When a book begins with a six-year-old village boy in a dirt clearing watching his perfectly still uncle get six ritual lines sliced across his face with a sharp knife, you know the book is not set in Kansas. Walk Toward the Rising Sun, by Ger Duany with Garen Thomas, is set in war-torn Sudan. Ger, the young Sudanese boy in the 1980s will have much more danger to face. His older brother Oder, whom he idolizes, and his father are soldiers. For a time, he performs as man of the house to his mother and younger siblings in his family made up of his father’s other wives and children. They are all surprisingly supportive of each other as the men and boys of astonishingly young ages spend most of their time away in battle.
Death, violence, hunger, and escapes from danger become a way of life until Ger becomes a child soldier. His brother Oder advises him to get an education so he can get out of this unsettled life, and he takes advantage of any educational opportunities when he can get even if the “school” is under a tree.
A plane trip to America in the 1990s brings new life as a refugee but also another set of problems as he confronts racism, PTSD, and temptations into a flamboyant lifestyle that threatens to destroy the dreams his dead brother has instilled into him. A combination of his own heart and purposes and people who help steer him into ways he can help others eventually brings him to a better place.
The book, told as a straight-forward narrative, compelled me to keep reading. Nikki Grimes has said that what is missing in the calls for diversity in reading is how important these books are for everyone. I hope the closest I ever come to knowing what it would be like to live in the middle of war, perpetually hungry, with school haphazardly held under a tree is in the pages of a book. However, a well-told biography like this can make me see a tall skinny Sudanese boy as a fellow human being with emotions and feelings not all that different from my own.