I couldn’t even start to imagine how painful it must be to have one’s lips and gums tattooed, until I read Ken Bugul’s La Folie ou la mort. There is an absolutely fantastic description of Mom Dioum’s attempt to persevere to the end of this long and painful rite of passage. She does it in order to mark a new beginning in her life and leave behind the past… She lies on the ground, her head in tight grip between the legs of the tattooer woman; the needlework takes hours and is accompanied by continuously accelerating beating of drums around her. By the time she’s about to collapse the reader can already taste the sweat and blood and the frenzy. Très fort!