"Staggering Genius" and "The What" - Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng paint a masterpiece

Alright, I’ll be honest – I’m a sucker for memoirs. Angela’s Ashes, A Million Little Pieces (yes, I know – and you can spare me), Dreams from my father and Stephen King’s On Writing while all wildly different, are all perfect examples of books that I dove into and came out of wanting more. If it’s told well and from the heart with at least a little finesse, it’s hard for a memoir to do wrong by me. But it wasn’t until I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers that I truly fell in love with the craft. You know that feeling after you witness something so penetratingly good that you feel inspired to do the same? Like, after a Scorsese flick, you wanna go shoot some shit or you start penning your own mobster masterpiece. Well after I read Heartbreaking, I started jotting down my own thoughts for my 1000 page epic memoir. Until I realized I was 19 and while I found my life mesmerizing and chalked full of gripping tales, the truth was it was all fairly trivial, I far lacked the maturity to write about myself honestly and most important, really, I had done nothing epic to speak of just yet. Got to have s story to tell before writing it, right? Moving on.....

In HWOSG, Eggers tells the true story of both of his parents dying of cancer five weeks apart from each other and him then taking on the task of raising his pre-pubescent younger brother at the age of 21. While the story sounds and in actuality is devastating, he tells it with a humor and a mastery of storytelling that I had yet to see and which spoke to me. (and to millions of others as well I might add, as the book was #1 and is probably still on the bestsellers list and earned eggers a finalist spot for a Pulitzer - that means its pretty good.) So when I was given a new book of his last Christmas that I had never heard of but read memoir on the cover, I was excited.

The book however, was not his memoir this time but the memoir of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee and one of thousands of displaced young men without families deemed the Lost Boys. The book begins with him explaining his story from his Atlanta apartment as it is being burglarized and he is being taken captive. He tells his captors, (through his book) the story of how thousands upon thousands of Sudanese ran from Sudan to Ethiopia, back to Sudan and then to Kenya in a battle for survival against war, starvation, wildlife, disease and the elements to finally reside in a refugee camp that to most, sounds unlivable but that he for over ten years called home. And after thirteen years of life in the Kenyan refugee camp is finally taken in by the United States (on September 11th, 2001 I might add) and takes on a whole new set of problems.

WITW is technically a novel, narrated by Eggers from the story that was orally told to him by Deng. It’s a novel because in many of his younger years Deng wasn’t old enough to necessarily recall things precisely as they happen but assures us in the forward that it is to the best of his abilities, accurate. (My spidey sense tells me that this may happen more often after the events of A Million Little Pieces author James Frey. He got the “talking to” by Oprah. Who wants to go on Oprah to get scolded? 1-2-3 NOT IT!) anywho…

The marvelous thing about this book is not that it tells such an incredible story, which it does. But it’s the way in which once again, along with Deng, Eggers can bring to light such a heart-wrenching, emotionally wrought tale with a humor and light-heartededness that has become his niche and through the story of one unbelievable young man can tell the story of thousands. One that is still remarkably relevant for Sudan and all of Africa as we speak.

Deng’s story is far beyond unbelievable and the courage he and thousands of others had to have to overcome these amazing things is nothing short of heroic. This book affected me very deeply and I highly recommend you go pick it up, not only because it is a beautifully written true adventure of a young man of extraordinary courage and sheds light on a horrific problem going on in Sudan but also because What is the What helps those still fighting this battle in Sudan. All proceeds go to the Valentino Achak Deng foundation that is helping rebuild his home village of Marial Bai. For more info check the links below…

The Valentino Achak Deng foundation - http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/

Valentino talks about the book, his experiences in America and in Sudan on a visit to Google headquarters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V7MeewG_MU

Eggers & Deng return to Marial Bai: Interview and Videos - http://www.smithmag.net/obsessions/2008/11/11/dave-eggers-and-valentino-achak-deng-return-to-sudan/

Eggers giving his 5 minute speech after winning the TED award -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3QbzvT6vko

Thanks for reading,
Kublakai