“He knows what he is doing. He’s already bartering with God, making offerings. It is just for such times humankind invented gods, while hope still exists. When hope disappears, men don’t call for God, they call for their mothers.”
The Memory of Love is a painfully beautiful book about overcoming the horrors of war. It tells the story of Adrian, a British psychologist that travels to Sierra Leone at the end of the civil war to help the traumatized population, and the story of Kai, a Sierra Leonean surgeon that struggles with the ghosts left behind by the war. Adrian, as many Europeans, goes to Sierra Leone to find “something” that he is not sure what it is, since in England he has a thriving career and a loving family. Kai wonders if he should leave the country that is responsible for his best memories and worst nightmares. A shared apartment brings them together and their lives intertwine forever.
Through many secondary voices, that Aminatta Forna weaves to the main ones in an exquisite way, we learn how people cope with the aftermath of a brutal time and how, in the end, people rebuild their lives. We also get to see the decades before the civil war, when Sierra Leone was a young country, full of dreams and challenges.
In her novel, Forna addresses many current topics; post-colonial relations, the white savior complex, post-traumatic stress disorder and human capital flight. However, what strikes the most about this book is how Forna’s characters deal with their past actions, look for redemption, and finally, try to find happiness or at least hope. It’s a beautifully written book in which Forna reveals the whole story in a remarkable and subtle way.
I truly recommend this book and it is one of my favorites. However, I want to be clear. This book hurts while you read it. It hurts because you can feel what the characters are feeling. It hurts because it’s hard to imagine things like that are happening everywhere and that we often respond with indifference. It hurts because, although it is a fictional story, the Sierra Leonean civil war was real.
About Aminatta Forna
Forna was born in Scotland to a Sierra Leonean father and a Scottish mother. When she was 6 months old, her family moved back to Sierra Leone. Her father was a political prisoner and hanged for treason in 1975. Her first book, a memoir, deals with the conspiracy surrounding her father’s death.
Ceci once sent a tweet to Aminatta and received a reply. She was TOO excited about that.
Other books written by Sierra Leonean women:
We just recommend books we’ve read
The Hired Man – Aminatta Forna (Read by Ceci and Angélica)
Happiness – Aminatta Forna (Read by Ceci)
Which book do you recommend? Please let us know in the comment section!
Sierra Leonean initiatives and projects that support and empower girls and women
GCN supports and promotes empowerment of girls and builds platforms to advance their rights and freedoms. They have two programs, the Girl Empowerment Program, with “girl clubs” established in communities and schools to inform and empower the girls, and the Girl at Risk Support Unit, that works with vulnerable girls giving them access to basic needs and support to survivors of abuse.
Here’s a video of Anita Koroma, the founder of GCN, talking in the Sierra Leonean radio about menstrual hygiene, a taboo topic in the country.
AdvocAid is a local organization that provides access to justice for women who get caught up in Sierra Leone’s often unjust legal system. This problem affects poor women the most, since they often don’t know their legal rights or can’t afford legal services, fines or bail. The organization tackles the issue through many channels: from legal representation, education empowerment, detainee support and a moving forward program, to integrating imprisoned women back to society. AdvocAid was recently awarded the second prize in the Global Namati Justice Prize, the world’s first global prize dedicated to recognising grassroots justice .
The Map of Fiction by Women 