Fathom genocide? Feel empathy for 100,000 or more nameless victims? Author Tracy Kidder takes the reader in as close as possible to these impossibilities by focusing on the story of one medical student who survived genocide in Burundi.
Deo has a harrowing tale to tell about how he escaped to New York from Burundi in 1994. But Kidder doesn't start Deo's story in Burundi, first he tackles an issue closer to home — poverty and income disparity in the United States. He tells how Deo, arriving in the city without English skills, scrapes by as a grocery deliveryman sleeping in Central Park. This too is harrowing.
"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardship," a quote by W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk becomes one of Deo's favorites,
What does it feel like to be homeless? Kidder takes the reader into Deo's emotive core: "What did it say about him that no one was willing to lend him a bed? The feelings that came from this weren't entirely different from the feelings that came from having people try to kill you. You wondered who they thought you were and who you were in fact. You felt utterly alone and you felt indignant."
These feelings are all the more affecting knowing they come from a man who has survived both growing up in Burundi, and the high possibility of death from malaria, and genocide. Ultimately, Deo feels he would be better off in impoverished Burundi —"if Burundi were at peace."
Now, Kidder dives into Deo's story of escape in Burundi traveling on foot through the wilderness from one end of the country and back again (about 150 kilometers) terrified of encountering human killers. It is a bloody, corpse-filled and brutal flight of close calls. Miraculously, Deo survives. He retains deep mental scars.
Returning to Burundi, Deo's memories roil to the surface. The inhumanity was so great that he wanted not to be human. "You wished you could be a bird! Or even, like, an insect! Because they were not threatened!"
Kidder's apt descriptions throughout the book make it possible to see and hear Deo as he is introduced and then, eventually, to travel with him on his escape and internalize his terror.
Kidder does an excellent job of fact-finding, truth-telling and story-telling. Only in the second half of the book, does he interject himself into the story. He puts the reader in his shoes, to show how he got to know Deo and learned his story. This perspective gives the narrative depth and credibility. Kidder provides careful analysis of the situations and characters as he encountered them. He makes it clear where his own biases and feelings may be coloring his perception, cleaning the lenses before focusing the reader in close on his own first-hand experience.
In telling Deo's tale, Kidder sets himself a huge task. In newspapers and history books accounts of genocide become, "lives turned into integers, the bigger the more titillating, and the more abstract." Kidder works hard to personalize the experience. The reader follows Deo's life and feels his despair, but also his resolve. In the end, Deo's story is inspiring. He manages to return to medical school and helps build a medical clinic in Kayanza, a village in Burundi. His perseverance is extraordinary as are the circumstances that aligned to ensure his survival and the people who came to his aid (the persistence-wielding nun, Sharon, who saw it as her mission to help anyone who walked into her church, unfailingly — as Deo did — and the New York couple, the Wolfs, who willingly took a stranger into their home.) They are portrayed, however, as ordinary people whose strengths and aptitudes become extraordinary in concert.
Read this for educators: There are excellent passages about how much Deo's education means to him. In his struggles, he finds comfort in learning and in books and seeks solace in the classroom: "That's the only thing that would really help me, just to heal my brain, my mind, would be to sit down in a classroom." He remembered how it felt to be in a classroom. Perhaps it had felt better in memory than it ever had in fact, but now it seemed like the greatest pleasure he had known."
Read this: to learn more about genocide in Burundi, conflict in Central Africa, and global health issues.
Pairs well with: Mountains Beyond Mountains, journalist Tracy Kidder's biography of anthropologist and doctor Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, and The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by ethicist Peter Singer (Kidder's Strength in What Remains is an excellent example of using a tight focus on a single person's story to overcome the often numbing effect of attempting universal empathy).
Deo has a harrowing tale to tell about how he escaped to New York from Burundi in 1994. But Kidder doesn't start Deo's story in Burundi, first he tackles an issue closer to home — poverty and income disparity in the United States. He tells how Deo, arriving in the city without English skills, scrapes by as a grocery deliveryman sleeping in Central Park. This too is harrowing.
"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardship," a quote by W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk becomes one of Deo's favorites,
What does it feel like to be homeless? Kidder takes the reader into Deo's emotive core: "What did it say about him that no one was willing to lend him a bed? The feelings that came from this weren't entirely different from the feelings that came from having people try to kill you. You wondered who they thought you were and who you were in fact. You felt utterly alone and you felt indignant."
These feelings are all the more affecting knowing they come from a man who has survived both growing up in Burundi, and the high possibility of death from malaria, and genocide. Ultimately, Deo feels he would be better off in impoverished Burundi —"if Burundi were at peace."
Now, Kidder dives into Deo's story of escape in Burundi traveling on foot through the wilderness from one end of the country and back again (about 150 kilometers) terrified of encountering human killers. It is a bloody, corpse-filled and brutal flight of close calls. Miraculously, Deo survives. He retains deep mental scars.
Returning to Burundi, Deo's memories roil to the surface. The inhumanity was so great that he wanted not to be human. "You wished you could be a bird! Or even, like, an insect! Because they were not threatened!"
Kidder's apt descriptions throughout the book make it possible to see and hear Deo as he is introduced and then, eventually, to travel with him on his escape and internalize his terror.
Kidder does an excellent job of fact-finding, truth-telling and story-telling. Only in the second half of the book, does he interject himself into the story. He puts the reader in his shoes, to show how he got to know Deo and learned his story. This perspective gives the narrative depth and credibility. Kidder provides careful analysis of the situations and characters as he encountered them. He makes it clear where his own biases and feelings may be coloring his perception, cleaning the lenses before focusing the reader in close on his own first-hand experience.
In telling Deo's tale, Kidder sets himself a huge task. In newspapers and history books accounts of genocide become, "lives turned into integers, the bigger the more titillating, and the more abstract." Kidder works hard to personalize the experience. The reader follows Deo's life and feels his despair, but also his resolve. In the end, Deo's story is inspiring. He manages to return to medical school and helps build a medical clinic in Kayanza, a village in Burundi. His perseverance is extraordinary as are the circumstances that aligned to ensure his survival and the people who came to his aid (the persistence-wielding nun, Sharon, who saw it as her mission to help anyone who walked into her church, unfailingly — as Deo did — and the New York couple, the Wolfs, who willingly took a stranger into their home.) They are portrayed, however, as ordinary people whose strengths and aptitudes become extraordinary in concert.
Read this for educators: There are excellent passages about how much Deo's education means to him. In his struggles, he finds comfort in learning and in books and seeks solace in the classroom: "That's the only thing that would really help me, just to heal my brain, my mind, would be to sit down in a classroom." He remembered how it felt to be in a classroom. Perhaps it had felt better in memory than it ever had in fact, but now it seemed like the greatest pleasure he had known."
Read this: to learn more about genocide in Burundi, conflict in Central Africa, and global health issues.
Pairs well with: Mountains Beyond Mountains, journalist Tracy Kidder's biography of anthropologist and doctor Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, and The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by ethicist Peter Singer (Kidder's Strength in What Remains is an excellent example of using a tight focus on a single person's story to overcome the often numbing effect of attempting universal empathy).
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