The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa

In her debut memoir, The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa, Linda Gambill demonstrates the rare courage required to examine one’s youth with both unshrinking honesty and tender grace. As a reviewer who has seen many decades pass, I find her reflection on her twenty-four-year-old self particularly resonant. Anchored in her transformative years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1970s, Gambill delivers a narrative that maps the internal cartography of the soul as vividly as the sun-drenched paths of The Gambia.

The story begins in the biting chill of 1978 Knoxville, Tennessee, where Gambill feels adrift in a stagnant life. Driven by a need to reclaim her agency and a long-held dream of service, she escapes to West Africa, only to find herself “vastly underprepared” for the realities of the bush. What follows is a profound exploration of identity and belonging. Gambill arrives in the village of Medina Omar as a self-described outsider, eventually realizing that true belonging cannot be found in a landscape until it is first cultivated within oneself.

Throughout the narrative, Gambill masterfully navigates the complexities of cultural collision. She does not shy away from the harsh realities of the North Bank Division, wrestling with Western sensibilities when faced with local traditions and the sexual politics of polygamy. These moments of confrontation are balanced by her evolving human connections, specifically with Marcus Akua and Kabir Dem. Her relationship with Kabir, a traditional shopkeeper, is especially poignant, as it forces her to dismantle her own assumptions of cultural superiority.

Interwoven with these experiences is the theme of legacy, represented by a 1920s portrait of her grandmother, Mama Belle. This touchstone allows Gambill to explore how ancestral history and the accretion of time shape our present choices. The book’s structure, including a moving return to the village twenty years later, highlights the “phantom of a former self” and the enduring impact of her work in the village garden. Gambill’s prose is by turns lyrical and wise, marked by a photographer’s eye for the “lemon-colored” morning light and the “emerald blur” of the bush. For those of us who appreciate a memoir that treats the past with professional care and deep emotional intelligence, The Geography of Desire is a haunting reminder that our early journeys never truly end; they simply wait for a steady wind to bring their scent back to us.