This is a fiery book. The main character, “our sister” or Sissie for short, travels from Ghana to Europe, and comments on her life as “the african woman” amongst the white natives.

The portions set in Bavaria and London are the angriest: Sissie is deeply, intensely angered at the natives’ patronizing attitudes (intentional or otherwise), their cluelessness, their rationalizations, their happiness, the size of German food portions, the juicy plums that are so delicious. It’s an anger stemming from centuries of injustice that lashes out and that is confused in settling on targets but that is too wild and too real and too just to be anything else.

The final portion of the book, a letter to an ex-lover, I felt was the best part of the book. It’s where Sissie’s anger is turned on African immigrants whose post facto justifications for not helping the mother country is infuriating to her. This section, too, is confused and not always reasonable, but it provides more of an explanation for why Sissie feels the way she does, and that explicit insight into a deeply angry person’s motivations unlocks an appreciation for the character that wasn’t there for me in the earlier parts.

Dealing with centuries of systematic oppression is not an easy thing to do: no-one who proclaims a simple solution comes off looking good. Very nicely done! ( )

Ghana

A surprisingly complex and nuanced account of the narrator's travels from Ghana to Europe and other destinations. Don't let editorial reviews fool you with their domesticated descriptions--this is a much better book than they would lead yoo to believe. It addresses not only colonialism and overt, individual acts of racism, but also ingrained racist perspectives that are obvious when one is their object yet inexplicable and invisible when one is not. The book is written in a pastiche of styles, with the interwoven poetry and prose sections being most effective; sadly, the "letter" that closes the volume is, while interesting in its content, tedious stylistically. Read with Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven and Ntozake Shange's [b:For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf|58098|for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf|Ntozake Shange|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347933527s/58098.jpg|505856]. ( )