Strength in What Remains ***

By Tracy Kidder.
Published by Random House, hard cover.
2010 Random House Trade Paper back Edition.
272 pages.

I think that one of the most amazing things about this book is that it reads like a fiction book. I was hooked like when I read a piece of fiction.   After reading about 50 to 60 pages, I started looking at the cover and blurbs about it and then that's when I realized that it was a non-fiction book.  I truly believed I was reading fiction!  Simply put it's very readable.  Much non-fiction can be dry and it is sometimes it's only the specific content that keeps a reader interested.

Perhaps it was the structure of the narrative that made me believe I was reading fiction.  It went back and forth between two times of the subject's life.  At least the first 30 to 40 percent is structured in this way.

This is the story of a Burundian refugee named Deo who escaped from Burundi and ended up in the hard streets of New York City.  It tells the tale of Deo's escape and then alternates that tale with the tale of his arrival and early life in New York City.  In Burundi, he had been a medical student when all hell broke loose and the civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis broke out.  This portion of the story is a barely coherent vision of fear, mayhem and murder - appropriate because that must have been what it felt like to live with it.  Yet this part of the narrative still had a flow if not a single direction.  It spoke of the numerous dead he had seen, the fright he would feel when he saw people walk around with a machete, the sickness and malnutrition he suffered and some of the kindness he encountered that made it possible.  In fact, I believe this, the kindness of strangers, was one of the major themes that runs through the book.

And this theme occurs again in New York City.  Now one of the hardships for many immigrants to the US is that often times, they have to work at menial jobs, because their lack of English bars them from an occupation that their training in their homeland was targeting.  So Deo come to America with $200 in his pocket and didn't know a soul.  He does speak French, the Lingua Franca of Burundi, and a cab driver helps him find an abandoned building to live in.  There is crime and homelessness in this tenement, but at least he has a roof over his head.  He gets a job at a small grocery and it's there he meets a woman during a delivery who takes interest in him.  She works for a church and speaks some French.  She learns about Deo's experiences and his education and decides to take him under her wing.  She finds him a home with a sympathetic couple.  He goes back to school and again, through the kindness of strangers, he's back on his feet.

There are a couple of strands worth pursuing at this point.  One is that though Deo is on his feet, there are still some deep scars from his experiences during the massacre.  He demonstrates this in his behavior toward some of the people who try to help him.  Of course, he's relatively well off emotionally compared with the potential harm that could have befallen him.

Another thought I had while reading is the fact there was something special about him.  He was educated.  Could people sense this even if they didn't speak his language?  Maybe his mannerisms gave him away as someone worthy of a little extra help.  What would happen to me if I was a refugee in a foreign country I wondered while reading this.  Well, first off I'm white and American so I'd either have my head chopped off or I'd be elevated to king status.  I exaggerate but I feel if I could avoid the danger that my foreignness attracts in a foreign country, I could probably get by, because I'm an intelligent, go getting American.  I know better than to ignore the fact that my being American is an enormous advantage in such extraordinary circumstances, yet my argument stands.  Would I be able to survive by will of my education and force of my personality.  I think so, and I think this is why Deo was able to survive.  Of course there is some major differences between Deo and me.  I would go and seek help.  Deo did not seek it out so much but it was more like help seeked him out.  If I was in a foreign country, I would be asking questions and putting my nose in places where I could get someone to hear my case.  Deo avoided this behavior.  Partly because he was still afraid for his life and partly because of his culture.

The book tells several folk tales that explain why  people don't complain, or tell other people their business or problems in Burundi.  It is a culture of silence and stoic suffering.  In one part of the book, the woman benefactor tries to persuade him to write a memoir of his experiences.  Deo did not want to do this.  He feared his enemies and it was against his very nature to be broadcasting trials and tribulations to the world at large.

The second part of the book drops a bit in quality.  After Deo's tale is told, the author does a bit of navel gazing and discusses how he met, researched and found all the people involved.  Not horrible reading, but clearly not as engrossing as the previous part.

The final part becomes more interesting again.  It is about a trip that the author and Deo take back to Burundi.  DeoDeo was at time silent and brooding and in one instance he was insolent to a person who could potentially do him harm.  Even though the majority of the violence had ended in Burundi, there was still some dangerous situations in Burundi to be concerned about.

This is the kind of book someone should make if they want to get people involved in world events, unlike the book mentioned previously in the blog about Darfur where it was already assumed that the reader knew what was going on. One has to learn about something before one can or is even willing to do something to make a change or a difference.

Here's a nice general video that gives a lot more information than I do  about the story.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PcAQFNLacfw" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen>iframe>
And an interview.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KPWuGVzPVBM" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen>iframe>