Daughters Who Walk This Path by Yejide Kilanko

**This book was received through the Amazon Vine program**

What a sad, yet hopeful book. Daughters Who Walk This Path opens up not only a culture, but a topic that focuses on abuse in the home and how sometimes the ones that hurt us most are those known to us.

Morayo is a young girl growing up in Nigeria. The older sister, she feels a sense of responsibility to her younger sister, most especially because her younger sister is an albino and considered unlucky in their culture. But when she's looking out for her sister, no-one is looking out for her and a cousin who has come to stay forces her to do unspeakable things. And the aftermath of that will follow her for many years as she struggles to believe in herself again.

Morayo is a fantastic character. She grows, she has troubles, but overall, she is very real. The pain that she goes through is heartbreaking, and I will admit that I shed a few tears while reading about her plight. And the reactions to her troubles are heartbreaking as well. Reading about her loneliness and the denial that her family seemed to go through was tough, but yet oh so true when you look at real life abuse statistics anywhere in the world. I did think her sister could have been a better character. She almost doesn't seem needed, and very rarely adds to the plot. Morayo's aunts add more insight and development to the book than she does. And given that she has her own troubles with being an albino, I think she really could have been used better in the story.

Abuse is a hard subject to talk about. Especially since often times it is someone the person is close to instead of a complete stranger. And the awkwardness it makes between family members just further hurts the victim. I think that Kilanko did a great job with showing how the events in her childhood shaped Morayo's adult life and made her make the choices that she did. And while all this was going on she even managed to share a little bit about how schooling and university works in Nigeria, which I thought interesting. The only part I didn't really care for was the chapter in which she tried to dive into the political realm. It just felt out of place and didn't flow as nice with the rest of the book.

I think this is a very interesting book and while it's sad, it also is a little uplifting because it proves that the human spirit can get through some terrible things. This is one that's well worth reading.

Daughters Who Walk This Path
Copyright 2013
329 pages

Our Kind of People by Uzodinma Iweala

I've read "Beasts of No Nation" and thought it was a good, insightful book.  So when I saw this book by the same author, and saw that it dealt with another hard topic, I decided to give it a try.  And I thought the message he was trying to put out there was worthy, certainly viewing AIDS/HIV in a different way than it is commonly perceived is a good thing, but I'm not sure if he pulled it off successfully.

In this nonfiction, Iweala travels back and forth between the United States and his family's native country of Nigeria.  Most of this book takes place in Nigeria and centers around the HIV positive people he meets and interviews.  It tells the perception of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, by the people who have it, people who don't, and just the overall thoughts of the disease.  It also goes a little bit into the different treatments available that makes this disease no longer have a fatal end and also the different campaigns in Nigeria to try to stop the rampant spread of AIDS/HIV.

I thought he was very fair to the people he described in this book.  He told it in a "voice" that seemed authentic and like the stories were actually from the people themselves rather than him completely paraphrasing it.  So in that regards the people here are very real and Iweala is able to tell stories that wouldn't normally be told.  For himself, he is merely the narrator and while he mentions certain things that relate to him and his family, he doesn't really go into why this topic is so important to him other than having worked in that area in medical school.  I guess it would have been nice to really get a feel for why he is so passionate about the subject.

The actual stories from the people he talks to are compelling.  And they are the best part of this book.  Unfortunately though, they are spaced in such a way and included in with so much other information, that reading this book is somewhat exhausting.  It's like holding your breath for a long time while running and then struggling to keep up when you become tired.  I think better spacers and a sense of focus would have helped this book.  The topic of AIDS/HIV is a hard one to write about as there are so many rumors and falsehoods that Iweala is correct in saying that people with HIV are perceived as different or even bad.  But unlike Iweala, I disagree that this focus is on Africans primarily.  I think that a bad stigma is placed on anyone with this disease, regardless of where they live in the world or their access to medicine.  And that it's just as harsh here as it is there.  And while people who aren't promiscuous or share needles get this disease, it shouldn't be ignored that risky behaviors increase the risk of getting the disease.  It's not a cultural problem but rather a personal one as each individual contracts the disease for a different reason.

It's a thought provoking book, and I'm glad that Iweala took the time to show us a look at people in Africa with AIDS/HIV and their perception of the disease.  You might not learn anything new about the disease from this book, but it does help someone relate to the people who have it and recognize that they are not any different from people who don't have it.  A little more focus and this could have been a very outstanding book.

Our Kind of People
Copyright 2012
217 pages