Time's Memory (review)
2007; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2006.0296
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoReviewed by: Time's Memory Karen Coats Lester, Julius Time's Memory. Farrar, 2006 [240p] ISBN 0-374-37178-4$17.00 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Working in the same spaces that he opened in The Old African (BCCB 12/05) between the magical possibilities of Africa and the grim realities of the antebellum South, Lester tells the story of another sort of redeemer for the slaves. Amma, the creator god of the Dogon religion, sends Ekundayo, a spirit being, from Africa to America in the womb of a woman destined for the slave trade. Ekundayo emerges as a fully grown man and learns in a vision that he must find a way to bring comfort and rest to the nyama, or souls, of the people who have been brutally killed and inadequately grieved in America. Ekundayo's first body then dies, and he enters the body of Nat, a slave on a nearby plantation who is in love with his master's daughter, Ellen, who loves him as well. Ekundayo absorbs Nat's nyama into his own, and their passions become one, leading to Ekundayo's decision to stay even when Amma gives up on the quest as hopeless and offers to take him back to Africa. Ultimately, Ekundayo combines Dogon tradition and spiritualism with the permanence of written stories to help the nyama find their peace. While quite of bit of exposition is needed to set Ekundayo's task in terms that combine Dogon cosmology with American history (though the book plays fast and loose with elements of the religion), the events that take place after Ekundayo enters Nat's body are more accessible, and the exploration of the varied emotional complications of slavery is intense and profound. The reunion of Nat and Ellen's spirits in contemporary bodies can be read as either hokey romanticism or redemptive closure, but Lester's unapologetic insertion of spiritist reality into the everyday life of the slaves will undoubtedly move young people into a deeper understanding of the roots of African-American ideology and faith. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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