Welcome to Litsy!

A gripping, fictionalised, look at the history of Sierra Leone through the narratives of women connected by a large polygamous family. Published in 2006.

Hope to read her new book soon.

A single issue of Janneh's newspaper appeared on the streets. The next day the police rounded up all the newspaper vendors and put them in prison. As for Janneh, he simply vanished.... Other people disappeared, too. A nursery school teacher here. A city councillor there. A poet ordered down from his crate in the marketplace. One by one, like lights going off all across the city.

Once I went to live among strangers and I learned what it was like to lose yourself. To feel the fragments flying off you. As if your soul has unhitched itself from your body and is flying away on a piece of string like a balloon. Lost in the clouds. You think, I only have to catch the end of the string. But though it hovers within sight, you cannot grasp it. You try and try. And then there comes a time when you are too tired.

Sometimes when I look at the past I see a swamp: cloying, dark, impenetrable. Like the mud we swilled as children building our playhouse. Mud covering everything, smeared over the detail of recollections, submerging memories. Mud you wade about in trying to locate a lost image or event. Then, usually when you least expect it, the mud throws something up: perfectly preserved as a corpse in a peat bog.

The mine machines were stilled, their voices quiet. It seemed there had been no other sound for months. ...The silence crept outwards, out until stifled everything, even the humming of the forest.

The silence is what I remember most. Because it was not the way we did things. The silence was something different. Before then silence was something I thought that I alone understood.

A woman has no religion. Have you heard people say that here? A woman has no religion. And maybe it's true. We change our faith to marry and worship to please our husbands. But it was not always so.

In those days they were always coming to convert us. The Muslims from the North, the Christians from the South. We deserted our gods. But nobody wrote stories about that. ... My mother would not yield.

The plot is founded on a man with ten wives; perspectives are taken from four of them. With so many characters, and loads of colorful details, it was too difficult to submerge myself. It was like reading short stories, but having to remember certain details related to certain characters during certain time periods. I guess that‘s what it would be like to have a family this large! Definitely gives a Sierra Leone cultural awakening. #litsypassport

Due to NJ‘s messed up library delivery system, I just got my February #litsypassport book. This month‘s country: Sierra Leone. Just a few days to read it if I‘m going to stick to my schedule!

Books I finished on my holiday -#1. This is a "fix up" novel based on the lives of many women in one Sierra Leonan family, daughters, wives, matriarchs. Long read but good. Read on Hoopla!