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A West African Community at Sea
by Anna Badkhen
Book Reviewed by:An intimate account of life in a West African fishing village, tugged by currents ancient and modern, and dependent on an ocean that is being radically transformed.
The sea is broken, fishermen say. The sea is empty. The genii have taken the fish elsewhere.
For centuries, fishermen have launched their pirogues from the Senegalese port of Joal, where the fish used to be so plentiful a man could dip his hand into the grey-green ocean and pull one out as big as his thigh. But in an Atlantic decimated by overfishing and climate change, the fish are harder and harder to find.
Here, Badkhen discovers, all boundaries are permeable - between land and sea, between myth and truth, even between storyteller and story. Fisherman's Blues immerses us in a community navigating a time of unprecedented environmental, economic, and cultural upheaval with resilience, ingenuity, and wonder.
[Badkhen] shines a spotlight on a community that is not often featured in the news or on screen, and for that she must be commended. Although it may seem like these lives are somehow simple and serene, she shows that they are plagued with the same worries that keep all of us up at night - the safety and well-being of our families, the desire for self-fulfillment and, on a larger scale, the impact we have on our environment...Further, Badkhen is fully willing to do hard work - she blisters her hands pulling nets, bakes in the sun while helping to build a boat and expends emotional energy consoling abandoned wives in the community; clearly she is not afraid to fully immerse herself. Yet there is a piece missing and it is the one she reserves for herself; her writing looks in more than it looks out and we find ourselves wishing to break free, to see more of what she has chosen to obscure...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Natalie Vaynberg).
In Fisherman's Blues, Anna Badkhen takes us on a trip to the West African nation of Senegal. Although her primary focus is on the families who make their living in and around the ocean, another thread emerges - the fascinating stories of the jinn. The magical power of these equally magical creatures is described in stories of great success or misfortune, both at sea or on land, yet the jinn are also present in family life - they curse or bless children born to a specific house, they fall in love and even marry, they hold grudges and require appeasement. Possessing both superhuman strengths and very human weaknesses, these creatures present an interesting paradox, much like the region they inhabit.
According to the Quran, God created the ...
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If you liked Fisherman's Blues, try these:
by Lamorna Ash
Published 2021
From an adventurous and discerning new voice reminiscent of Robert Macfarlane, a captivating portrait of a community eking out its living in a coastal landscape as stark and storied as it is beautiful.
by Christina Thompson
Published 2020
A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.
James McBride
This book is a peek at a side of West Africa few of us have seen or will ever see...Their way of life is an ode to humanity, and I'm so glad Anna Badkhen, one of the most creative and important non-fiction writers in our era, has allowed us to know them.
