So Long a Letter – Book Response

I am participating in a book challenge for the year to stretch my literary intake. I decided to participate in one I would have never thought to do and that is the African Diaspora Reading Challenge 2010.

My goal is read a book a month and I’m going for the Scholor Level of participation. I’ve changed my title from “book reviews” to “book responses.” There is an order to book reviews and a simple google search will yield a hundred reviews on every book I post as part of this challenge. It is not my goal to give you a review. My goal is to give you a response, my response. What stood out to me, what I resonate with, what I don’t understand and how it makes me think.

The book I read for the month of March was So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba.

Two women…educated and progressive thinkers marry for love. Their husbands decide to take second wives. The two women, then make two very different choices.

There was a tone and flow in “Let the Lion Eat Straw” that I could not find the rhythm for. My strong negative response makes me want to read that book again. However, for So Long a Letter I felt as if the way the author wrote the book, she might as well had been speaking sweet nothings into my ear. You know when you hear really good song lyrics, or you hear that one liner, or you read the love poem and every single word is perfect and touches you in just the right way? That is what Mariama acheived in how she wrote this fiction piece. If the English translation does this to me, I can not even began to fathom the way this book reads in its original langauge. The english version of the flow of the language reads as authentically as I can imagine to its cultural descent and I loved every word.

Another bit that seemed to seep through every page of this book were the African rituals, customs, traditons, and rites of the characters and I’m assuming of the actual culture that this is inspired from. I love rituals. I love history. I love a symbol with deep meaning. I love an action that ties back 1,000 years and unites every person who practicies it. In the past I’ve been so intrigued by this that I thought my only course of action was to learn Jewish history and culture. They seemed to have the most intriguing culture to me. The post civil rights black pop culture that takes place from 1980 and forward saddens me and I’ve been searching for something more deep and meaningful than BET, hip hop and dreadlocks.

This book, amongst other recent  things, has started to show me more for those with an African history. There were moments where the language was so rich, the story was so powerful, that I felt as if I were right there as the Aunt summoned her ancestors and the gods.

I love when things are said in a certain way. I collect quotes. I won’t quote to many moments from the book because I think you should do yourself the favor and read all 90 pages of this story. I give no context for the quotes. You will just have to read the book.  Some highlights though were…..

There was also the best “Dear John” letter, I had ever come across.Two of my favorite quotes are…

I purchased this book used off of Half.com and I had the pleasure of reading the notes the previous owner left. When I say “pleasure” I do mean pleasure. There is no dripping sarcasm. I love to see what other’s responses were too. What stood out to them and why.  When loaning my books out, I tell my friends to take the same liberty with my books and I love the discoveries I make of their mind and how they read the borrowed book.