Igifu

by Scholastique Mukasonga, Jordan Stump (Translator)

Overview

The stories in Igifu summon phantom memories of Rwanda and radiate with the fierce ache of a survivor. From the National Book Award finalist who Zadie Smith says, "rescues a million souls from the collective noun genocide."

Scholastique Mukasonga's autobiographical stories rend a glorious Rwanda from the obliterating force of recent history, conjuring the noble cows of her home or the dew-swollen grass they graze on. In the title story, five-year-old Colomba tells of a merciless overlord, hunger or igifu, gnawing away at her belly. She searches for sap at the bud of a flower, scraps of sweet potato at the foot of her parent's bed, or a few grains of sorghum in the floor sweepings. Igifu becomes a dizzying hole in her stomach, a plunging abyss into which she falls. In a desperate act of preservation, Colomba's mother gathers enough sorghum to whip up a nourishing porridge, bringing Colomba back to life. This elixir courses through each story, a balm to soothe the pains of those so ferociously fighting for survival.

Her writing eclipses the great gaps of time and memory; in one scene she is a child sitting squat with a jug of sweet, frothy milk and in another she is an exiled teacher, writing down lists of her dead. As in all her work, Scholastique sits up with them, her witty and beaming beloved.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939810786
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	679,454
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Born in Rwanda in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced from childhood the violence and humiliation of the ethnic conflicts that shook her country. In 1960, her family was displaced to the polluted and under-developed Bugesera district of Rwanda. Mukasonga was later forced to flee to Burundi. She settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. In the aftermath, Mukasonga learned that 37 of her family members had been massacred. Her first novel, Our Lady of the Nile, won the 2014 French Voices Award, was shortlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary award, and in 2019 was adapted into a film by Atiq Rahimi. In 2017, her memoir Cockroaches was a finalist for the LA Times Charles Isherwood Prize. In 2019, The Barefoot Woman was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translation. About the translator: Jordan Stump has received the 2001 French-American Foundation's Translation Prize, and in 2006, was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has translated the work of Marie NDaiye, Eric Chevillard, Marie Redonnet, Patrick Modiano, Honoré de Balzac, and Jules Verne, among others. He is a professor of French literature at the University of Nebraska.

Read an Excerpt

Igifu
You were a displaced little girl like me, sent off to Nyamata for being a Tutsi, so you knew just as
I did the implacable enemy who lived deep inside us, the merciless overlord forever demanding a tribute we couldn’t hope to scrape up, the implacable tormentor relentlessly gnawing at our bellies and dimming our eyes, you know who I’m talking about: Igifu, Hunger, given to us at birth like a cruel guardian angel .
. . Igifu woke you long before the chattering birds announced the first light of dawn, he stretched out the blazing afternoon hours, he stayed at your side on the mat to bedevil your sleep. He was the heartless magician who conjured up lying mirages: the sight of a heap of steaming beans or a beautiful white ball of manioc paste, the glorious smell of the sauce on a huge dish of bananas, the sound of roast corn crackling over a charcoal fire, and then just when you were about to reach out for that mouthwatering food it would all dissolve like the mist on the swamp, and then you heard Igifu cackling deep in your stomach. Our parents—or rather our grandparents—knew how to keep Igifu quiet. Not that they were gluttons: for a Rwandan there’s no greater sin. No, our parents had no fear of hunger because they had milk to feed Igifu, and Igifu lapped it up in delight and kept still, sated by all the cows of Rwanda. But our cows had been killed, and we’d been abandoned on the sterile soil of the Bugesera, Igifu’s kingdom,
and in my case Igifu led me to the gates of death. I don’t hate him for that. In fact I’m sorry those gates didn’t open, sorry I was pulled away from death’s doorstep: the gates of death are so beautiful! All those lights!
I must have been five or six years old. This was in Mayange, in one of those sad little huts they forced the displaced people to live in. Papa had put up mud walls, carved out a field from the bush,
cleared the undergrowth, dug up the stumps. Mama was watching for the first rain to come so she could plant seeds. Waiting for a faraway harvest to finally come, my parents worked in the sparse fields of the few local inhabitants, the Bageseras. My mother set off before dawn with my youngest brother on her back. He was lucky: mama fed him from her breast. I always wondered how that emaciated body of hers could possibly make the milk that kept my brother full. As for Papa, when he wasn’t working in somebody’s field he went to the community center in Nyamata, on the chance that he might get some rice from the missionaries, which didn’t happen often, or earn a few coins for salt by writing a letter or filling out a form for an illiterate policeman or local bigwig. My sister and I eagerly waited for them to come home, hoping they’d bring a few sweet potatoes or a handful of rice or beans for our dinner, the one meal of the day.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Haunted though they are by the memory of the unspeakable atrocities visited on her family and her people, these stories by Scholastique Mukasonga breathe upon a vanished world and bring it to life in all its sparkling multifariousness.
— J.M. Coetzee

In sentences of great beauty and restraint, Mukasonga rescues a million souls from the collective noun 'genocide,' returning them to us as individual human beings, who lived, laughed, meddled in each other's affairs, worked, decorated their houses, raised children, told stories. An essential and powerful read.
— Zadie Smith

Scholastique Mukasonga's stories dart nimbly between fleeting fondness and blunt recrimination, mining recollections of a Rwanda fissured by an unconscionable and amoral scourge. In Igifu, we find the idyllic nestled alongside atrocity and tradition marred by dispossession. A dire warning and a captivating triumph.
— Justin Walls, 2020 Best Translated Book Award fiction jurist

What Scholastique Mukasonga accomplishes with this collection is nothing short of alchemy. There is scalpel-sharp precision melded with regenerative soulfulness at play here. Mukasonga is a genius and her work should be savoured again and again. 
— Diriye Osman, author of Fairytales For Lost Children

A profound love of family and the Tutsi tradition infuses, suffuses, and animates Mukasonga's stories of the Rwandan genocide, the slaughter of her people. To mention "love" in the same sentence with "genocide" may appear odd, even indecent, but Mukasonga's brilliant writing encompasses the two.  In Igifu, a meditation on hunger,  Mukasonga's account of starvation startles and devastates; her language is both corporeal and metaphysical. "The Glorious Cow" tells of her father and his cows, his care for his beloved herd; it is revelatory. Mukasonga lived through unspeakable terror and loss, which is part of Igifu. But I believe she wants readers to know her mother, father, kin, and friends, as they were, to remember not just their massacre, but their wonderful humanity. Keeping their memory alive, keeping it vital, Mukasonga lives. This is an unforgettable book, told by an inimitable writer.
— Lynne Tillman, author of Men and Apparitions and American Genius, A Comedy

Editorial Reviews

Mukasonga's language, in Stump's translation from the French, is at once intimate and impersonal…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.

The New York Times Book Review - Jane Hu

★ 07/06/2020

French Rwandan writer Mukasonga’s superb collection (after the memoir The Barefoot Woman) conjures the lives of Rwandan Tutsis dwelling on the margins of society following the Hutu revolution in 1959 and during waves of genocidal killings over the next two decades. In the five stories, characters fear for their lives as Hutu-led governments encourage their slaughter; endure deprivation (igifu means hunger); and grapple with how to best honor their lost families and lost way of life. Notably, Mukasonga carefully attends to how individuals’ attempts to negotiate unspeakable tragedy can lead to sad, odd, and even grimly funny situations. In “Grief,” four Rwandan Tutsi girls visit a Burundi seminary’s neglected cemetery each day, pulling weeds and planting flowers, and imagine that “these could be our parents’ graves.” In “The Glorious Cow,” a proud Rwandan Tutsi teaches his son to herd imaginary cows (his were slaughtered in the genocide), forgoes drinking milk, and reviles a fellow refugee for keeping goats. (“Milking goats! What could be more shameful for a Tutsi?” the father says of his encampment neighbor, Nicodème. “Hardship had dragged Nicodème into the depths of degradation.”) Mukasonga’s collection is full of deeply human moments like this. Taken as a whole, it’s an impressive and affecting work of art. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Igifu depicts the lives of Rwanda’s Tutsis from their exile in the 1960s to the genocide of the ’90s . . . [Scholastique Mukasonga] mediates the personal through fable to convey the sense of a collective past . . . Mukasonga’s language, in Stump’s translation from the French, is at once intimate and impersonal . . . The devastation in Mukasonga’s stories is only amplified by the short story form." — The New York Times

"Haunted though they are by the memory of the unspeakable atrocities visited on her family and her people, these stories by Scholastique Mukasonga breathe upon a vanished world and bring it to life in all its sparkling multifariousness." — JM Coetzee

"Mukasonga carefully attends to how individuals’ attempts to negotiate unspeakable tragedy can lead to sad, odd, and even grimly funny situations . . . Igifu is full of deeply human moments. Taken as a whole, it’s an impressive and affecting work of art." — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"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." — Kirkus

"Mukasonga has been writing autobiographical stories about her upbringing and Rwanda’s genocide for years, but “Igifu” may be her brightest, most eye-opening work yet." — LA Times

"Mukasonga’s autobiographical short stories about Rwanda plunge the depths of memory and grief, but also love and hope." — Chicago Review of Books

"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. With Igifu, Scholastique Mukasonga has written a wonderful and important book, one that will expose most Western readers to unexpected new worlds." — Washington Independent Review of Books

"A collection of autobiographical stories set during the Rwandan genocide, Igifu will tear out your heart and piece it back together again. Dealing with themes of poverty, starvation, and death, the stories in Scholastique Mukasonga's new collection will haunt you long after you've finished reading." — Bustle

"Mukasonga’s gift lies in illustrating the day-to-day reality of a persecuted minority, the calculations that must be made and the humiliations endured . . . 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." — Harper's Magazine

"Igifu is a study in collective grief and trauma that finds its strengths through the observations of ritual . . . 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." — Full Stop

"Autobiographical elements continue to haunt [Scholastique Mukasonga's] exquisite collection, Igifu, through five wrenching stories...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... Igifu seems to serve as a bridge among Mukasonga's oeuvre, moving from memoirs (debuting in 2006 and 2008 in France) to this short fiction, to her first novel, Our Lady of the Nile... Despite the undeniable terror, Mukasonga's storytelling proves illuminating and resilient." —Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, in Shelf Awareness

"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. Igifu is a poignant collection about the effects of trauma on tradition, community, and individuals." — Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews

"Combining the authority of traditional storytelling with the techniques of the social novel, [Scholastique Mukasonga's] books explore themes of mourning and remembrance, female community, education and the insidious legacy of Rwanda’s Christianisation. At their centre lies the struggle of Rwandan Tutsis, who suffered decades of violence and displacement before the genocide of 1994." — Julian Lucas, The White Review

“I will read anything and everything by Scholastique Mukasonga, who writes in French and is translated by Jordan Stump. Mukasonga’s writing is beautiful, lucid, and moving about the most chaotic and devastating experiences. Her work astounds me in a way that few writers do. I return again and again to the haunting opening of The Barefoot Woman, her memoir about her mother, Stefania, who was murdered in the Rwandan genocide. The memoir itself is how the narrator keeps a broken childhood promise to her mother, ‘my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.’ In September, I look forward to reading Igifu, a story collection published by Archipelago.” — Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers, in Restless Books

"[Igifu] contains nothing less than the heaviness of memory — its oceanic vastness, its vitality to the health and recovery of a community, its weight on the individuals charged with keeping it. Though each story has its narrators, characters, and families, I came away feeling that the main storyteller was both one and many — a we, a collective. In isolation, the stories are glittering gems; together in their own collective, they shed smoothness, and each edge is felt." —Anna Weber, events manager, White Whale Bookstore, in BuzzFeed

"Like Primo Levi’s accounts of the Holocaust or Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoir of persecution in Stalinist Russia, Mukasonga faces the very worse people have done without flinching, without bitterness or hatred, but with a steadfast refusal to forget. The stories function like a resurrection, bringing back not only the dead but the people’s relationships, cultural traditions, humour and beauty."— Marisa Grizenko, Plain Pleasures


"From the first [story in Igifu], I was ushered to dazzling new outlooks on the world, some tinged with wit, some with terror . . . This is an author who goes well beyond recollection; she’s alert to the signals of other people’s nerve-endings." —John Domini, Brooklyn Rail

"Igifu is about displacement and resettlement, about the relationship with foreign lands and outside forces – Hutu, Belgian, Burundian – whose imposition generates devastating and unequal consequences . . . Unsettling as it may be, the choir of voices in the book confers a sense of reality to the stories, which read like chronicles of real people, infusing the reading experience with a sense of responsibility and urgency that the reader cannot ignore." – Anna Giulia Novero, Wasafiri

"I read this slim collection of most autobiographical short stories in one sitting. There was no way that I would take a break . . . Stump’s translation is deep-rooted in understanding the Tutsi people, their loss, their trauma, and how to appropriately put it on paper . . . As a reader, all I could do was understand, learn, unlearn, and be left with a sense of empathy and appreciation as to how Mukasonga writes through it all – with great tenacity and resilience."
—Vivek Tejuja, The Hungry Reader

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2020

Mukasonga (Our Lady of the Nile) was living in France when 37 family members were massacred in Rwanda's 1994 genocide—a term, one character here says bitterly, the media don't use "as if [it] were…too serious for Africa"—and her reverberant works keep the grief and horror alive. A woman searching for her family at their enclosure finds mixed bags of bones and skulls and believes she sees the outline of her father's body in the latrine. A man who went into exile before the genocide wonders whether the cow he once proudly tended was ever named by his father—and whether it was eaten by his family's killers. Driven into hiding by rumor, refugees "go back to a life lived on borrowed time, back to the everyday fear." VERDICT What's truly chilling here is not violence depicted but violence anticipated or imagined. Highly recommended.

Library Journal

2020-06-17
A collection of thematically linked tales of Rwandan life in a time of ethnic conflict.

Originally published in French in 2010, these short stories partake of both fiction and memoir. The title story centers on a constant of refugee life, for Igifu is hunger personified, “given to us at birth like a cruel guardian angel.” Igifu is kept at bay only by food, of course, and while the parents of the Tutsi narrator did so with abundant milk, now the cows are dead, and, as in Mukasonga’s real life, “we’d been abandoned on the sterile soil of…Igifu’s kingdom.” Although starving, her mother worries that the neighbors will learn that they’ve been reduced to eating wild radishes, “no food for Tutsis,” though she’s not too proud to turn to those neighbors when the narrator faints from hunger and approaches the gates of death itself. Mukasonga then shifts genders, relating in a man’s voice the cultural realities of a people who measure wealth in cattle (and for whom “cattle stealing was nothing short of a sport”) but are reduced to the shameful condition of raising goats. In that story, which spans decades, a young cowherd grows to manhood in exile while his father finally saves enough to buy a cow‚ a trajectory interrupted by the next spasm of ethnic violence: “The genocide did not spare my father Kalisa, or my mother, or all my family, any more than the other Tutsis of Nyamata. I’ll never know what name he gave his one cow. I don’t want to know if the killers feasted on her.” In another story, a grown-up woman, beautiful, proud, and devoted to fine clothing and makeup, paints herself into an existential corner: The object of a French colonist’s desire until independence, then the mistress of a wealthy, politically powerful entrepreneur in Kigali, she becomes just another refugee, reduced to selling herself in the camps. 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.

Kirkus Reviews

Igifu may be her brightest, most eye-opening work yet.”

|Los Angeles Times

Mukasonga’s autobiographical short stories about Rwanda plunge the depths of memory and grief but also love and hope.”

Chicago Review of Books

[Mukasonga] mediates the personal through fable to convey the sense of a collective past…The devastation in Mukasonga’s stories is only amplified by the short story form.”

New York Times

The heartbreaking realities of their plights are balanced by absorbing glimpses into Tutsi culture and the characters’ unquenchable senses of hope.”

Foreword Reviews

The stories are glittering gems; together in their own collective, they shed smoothness, and each edge is felt.”

BuzzFeed

Mukasonga’s gift lies in illustrating the day-to-day reality of a persecuted minority, the calculations that must be made and the humiliations endured.”

Harper’s Magazine

Leave[s] the reader with profound appreciation for the resilience and generosity of the Tutsi people…Will expose most Western readers to unexpected new worlds.”

Washington Independent Review of Books