Scale Boy

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

 

In 1980, at the age of ten, Patrice Nganang visited a local merchant to purchase a scale. He would use it in his role as a “scale boy”—a job still practiced in his hometown of Yaoundé, Cameroon—and would come to spend his days roaming the streets of the city with his weighing machine, exchanging its use for a small sum. People on the street would call out to him: Pèse-personne! Scale boy! There was no need to call twice.

Scale Boy: An African Childhood is an extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, incongruous, full of conflict, tragedy, and joy. Nganang, the acclaimed author of the novels Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and A Trail of Crab Tracks (a New Yorker Best Book of 2022), brings his attention to bear on post-independence Cameroon, taking as his subject his own vibrant, animated youth during a period of upheaval both national and personal. “To me,” he writes, “Cameroon’s history was a novel, my first true novel.”

In short, lively chapters interwoven with photographs, Nganang recounts his stint working at an auto-repair garage, the sights and tastes and sounds of his neighborhood, his schoolboy days, his interest in Cameroonian history, and his growing love of literature. The narrative builds to and ends with the 1984 attempted coup against President Paul Biya, who still rules the country today. The violence and instability of the period ushered in the end of Nganang’s childhood and set the stage for the political impasses that persist.

This remarkable memoir illuminates the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community. Though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang—with his inimitable voice and spirit—presents a new vision of a young Black African’s coming-of-age.