Protagonist Finaís search for happiness and belonging begins on the night of her aborted  circumcision and continues through her teenage years in Freetown, Sierra Leoneís capital; her twenties in the Washington Metropolitan Area; and ends with her return to Sierra Leone to work as an advocate for war-traumatized children. The novel explores the problems she encounters in each setting against the backdrop of the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the stranger/immigrant condition and the charactersí struggles to clarify their ideas about ìhomeî and ìabroad.î Finaís circumcision gets significant, though not sensational, play in the different attitudes toward the practice between her and her fiancÈ Cammy, a Trinidadian urologist. The differences complicate their relationship at a time when skeletons from their pasts threaten their impending marriage. The stories of Finaís friend, African-American Aman and her fiancÈ, Nigerian Bayo; of Edna (Finaís foster sister) and her husband Kizzy; and of Mawaf, a war-traumatized teen, unfold in subplots that merge with the main plot and overarching theme of belonging as characters straddle ìhomeî and ìabroadî places.

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So the Path Does Not Die

2012

African Books Collectives

Synopsis

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3.3

12 Rating(s) / 1 review(s)

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Oladipupo Muslimot Olatoyosi

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