The Bite Of The Mango Sparknotes

The Bite of The Mango is a story about a girl named Mariatu Kamara who lived in Sierra Leone and was a victim of war. This book wrote by Mariatu is to bring awareness to the people who were injured during the war in Sierra, and also to help with the poverty her people are facing. She told her story and how she went on a journey to overcome her fears and gather courage to share her story with the world. The key ideas throughout the book is that Mariatu had to fight to survive her injuries, the war and beg on the streets to help her family get some money. Mariatu had managed to survive without her hands and she adapted to not having them. Knowing about wars in other countries, but never knowing that the boys took extreme measures and cut off

She started off by talking about her childhood and how she was always playing and having fun with her brothers and sister. One day when she went to go gather water, she got attacked by rebels and her hands got cut off. “Then we saw them, coming out of one of the houses- soldiers of some sort, bare-chested, wearing khaki pants, with bullets wrapped around their muscled bodies.” (Mariatu, page 29) She then had to find her way to a big city called FreeTown, which took her a while. She got medical attention and found two of her brothers, but soon discovered she was pregnant because she got raped and later her baby died of malnutrition. “Since finding out I was pregnant, I’d endure serious bouts of depression, followed by moments of extreme happiness in which I forgot all about the war.” (Mariatu, page 97) Her and her brothers and sisters went and begged on the streets for money to buy food, soon news reporters were interviewing her and wanting her story “Indeed, passersby always singled me out when I held Abdul.” (Mariatu, page 102). She told her story and had moved to London and wanted to move to Canada. She went to school and learned English, she also went back home to realize that there was no money going to the family