Sister Deborah - by Scholastique Mukasonga (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A sharp and playful critique of colonialism from the leading voice of French-Rwandan literature, animated by memories, archival specters, and powerful women

"In sentences of great beauty and restraint, Mukasonga rescues a million souls from the collective noun 'genocide, ' returning them to us as individual human beings." -- Zadie Smith

In a 4-part narrative brimming with historical asides, alluring anecdotes, and murky questions left in the margins of colonial records, Sister Deborah heralds "a life that is more alive" as it explores the tensions and myths of Rwanda's past.

When time-worn ancestral remedies fail to heal young Ikirezi's maladies, she's rushed to the Rwandan hillsides. From her termite perch under the coral tree, health blooms under Sister Deborah's hands. Women bear their breasts to the rising sun as men under thatched roofs stand, "stunned and impotent before this female fury."

Now grown, Ikirezi unearths the truth of Sister Deborah's passage from America to 1930s Rwanda and the mystery surrounding her sudden departure. In colonial records, Sister Deborah is a "pathogen," an "incident." Who is the keeper of truth, Ikirezi impels us to ask, Who stands at the threshold of memory? Did we dance? Did she heal? Did we look to the sky with wonder? Ikirezi writes on, pulling Sister Deborah out from the archive, inscribing her with breath.

A beautiful novel that works in the slippages of history, Sister Deborah at its core is a story of what happens when women -- black women and girls -- seek the truth by any means.

Review Quotes

"[Sister Deborah] delivers a dazzling and witty narrative of a Black Christian cult in early 20th-century Rwanda . . . as in Mukasonga's excellent previous work, she manages to balance clear-eyed portrayals of charlatan leaders and their superstitious followers with striking depictions of spiritual visions . . . a master class in post-colonial feminist storytelling."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Award-winning French Rwandan novelist Mukasonga evokes her country's tumultuous history in a lyrical, allegorical narrative, translated by Polizzotti, set in the 1930s, when white Catholic missionaries proselytized to a population already steeped in myths . . . A haunting tale."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Female fury and the power of women are realized in Sister Deborah's prophecy of Mother Africa's reign, bringing satisfaction and ultimately nullifying the promises of missionaries and colonizers."
--Kelly Fojtik, Booklist

"Sister Deborah is a compact novel told in four parts . . . situated in the tricky nexus of colonialism, religion and Black liberation. It sings with Marx's famous proclamation that "religion is the opium of the people," in all its multifaceted truth. " --Theodore Anderson, Newcity

"The narrators of Sister Deborah turn and tilt the story like a prism until, by Mukansonga's light, the versions and legends, tellings and retellings become many tiny brilliant rainbows."
--Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude

"[Mukasonga] sharply and profoundly explores the spiritual realm in Sister Deborah . . . Ikirezi and Sister Deborah's trajectories--Africa to America for the former; America to Africa for the latter--are superbly engaging stories, while their experiences also adroitly (never didactically) expose widespread disparities and inequities of race, gender, history, society, and religion. Mukasonga skillfully elevates her storytelling into enriched enlightenment."
--Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness

"Mukasonga's writing is as striking for the bracing clarity and directness of her sentences as for the restlessness of its experimentations with genre . . . Sister Deborah presses on questions of cultural translation, which are also Mukasonga's own: questions of faith and syncretism but also of faithfulness to one's origins . . . The paths lives take, Sister Deborah insists, are mysterious and unstable. And it would be disingenuous to claim that we do not yearn to explain these mysteries to ourselves, to mold these accidents and contingencies into narratives that make sense to us."
--Marta Figlerowicz, The Paris Review

"Scholastique Mukasonga is not only one of the most important Francophone novelists writing today but a storyteller of rare gifts, and Sister Deborah, expertly translated by Mark Polizzotti confirms this. Trenchant in its critique of the nexus between colonialism and religion, compelling in its feminist and decolonial perspective, it marks another gift by Mukasonga for English-language readers."
--John Keene

"Structurally, Sister Deborah is a fascinating book, with Mukasonga hinting that we're getting a kind of coming-of-age novel early on and then shifting gears into a very different mode. The overall effect is polyphonic, as the narrative details a series of religious conflicts over the years, contrasting the attitudes and beliefs of several characters from Rwanda and the US."
--Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

"This is a brilliant novel and Mukasonga tells a first-class story."
--The Modern Novel

"At times howlingly funny, Sister Deborah pokes fun at European colonialist powers and at the same time exposes the tragedy of occupation. Mukasonga draws on Rwanda's rich folk traditions without minimizing the injustices entrenched in its autochthonous culture."
--Bárbara Mujica, Washington Independent Review of Books

"Sister Deborah's greatest strength is in the layers of interpretation and unreliability that the narrators deliver . . . Sister Deborah's story, as told to Ikirezi, walks through competing influences of Rwandan tradition and colonial religion, and stacks dreams, delirium, visions, and reality upon each other."
--Allison Zhao, Acta Victoriana

"Incredibly impactful. If you have not read anything by Mukasonga, you should, and Sister Deborah is a good place to start."
--The Mookse and the Gripes

"A brilliant serio-comic fable, a critique of religious delusions and how they feed self-destructive fantasies . . . an amusingly wild yarn."
--Bill Marx, The Arts Fuse

About the Author

Scholastique Mukasonga was born in Rwanda in 1956. She settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. Her groundbreaking books include: the debut novel Our Lady of the Nile, Cockroaches, Igifu, and National Book Award-nominated The Barefoot Woman, expertly translated by Jordan Stump. In 2021, she won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Freedom.

Mark Polizzotti has translated more than sixty books from the French. His translations have won the English PEN Award and have been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the International Booker Prize, and the NBCC/Gregg Barrios Prize, among others. The author of twelve books, his essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere.