What is the What

I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, everyday until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people that will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

Valentino Achak Deng and Dave Eggers

This is the close of "What is the What" which is at once a beautiful and inspiring passage, but also a challenge. As impossible as it may be for the reader to pretend that the narrator Valentino does not exist, the reader llkely has. That I, and numerous others, have pretended other people do not exist is the reason that Valentino has to fill the air with his words.

I just finished this book, which I'm still processing. Its an incredible achievement and I will need to read this a few more times to really digest it. Immediately, I thought to other books I've read and am reading: 1) We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda , 2) Che, what cost rebellion/revolution? 3) Shake Hands with the Devil and the film Men With Guns (aren't they all just men with guns...?)

The narrator has a website with background information on Sudan and ways to take action. For more information on the book, check out McSweeneys, the publisher's home page.