Ancestor Stones

For the most part, I really enjoyed Ancestor Stones. This is a book I can actually imagine myself reading outside of class, something I could enjoy while sitting on my couch with some hot chocolate instead of my desk with a pen and notebook handy.

One quote that really jumped out to me and almost seemed to sum up each woman's journey was in Abie's section at the very end:

"I was no longer a stranger. I knew just where into all of this I fitted. Because in this small world [the village], everybody had a place, meaning they all knew how they came to be here. A story of which every detail was cherished. And I had mine."

In my previous entry, I wondered if I would every see a happily-ever-after in any of the stories, because each woman had a dud for a husband, or left her husband, or had too many husbands, or did something or had something happen that caused her to be unhappy. But I think the above quote could be applied anywhere in the novel: literally in the village, which is what Abie was talking about in context; but also where each woman eventually found the end of her story, and in the family structure of this book, that is, the three or four generations that this novel chronicles.

My intent for this blog was to write about the dynamics of the women in the village, but when I went to trusty Google to find "Rofathane," I couldn't find anything about this village. I did, however, find an article from Aminatta Forna's website about Rogbonko, the village her grandfather founded and where he planted coffee foundations and grew rice - sound familiar? It is how Asana's story starts, with her father planting coffee beans in their "oasis in the forest," named Rofathane.

So, since I discovered Rofathane is apparantly based on Rogbonko, I took a look at the pictures on Forna's page about Rogbonko, which are definitely worth a look because it makes the stories in Ancestor Stones a little more real, to know that the village of Rofathane and the people who lived there are based in fact.

So, to wrap up my tangent and back to African women and Ancestor Stones: ultimately, it is important to remember that Rofathane and the women in Abie's family have their own niches and their own history that we may think we might not understand, but with the help of books like Ancestor Stones, we can.