Thursday, April 26, 2012

Day One Hundred Seventeen: "Runs Girl" by Chinelo Okparanta

Choice.

A young girl must decide how to help her mother who needs medical attention but who doesn't have the money she needs to get it. Set in Nigeria, the story is both heartbreaking and vivid with images of the lives of the lower class and how those lives are shaped by the poverty, by the corruption around them, and by the limited options they have to overcome any of it.

There is rape, shame, and death without resolution or forgiveness, all things that work together to make this story a nice spin on a traditional theme one sees in literature often. What do we do to protect the ones we love? Are there limits? Do we dare test them? Sadly, the answers this story provides are hard ones but realistic ones. The mother dies. The girl is ruined. Life...goes on.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This was a wonderful story! Heartbreaking indeed!