The Dark Child, by Camara Laye

I have had this copy of The Dark Child (sometimes translated as The African Child, titled L'Enfant Noir in the original French) for 25 years. It was assigned reading (which I did not read) for an African Religion class I took at Oberlin College. I think I was on page 2 of the book when I first asked myself, "why did it take me so long to get around to reading this?" Although I've had this book for 25 years, have moved it who knows how many times, and I don't know why it took me so long to get to it, I can tell you why I decided to pick it up just now: it was the reference to it in the recent NY Times "By the Book" interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (I love the "By the Book" interviews, regardless of who is being interviewed.)

The Dark Child is a memoir of Camara Laye's childhood and youth in Kouroussa in Guinea, and his later schooling in Conakry leading up to his departure for France to continue his studies. The whole book is suffused with nostalgia, particularly the early chapters, describing Camara's early childhood, which have the almost dreamlike quality of drawing up very distant memories. (You would think he was older than 25 - that is, that he was further removed from his childhood - when he wrote this!)

The book describes the rituals and magic of everyday life in Upper Guinea, and though he has taken part in or experienced them, Camara treats them with a bit of wonder that must have come from his own remove. You can sense his own lament at not having striven to understand more when he was fully immersed in that world. The book is also full of love: it's dedicated to his mother, and the love between her and him is so palpable in the text that I'm tearing up now just thinking about it. But the love in the book extends also to his father, his uncles on both sides of the family, his friends, and even to the places of his youth. You can feel a warm affection throughout.

This was truly a stunning book. I'm sort of sorry I waited so long to read it, but maybe now was just the right moment. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it 25 years ago the way I did today.