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A review by nvaynberggmailcom
Fisherman's Blues: A West African Community at Sea by Anna Badkhen
3.0
Part spiritual journey, part ethnography, Anna Badkhen's Fisherman's Blues does an adequate job of bringing a West African fishing village to life. Though it is most certainly interesting to hear stories and excerpts of lives that are so different than ours, Badkhen's tendency to flowery prose and unnecessary allusions gets a bit tiresome and keeps the prose from ever taking off.
Focusing primarily on one extended family, the Souares, Badkhen traces the daily life of a fisherman and his relations. Fisherman tell many stories, they love their greasy, sweet and carb-filled foods, they have a strong focus on family life and they struggle for a way out of a dying business. These themes are compelling; they underscore what we already know, the world is changing quickly and those that cannot adapt will be left behind. It is all the more heart-wrenching to put real faces and real stories to this abstract understanding.
However, Badkhen never quiet gets to the heart of the matter. Instead she focuses too much on her own musings--referencing every Western myth she can think of, from Greek mythology to Goethe and beyond. Why she feels the need to drag these to a land where stories and myths are ripe for the picking remains unclear. There are also oh so many philosophical refrains on the transience of life, the shifting nature of the oceans and so on and so forth--yet this does not add anything to the story, only gives us a better picture of the author herself.
Never quite getting beyond the obvious, Badkhen simply shows us a glimpse of a different place, briefly introduces us to the friends she's made. If this was part spiritual journey, part ethnography, it may have been better to embrace one or the other, as it stands, this book feels unfinished and without a clear purpose.
Focusing primarily on one extended family, the Souares, Badkhen traces the daily life of a fisherman and his relations. Fisherman tell many stories, they love their greasy, sweet and carb-filled foods, they have a strong focus on family life and they struggle for a way out of a dying business. These themes are compelling; they underscore what we already know, the world is changing quickly and those that cannot adapt will be left behind. It is all the more heart-wrenching to put real faces and real stories to this abstract understanding.
However, Badkhen never quiet gets to the heart of the matter. Instead she focuses too much on her own musings--referencing every Western myth she can think of, from Greek mythology to Goethe and beyond. Why she feels the need to drag these to a land where stories and myths are ripe for the picking remains unclear. There are also oh so many philosophical refrains on the transience of life, the shifting nature of the oceans and so on and so forth--yet this does not add anything to the story, only gives us a better picture of the author herself.
Never quite getting beyond the obvious, Badkhen simply shows us a glimpse of a different place, briefly introduces us to the friends she's made. If this was part spiritual journey, part ethnography, it may have been better to embrace one or the other, as it stands, this book feels unfinished and without a clear purpose.