The Bite of the Mango.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

During the years 1991–2002, Sierra Leone in West Africa was wracked by a brutal civil war in which the rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), terrorized villages by raping, mutilating, and killing their inhabitants. The Bite of the Mango is the harsh, true story of one of the RUF’s victims. For a year, Mariatu Kamara, 11, and her fellow villagers would hide in the bush whenever rumours suggested the RUF’s proximity, but then Mariatu’s village relocated to a larger, safer community. Nonetheless, the RUF attacked, and child soldiers used a machete to amputate both of Mariatu’s hands. Hospitalized in Freetown, Mariatu discovers she is pregnant, the result of a pre-attack rape. Sent to live in a tent camp for amputees, Mariatu survives by begging on Freetown’s streets. Her son, delivered by caesarian section because of Mariatu’s young age, dies from malnutrition when just 10 months old. A newspaper article featuring Mariatu leads a Canadian family to send her money and raise her hopes that she can come to Canada; however, another opportunity takes her to England to be outfitted with prosthetic hands, something she ultimately rejects. Back in Sierra Leone, Mariatu gets the opportunity to immigrate to Canada, where she now lives.

North American adolescents, unaware of the Third World social conditions in Sierra Leone, may have difficulty in acknowledging The Bite of the Mango as being fact, not fiction. Following the horrific happenings that Mariatu describes in the first two-thirds of the book, those portions dealing with her time in England and coming to Canada feel inadequately developed. Recommended.