Stephanie Jane recenzis Awu's Story de Justine Mintsa
Strong and memorable characters
4 steloj
Awu's Story, in this edition, begins with informative introductions by Therese Kuoh-Moukhoury and Cheryl Toman. While I did appreciate these immensely - they give a lot of additional background to the novella and to Gabonese literature in general - I would recommend not tackling them until after reading the book itself. In their explanations of incidents in Awu's Story I thought they gave away too much of what was to come.
Awu's Story explores the changing roles of women in Fang society and how the pioneers of these changes struggle against their society's expectations and the conservative traditions with which they have been raised. We view a series of events over several years affecting primarily Awu, her sister-in-law and her niece. Through these we see Awu grow in confidence and maturity. She chooses her battles wisely though and I found it interesting to learn which traditions she chose to uphold. …
Awu's Story, in this edition, begins with informative introductions by Therese Kuoh-Moukhoury and Cheryl Toman. While I did appreciate these immensely - they give a lot of additional background to the novella and to Gabonese literature in general - I would recommend not tackling them until after reading the book itself. In their explanations of incidents in Awu's Story I thought they gave away too much of what was to come.
Awu's Story explores the changing roles of women in Fang society and how the pioneers of these changes struggle against their society's expectations and the conservative traditions with which they have been raised. We view a series of events over several years affecting primarily Awu, her sister-in-law and her niece. Through these we see Awu grow in confidence and maturity. She chooses her battles wisely though and I found it interesting to learn which traditions she chose to uphold. Not everything is cast aside in the name of progress and, as a former French colony, Gabon has its share of post-colonial disasters such as the state of its maternity hospital.
I liked Mintsa's writing very much. She has created strong and memorable female characters, both ones with which I could empathise and ones who irritated or angered me. However my problem with Awu's Story and the reason it didn't hit a full five star rating is its brevity. A short volume overall, once the introductions were out the way it didn't feel to me that I really had enough time to get fully immersed in the tale before it was over. I could have happily have read many more pages about Awu's life.