... stories of strength, suffering, and endurance ... Most of the speakers are very young, and their innocence underscores the horror of their situations ... These stories are intimate portraits of young people with no choice but to carry on. The heartbreaking realities of their plights are balanced by absorbing glimpses into Tutsi culture and the characters’ unquenchable senses of hope. Their resilience is inspiring, while their need to be resilient is a tragic reminder of the consequences of prejudice and unthinking hatred ... a poignant collection about the effects of trauma on tradition, community, and individuals.
... five heartrending stories ... Mukasonga’s superbly crafted stories leave the reader with a deep sense of desolation, thanks, in part, to her deft use of metaphor ... Yet these stories are not devoid of joy and hope. The fortitude and perseverance of the Tutsi women; the bonds that unite neighbors, who put aside grudges and pull together in times of need; the beautiful milking rituals of the Tutsi farmers; the willingness of one woman to raise another’s child, should it be necessary—these particulars leave the reader with profound appreciation for the resilience and generosity of the Tutsi people ... a wonderful and important book, one that will expose most Western readers to unexpected new worlds.
The stories in this collection, translated from the French by Jordan Stump, work...[by] narrating individual experiences and resisting the pull toward parable ... The matter-of-fact psychological probity of Mukasonga’s work is akin to the piercing memoirs of Annie Ernaux and the early novels of Edna O’Brien. She also shares their gift for writing about childhood ... With visceral immediacy, Mukasonga captures the children’s creeping fear and desperation as they grow weak from starvation ... Mukasonga's work is a lament for a destroyed world[.]
... exquisite ... five wrenching stories ... Each of Mukasonga's other stories expose raw moments of excruciating challenge ... Providing welcome continuity, French professor Jordan Stump translates the book, making Igifu the third of Mukasonga's four English-language titles Stump has translated with graceful agility ... Despite the undeniable terror, Mukasonga's storytelling proves illuminating and resilient.
Mukasonga’s language, in Stump’s translation from the French, is at once intimate and impersonal. Her stories are almost all narrated by children, whose early exile from home and family heightens their disorientation in the world while denying them ways to cope ... The devastation in Mukasonga’s stories is only amplified by the short story form. Igifu is notably slim, as though to suggest all that still hasn’t been told.
Brief as the text is, it conveys overwhelming loss ... That is, Mukasonga keeps the work at arm’s length from autobiography. There are dream passages, comic exaggerations, and decade-skipping chronological leaps ... this is an author who goes well beyond recollection; she’s alert to the signals of other people’s nerve-endings ... The shifting perspectives contribute to...success as something other than narrative, rather a meditation, chilling but hard to set down ... The ruins from which this author escaped cast a shadow over everything to which she turns her hand—but to shape those shadows demands a terrific dexterity, and an imagination to match. Both of those, happily, are also part of Mukasonga’s inheritance.
Read in order, Igifu is a study in collective grief and trauma that finds its strengths through the observations of ritual. Writer Scholastique Mukasonga is interested in the inability of the human mind to conceptualize genocide, overwhelming in its evilness and reach. As her characters find themselves unable to articulate what has transpired, her stories verbalize the horror of genocide in ways drastically abstract, beautifully and imaginatively rendered. The ineffectiveness of language to explain trauma parallel the creation of ritual employed in the aftermath of violence. The diverse set of characters throughout the five stories in the collection take small actions one at a time, forming habits that work like amulets, as a way to endure. These joint ideas guide the narratives in Igifu to depict the patterns of learning to live in the midst of tragedy.
... superb ... Mukasonga carefully attends to how individuals’ attempts to negotiate unspeakable tragedy can lead to sad, odd, and even grimly funny situations ... Mukasonga’s collection is full of deeply human moments like this. Taken as a whole, it’s an impressive and affecting work of art.
Reminiscent at times of Iris Origo, Mukasonga writes with world-weary matter-of-factness, her stories understated testimonials to the worst of times ... Elegant and elegiac stories that speak to loss, redemption, and endless sorrow.
