. What began for Jean–Marie Teno as a film on the literature of Cameroon became a study of the usurpation and co–optation of a language and culture. It became, that is, a film about the colonial legacy of repressiveness and corruption that continues beyond independence. With a deceptively freewheeling approach, Teno combines a personal voice–over narration, contemporary and colonial–era newsreel footage, and even a tour of his most beloved libraries and bookstalls, to delineate the link between a people who do not read and the violence and poverty of everyday life in Cameroon. Teno mourns a loss that happened before he was born. But resistance takes many forms, as shown by the biting political routine of a nightclub comedian, a brief shot of a man teaching his kids to read by the roadside, and this film itself.