The Bite Of The Mango, by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland, is a very tragic book, and at some parts, it has even made me cry, however, this book was really educational because I got to learn the first-hand experience about what happened to an actual living person, not some fake character. A girl named Mariatu Camara, 11, suffers many hardships in her life while living in Sierra Leone such as both of her hands are chopped off, then she figures out she was raped and becomes pregnant, next her baby dies from a disease. The only good thing that happened to Mariatu is that she is then sent to England where she is taken care for and is given a pair of prosthetic hands. After, Mariatu goes back to Sierra Leone and gets a Visa to go to Canada where …show more content…
Throughout the book, there have been many examples of this theme when Mariatu was living in the refugee camp and also when Mariatu was living in Canada. Mariatu is shaped by her society because when she was young she started farming with her best friend, Mariatu, and how Mariatu would spend her nights by dancing and would dress as the devil during a performance for the entire village, “We spent our nights dancing to the sound of drums and to people singing… the entire village met to watch as people put on performances. When it was my turn to participate, I’d play as the devil, dressed up in a fancy red and black costume.” (Kamara and McClelland 15). Clearly, Mariatu remembers her childhood and her village and how she was influenced by it. Mariatu shows many traits she has learned from her village such as her dream of palm oil, “Whenever you dream of palm oil, my grandmother had told me when I was seven, blood will spill by the end of the day,” (Kamara and McClelland 25). As seen this has stuck to Mariatu throughout her entire childhood and also her adulthood. Mariatu’s dream of palm oil is very important because this is what leads to the climax of the story. Mariatu Kamara has gone through many things in her