My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses enslavement.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts creates a connection between the physical and spiritual worlds by positioning the narrator’s coming-of-age process amidst the background of a mythologized world. At the beginning of the text, the narrator comments that the bush of ghosts is “so dreadful […] that no superior earthly person ever entered it” (7). This statement introduces a connection between the worlds as the narrator implies how “earthly persons,” or humans, already know of the bush’s existence. With this knowledge, the novel expands the physical world to encompass the spiritual and illustrates the narrator’s relationship with his culture’s folklore and mythology. During his time in the bush, the narrator learns of other ways in which the physical and spiritual coexist. For example, the burglar-ghosts’ role of appearing as earthly babies to steal the possessions of humans illustrates how some of the ghosts enter the physical world and interact with the earthly persons.

Through his time in the bush of ghosts, the narrator learns how the worlds not only interact with each other but also share belief systems, including shared religious practices, such as animal sacrifices. When the narrator takes the form of a cow, an older ghost attempts to sacrifice him, illustrating how the ghosts within the novel participate in such practices to appeal to the gods for their benefit.