September 15, 2024
The uncanny rise of a feminist cult. Award-winning French Rwandan novelist Mukasonga evokes her country's tumultuous history in a lyrical, allegorical narrative, translated by Polizzotti, set in the 1930s, when white Catholic missionaries proselytized to a population already steeped in myths. Into the restive Belgian colony a contingent of Black evangelicals arrived from America, "an unknown world," Rwandans believed, "where the Blacks were as powerful as the Whites." Central among them was Sister Deborah, whose reputation as a healer excited the community, reaching the mother of Ikirezi, Mukasonga's narrator. Ikirezi was a sickly child whose ailments, her mother was certain, "came from either people or spirits." Sister Deborah both healed and inspired Ikirezi; after earning a doctorate in anthropology at Howard University, she became an "eminent Africanist," returning to her village to investigate the woman who so deeply affected her life. Sister Deborah, Ikirezi discovers, preached liberation: a celestial woman would descend on a cloud, scattering "a marvelous seed that would yield abundant harvests without the need for farming, thereby ending the servitude in which women were mired." In preparation for this great coming, women must carry out a revolutionary plan: "uprooting the cursed coffee plants, chasing away the agronomists with their stupid boots, scattering the medallions of the tax collectors and missionaries." Fearing the spread of a rebellious cult, the army intervened. Chaos ensued, and Sister Deborah may or may not have been killed, may or may not have reinvented herself as Mama Nganga, and may or may not have finally been burned to death in a fiery rout. Ikirezi's fate, too, is unsettled: Told she will give birth to the Messiah, she flees Rwanda, knowing in her heart that "spirits never come when you expect them." A haunting tale.
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October 1, 2024
This novel from award-winning, exiled Rwandan author Mukasonga (Kibogo, 2020) is told in four parts and translated from its original French. The first part begins with the narration of Ikirezi, a chronically ill peasant girl. In desperation, Ikirezi's mother brings her to Sister Deborah, who holds court on a forbidden hillside. A soothsayer, prophetess, and healer, Sister Deborah imposes, sitting on a tall termite mound draped with an American flag. Ikirezi recounts the touch of Sister Deborah's cane and the mysterious energy that changes the course of Ikirezi's life. The narration shifts to male characters and their speculations about Sister Deborah. Musoni, a chief's son, proposes marriage and is summarily dismissed with, "I belong to no one." Female fury and the power of women are realized in Sister Deborah's prophecy of Mother Africa's reign, bringing satisfaction and ultimately nullifying the promises of missionaries and colonizers. The story comes full circle to Ikirezi's adulthood and Sister Deborah's sojourns abroad. Fans of African and diaspora fiction will be drawn to Mukasonga's historical, allegorical tale.
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Starred review from September 16, 2024
Rwandan French writer Mukasonga (Kibogo) delivers a dazzling and witty narrative of a Black Christian cult in early 20th-century Rwanda. Shortly after the country is captured by Belgium during WWI, a pagan chief flouts the new white Catholic clergy by granting a disused settlement to a group of American Pentecostals led by Reverend Marcus and Sister Deborah, a young woman with healing powers who speaks in tongues. According to their beliefs, Jesus, who is Black, will arrive imminently on a cloud and save the people of Rwanda from centuries of misfortune brought on by famine and war. The narrator, Ikirezi, a Rwandan American feminist scholar who grew up with a series of ailments before being healed by Sister Deborah, recounts her return to Africa to interview the healer as part of her dissertation. The novel roars to life as Sister Deborah tells her story to Ikirezi, who’s tracked her down in a Nairobi shantytown. As in Mukasonga’s excellent previous work, she manages to balance clear-eyed portrayals of charlatan leaders and their superstitious followers with striking depictions of spiritual visions (the leader of a new millenarian sect in Nairobi, who might be Reverend Marcus, sells parishioners “eternity insurance” against the impending rapture). It’s a master class in post-colonial feminist storytelling.