Black Man's Grave: Letters From Sierra Leone
by Gary Stewart, John Amman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gary Stewart, John AmmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-28
ISBN: 0979080827
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Cold Run Books
Book Reviews of Black Man's Grave: Letters From Sierra Leone
Book Review: Evocatively written, carefully researched
Summary: 5 Stars
According to urban gang expert David Kennedy it takes relatively few thugs to begin utterly terrorizing a neighborhood -- or, as Gary Stewart, John Amman, and their informants in Sierra Leone can testify, an entire country.
Black Man's Grave is contemporary African history as viewed by a journalist and an academic, professionals whose assessments are deepened by a patina of nostalgia. Both Stewart and Amman were Peace Corps volunteers in Sierra Leone, and they mourn the imperfect paradise they knew from their work in the same northern village, Fadugu (which means in Mandingo, "a town where one is well fed"), where three ethnic groups converged more than a century ago and managed to co-exist and thrive. Rounding out their insights are letters from old Fadugu friends: teachers, agricultural technicians, and other citizens who somehow, but not always, survived Sierra Leone's genocidal 1992-2002 civil war.
Evocatively written and carefully researched, Black Man's Grave can't really be done justice in a short review. Stewart and Ammans's combination of history and reportage, and the letters' poignantly matter-of-fact close-ups, take the reader from Sierra Leone's days as a refuge for former slaves through the nineteenth century, when regional chiefs cannily manipulated their British masters, into the last century of cultural progress and relative affluence. Sierra Leone was eventually devastated by greed, with the struggle to control its diamond mines resulting in mass killings and punitive mutilations, sexual violence, and the enslavement of child soldiers, a nightmare orchestrated by the country's rival leaders and neighboring Liberia's president Charles Taylor.
A number of publishers inexplicably turned down Black Man's Grave, although declaring it "remarkable" (Thomas Dunne Books), "quite compelling" (Beacon Press), and "the kind of book [we'd] love to publish here" (Basic Books). The Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up jointly by the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations, is now underway in The Hague, mandated to try Charles Taylor and other leaders for war crimes committed in Sierra Leone since November 30, 1996. As of this writing, Mr. Taylor's case is in the defense phase, so Black Man's Grave is a particularly timely read. Fifty percent of its profits will go to projects benefiting the people of Fadugu. -- Melanie Lawrence for the FEARLESS REVIEWS
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