Quick Take
- Narration: Tsidii Le Loka brings a lyrical, deeply felt presence to Rebecca Deng’s testimony, her voice carrying the cadences of the story’s African origins in a way that serves the material profoundly.
- Themes: refugee survival and displacement, faith in the face of annihilation, the genesis of a new American life
- Mood: Harrowing and lyrical in equal measure, with an undercurrent of resilience
- Verdict: A testimony of almost unimaginable experience rendered with the clarity of a child’s perspective, one of the more important survival memoirs in this genre.
I started What They Meant for Evil on a Saturday morning, thinking I would listen for an hour or so before moving on to other things. I listened straight through. Seven hours and eighteen minutes later I sat quietly for a while before doing anything else. That does not happen to me often. I am a practiced listener and a trained critic, and I have developed professional defenses against being undone by books. This one got through them.
The title comes from Genesis 50:20, Joseph’s declaration to his brothers after everything they had put him through: you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. Rebecca Deng, one of what the Western press called the Lost Boys of Sudan, except she was one of the Lost Girls and that distinction has mattered for the public telling of this story, chose this title because she means it literally. Her story is a case for that verse made in lived experience rather than theology.
What the Lost Boys Framing Left Out
The Lost Boys narrative entered Western consciousness primarily through journalism and then through a handful of memoirs, most notably Dave Eggers’s What Is the What, which was written about and for Valentino Achak Deng. The framing privileged the male experience for reasons that had more to do with Western media choices than with the actual demographics of displacement. Rebecca Deng’s book is, as she says, the first time a Lost Girl has told her own story at book length.
This matters narratively as well as politically. Her experience of displacement was different: the specific vulnerabilities of a girl fleeing through South Sudan, the different kind of violence she faced, the ways protection was offered and withheld based on gender. She was four years old when her village was attacked. The account that follows draws on both her own memory and, presumably, on what was reconstructed for her through family and community. The result is narrated from a child’s perspective, which is both formally interesting and emotionally devastating.
Tsidii Le Loka and the Sound of Testimony
Tsidii Le Loka, a South African actress and singer perhaps best known for originating the role of Rafiki in the Broadway production of The Lion King, is a remarkable choice as narrator, and the choice pays off completely. Her voice carries the geographic and cultural origin of this material in ways that a generic American narrator simply could not. The cadences of Deng’s prose, described in the synopsis as lyrical, find in Le Loka a voice that enhances rather than translates them.
The passages of greatest physical danger, fleeing gunfire, navigating crocodile-filled rivers, moving through territories controlled by armed factions, are read with the measured urgency of someone who understands that the greatest tribute to testimony is clarity rather than performance. Le Loka does not inflate these passages. She trusts them, and that trust is entirely warranted.
Faith Without Easy Resolution
One reviewer noted that the book concludes by identifying the specific Bible verse referenced in the title, and that this discovery represents a kind of gift. Deng’s faith is not the triumphalist, suffering-erased-by-grace variety that can feel like a category error in testimony of this kind. She holds her faith and her suffering together without forcing them to resolve. The God she describes is present in her survival without being a simple explanation for why the suffering happened.
Reviewers consistently describe the book as one that prompts continued research into Deng’s interviews and subsequent work, which is the highest compliment a memoir can receive: it ends and you want more of the person.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
This is essential listening for anyone interested in the South Sudanese civil wars, in refugee experience, or in the specific history of the Lost Boys and Girls and their resettlement in the United States. It is equally valuable for readers interested in testimony at the intersection of faith and extreme experience.
There is no category of listener I would warn away from this book, except to say that the early sections dealing with violence and child displacement are harrowing. The book earns its difficulty, but listeners should know it is coming.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does What They Meant for Evil relate to other Lost Boys memoirs, particularly What Is the What?
Dave Eggers’s What Is the What tells Valentino Achak Deng’s story with the resources of a major literary novelist. Rebecca Deng tells her own story in her own voice, and the female experience of displacement she describes is substantially different from the accounts that dominated earlier coverage. The two books complement each other without duplicating one another.
Is the narrative primarily about the years in Sudan and the refugee camps, or does it focus on life in America?
The book covers both. The escape and displacement years are described in vivid detail, but the account of arriving in the United States in 2000 and rebuilding a life is also part of the story. The spiritual resolution of the title verse happens in the American portion of the narrative.
Does Tsidii Le Loka’s South African background affect her narration of a South Sudanese story?
It affects it productively. Her voice carries an authenticity and geographic resonance that serves the material. South Sudan and South Africa are distinct cultures, but the alternative of a narrator entirely disconnected from sub-Saharan African culture would have been a much greater mismatch.
Is Rebecca Deng involved in ongoing advocacy work related to South Sudan or refugees?
Yes. Reviewers who were moved by the book consistently found themselves looking up Deng’s subsequent interviews and advocacy work, which is evidence both of how compelling her testimony is and of her continued public presence on these issues.
