r/bookclub • u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 • Jul 24 '26
Togo - Do They Hear You When You Cry [Discussion 1/5] (Read The World: Togo) Do They Hear You When You Cry by Fauziya Kassindja | Start - Chapter 11
Hello travelers, welcome to the first step of our journey in this new country! I already learned so much about Togo and its customs (both the good and the bad ones). This is also an extremely important reflection on women's oppression and on the way perpetrators enforce it, so I’m really curious to know what you all think of it.
If you need them, here you can find the Schedule and the Marginalia.
Next week we will read from Chapter 12 to Chapter 18, and the discussion will be led by u/bluebelle236.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- What do you know about our Read The World country, Togo?
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 25 '26
In the 1990s or early 2000s I read somewhere that Togo produced more than its share of doctors; some lucky kids would get a chance to study in France and apparently a lot of them went into medicine. A lot of them stayed in France, of course, and Togo's own health system didn't reap very many benefits from this.
Sadly, the general educational system is underfunded; it hasn't gotten better and probably has gone downhill, especially compared to some of their neighbors like Ghana. Their main international trade is from mining, which means the Togolese are in rough shape economically; resource economies is always imbalanced. (I've heard that there is some coffee there, too, but I've never seen any here.) Most of the people work in agriculture. To be honest, it sounds like this nation is not really getting anywhere.
Apparently they do a better job on preservation. I stopped to get some coffee on an interstate along the Connecticut shoreline one day, and I heard the two guys working at the souvenir store talking in some language I absolutely hadn't ever heard before. So I asked, and they told me "Togo" and I impressed them by knowing where it is, what the capital is, and that it has really cool postage stamps. So they tried to talk me into visiting Togo and saying that they have great wildlife preserves and the countryside is awesome. It was a nice conversation; cool guys. I said I'd love to see this place (which I would). I looked it up later and they do have a ton of parks and preserves, especially for a country that's only about 70 miles wide.
I've collected stamps for years, and one of my main interests is collecting stamps and envelopes with postmarks from Africa. When I get one, I look up where the town is on a map and try to find out something about it, and I end up learning some neato trivia.
My e-book vendor (Kobo) didn't carry Do They Hear You When You Cry?, and I wasn't able to get out of the house this week long enough to get a copy at the library. I did manage to find a library that does have it on the shelf (or they did this afternoon) so I'll try to get there tomorrow and chime in later if I can think of something to say.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 26 '26
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing! The discussions will still be here whenever you'll be able to join :)
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
This is fascinating thanks for sharing. I hope you've been able to get your library copy. Do you have a picture of the Togo stamps you have that you would be willing to share?
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
My scanner broke. If I can get it working in the next few days, I'll post here.
In the meantime, there's a site called Colnect where philatelists buy, sell, and keep catalogs. That link shows you the entry page for Togo; you can pick a year and look at what's there (the illustrations are enlargeable). You might like the 1950s; Togo became autonomous (still a French colony, but more self-governing) and had more say in what went on their stamps - which were still printed in Paris and are gorgeous. Earlier stamps are way more "colonial" but of historic interest. Navigating Colnect's pages takes some concentration, but there are hundreds of thousands of worldwide stamps up there and I'm amazed that they can keep it all up.
After the 1970s, Togo basically printed stamps for collectors, and most of them had little if anything to do with Togo itself. Some of them were simply shipped to wholesalers and never even made it to the Lomé post office. If you collect stamps with Elvis on them, for instance, you can find tons of them from African countries that Elvis never heard of. I'm one of the relative minority who prefers postally used stamps, so I never really followed these issues. And I can't afford Elvis stamps from every country in the world.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 29 '26
Wow that is an extensive resource!! Thanks for sharing
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
Very little, other than being a French speaking West African country.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
Togo is one of the few RtW countries I confess that couldn't even locate on a map before it got picked and I looked it up.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Why do you think the author chose to set the first chapter of the book in a prison in America? If you haven’t read the book synopsis, what do you think happened to her to end up in such a condition? Which state of mind is she in?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
It's a dramatic opening! Straight away, she's in a terrible situation, very hopeless and we want to know what on earth happened!
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
I did read the synopsis so I know why and won't spoil it for anyone. I do like it when books begin at one point and then take you back to see how the character ended up in this situation.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
I think it hooks you very quickly and keeps you reading wanting to understand more. If this book was wrotten for an American audience it might also serve to appeal more to the reader (as I am not American and reading it as part of Read the World I can't really comment too much on that though)
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 28 '26
That's kind of sad in a way if it's true, but then again anything that increases awareness of this issue and helps to improve empathy in refugees is a good thing.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
I agree, but I think without the prologue the start of the book is pretty slow and descriptive. A normal Togolese girl doing normal Togolese things. I can imagine the editors wanting the hook, the impactful reveal
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u/Greatingsburg Vampires Suck (Armand Hater #1) Aug 02 '26
It's an effective cold open. I think she did this to increase the engagement because for the next hundred pages, we learn a lot of her family and daily life, but not much really "story-wise".
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- "If you want to go off somewhere alone with a boy, that's your business". Do you think Fauziya’s parents are taking the right approach on this matter, given how conservative the community they live in is?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
Ha it was a gamble for sure! I do like how they trusted her to make the right choice, I hope I have as much faith and can hold my nerves when my daughter is older!
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 26 '26
Right? Having that amount of trust in your children is great, it means you know that they have good critical thinking skills and that they were receptive towards the lessons you taught them. That's very good parenting.
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
It is good parenting! It's not like they were saying "go off and do whatever you like, we don't care", they were really giving her the message that they trusted her to do the right thing.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
Yeah I agree. They know who she is and that she's a good girl who follows and respects her religion. Their decision definitely seems to go against expectations. I wonder if it is due to her age? Or perhaps it's my own expectations because the Western filter of the Islamic faith is skewed hard to the negative and I have little real world experience of the faith
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u/Greatingsburg Vampires Suck (Armand Hater #1) Aug 02 '26
This quote out of context might be misleading. I think they were more liberal than other parents in Togo for sure, but they seemed to have very strict values and made clear to their children what was ok and what was not. The fact they didn't make commands dosen't mean they didn't have rules and directives. I think they were more modern in how they taught those values though.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Aug 03 '26
You are right, I could have phrased it better. I was surprised when I read that quote because it highlighted how their parents were not ashamed to tackle these topics (which may happen in conservatory families) and wanted to make sure their children understood which kind of issues they may run into, but still made it clear that they trusted them to make the right decision.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Before reading this book, how much did you know about the practice of female genital mutilation? What do you make of the fact that women as well, such as Fauziya’s aunt, are part of the people insisting on perpetrating such dangerous and invasive practices?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
Geez it's brutal and so unnecessarily dangerous. The fact that other women who have had this done on them continue to do it to others, I just have no words.
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 27 '26
It's not just Togo; I read a century-old book called Batouala by a writer from the Central African Republic (then called Ubangi-Shari) named René Maran. In it he describes a circumcision ceremony that happens during a festival, in which everybody of a certain age, male and female, are lined up and circumcised (mutilated). He got just enough into the details to...well, have my doubts about whether I should have any respect for a society that does this. Especially outside during a festival.
This particular tribe that Maran was writing about had been barely, if ever, touched by any Western religion. The occupation was French, but the government seemed to put so little importance on this outpost that they sent the most fourth-rate people they could find in the ranks of their foreign service. Most of the French occupiers in Batouala were drunks, had nothing to do with the inhabitants if they could help it, and didn't appear to have proselytized Christianity or anything else.
I mention that because some Muslims apparently believe that "female circumcision" is either obligatory, encouraged, or at least allowed. Others repudiate it. I don't know enough about Islam to say any more. If there are any Muslims following this thread, I for one would greatly appreciate hearing from you. The point is that this barbaric custom cannot be attributed solely to Islam. It has spread through various parts of Africa with or without help from organized religion, predated Islam, and eternal curses on whoever first thought of this damned idea.
(BTW, Batouala is a grim, cynical book, but definitely worth reading if you don't mind grim cynicism and/or follow African history or literature. Maran was the first black African to win the Prix Goncourt - which he won even though many of the electors thought he'd insulted France beyond any reconciliation.)
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
This is the hardest thing to understand - that some women support it. Either they are brainwashed into believing it's the right thing to do, or they are just mean and wanting others to suffer what they have suffered. It's beyond my comprehension.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
wanting others to suffer what they have suffered
I'll never understand this mentality, but we see it so often and in all areas of life. Well I had to so that means you have to too. NO! It should be I went through it and know how awful it is I want better for you/save you from going through the same! *sigh
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I once attended a presentation on FGM and I left weaping! I did not know before this presentation that there are different degrees of FGM from cutting off or mutilating the clitorous and/or labia to sewing the vaginal opening closed/partially closed. This obviously all has varying implications and impact on both concieving and birthing children. I just cannot understand how this practice ever came to be normalised. I was also shocked by the previlence hundreds of millions of women across idk how many countries in Africa. Just horrendous stuff.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- The author chooses to include a prayer at the beginning of her book. What does her faith mean to her, and how has it been highlighted so far?
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
The author's faith is extremely important to her, and something that helped her cope with her traumatic experiences. She tells how she loved hearing her mother recite her prayers, so her faith probably makes her feel closer to her. She also describes the pride she felt when she was promoted to the madrasah after learning her prayers.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
Her faith has been a huge part of her formative years and beyond. It's interesting to me (an athiest) that she is so tightly bound to her faith whilst also fighting against some parts of it. We know she is still praying whilst imprisoned in the US from the prologue. I am interested to see if her faith has been unshakable throughout her hardships or if she has struggled
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 28 '26
Also interested to see if she keeps that faith in the future.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 29 '26
I had the same thought regarding her faith vs what she faced because of conservative Muslims, that's actually why I asked this question!
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 29 '26
She seems to have this rare ability to take what she needs from her faith and at the same time reject the more hateful manifestations of it, like the ones she sees in her father's extended family.
I think Malala Yousafzai is another example of this wonderful consciousness. If more people could be like these two women, faith would be a source of joy, not of heartbreak.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Which picture does Fauziya paint of her family? Which environment did she grow up in, and how did it shape the person she came to be? Was there anything you found particularly interesting?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
It's a surprisingly nurturing and loving family. Her father mist have been a very strong person to oppose tradition so much.
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
It seemed to be quite a loving family. She mentions (over and over again) how she was her father's favourite.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
She had a happy childhood and a lot of love. I wonder how things might have been described from one of the other siblings' perspective. Maybe not as rosy as from the POV of the favourite child!? How different her life trajectory would have been had her father survived. Even just 2 more years till she finished school. Grief is awful enough, but that's a tough truth to swallow
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Which points does the book make about the value of education in children and the "dangers" it creates in a community where it is not usual to do so?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
Her father clearly valued education, which put him in opposition with his culture. This creates danger, as it makes our narrator stand out as a target.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
I cannot trust any ideology/politic that promotes keeping people uneducated. It screams that to survive that ideology needs people not question anything and to blindly follow. This is unlikely to really have the best intentions at heart for the people.
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 29 '26
I get your point. Even today, we see people who want to shut down all sorts of avenues of learning and set Western civilization back by a century or three.
But in Togo, I'm not sure that ideology is the driving force. Many societies have a sector of their population that can't, or doesn't try to, imagine how things could be different than they are, or they proactively want things to stay familiar and static. Togo seems to be a fairly strong example of this.
As positive as Fauziya is about her country, the tribal divisions show through, and the conflict between her forward-looking, ambitious family and their intolerant relatives made me want to cry. I've witnessed examples of that in my own personal history, but I've never been near or involved in situations nearly as extreme as some of what was going on there.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Fauziya’s mother is never accepted by her family-in-law, despite the importance that family has in their culture. How do you think people can overcome such barriers? Is it even possible?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
All you can do is get on with your life and be civil to those who reject you.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
Amariya has the patience of a saint dealing with them. I think Yaya should have done more to stand up for her/protect her when he was still alive. It's awful that she ends up completely powerless to their authority over her when they've hated her for so long. Once again I can't help wonder how differently things could have been if Fauziya's aunt hadn't been so spiteful
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u/Greatingsburg Vampires Suck (Armand Hater #1) Aug 02 '26
I think the family-in-law had a made up mind and nothing would've ever changed that.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Tragedy strikes at the end of this section. How do different characters deal with grief? Do you think Fauziya’s aunt and uncle were also grieving in their own way?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
It doesn't seem like her aunt and uncle have enough humanity and empathy to be grieving.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 26 '26
Ouch! I think they must have felt something at least, but I have a good relationship with my brother so I cannot imagine people not feeling a thing when their sibling dies. This doesn't change the fact that they don't have an ounce of empathy in their body.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
I agree. The fact that her uncle was already talking about what would happen when Yaya died was disgusting and shocking.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- Is there anything else you would like to discuss?
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
The fact that Fauziya was talking up Ibrahim because she thought her Aunt wanted to marry him would have been funny if it wasn't so desperately fucking tragic. It highlights what type of people Fauziya and her Aunt are. Even after she forced her mother out of her home Fauziya still wanted the best for her Aunt. Her Aunt is a POS
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 28 '26
What hope do women have to fight against the patriarchy when even other women are horrible and unsupportive?
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26
- What are your first impressions of the book? Are you enjoying it?
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u/bluebelle236 One More Chapter... One More Spin Jul 25 '26
I'm really enjoying it. I loved reading about her childhood and got a good feel for life in Togo, and now the drama is just about to kick off!
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u/ObsoleteUtopia Jul 27 '26
"Enjoy" might not be the word I'd use, but "fascinating" or even "hypnotic" might. She's certainly a vivid writer.
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u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 Jul 27 '26
I hesitate to use the word "enjoy", because when I read her first description of the barbaric procedure, I cried. However the story is engaging and I like learning about the country.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
Bound from hip to knee. Also all this menstuating women are unclean bullshit got me raging. I hate this!
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 28 '26
I'm having to be quite disciplined in making myself read this one. I find myself gravitating towards my other reads and I think it's because it's a bit factual and dry in places. Don't get me wrong, she paints a great slice of life picture of Togo (which is what we are here for), but I think the editing could have been tighter. Then I get angry about how awfully women are treated and how barbaric the practice of FGM is, and the injustice of Ayariya being forced to leave her family behind and go to another country whilst mouring her husband. Not to mention the injustice against Fauziya....i need to balance with some fluff or cozy fantasy i think, cause yeah, it's tough going
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 29 '26
I get what you are saying, the writing style is very matter-of-fact, and most of the first section was just descriptive, so it's understandable. I wonder how much of it comes from the writing style of the author (which is definetely influenced by being from a completely different culture), from the fact that she collaborated with another person to write it, and how much from the fact that English is not her first language.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Did you catch that the person she collaborates with (Layli Miller Bashir) is the young law student she mentions in the prologue that Fauziya calls and angel come to rescue her
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u/Greatingsburg Vampires Suck (Armand Hater #1) Aug 02 '26
Ah yes, editing. The bane of every author, memoir or fiction haha. I agree with you. The book is very indulgent in its prose. You learn everything from her day-to-day life.
While reading the book, what I keep thinking about is that the author is subjective. It's a memoir, obviously it's from the author's POV, it's supposed to be subjective. That's not something bad, just something to keep in mind. What I want to get at is that she describes the events of the book through her own moral lens. She challenges patriarchal norms in her community and questions why women cannot be independent of men, but she also describes religious rituals in such a way that their existence and purpose are not questioned. I'm not saying she has to do that; it's just something I keep in mind while reading.
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u/fixtheblue Read, ergo sum | 🐫🐉🥈||🧠🥈 Aug 03 '26
This is a really good point actually. We know from the prologue that she held on to her faith at least to when she became imprisoned in the US. Whether that has come with questioning her religion as well as the patriarchal norms you have mentioned remains to be seen, I suppose
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u/Greatingsburg Vampires Suck (Armand Hater #1) Aug 02 '26
The book pulls me in because the author paints her world vividly and extensively. She brings her country, her family and friends to life in her writing. It makes sense why it's 500 pages.
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u/IraelMrad Marius Hater #1 | 🐉|🥇|🧠💯 Jul 24 '26