy—whose lives intersect in unexpected and sometimes explosive ways 

When Adjoa leaves Ghana to find work in the Ivory Coast, she hopes that one day she'll return home to open a beauty parlor. Her dream comes true, though not before she suffers a devastating loss—one that will haunt her for years, and one that also deeply affects Janice, an American aid worker who no longer feels she has a place to call home. But the bustling Precious Brother Salon is not just the "cleanest, friendliest, and most welcoming in the city." It's also where locals catch up on their gossip; where Comfort, an imperious busybody, can complain about her American daughter-in-law, Linda; and where Adjoa can get a fresh start on life—or so she thinks, until Janice moves to Ghana and unexpectedly stumbles upon the salon. 

At once deeply moving and utterly charming, The Civilized World follows five women as they face meddling mothers-in-law, unfaithful partners, and the lingering aftereffects of racism, only to learn that their cultural differences are outweighed by their common bond as women. With vibrant prose, Susi Wyss explores what it means to need forgiveness—and what it means to forgive.

• Pub. Date: March 2011
• Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
• Format: Paperback, 256pp
• ISBN-13: 9780805093629
• ISBN: 0805093621

About the Author
from her website

Susi Wyss was born in Washington, D.C. to Swiss parents. When she turned seven, her family relocated to Abidjan, Ivory Coast for three years—a period that would have a lasting impact on her view of the world.

After graduating from Vassar College, Susi pursued a career in international health, hoping she could make a positive difference in places like the ones she’d seen as a child. She earned a master’s degree in public health from Boston University and joined the Peace Corps, working on a child survival project in the Central African Republic. For the next 16 years, she visited and worked in more than a dozen African countries, eventually living for another three years in Abidjan. It was during this second stint in the Ivory Coast that she began writing fiction, much of it inspired by people she’d met, stories she’d heard, and experiences she’d had in Africa.

Upon her return to the U.S., while continuing her work in international health, Susi earned a master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. She subsequently took a two-year sabbatical to write The Civilized World, a novel-in-stories set in Africa that was published by Henry Holt in April 2011.

Since completing her debut book, Susi has been balancing her creative writing with her work as an editor at Jhpiego, a Baltimore-based international health organization. Her stories, including several from The Civilized World, have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Bellevue Literary Review, Bellingham Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She has served as an associate editor for the Potomac Review, and her writing has been recognized by awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.

For more information, read the author's personal reflections on the African countries where The Civilized World is set.

Contact Susi via email
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Town/Location/Environment:
Stories take place across Africa, including Ghana and Malawi, and one of the characters lives outside of Washington D.C.

 

My Thoughts

Adjoa had been going to Madame Janice's every week for the last three months, but she still couldn't put her finger on why her stomach clenched and her shoulders stiffened every time her twin brother, Kojo, drove her to the white woman's well-kept house.

This book is a collection of stories intertwined together by people and places. Adjoa is a young Ghana woman, trying to make a better life for herself and her family. Janice is a single American woman who has been working in Africa most of her adult life. Comfort is a widowed Ghanian woman with a son and new grandbaby in Washington D.C., and daughter-in-law Linda has her own issues. Ophelia is a young childless wife hoping and trying for a baby.

I loved this book. The characters and their different stages in their lives held my interest. This story followed the characters at different points in their lives over an 8-10 year period. Some of the characters were more likable than others, and I found that I liked different characters at different times, and was less fond of them at other times of their lives.

Much of this book really revolves around motherhood: desiring it, striving for it, achieving it or not. There is pain, the disillusionment that often comes with age, as you discover that life is not all milk and honey after all. There is friendship and love, and there is forgiveness.

The Cover: I like this cover. Very simple, it just depicts hair braided with fabric, which makes you think of the main central character Adjoa, who is a hair stylist.

Content Rating: A very clean book. I can't recall any vulgarity and only perhaps one brief sexual situation.

My final word: A beautiful, stirring melange of stories, I would strongly recommend this one to everyone.

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My Rating: 8.5 out of 10


Disclosure:

I received a copy of this book for review from Henry Holt and Company, in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel.

REVIEW: Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield

Synopsis

A moving tale of the triumph of the human spirit amidst heartbreaking tragedy, told through the eyes of a charming, impish, and wickedly observant Afghan boy

The Taliban have withdrawn from Kabul’s streets, but the long shadows of their regime remain. In his short life, eleven-year-old Fawad has known more grief than most: his father and brother have been killed, his sister has been abducted, and Fawad and his mother, Mariya, must rely on the charity of parsimonious relatives to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence.

Ever the optimist, Fawad hopes for a better life, and his dream is realized when Mariya finds a position as a housekeeper for a charismatic Western woman, Georgie, and her two foreign friends. The world of aid workers and journalists is a new one for Fawad, and living with the trio offers endless curiosities—including Georgie’s destructive relationship with the powerful Afghan warlord Haji Khan, whose exploits are legendary. Fawad grows resentful and worried, until he comes to learn that love can move a man to act in surprisingly good ways. But life, especially in Kabul, is never without peril, and the next calamity Fawad must face is so devastating that it threatens to destroy the one thing he thought he could never lose: his love for his country.

A big-hearted novel infused with crackling wit, Andrea Busfield’s brilliant debut captures the hope and humanity of the Afghan people and the foreigners who live among them.

About the Author

Andrea Busfield is a British journalist who first traveled to Afghanistan to cover the fall of the Taliban in 2001 as a reporter for the News of the World. She is now a full-time writer living in Bad Ischl, Austria. Born Under a Million Shadows is her first book.

Quick Facts for Andrea Busfield located on Macmillan Books:

Where are you from?
England.

Who are your favorite writers?
Louis de Bernieres, Colin Bateman, Joseph Heller, Barbara Kingsolver, Isabel Allende. To be honest I’m a pick n mix kind of reader.

Which book/books have had the biggest influence on your writing?
Birds Without Wings (Louis de Bernieres)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

What are your hobbies and outside interests?
Music, friends, my family and my dog.

What is the single best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
“Don’t read beauty magazines – they will make you feel ugly.” Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrmann.

What is your favorite quote?
“All right, I'm coming out. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna shoot him. Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, but I'm gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down.”—Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

What is the question most commonly asked by your readers? What is the answer?
Is this autobiographical?
No.

What inspired you to write your first book?
Love – for my boyfriend, and for a country that deserves so much more.

Where do you write?
On my lap on a laptop. I don’t have much furniture!

Five Books Andrea Busfield Can't Live Without:

An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan by Jason Elliot
Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): A True Story of Hell on Earth by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson
Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon


My Thoughts

My name is Fawad, and my mother tells me I was born under the shadow of the Taliban.

Because she said no more, I imagined her stepping out of the sunshine and into the dark, crouching in a corner to protect the stomach that was hiding me, while a man with a stick watched over us, ready to beat me into the world.

This haunting excerpt is how we are introduced to Fawad.

Fawad is a charming boy. Smart, good-humored, brave and strong, you find yourself praying that life goes well for him. I mean, things are stacked against him, and you really want him to find a way to have everything he dreams of.

This book portrays the complex and dark beauty of Afghanistan's face, as well as its dark underbelly. At times you find yourself in awe at the kindness of the people, the love they have for their country, their humor and passion. At other times you cringe at the cruelty, the blatant disregard for humanity, the ugly complexity of their hierarchical and tribal society and its tenuous relationship with surrounding countries, primarily Pakistan.

This is a country that has spent much of its existence "occupied", under the rule of some governing power that is unwanted.

"...the Taliban fight goes on in the south against Afghans and foreigners; and in the streets the adults beat boys, the boys beat smaller boys, and everyone beats donkeys and dogs." (p. 60-61)

"My mother told me that when the Taliban originally came marching from the south to lay claim to Kabul, they were welcomed like saviors. The capital had become a city of rubble after the Russians left because the victorious mujahideen had turned on one another, fighting like dogs over a piece of meat-- and Kabul was that piece of meat. In the chaos and confusion of civil war, crime was everywhere; shops were made to pay special taxes, homes were taken, people were murdered, and their daughters were raped. But when the Taliban came, it all stopped. Order was brought, and the people were grateful. However, as Spandi's father said, you cannot know a man's real intentions in only one night, and over the years the Taliban showed their true colors. They stopped women from working, they wouldn't let girls go to school, they roamed the streets beating people with sticks, they jailed men with short beards, they banned kite flying and music, they chopped off hands, they crushed people under walls, and they shot people in the football stadium. They had freed Afghanistan from war, but they locked up our people in a religion we no longer recognized..." (p. 46-57)

There is such a dichotomy in the rich tapestry of Afghanistan. I just can't get over the complexity found in its simplicity. Or is it simplicity in its complexity? My mind is shaky with exhaustion in trying to wrap itself around it.

This story has a wealth of wonderful characters, from housemates Georgie, James and May, streetmates Spandi and Jamilla, the dark and tormented beauty of Haji Khan (who himself could represent for me the country of Afghanistan), the hope of Shir Ahmad, the quirky and endearing character of Pir Hederi, and even Pir the Madman.

One thing of note was the way that Fawad's own mother practically disappears from the picture for much of the story. After an illness takes her away for a time, you barely hear of her any further, even after she returns, until the end of the story. Fawad spends his time with Georgie and some of the other supporting characters. It kind of reminded me of what you see happen in many TV shows. There will be a storyline, like a baby being born into the family, but once the storyline plays out and the baby is born, it seems to sort of disappear. You don't see it anymore nor hear too much about it (anyone remember the TV show Friends? That's what happened after Rachel had her baby.) So Fawad's mother becomes an inconsequential character about halfway through the story. But I guess that's okay. After all, this is Fawad's story. And I can understand why this happened. His mother is not as integral a character, and if Fawad were an adult, her absence would go unnoticed. However since he is a child, I found her absence from his story striking, but perhaps necessary in order to keep her from clouding his story with motherly pursuits (as mothers are wont to do).

At the end of the book that I received there was an interview with the author Andrea Busfield. She shared some startling statistics and striking imagery of Afghanistan.

• Afghanistan has the world's second-highest infant mortality rate.
• The average life expectancy is forty-four.
• Abject poverty and the image of a child walking barefoot in the snow.
• There is no "dating" social life in Afghanistan. Marriages are typically arranged by the family, and "dating" would be forbidden.

Yet the author speaks so fondly of the country and its people. "It would be hard to find a more hospitable place on earth than Afghanistan."

She says in her interview:

"...I wanted to capture the beauty found there-- the fun, the laughter, the love. Therefore, I opted for a romantic plot and decided it should be narrated by a hero who was still young enough to see the good in life-- and bounce back from tragedy."

And when asked what she hopes her readers take away from this novel, she replies:

"Ultimately, that Afghans are deserving of our continued support-- and as the last page turns that they discover a little piece of Afghanistan in their hearts."

Mission accomplished-- on all accounts.

In the end, I'm left with hope. Hope for Fawad and the realization of his dreams, hope for Jamilla and her happiness and freedom from the tyranny of men, hope for impossible romance, hope for compassion amidst such cruelty and beauty amid such horror-- hope for Afghanistan.

Andrea Busfield-- I think I'm in love with you...


My Rating: 9.5 out of 10

(My thanks to Jason of Holt, Henry & Company for the book in exchange for my honest review.)