CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: What is the What by Dave Eggers

What is the What
Dave Eggers
McSweeneys, 2006



Dave Eggers’s “What is the What” follows the first-person account of a “lost boy” from Sudan, who lives in Atlanta at present. The book is nearly nonfiction—based on a real person of the same name—but in building the narrative Eggers played with facts enough to call it a novel; this twist of truth makes the 400+ pages an especially compelling read. Eggers does away with his typically profane style of writing to present Achak raw and gentle, full of faith that eventually gives way to doubt.

In Achak’s bare English, at once formal and poetic, the story of Sudan’s civil war and one man’s life will shatter you.

--Reviewed by Amy Scheer

Besides her day jobs as freelance writer and mother, Amy Scheer is a prolific editorial letter writer. Most recently, her letters have appeared in Newsweek and Time. Amy lives with her composer-husband and two jolly sons in Grand Rapids, MI. Favorite past-times include sipping East African tea.

Feminist Reading of Boneheads, Stegosaurs

As we flipped through Usborne's "First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life," Merry took in the pictures of fast-running, sharp-clawed, dagger-toothed dinosaurs. Meat eaters, made to rip and shred and ingest one another. Merry's mouth gaped. Suddenly she asked,

"Are WE meat?"


I have to admit, I am not a dino-fan. But Merry was rivited as we turned page after page of endless saurases. And then the text began to tickle my funny-bone.

Read the following exerpts with a feminist lens and see if they're not funny:

"Stegosaurs were big and heavy, and could only move slowly. . .Their bodies were almost as big as a bus, but their brains were the size of table-tennis ball." Here you can see the size of a stegosaur's brain compared with its body. (insert picture here of huge animal with teenytiny brain).

And my all-time favorite. Boneheads: "Pachycephalosaurs [had] bony domes on top of their heads. These dinosaurs are sometimes known as boneheads."

(And my favorite line:) "Male boneheads sometimes fought each other."

So the world evolved. But some things never changed.