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Rating: 
Summary: How does it feel to be an outsider?
Review: "Memories of Sun" is a story collection that takes the reader on a sensory journey into and out of Africa. But don't mistake this book for a travelogue. Each poem and story is a generous slice of African culture spiced with an emotional punch.While reading the book, I happened to see the movie, "Tears of the Sun." As the opening scenes played out, I realized it was also about Africa. Of course I immediately thought about "Memories of Sun". Because I had read most of, I felt a deeper emotional pull into the film's story. No doubt the director and the publisher never intended for the two to complement one another, but they do. Kurtz's superb editing is the glue that holds this collection together. She divided the book into three sections: Africa; Americans in Africa; and Africans in America. Each section is introduced with a poem carefully selected to set the tone for the stories to come. In Africa, "Bagamoya" by Nikki Grimes offers the sights and sounds of an ancient African seaport. In the following stories, readers meet Annette who exchanges gifts with a South African Bushman girl; Hedi who learns about art in the Roman ruins of Dougga, Tunisia; Auma Adoch who journeys from the hills of Sudan to Mengo, Uganda, to discover whose child she really is; and Kamau who desperately wants his father to see him run his race on Sports Day in Nairobi. In Americans in Africa, "Into the Maghreb" by Lindsey Clark takes readers on an enchanting trip to Morocco through a child's eyes. In these stories readers travel to Senegal with Josie and her Ole Ma; to a school in South Africa with the rebellious Lincoln; and to Ruaha, Tanzania, on comical safari with Sarah and her family. "Her Mother's Monkey" by Amy Bronwen Zemser, about the orphan baby monkey, Angus who comes to live with Francine and her family made me weep. In Africans in America, "An African American" by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah shows readers how it feels to live with and love two cultures. These storytellers show us Chicago through the eyes of an Ethiopian refugee, and southern California through the eyes of a tough Nigerian child-soldier. In "Lying Down with the Lion" by Sonia Levitin, Ajang's re-telling of a Sudanese folktale changes his new friend, Terry's life. Most stunning of all, Jane Kurtz's "Flimflam" is a jarring look at apathy. Throughout this collection a single theme resonates: How does it feel to be an outsider? "Memories of Sun" doesn't attempt to provide easy answers, only to steer readers down the path to understanding. Copyright (c) 2004 by Peggy Tibbetts
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