There Is a Country (E–pub/E–book) î Nyuol Lueth Tong

characters ¶ E-book, or Kindle E-pub ☆ Nyuol Lueth Tong

Summary There Is a Country ✓ E-book, or Kindle E-pub There Is a Country collects eight engrossing pieces by South Sudanese authors the first collection of its kind from the youngest country in the world. A few stories gave me true pause but most were simply good A solid fine collection interesting for the art of its coming together than any individual story within Nyuol Lueth Tong as stated in the introduction is often asked by people where he works in the US to tell him about his new country South Sudan They don t want the journalistic fact of nonfiction history they want to understand the place as a whole its culture and feel They want South Sudanese literature Tong set out to find it and if South Sudanese literature could not yet be found he sought to establish a beginning Gather South Sudanese voices together in this small collection and begin to be able to listen for a South Sudanese voiceMy personal rule for travel is to read at the very least two nonfictions and a novel about any place I go The nonfiction to know The novel to understand I m grateful for this book for how it helps understand The comfortable mix of Arab influence in a place that reading only fact would lead you to imagine Arabic as only anathema The ease of movement from war and fear to friendship and chasing girls The moneyed moving entrepreneurial women one of the less visible outcomes of years of men s war and a story that s hidden behind the facts of sexualized violence that simultaneously targets and victimizes womenThe authors are scholarly mostly doctors and scientists some activists writing as a side project an outcome of writing outside the privileged writing student milieu that grounds fiction in a lived reality in a way many MFAs cannot catch They re all men I believe they ve all studied and lived outside South Sudan and outside Africa They write in English Tong makes no pretense to presenting a complete literature of South Sudan This project is a good intentional start

Summary There Is a Country ✓ E-book, or Kindle E-pub Vivid gripping prose There Is a Country's stories explore youth and love life and death a first glimpse of what South Sudanese literature has to offe. One of the things I appreciated the most about this slim anthology was a uick few sentences in the introduction about why fiction is important how it creates a sense of place in a way that journalism reports etc never could I have trouble articulating that thought to staunch anti fiction people so thank you Nyuol Lueth Tong for thatI enjoyed all of the pieces in here though they were all uite tense in their own way I suppose that s part of the sense of place created I would have liked to hear some women s voices in here too That was a gaping hole in the fabric for me

characters ¶ E-book, or Kindle E-pub ☆ Nyuol Lueth Tong

Summary There Is a Country ✓ E-book, or Kindle E-pub Wrestling with a history marked by war and displacement the work here presents a fresh and necessary account of an emerging nation past and present In. 35 starsDid I know anything about South Sudan No That s kind of why I m reading this duh Chosen for my read around the world challenge There Was A Country was a surprise and delight to find South Sudan claimed independence from Sudan in 2011 which makes it one of the newest countries in the worldIn editor Nyuol Tong s introduction he is reluctant to point to the familiar authors who form the diaspora of former refugees and war survivors and call them South Sudanese literature due to the complexity of categorizing African literature within and outside the context of its colonial legacies South Sudanese culture in other words is a strikingly hard to define thing To further complicate our brief all of the stories collected here were written in English As Ngugi wa Thiong o would phrase it is this not the final triumph of a system of domination That the first anthology of fiction bearing the nation s name is in English a colonial language demands an explanation The intent above all is to allow the South Sudanese stories to reach as many people as possible colonial languages reinforce this subjugational unity as a common medium of communication and of national identification an umbrella under which different ethnicities and cultures can find eual representation it seems reasonable to use it to send our own work out into the worldHere we find war but also so much than that And now as always when it comes to short story collections anthologies have my entirely useless selection of notes ESCAPE BY EDWARD EREMUGO LUKAThe night weighed heavily on me for it reminded me that they would come for me one day When they did I would be ready for them They have no faces but I had a fair idea of who they wereLeaving your friends and family behind determined to return one day for them I wonder PORT SUDAN JOURNAL BY VICTOR LUGALASudanese make friends easily even with the devilHaving American money makes you an imperial agent well you re not far off I imagine I never knew why the Nubian woman had failed to maintain a husband this woman knew everything to do with beer and hangovers and taking care of men yeah dude I think I know exactly why she failed to maintain a husband That s it right thereWHAT DOES THIS ENDING MEAN DID HE SEND HIS OWN NEPHEW AWAY WHO WAS JUMA what THE BASTARD BY NYUOL LUETH TONGCombination of medical science and local spiritual customDiviners make things up validating what the people who had come to them already believed not because the spirits don t exist but because the spirits are stingy with information so as not to spoil the future and their own fun in watching it I like this LEXICOGRAPHICIDE BY TABAN LO LIYONG HOLY WARRIOR BY DAVID L LUKUDUBut he was afraid really afraid He did not know why he was terrified was it not his choice to come and die POTATO THIEF BY JOHN ORYEMCall someone a name long enough and they will become that which you call them out of a resigned inevitability or in this case sheer goddamn spite LIGHT OF DAY BY SAMUEL GARANG AKAUThe phrase stepping on someone s balls a bit is a much better way to say pulling someone s legThis is an interesting look at a teenage courtship in Sudan Yom fencing with cutting words and Mayom trying his damndest to be suave he fails but she reluctantly finds him charming regardless Also Obliue references to the rhythm method which I never would have guessed adolescent boys would know anything about TALL PALMS BY ARIF GAMALThanks to this poem and some casual google sleuthing I now know that according to popular folk knowledge forcing a snake to drink milk will help rid you of all evils On an shallower aesthetic level this book is nicely put together with a cut out cover and art by Gregory Euclide