Name: Deeper Than African Soil: An Honest Recollection of Growing Up as a Missionary "Third Culture Kid": Faith Eidse: 9781601268471: Masthof: Books
Brand: Faith Eidse
Price: 18.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Deeper Than African Soil: An Honest Recollection of Growing Up as a Missionary "Third Culture Kid"

Faith Eidse

18⁰⁰

ISBN/Barcode:

Deeper than African Soil captures the romantic, pores-open wonder of a child raised among worlds. It unveils the adventure and suffering of revolution, disease, boarding school trauma, wrenching farewells and losses deeper than most people endure in a lifetime. It explores the nature of memory itself, why we repress it and how to call it forth, all five senses open. Daughter of Canadian Mennonites, Faith Eidse was separated from family at the scariest moments of her life. Amid postcolonial tensions in Congo, Canada and the U.S., Faith and her sisters—Hope, Charity and Grace—lived vivid lives, bridging cultures from their home (Dutch Mennonite) to their host villages in southern Manitoba, the American Midwest and southwestern Congo. Yet home was always changing—sometimes drastically. Faith seldom felt she truly belonged to the places they lived. In the United States, Faith was an immigrant. In her parents’ passport country, Canada, she was a visitor. In Congo, she claimed friendship, longing and memories. She related to all cultures yet owned none, formed identity from bits of home (first culture) and host (second or third) cultures to create a unique third culture. “Third culture kids” each have their own enriched, complicated story but share a diaspora of the heart and longing for home. (352pp. illus. Masthof Press, 2023.)

Contains adult themes.

A Canadian missionary kid writes of growing up in the Congo
Faith Eidse’s new book, Deeper than African Soil, deeply resonated with me. We were missionary kids and grew up in central Africa in the1950s and 1960s. The privilege we had of closely knowing Congolese culture, in her case, and Angolan culture, in my case, cannot be overstated. We had similar experiences of leaving home early to attend school far from those we loved. Faith tells the story of getting to know herself, always with a notebook in hand, writing what she observes and feels. Often feeling invisible, in her teens, she learns to feel at home in her skin and in her move to North America. Her book is full of rich details and complete honesty. A true joy to read.

Riveting account from a child’s-eye perspective of growing up in the Congo
This is a riveting account from a child’s-eye perspective of the unrest of the Jeunesse in Congo in the early 1960s, living in a UN refugee camp, experiencing sexual harassment and abuse as a child/teen and more. Eidse did a thorough job of interviewing others who went through the experiences with her and backs up historical events in the Congo with research of outside sources. She writes with a painfully honest but balanced approach for a memoir that could have been an overall negative portrayal of her life growing up in the Congo. Eidse’s deep respect for her family is apparent throughout the book, even when her parents made decisions that she wouldn’t have agreed with.

Her high regard for the customs and life of the Chokwe people of Congo who she grew up with was inspiring, knowing that her family could have chosen to isolate themselves in their own home on the mission compound. But she and her sisters chose to immerse themselves deeply into village life and relationships with the Congolese in the surrounding community. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone who is a “global nomad” as I am, or who has struggled to embrace their own unique identity.