Strength in What Remains 
Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 272 pages
First line: As we drove through southwestern Burundi, I felt as if we were being followed by the mountain called Ganza, the way a child feels followed by the moon.
Synopsis (from the jacket cover): Deo arrives in the United States in search of a new life. Having survived civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life…
Review: This is one of those reviews I know will not do justice to the work, but I also know I have to attempt to encourage as many readers as possible to read this tremendous story. I read Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains this spring and was grateful to have learned about Paul Farmer, but felt Kidder’s work was a bit uneven otherwise. Farmer is such a great man that even stating this mild criticism of Mountains felt unkind or small, but true nevertheless.
Strength in What Remains is not only more powerful than Mountains, but exponentially stronger as a work of nonfiction, too. I read this during one rainy afternoon and couldn’t put it down, even to eat. Here is an excerpt that would hook the most reluctant reader:
“A young man arrives in the big city with two hundred dollars in his pocket, no English at all, and memories of horror so fresh that he sometimes confuses past and present. When Deo first told me about his beginnings in New York, I had a simple thought: ‘ I would not have survived.’ And then, two years later, he enrolls in an Ivy League university. How did this happen? Where did he find the strength, and how had he won the beneficence of strangers? How had it felt to be him?”
Strength focuses on a survivor of the Burundi and Rwanda genocides and begins his journey in the present. As with Dave Egger’s What is the What, this is paramount. Starting in the midst of the genocide would be too horrific for any reader. But to start in the present reassures the reader that the hero we immediately connect with has not only survived horrors beyond imagining in his home country, but will eventually create a life in the U.S. – no small feat during a time in our country when immigrants face insurmountable challenges – and eventually return to Burundi (as an American citizen) to build and run a desperately needed medical clinic.
Deo’s hero’s journey is riveting from the start – and impossible to put down, even during the day-by-day description of his six month escape from the unimaginable horrors of genoicide. We first witness Deo’s peaceful and fascinating childhood as the son of Burundi cowherder, then the looming forces that result in the civil war, and eventually the nearly superhuman strength required to not only physically survive genocide, but then emotionally and psychologically build a life as well.
I can’t recommend this work enough – it addresses both the very worst and best in humanity and the complex forces that can result in horrific violence – and is simply a tremendously well-done narrative as well. I would love to hear other perspectives, too.
