A Rwandan exile living in France, Scholastique Mukasonga pulled from her extraordinary life to write two notable memoirs, Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman. Autobiographical elements continue to haunt her exquisite collection, Igifu, through five wrenching stories. Born in 1956, Mukasonga had a tumultuous childhood marked by horrific anti-Tutsi violence that forced her family from their home village. The ongoing expulsions and persecutions culminated for Mukasonga during the 1994 genocide with the massacre of 27 family members. Two years earlier, Mukasonga had settled in France.
Her horrifying loss sparks the collection's final--and most indelible--story, simply titled "Grief," in which a Tutsi woman living in France learns of the personal implications of the Rwandan genocide. Each of Mukasonga's other stories expose raw moments of excruciating challenge. "Igifu" means "hunger," a constant state of being for a girl and her family. Starvation nearly kills her, but she's revived by middle-of-the-night kindness that comes almost too late. In "The Glorious Cow," a young man recalls his pastoral childhood among a family of devoted caretakers to beloved cows, and their destruction when genocide sweeps through his homeland. That perpetual anticipation of slaughter drives "Fear," a relentless reality that merely changes in degrees from "everyday" to "great fear." In "The Curse of Beauty," a Tutsi woman is punished her entire (short) life for being beautiful, by men who threaten, buy, abuse, discard and eventually murder her.
Providing welcome continuity, French professor Jordan Stump translates the book, making Igifu the third of Mukasonga's four English-language titles Stump has translated with graceful agility. Despite the undeniable terror, Mukasonga's storytelling proves illuminating and resilient. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon