Review by New York Times Review
A MEMOIR IS an opportunity for a writer to put his or her life on trial, but few follow through and condemn themselves too. Jeffrey Gettleman, this newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning East Africa correspondent, fell in love with Africa while still a self-described frat boy; at Cornell he met his other great love, Courtenay, an alluring sorority girl. The twisted road that eventually allows him to unite these two conflicting passions takes the reader through a melodrama that squats uncomfortably between "Eat, Pray, Love" and "Heart of Darkness." Africa. That vast swell of nations, languages, landscapes and histories has always had a peculiar impact on foreigners, but Gettleman seems to have been hit harder than most. The continent is described as his "imaginary friend," a place that his fraternity brothers cannot possibly understand: basically a high-five-happy Shangri-La where the people are poor but rarely resentful. It is a place where he felt "worshiped" during a summertime visit, and to which he hankers to return. Gettleman's first job as a rookie journalist, though, is in Brooksville, Fla., and this setting, both familiar and unfamiliar to him, provides for the most vivid passages of the memoir, particularly his suspenseful description of an unintended confession by a child-murderer. As he blasts what he acknowledges to be a charmed path through the world of American journalism, it is not long before he is sent abroad. In Afghanistan the affability of the locals threatens his love of East Africans. Gettleman is a man keen on physical contact, and handshakes and bear hugs from burly men come in thick and fast in the marketplaces and cafes of Mazar-iSharif. He treks to the Valley of the Caves and helps rescue a young Talib who had been kidnapped by Northern Alliance militiamen. In Baghdad he has an on-the-job affair with a female photographer whose black abaya slips to the floor in a James Bond-esque flourish. During the day they chase stories, and he coins the term "manslaw" to describe the clumps of fat and flesh left behind in the debris of suicide attacks and car bombs. The whole memoir is peppered with terms - "dork," "yo mama" - that feel unnecessarily juvenile and jar with the gravity of his subjects. Gettleman is admirably honest about his selfishness and naivete: He is a passenger involved in a hit-and-run accident in which an Ethiopian soldier dies but he quickly "brushed that away"; he is arrested with a notebook that could expose Ogadeni rebels to torture and assassination; he cheats multiple times on Courtenay. The longdistance romance is wrung of all drama, every breakup and row described in minute detail. Eventually, he wins both girl and continent, and is given the plum job title he has worked so long for: East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. In Nairobi, old Africa hands present Gettleman with the question of to "oogabooga" or not to "ooga-booga"? How free should he be with the stereotypes that surround Africa, the stereotypes that he knows Binyavanga Wainaina and Chinua Achebe have notably warned against? He initially avoids the cliché-ridden approach of older correspondents: His first big story is about the trial of Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondely, a white Kenyan landowner who had killed two black men on his 50,000-acre estate. In this memoir, though, Gettleman slips into the ooga-booga quicksand. Mogadishu - or "Mog," as he calls it - is a word that "summoned up all the nastiness Africa could quite possibly produce." When it comes to Mogadishu, it's personal; it is the city where his friend, Dan Eldon - a young photojournalist whom Gettleman credits with igniting his love of East Africa - was killed. Eldon's ghost haunts this book, and in taking on Mogadishu, Somalia, al-Shabab and American meddling, Gettleman is intent on putting that ghost to rest. I have perceived in many works on Somalia by Western journalists some of the wild-eyed joy you see in photos of youths running with the bulls in Pamplona - a macho thrill that life there is supposed to be short and cheap, an almost sensual delight in, say, the "dark, unblinking eyes" and "chains of bullets." "Love, Africa" follows in that tradition, but it does a useful thing too: It shows just how impervious that gaze is to the work of African writers, and how the call of the tribe - the media tribe - cuts through whatever good intentions are put before it. by the end of the memoir, ensconced in comfort in Nairobi, Gettleman strikes a conflicted figure. He is still in love with Africa, though the postelection violence in Kenya as well as the Westgate Mall attack by al-Shabab have torn away some of his illusions. Both he and Courtenay have accepted the wisdom of their predecessors, ruefully recalling what a Zimbabwean farmer told them once at a truck stop near the South African border: "These people can survive on very little. They're not like us whites. They don't need a hamburger or an apple. They'll be fine for a month with a slab of rancid donkey meat." After spending years living in Africa, after questioning the inequality he sees around him, and after conversing with numerous politicians, activists and ordinary men and women, Gettleman allows the embittered white farmer to get in a parting shot, which he and his wife seem to take as brutal honesty. This unintentionally amusing scene fits what is a bewildering memoir. The whole narrative reminds me of those books written by colonial adventurers such as Sir Richard Burton, aimed at readers interested in Africa mainly as a site for their dreams and nightmares. ? By the end of the memoir, Gettleman strikes a conflicted figure. NADIFA MOHAMED is the author of "Black Mamba Boy" and "The Orchard of Lost Souls."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 16, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Gettleman recounts his two decades in journalism in this exciting, harrowing memoir that aptly displays why he's a Pulitzer Prize winner and a New York Times bureau chief. In college at Cornell in the 1990s, Gettleman discovered his two true loves: East Africa and a beautiful, bright fellow student named Courtenay. These two passions end up being at war with each other: the more Gettleman seeks out a career that takes him to the region he feels at home in (first in a brief stint as an aid worker, and then as a correspondent), it puts both geographical and emotional distance between him and Courtenay, who is pursuing her own dream of being a public defender. But even as Gettleman's job takes him to war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq (and into other women's beds), he can't quite let go of the hope of a future with Courtenay. Whether he's recounting a terrifying encounter with a child killer or running afoul of the Ethiopian government, there's a thrilling immediacy and attention to detail in Gettleman's writing that puts the reader right beside him. Combining that with his gimlet-eyed observations on East Africa and his love for the region, especially Kenya, Gettleman's memoir is an absolute must-read.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A journalist juggles a relationship and overseas adventure in this hectic memoir. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Gettleman recounts his dangerous reporting from global hot spots: interviewing Taliban POWs in Afghanistan; surveying firefights and suicide-bomb carnage in Iraq; and exploring famines, insurgencies, tribal massacres, and a pirate café in East Africa, where he is the Times bureau chief. Sharing many of his exploits is his wife and sometime colleague Courtenay; their star-crossed relationship, including bouts of infidelity, complicates his wanderlust. Gettleman's narrative has the virtues and limitations of journalism; it's colorful, evocative and immediate, but also distracted and somewhat shapeless. Many episodes are riveting: Gettleman was abducted by Iraqi insurgents (he escaped by pretending to be Greek instead of American), and he and Courtenay accompanied Ogaden rebels on a gruelling desert trek only to be thrown in prison by Ethiopian soldiers. Unfortunately, the storm-tossed-romance theme feels inflated; it bogs down in bickering between Gettleman and Courtenay, and sometimes entices the author into purplish prose (one illicit tryst in Baghdad "[left] a wet spot on the sheets as blood settled into pools out on the streets"). Africa definitely feels like the more compelling of Gettleman's passions, rendered here in engrossing reportage. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, chronicles his career, along with the hardships that accompany his unique and often perilous profession. The author falls in love with Africa during a college trip and is determined to return, but this infatuation causes discord with his girlfriend Courtenay. The book plods at the beginning but gains momentum when Gettleman takes a job at a Florida newspaper. Inspired by journalist Rick Bragg, he resolves to root out intriguing stories. This persistence lands him overseas post-9/11, reporting from the Middle East and Africa. Gettleman demonstrates the toll that itinerant journalism takes on a relationship and how it contributes to a perpetual state of disquietude. He also reveals the hubris and naivete that can be associated with the quest for the next groundbreaking story. Complex political issues pertaining to Africa lack sufficient context and depth, and the love story component is not compelling enough to make up for this. VERDICT Despite its flaws, this book is a vivid and valuable contribution to the literature of war correspondents. Readers should also seek out the work of Philip Gourevitch, Janine di Giovanni, and Megan K. Stack for more rigorous -narratives.-Barrie Olmstead, -Sacramento P.L. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A passionate debut memoir bears witness to political turmoil.For Pulitzer Prize winner Gettleman, East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, his response to Africa was nothing less than love at first sight. Yearning to return after a summer trip, in 1992, he left Cornell University, where he was an undergraduate, for "a whole glorious year" of exploring. Nave, enthusiastic, fearless, and woefully unprepared, he counted among his adventures nearly falling off Mount Kilimanjaro, being arrested for climbing without a permit, getting mugged, and twice losing his passport. Nevertheless, he felt sure that East Africa would become part of his life forever. The path to realizing that dream involved an internship in Ethiopia, just emerging from 30 years of civil war. The country was broken: dead animals rotted in the streets, and beggars roamed everywhere. Later, as a journalist, the author documented the atrocities of other wars: in Iraq, where the American invasion had unleashed "horrific and random and multivectored" violence; in Somalia, where America's support of Ethiopia's invasion, overthrowing "a popular, grassroots, and surprisingly effective Islamist administration," led to chaos, "high-seas piracy," terrorism, and ultimately devastating famine. Reporting from a region of 3.3 million square miles, 400 million people, and a dozen "fragile and poorly governed" countriesincluding the hot spots of Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Kenya, and BurundiGettleman focused on human rights abuses and terror resulting from conflicts among warlords, religious and ethnic factions, Western-backed rebels, and opportunistic militias "very good at murder on a shoestring." Caught in those conflicts, he was kidnapped, imprisoned, and beaten. Gettleman is forthright about condemning American policies and U.N. failures, and he underscores his struggles to find language to convey the reality he witnessed. He haggled with his editors, for example, "over hacked versus killed, tribe versus ethnic group," each of which "expressed value judgments or paternalism." Besides his career, the author chronicles his long, sometimes-fraught relationship with the woman he finally married and with whom he settled in Kenya. A stark, eye-opening, and sometimes-horrifying portrait by a reporter enthralled by the "power and magic" of Africa. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
