Igifu
by Scholastique Mukasonga
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"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 show more 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."-- show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: 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 show more 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.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I don't have much to say except the banners and the stupidifiers are right: Reading is very dangerous; ideas are existentially threatening. To "Them." Good, says I.
Igifu, the personification of hunger. The viciousness of it. The endlessness of it. The demands of the body...unmet...the demands of the child, unmeetable...the demands of the future, just not your future, that you must meet. 5*
The Glorious Cow here's the way it sounds:
Never think your inability to release the past, to move forward, to leave the dead in their graves, will ever do a single shred of good in, for, or to the world, the family, or yourself. 5*
Fear sounds like this:
I feel physically ill typing this. A mother addressing her daughter with these words. What the actual fuck happened to my country to make it possible for me to hear this in my head, only in Spanish? 5*
The Curse of Beauty continues the abusiveness of the Othering, the cruelty of the powerful. There's a curse in being found beautiful by those who see first your powerlessness, after that your face, and then stop looking at you at all but seeing only themselves as warped reflections of smallness magnified. 4*
Grief exists for this line alone: "They’re inside you. They only survive in you, and you only survive through them."
Keep alive until you're forced not to be; you're now a vessel for the vanished, the only vessel for some (too many) to exist, to have existed. Any survivor will understand that, feel its massive, invisible weight, know its unshareable spiky penetration into your core. 5*
#ReadingIsResistance show less
The Publisher Says: 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 show more 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.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I don't have much to say except the banners and the stupidifiers are right: Reading is very dangerous; ideas are existentially threatening. To "Them." Good, says I.
Igifu, the personification of hunger. The viciousness of it. The endlessness of it. The demands of the body...unmet...the demands of the child, unmeetable...the demands of the future, just not your future, that you must meet. 5*
The Glorious Cow here's the way it sounds:
If we met any girls bringing the water home from Lake Cyohoha, my father would grumble: "That’s what they’ve done to us. Have you seen those calabashes they’re carrying on their heads? Back home in Rwanda, those calabashes were our butter churns. No one would have dared fill them with water. Shame be upon us! And I know what your mother does, but it’s no good, not even Ruganzu Ndori’s water can replace the milk from our cows."
Never think your inability to release the past, to move forward, to leave the dead in their graves, will ever do a single shred of good in, for, or to the world, the family, or yourself. 5*
Fear sounds like this:
"In Nyamata," my mother used to say, "you must never forget: we’re Inyenzi, we’re cockroaches, snakes, vermin. Whenever you meet a soldier or a militiaman or a stranger, remember: he’s planning to kill you, and he knows he will, one day or another, him or someone else. And if not today, then soon, in fact he’s wondering why you’re still alive at all. But he’s not in a hurry. He knows you won’t get away."
I feel physically ill typing this. A mother addressing her daughter with these words. What the actual fuck happened to my country to make it possible for me to hear this in my head, only in Spanish? 5*
The Curse of Beauty continues the abusiveness of the Othering, the cruelty of the powerful. There's a curse in being found beautiful by those who see first your powerlessness, after that your face, and then stop looking at you at all but seeing only themselves as warped reflections of smallness magnified. 4*
Grief exists for this line alone: "They’re inside you. They only survive in you, and you only survive through them."
Keep alive until you're forced not to be; you're now a vessel for the vanished, the only vessel for some (too many) to exist, to have existed. Any survivor will understand that, feel its massive, invisible weight, know its unshareable spiky penetration into your core. 5*
#ReadingIsResistance show less
Two stories have stayed with me since reading this short book (although they are all memorable): the title story Igifu—Hunger and almost the opposite, The Glorious Cow, somewhat of an ode to the cow and the elixir that is milk. If you’ve never felt starvation, Igifu describes it in agonizing detail from the perspective of a young girl praying her mother can find food to each day, and sleeping sleeping to deal with the stomach pangs. When life was good in Rwanda, before Hutu soldiers shot and killed the Tsutsi’s beloved cows, life revolved around milk and the fresh butter so sweetly and patiently made from that milk. And when the cows were gone, the refugees who had to flee their homes longed for their lost beautiful cows. These show more are auto-biographical stories by the author who lost 27 family members in the genocide. Ending with a story called Grief, this is a beautiful short book. It ought to be read to truly understand the impact of the genocide on ordinary people and their children. show less
* I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *
Igifu. Hunger. The first story in this collection is a confronting account of a Rwandan child starving to death during the genocide of the mid-1990s. The remaining stories are just as disturbing, as Mukasonga recounts tales of the genocide told from the point of view of Tutsi children and young adults. The devastation this atrocity had on their way of life, and the uprooting, grief and loss of these survivors is very affecting. This short collection is emotionally-charged and sometimes hard to read, but very worthwhile.
Igifu. Hunger. The first story in this collection is a confronting account of a Rwandan child starving to death during the genocide of the mid-1990s. The remaining stories are just as disturbing, as Mukasonga recounts tales of the genocide told from the point of view of Tutsi children and young adults. The devastation this atrocity had on their way of life, and the uprooting, grief and loss of these survivors is very affecting. This short collection is emotionally-charged and sometimes hard to read, but very worthwhile.
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Rwanda
27 works; 1 member
Author Information
13 Works 1,098 Members
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Gallimard, Folio (5987)
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- L'Iguifou
- Original publication date
- 2010 (original French) (original French); 2020 (English: Stump) (English: Stump)
- People/Characters
- Helena; Asumpta; Maboko Jean de Dieu; Mobutu Sese Seko; Kadogo
- Important places
- Nyamata, Bugesera, Rwanda; Lake Cyohoha, Rwanda; Kigali, Rwanda; Kirarambogo, Rwanda; Bujumbura, Burundi; Gihanga, Burundi
- First words
- 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 ... (show all)scrape up, the implacable tormentor relentlessly gnawing at our bellies and dimming our eyes, you know who I'm talking about: Igifu, Hunger, give to us at birth like a cruel guardian angel...Igifu woke you long before the chattering birds announced the first light of dawn, he stretched out the blazing afternoon hours, he stayed at your side on the mat to bedevil your sleep.
- Quotations
- ...don't let anyone try to tell you to get over your loss, not if that means saying goodbye to your dead. You can't; they'll never leave you, they stay by your side to give you the courage to live, to triumph over obstacles, ... (show all)whether here in Rwanda or abroad, if you go back. They're always beside you, and you can always depend on them.
[Grief] - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Now," said the guardian of the dead, "what is there for you to fear?"
- Blurbers
- Tillman, Lynne
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- Popularity
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- Reviews
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- Rating
- (4.36)
- Languages
- English, French
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
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