User Profile

Prison Time in Sana'a is the very first Yemeni-authored book I have read so I appreciated most of all that Al-Guneid devotes one of its three sections to an explanation of Yemen's current political situation, especially its fluid mosaic of alliances and allegiances. Understanding all this is a bewildering prospect for an outsider so Al-Guneid's clarity greatly helped me. I would echo the advice given in Stephen Day's introduction to start with the second section before reading Al-Guneid's actual prison memoir.

The memoir itself consists of Al-Guneid giving an overview of the events that led to his shocking abduction, and then his impressions of some of the men he encountered during his ten months in jail. I loved the way in which he was able to capture their personalities, making each one truly individual, whilst also portraying the grim conditions within each of the spartan - and often overcrowded - cells. Al-Guneid's ability to maintain his self-reliance and dignity is moving and it must have taken significant willpower for him to revisit the experience in order to write this insightful memoir. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to read it and, through his words, to understand more about the grave situation in Yemen.

My first Senegalese novel and I was impressed by the way in which Sarr portrayed deeply philosophical conversations between his characters without losing the sense of real speech and style. I wish my French was good enough to have read Brotherhood in its original language, but I felt Alexia Trigo did a good job of the translation. Brotherhood has two linked narrative strands: one recounts the efforts of a group of seven dissidents to publish a journal decrying jihadist violence and oppression in their occupied city; the other is a series of letters between two bereaved, grieving mothers who, unable to leave their separate homes, attempt together to understand the loss of their children.

Brotherhood starts out with a scene of extreme, but dispassionate violence - a double execution - which reminded me of the opening of The President's Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli. The eponymous Brotherhood imposes their vision of correct Islamic life onto the city through bloodshed and fear, and public demonstrations of their power are an integral part of their strategy. Behind the scenes though, the Brotherhood's foot soldiers are only too keen to indulge in the forbidden behaviours they publicly punish, much to the chagrin of their leader who was probably the most fascinating character in the whole novel for me. He absolutely believes in the purity of the Brotherhood's vision, even while he is also aware of his superiors' corruption of that vision for their own ends. Sarr managed to allow me understand this man.

Brotherhood is a novel that, as I guessed pretty early on, is never going to end with a happily ever after. I found the narrative structure satisfying, however, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the novel even though it doesn't have the kind of rich detail that usually appeals to me. For example, Sarr takes a whole chapter to introduce one character, an incredible chef, without ever identifying a single meal or ingredient more precisely than 'food'! That said, I liked how this work drew me in to this city and its people's lives.

There are so many things that amazed me about this book, from the intricacy of the characters to the extraordinary storytelling, to the intense depth of the research. But most of all, I was amazed that I had never heard of it or of the Atlanta child murders. Both the book and the murders seem so central to modern Black American history that their invisibility (or erasure) seem deeply poignant.

It took me nine months to read. It is a long book, but it also needed space to read, digest, and understand. Ostensibly, it is a book about a mother looking for her child who has disappeared during the spate of murders of Black children in Atlanta from 1979-81. Zala, the protagonist, becomes an active community member, joining up with other parents of disappeared young Black children who try every avenue possible to find their children. It tells the story of the Atlanta child murders from a Black perspective, but this is also a foil for a deeper story that depicts the trauma of Blackness and the implicit violence of white America, the dysfunction and negligence of state police, the emotional experience of the families of the disappeared, the paranoia of loss, and how people live their lives within all of this maelstrom. It creates lived experience, not metaphor, and for that it is exceptional.

Toni Cade Bambera has their own unique voice, reminiscent of another generation of writers; Tolstoy sprang to mind several times while reading, for the depth of character and interlinked events, but Cade Bambera has a soft touch that is magical. It is a rare skill for a writer to empathise with grief in such a beautiful way.

Those Bones Are Not My Child is definitely one of the 'Great American Novels', although it is never mentioned in lists of that canon. In fact, I've read many of the novels that are in these lists, and they are not in the same league, and its lack of visibility is telling.

In the end, for all its other merits in highlighting Black womens' experience in a violent place, what will stay with me is the strength of community togetherness and family, and how people learn to carry on together even in the worst situations. Despite the difficult subject, the hope is welcome.