Today, many will associate the bustling, urban city of Goma with armed group incursions and the Congo wars of the 1990s/2000s, and the home of hundreds of international NGOs and humanitarian workers. And perhaps more recently, with the country's longest outbreak of the Ebola virus, whose epicentre, while in the neighbouring towns of Beni-Butembo, is too close for comfort to the country's most densely populated city. The capital of North Kivu province, Goma is a frontier city, located strategically just across the border with Rwanda, on the shores of Lake Kivu. It is in practice, the ‘capital’ of eastern Congo.

Goma: stories of strength and sorrow from Eastern Congo brings the city to life through stories of the lived realities of 12 ordinary people; men, women, young, old, from different personal and professional backgrounds. The stories these ordinary people tell are often poignant and full of gems; anyone who spends any time in Congo knows how wonderfully rich these stories can be. For example, the account of the challenges of the public health system in Congo, as recounted by Chantal Sasolele, a medical doctor in Goma (Chapter 5), are particularly compelling, and should be essential reading for anyone responding to public health emergencies in Congo, from Congolese leaders to international aid workers.

The book is remarkable in that it sits largely alone in scholarship about conflict-affected places in Central Africa. Rarely do we hear from communities in conflict themselves – how they remember and interpret their past; and how they experienced the challenges and opportunities they faced and the choices they made. The importance of allowing the voices of regular people in Congo to emerge out of the cacophony of policy reports and interpretive academic articles, cannot be overstated. It underscores the paucity of oral history research in this part of the world, or even, as in the case of Goma, simple interviews that allow Congolese to tell their own stories.

This is important, as stories have agency. And the instrumentality of stories is critical to activism. As Michael Ignatieff has said, aid agencies (and academic researchers) themselves are moral storytellers – they tell stories of people in conflict-affected places to mediate and to motivate action. Stories thus are themselves actions, not simply accounts of actions. And stories, like actions, have intention, desired effects, and target recipients. They can be calls to action, and they can serve as evidence. Sometimes these stories are the only evidence we have of crimes against humanity. Finally, stories can empower or disempower, they can add value or devalue. But they are never neutral. Stories are imbued with meaning. The worlds we live in are worlds of stories – and stories compete. Storytelling is thus important but complicated. Who gets to tell the story? Who has the authority to tell the story? Whose stories are told? Bearing witness is an important component to authenticity. But who owns and shapes the story?

Goma struggles with this inherent tension of authorship and storytelling. In trying to weave a coherent narrative across the book, it is sometimes repetitive (for example, it repeats multiple times the risks to the city of natural gas, volcanic activity and earthquakes), and overly narrates and interprets. Often, one is left wanting for longer, uninterrupted passages from the voices and the stories they have to tell. That said, the book is accessible, and a welcome addition to scholarship on the Congo.