Irankunda joins other writers from the African continent (see Rwandan Clemantine Wamariya’s The Girl Who Smiled Beads and Liberian Wayétu Moore’s The Dragons, the Giant, the Women) in giving eloquent and stirring witness to a childhood shattered by war and the legacies of colonialism.
Foo’s writing is shrewdly insightful. In telling her story so compellingly, she joins authors such as Anna Qu and Ly Tran in adding nuance to the “model minority” myth, if not actively subverting it. Highly recommended.