ricardosilvestre's review
5.0
Por onde começar?
Esta história é, por várias razões, uma história como nenhuma outra e captou de imediato a minha atenção. O livro acabou por me ser oferecido no meu aniversário de 2022.
Tété-Michel, um jovem negro, filho de uma família tradicional do Togo que em 1958 foge de casa, com apenas 16 anos, para se tornar o esquimó africano (como foi intitulado num documentário que a BBC lhe dedicou) por terras da Gronelândia.
Um livro fenomenal, onde tudo é observado minuciosamente e em que cada detalhe faz nos crer que o mundo ainda pode ser um lugar deveras surpreendente.
Um dos melhores, senão o melhor, que já li este ano.
Esta história é, por várias razões, uma história como nenhuma outra e captou de imediato a minha atenção. O livro acabou por me ser oferecido no meu aniversário de 2022.
Tété-Michel, um jovem negro, filho de uma família tradicional do Togo que em 1958 foge de casa, com apenas 16 anos, para se tornar o esquimó africano (como foi intitulado num documentário que a BBC lhe dedicou) por terras da Gronelândia.
Um livro fenomenal, onde tudo é observado minuciosamente e em que cada detalhe faz nos crer que o mundo ainda pode ser um lugar deveras surpreendente.
Um dos melhores, senão o melhor, que já li este ano.
morebedsidebooks's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
2.0
In An African in Greenland, Tété-Michel Kpomassie from Togo becomes fascinated with Greenland as a teenager and after years eventually makes it there. Experiences shared with the world as a very frank travelogue.
Actually, Kpomassie is a storyteller who is more than frank. Through less a rose-colored lens as more interesting a post-colonial one, the writing possesses an indulgent quality. A myriad of memories, knowledge and encounters related which have had some effect on Kpomassie yet, unfortunately, does not always make for absorbing reading. This turned out to be one of the most challenging books I’ve read when searching out Francophone writers. Because it is just so full of extensive, specific, unrelenting detailed descriptions at the same time mixed with the briefest yet devastating sentences. However, it was a paragraph in the second to last chapter of the book that left the biggest impression on me. Kpomassie related horrors suffered by a family of one of his hosts in Jakobshavn.
Spoiler
"Every time G. had been drinking too much, his wife shunned him and the sickening smell of drink and tobacco he gave off. She would go and sleep with her children at the other end of the platform. G. lay on his back with bleary eyes and kept calling out, “N., come here — I’m waiting!” “Leave me alone!” she retorted in a sharp, shrill voice. The next hour witnessed an endless series of appeals followed invariably by refusals. Finally, in his absolute determination for sexual relief, G. would step across his sleepless children to get at his wife. She had her own strange method of putting up greater resistance, which involved hugging one of her sons — always the same eight-year-old boy — tight against herself. Protecting his mother by holding her close in his arms, the howling, weeping child would fight off his drunken father with tremendous kicks in the face which sometimes made his father’s nose bleed. Soon the man would fall back out of breath, but he quickly returned to the attack amid shrieks and tears from all the children. This unbelievable scene would drag on sometimes till morning, with momentary pauses and savage resumptions. The little boy in question had once announced that some day he would kill his father, because he was making life a torture for his mother. "
Yet Kpomassie, a grown man present, gives no indication, unless being a witness is all of it, of his own course of action faced with such a situation.
Further, the book perhaps unsurprisingly suffers from a bit of myopic perspective at times. When a described fine birthday present of a rifle and ammunition pouch for a boy of thirteen was given, Kpomassie ends with a question “Where else in the world, even where survival is dependent on hunting, do people put a rifle and bullets into the hands of a child?” This is in no way as remarkable to me as Kpomassie since where I grew up people do the same.
Translated to English by James Kirkup, I also disagree with the introduction by A. Alvarez that describes the book “like a fairy story”. Kpomassie’s has an adventuring streak with traditional beliefs or folklore included, but his narrative is still largely about as down to earth as you can get. However, I do agree Kpomassie’ must come off a charming man. Making friends everywhere, including when one would think the differences matter. Finally, in 2022 at age 80 Kpomassie returned permanently to Greenland planning to live out his last days in the country.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Animal death
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Colonisation, Murder, Racism, Death, Excrement, Pregnancy, and Child death
Other content includes poverty, polygamy, and proselytization. Various treatment towards animals and food preparation, including of animals is described in graphic detail.mary's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
4.0
Kpomassie is born in Togo in the 1940s. When he's climbing a coconut palm, he is attacked by a snake, and falls, causing himself serious injury. In gratitude for his survival, Kpomassie's father pledges that Kpomassie will join the high priestess of the python deep in the forest, something that Kpomassie finds terrifying. As he convalesces, Kpomassie finds a book that describes Greenland: a world of ice and snow, far away from Togo and with no snakes. From then on, he's obsessed with going to Greenland. It takes him almost a decade to achieve this goal, as he's not wealthy, and experiences significant bureaucratic and logistic problems in leaving West Africa. But he's intent on his goal: even though he begins to earn good money working in an embassy due to his skills in French and English, he's still willing to give up everything in order to travel from port to port and make his way first to Paris, then Denmark, then finally Greenland.
This is a strange and wonderful book. Kpomassie is fascinated by the lives of the Greenlanders, and it's full of anecdotes and stories about their way of life. However, Kpomassie and the native Greenlanders have shared experiences of living under an imperial power, seeing their ways of life eroded, and struggling to maintain the aspects of hunting, religion and language that make them who they are. Kpomassie is frequently judgemental or hypocritical in his writing about the Greenlanders -- for example, he is horrified that women routinely sleep with many different men, even when married, and says he finds their lack of morals disgusting, but he is not so horrified that he doesn't also boast of sleeping with two women in one night. He also witnesses the Greenlanders' poverty and lack of prospects, but doesn't seem to link this with the alcoholism he witnesses, and instead derides the Greenlanders for being lazy. However, there's a sense of openness in Kpomassie that's missing in much travel writing, and he always approaches the Greenlanders with respect, and wishes to learn from them, and never distances himself from them. He struggled to have enough money to reach Greenland at all, and is constantly struggling to make ends meet: he and the native people are in pretty much the same boat, and when they don't have enough to eat, neither does he. There's a powerful feeling of equality in his stories, and a sense of genuine affection and respect between Kpomassie and the people he meets.
The view of Greenland in the 1960s is not romantic. Denmark is the imperial power in Greenland, and Denmark's policies have eroded traditional ways of life, forcing Greenlanders to live in poorly-made houses, and give up many of their hunting practices by which they lived for thousands of years. They now live in poverty, with little to do to fill the many empty, dark and cold hours, aside from drinking and sex. They live on a diet of fish, seal blubber and seal meat, as well as eating huskies and sea-birds. Many of the families Kpomassie meets live in freezing houses in squalid conditions, with barely enough to eat. Greenland is a place of crushing darkness and cold. Yet there are moments of real beauty and joy in the book too: the Greenlanders show great hospitality and affection to Kpomassie, and, when they get the opportunity, are skillful hunters and fishermen, with a great interest in the world around them. It's a balanced story, that encompasses both grueling hardships and joy in life. Highly recommended as both travel writing and an outside perspective on Greenland.
This is a strange and wonderful book. Kpomassie is fascinated by the lives of the Greenlanders, and it's full of anecdotes and stories about their way of life. However, Kpomassie and the native Greenlanders have shared experiences of living under an imperial power, seeing their ways of life eroded, and struggling to maintain the aspects of hunting, religion and language that make them who they are. Kpomassie is frequently judgemental or hypocritical in his writing about the Greenlanders -- for example, he is horrified that women routinely sleep with many different men, even when married, and says he finds their lack of morals disgusting, but he is not so horrified that he doesn't also boast of sleeping with two women in one night. He also witnesses the Greenlanders' poverty and lack of prospects, but doesn't seem to link this with the alcoholism he witnesses, and instead derides the Greenlanders for being lazy. However, there's a sense of openness in Kpomassie that's missing in much travel writing, and he always approaches the Greenlanders with respect, and wishes to learn from them, and never distances himself from them. He struggled to have enough money to reach Greenland at all, and is constantly struggling to make ends meet: he and the native people are in pretty much the same boat, and when they don't have enough to eat, neither does he. There's a powerful feeling of equality in his stories, and a sense of genuine affection and respect between Kpomassie and the people he meets.
The view of Greenland in the 1960s is not romantic. Denmark is the imperial power in Greenland, and Denmark's policies have eroded traditional ways of life, forcing Greenlanders to live in poorly-made houses, and give up many of their hunting practices by which they lived for thousands of years. They now live in poverty, with little to do to fill the many empty, dark and cold hours, aside from drinking and sex. They live on a diet of fish, seal blubber and seal meat, as well as eating huskies and sea-birds. Many of the families Kpomassie meets live in freezing houses in squalid conditions, with barely enough to eat. Greenland is a place of crushing darkness and cold. Yet there are moments of real beauty and joy in the book too: the Greenlanders show great hospitality and affection to Kpomassie, and, when they get the opportunity, are skillful hunters and fishermen, with a great interest in the world around them. It's a balanced story, that encompasses both grueling hardships and joy in life. Highly recommended as both travel writing and an outside perspective on Greenland.
ethansreads's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
5.0
patrickmayhew's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
4.25
A passively inspiring book that is engaging from the onset and reads almost like fiction because of the authors beautiful prose and unimaginable expedition
jessicawoofter's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
allieeveryday's review against another edition
4.0
I learned so freaking much in this strange travel book, which was unlike any other book I've read. For one, though it's all about Kpomassie's travels to and around Greenland -- which is fascinating! -- it did NOT make me want to actually GO to Greenland. (It's cold 100% of the time there, and either totally dark or the sun never sets for like 8 months of the year, and also I'm vegetarian and I don't think seal blubber is going to go down easy.) All joking aside, it sounds like it's a very hard place to live. I appreciated the detail Kpomassie included about his adventures: how he learned the Greenlanders' language and was curious about the local traditions. He did his best to fit in and really live like the natives did, including going hunting in the ice, and sleeping in the giant communal bed with the rest of the family he was staying with, and drinking copious amounts of coffee since that's what the locals did when they visited each other.
This was originally published in 1981, and I wonder about some of the traditions and living conditions and how they might have changed with the advent of some newer technology (as well as the general march of time). I mean, I know 40 years isn't that long, but maybe some of the villages have gotten more modern plumbing since then?? And I also wondered what was missing from Kpomassie's experience - for example, the last family he stayed with in the book lived in a one-room earthen turf house, and the daughter of his host was very pregnant. I assumed that she would have to give birth at home, but a throwaway sentence indicates she stayed at the hospital for a week. But where was the hospital! How did she get there! Did the hospital have plumbing!!!
I could have easily read 300 more pages. Entertaining and interesting tale.
This was originally published in 1981, and I wonder about some of the traditions and living conditions and how they might have changed with the advent of some newer technology (as well as the general march of time). I mean, I know 40 years isn't that long, but maybe some of the villages have gotten more modern plumbing since then?? And I also wondered what was missing from Kpomassie's experience - for example, the last family he stayed with in the book lived in a one-room earthen turf house, and the daughter of his host was very pregnant. I assumed that she would have to give birth at home, but a throwaway sentence indicates she stayed at the hospital for a week. But where was the hospital! How did she get there! Did the hospital have plumbing!!!
I could have easily read 300 more pages. Entertaining and interesting tale.