Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Igifu
Igifu | Scholastique Mukasonga
2 posts | 2 read | 3 to read
The stories in Igifu summon phantom memories of Rwanda and radiate with the fierce ache of a survivor. From the National Book Award finalist who Zadie Smith says, "rescues a million souls from the collective noun genocide." Scholastique Mukasonga's autobiographical stories rend a glorious Rwanda from the obliterating force of recent history, conjuring the noble cows of her home or the dew-swollen grass they graze on. In the title story, five-year-old Colomba tells of a merciless overlord, hunger or igifu, gnawing away at her belly. She searches for sap at the bud of a flower, scraps of sweet potato at the foot of her parent's bed, or a few grains of sorghum in the floor sweepings. Igifu becomes a dizzying hole in her stomach, a plunging abyss into which she falls. In a desperate act of preservation, Colomba's mother gathers enough sorghum to whip up a nourishing porridge, bringing Colomba back to life. This elixir courses through each story, a balm to soothe the pains of those so ferociously fighting for survival. Her writing eclipses the great gaps of time and memory; in one scene she is a child sitting squat with a jug of sweet, frothy milk and in another she is an exiled teacher, writing down lists of her dead. As in all her work, Scholastique sits up with them, her witty and beaming beloved.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
quote
swynn
Igifu | Scholastique Mukasonga
post image

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

review
ReadingEnvy
Igifu | Scholastique Mukasonga
post image
Pickpick

This is the third book I have read by this author. The stories in it connect to Our Lady of the Nile with several stories but one is unforgettable - "Fear," about the students going to class but always being told they are in danger, at risk, watch out, etc. What we think of as the Rwandan genocide is not the only violence against the Tutsi, and it has a much longer history. ⤵️

ReadingEnvy The author left the country in the 1970s, and another story about the woman living abroad and unable to find her relatives, only to receive a list of all those who died, and her journey back to try to find closure - well, if you're read Cockroaches it is no question where that comes from. The stories are moving and personal, and they come out tomorrow from archipelago books - I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. 5y
43 likes1 stack add1 comment