Adwoa Badoe,
Between Sisters
Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2010.

Rating: G*

Gloria Bampo has failed thirteen of her fifteen exams in her final year of Junior Secondary School. If she were in Canada, this would just mean another year of school. In Ghana, however, this is a much more serious situation. Gloria will not be able to continue her schooling. Her father has lost his job, her mother is working but ill, and her sister is finishing catering school. Gloria must find work. Fortunately for her, she is offered a position working as a nanny for her distant relative Christine, who works as a medical doctor. Gloria takes the position as a ‘‘sister’’ rather than as an employee. This means that while she will not get paid, she will be treated like a close relative and will be supported through seamstress training when her little charge, Sam, is old enough to start school. Christine treats Gloria well. Unfortunately, Gloria is befriended by Bea, the illegitimate child of one of Christine’s colleagues. Bea is troubled and tempts Gloria with fashionable new clothes, boyfriends, and a life she could not have imagined at home with her family in Accra.

Badoe has painted a vivid picture of the life of a young girl today in Ghana. This is not a topic Canadian students are privileged enough to read often, and because of that, this is a book that should find its way into most high school libraries. Gloria is a three dimensional character with problems that, while culturally different, are not dissimilar to those faced by teens in Canada today: love, sex, peer pressure, friendship, family. In spite of the difference in location and culture, Canadian girls will find much to relate to in Between Sisters.

This book is recommended.

Diane Gallagher-Hayashi
Vol. 16, number 3
February 2011

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.