I Am Still With You

Journalist and critic Emmanuel Iduma was born nearly 20 years after the end of Nigeria’s civil war, which pitted the Nigerian government against the secessionist state of Biafra. But the events of the genocidal conflict, which lasted into the late 1960s, are still a mystery to the author. “We are a generation that has to lift itself from the hushes and gaps of the history of the war,” Iduma writes in I Am Still With You: A Reckoning With Silence, Inheritance, and History, his moving memoir that attempts to fill in those holes. After years of living in New York, Iduma returns to Nigeria in 2020 to investigate the disappearance of his namesake uncle, who went missing while fighting in the war. A thorough and thoughtful reporter, Iduma explains how it has become taboo in Nigerian culture to discuss the war, and uses his family’s own tragedy to tell the devastating story of a country that has not been allowed to properly mourn its dead. I Am Still With You is a deeply felt eulogy for those who were lost and a sobering reflection on the shame that comes with silence. —Shannon Carlin

Buy Now: I Am Still With You on Bookshop | Amazon

Contact us at letters@time.com.