| When Osman Sankoh asked me to read and review
his book Hybrid Eyes, I was delighted at the invitation. I had
met Osman while working in Berlin on a project with a mutual
friend and colleague, and I was impressed by his genial, approachable
demeanour and astute contributions to the project. I had heard
about his previous book, Beautiful Colours, but I had not yet
had the opportunity to read his writing. Acquainted only casually
with Osman, I imagined that the writing would be--as the writer
himself seemed to me--thoughtful, accessible, and intellectually
engaging. Of course, Hybrid Eyes turned out to be all these
things. I was wholly unprepared, however, for the intensity
of the experiences the book describes--difficult experiences
which Osman himself had undergone and from which he had evidently
emerged courageously and without any disabling bitterness. Hybrid
Eyes is remarkable for the clear-sighted realism of its treatment
of culture-clashes, social and economic injustices, individual
pettiness and ignorance, and the pointless suffering to which
people too often subject one another. More remarkable, however,
is the book’s underlying optimism, its faith that people
from radically different cultures can successfully work to understand
and help one another, despite the barriers between us.
Osman Sankoh himself helps to tear down some barriers by
speaking honestly from his unique personal experience. At
once a memoir and a book of ideas, Hybrid Eyes illuminates
how the Western world looks from the point of view of a transplanted
Sierra Leonean, someone not quite of a piece with his new
culture but no longer quite Other, either. As an African among
Europeans, as a family man among young university students,
as the holder of an unfairly unrecognised degree among undergraduates
yet to complete their studies, the Osman of Hybrid Eyes sits
uneasily on the border between worlds and must find a way
to inhabit both. The dilemmas are painful. However, as a result
of his unique vantage point, he is able to observe and evaluate
lucidly every feature of his two cultures, from their educational
institutions, to their gender politics, to their uneven distribution
of wealth, and more. Some of the conclusions he draws are
not as native Westerners would see things (or prefer to see
them); other are remarkably charitable when it is not altogether
clear that such a forgiving view is warranted. Regardless,
in every case, the conclusions are honestly and openly his
own. The directness of his gaze can be discomfiting, but one
never feels that what he says is anything other than a thoughtful,
authentic assessment of what he sees.
Hybrid Eyes is additionally illuminating to Western readers
for the portrait of Sierra Leonean life and values it provides.
The book was a particular revelation to me as a middle-class,
European-American reader, coming as I do from a cultural milieu
which makes almost mandatory a peculiarly narrow and economically-driven
vision of the world. If we Westerners base our world-view
on the picture of the globe painted for us by the corporate
news and entertainment media, if we don’t personally
know any Africans or read much African writing, if we cocoon
ourselves completely in commercially-generated and -mediated
Western unreality--as it is so frighteningly easy to do for
us in the United States, in particular--it is altogether possible
for us to live our entire lives without ever forming a fair
or authentic awareness of Africans’ actual experiences,
ideas, and ways of life. Like the works of the similarly compassionate
but bluntly honest Wole Soyinka, Osman’s book helps
flesh out readers’ understanding of Africans’
experiences at home and abroad.
Osman Sankoh contends that Sierra Leoneans can learn from
Western cultural practices and traits, such as the internationally
famous German efficiency and orderliness, but what forcefully
strikes a Western mind upon reading this book is the extent
to which we must learn from Africans. This we must do for
the sake of both justice and simple clarity of understanding,
in large part because Westerners have so thoroughly and so
often brutally silenced African voices in the global dialogue
of ideas. The specifically Sierra Leonean qualities of being
and ways of viewing the world which Osman represents in this
book have particular importance to those of us living and
working in an increasingly technologically dominated and socially
alienated Western culture. Hybrid eyes can see in us what
our own monocultural eyes often cannot: that we egregiously
waste perfectly good food, clothing, and furniture; that we
swallow whole the stereotypes manufactured for us by the media
and perpetuated by our own ignorance; that we gaze on strangers
coldly. The lessons of this book come as wake-up calls to
native Westerners and as urgent reminders to transplanted
Sierra Leoneans to value and not let slip away the ways of
being that can most enrich us as humans. Hybrid Eyes reminds
us all to speak directly to one another without shrinking
back, to share our music, to laugh loudly and dance in the
streets, to offer and accept help, to throw a party that shakes
the walls and invite everyone. |
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Price: $10.00
