Death and the King's Horseman

"Life is honour. It ends when honour ends."

Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman is one of the most intriguing examples of postcolonial literature I have encountered. Inspired by a historical event that took place in 1946, the short play examines the consequences of colonial intervention during a suicide demanded by custom in Oyo. Open to multiple interpretations based on gender (it is mostly women who uphold traditions in the text), generational conflict, postcolonial thought, duty, 'tradition' vs. modernity, or tragedy (as well as death, or the cycle of life), the play is much more than a simple dichotomy of West versus tradition.

Certainly, this tragedy is an indictment of colonialism in its entirety and the white man's hubris going so far as to disrupt the natural order. Yet it is by no means a rejection of all of the West, as Olunde's powerful character shows. The cycle of life and death, for posterity's sake, by no means condemns all aspects of British civilization, but proffers a coexistence cut short by colonial intervention in the ritual suicide. Olunde's character, educated in England and studying medicine, the new generation of Nigerians who carry the best of the West and local traditions, is ultimately made to the pay the final cost and Nigeria loses the potential of such courageous figures. 

Furthermore, the play throws into question categories such as 'civilized' or 'modern' because 'modernity' in Europe, as Olunde explains, is the contemporary savagery of World War II and the mass suicide of soldiers. If the ritual suicide of the deceased Yoruba alafin's horseman to accompany him into the other world is barbaric, what does that say about 'modern' Europe, as Olunde poses the questions to Pilkings's wife, Jane? And what of the excess and decadence of holding a ball for the Prince of England when Britain is at war? While the Europeans desecrate the ancestral spirits and culture of death in Oyo (the use of egungun masks for the masked ball at the European club foreshadows Picklings's dishonor of the community by disrupting the suicide and arrested Elesin), they are in the midst of a global conflict where millions of Europeans died. 

Where Soyinka further complicates things is in how the dishonor wrought by the colonial state's intervention to prevent the suicide is the wavering commitment of Elesin himself to carry out the act, suggestive of an internal conflict within Yoruba culture and society regarding its cultural values and traditions as somehow static or evolving over time. The very notion of tradition itself is undermined by the play's powerful conclusion, and, as the 'mother' of the market, Iyajola, explains, the world of the Yoruba remains cast into the void. 

This play is well-worth the time for a serious literary endeavor into colonialism in an African context. While undoubtedly critical of British cultural imperialism, arrogance, or brutality, the play does much more than construct some impenetrable wall between the West and Africa, which would be too simplistic or reductionist of a viewpoint. Instead, Soyinka welcomes the reader to contemplate the very notion of value judgments of civilizations as 'civilized' or barbaric. In addition, the play is steeped in the Yoruba worldview and cultural world, revealing its sophistication and lyrical beauty of the riddles and oral traditions. Possibly the take away of such a complex play is that the worldview of Yoruba culture is equally developed and contradictory like that of British civilization, or any other human society on the face of the globe. 

Joys of Motherhood

I've been thinking lately about Buchi Emecheta's novel about motherhood, Joys of Motherhood. Though written in the 1970s, it depicts Igbo and Nigerian Lagos society near the end of colonialism, with all the ugliness and beauty of white colonialism, Igbo 'traditional' marriage and gender roles, the relationship of mother and child, and the culmination of a mother's life of living for children and men. At the end of the novel, it is not quite clear if this could be considered "feminist," since Emecheta's narrative voice does not condemn nor romanticize the troubled life of the Igbo mother. Nevertheless, her thoughts on colonialism, racism, and intermarriage between different Nigerian ethnic groups are quite clear, especially when the protagonist's daughter marries a Yoruba or Hausa Muslim. Looking back, it was a interesting look at Igbo society, providing a female-centered perspective one does not see in the work of, say, Chinua Achebe. I cannot help but think of the parallels between Emecheta and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a contemporary Nigerian writer of Igbo descent who also gives the reader a separate view of gender relations among Igbo society and Nigeria overall.

The Thing Around Your Neck

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck is an addictive read, but weakened by some of the Nigerian-American short stories being too similar. At times, one forgets the distinctions between those tales, even though some address certain themes of sexuality absent elsewhere. Otherwise, the collection of short stories entertains, informs, educates, and reminds one of the importance of diaspora and the changing face of immigration in the United States. African immigrants, especially Nigerians, have been coming to the US in greater numbers and the black immigrant experience is still neglected if not completely ignored in mainstream literature, so Adichie's collection serves as a useful foray into the experiences of Nigerian immigrants. Furthermore, she delves into issues of race, which, for African immigrants, is importance to acknowledge for improving relations between African-Americans and black immigrant communities. This is a theme that comes to the forefront in the brilliant novel, Americanah, but one can detect signs of that theme already in The Thing Around Your Neck. 

In addition, Adichie's vindicationist retelling of recent Igbo history through the lives of an Igbo woman and her educated grandchild, was a thrilling read. Obviously shaped by Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, she retells the story of British conquest of the 'primitive tribes of southern Nigeria' with an excellent, intertextual short story. Similarly, Adichie, a product of a middle-class Nigerian background, challenges stereotypes of Nigerians and Africans in general with some of her tales, which tell the tale of educated, professional individuals or families struggling against corruption in Nigeria and racism and classism in the US. The struggle for democracy and equality in Nigeria remains just as relevant for Nigerians in America as the struggle for finding one's 'place' in the US, the battle to assimilate without losing one's heritage.

Other highlights include "Jumping Monkey Hill," which speaks to the dominance of white, Western lens for elevating or promoting a 'proper African' or 'really African' literature. The white Englishman who puts together the literary conference in Cape Town dominates all reviews, imposes his own standards and definitions of Africa on the assortment of writers, and is taken more seriously despite his racist and sexist stereotypes of Africa. Alas, the hegemony of Western images of Africa retains its potency, despite valiant and numerous critiques from the best of African writers for decades (such as Chinua Achebe, who deconstructs racist images of Africa in 'classics' like Conrad's Heart of Darkness). The tale about religious and ethnic conflict in Kano during a riot also stands out for Adichie's keen eye for challenging internal divisions in Nigeria. This is of course a much larger theme in Half of a Yellow Sun, but nonetheless critical for Adichie's other fiction about one of the most diverse African countries.

Purple Hibiscus

"To restore the dignity of man."

I finally read Purple Hibiscus after purchasing it from a downtown used bookstore several months ago. Despite being an admirer of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for her future novels, I took my time to devour her debut novel. It was a mistake. Without a doubt, hints of Adichie's greatness as a writer are already strong in Purple Hibiscus. Her simple, yet deep prose, skill with visuals and capturing the flowers, plants, animals, and winds (especially the harmattan winds) of Nigeria, and encapsulating the turmoil and travails of the post-colonial Nigerian state through one family offers powerful lessons regarding power, identity, and the importance of keeping the delicate alive.

In many ways, this author shares Chinua Achebe's vision and style, especially in peppering the novel with Igbo cuisine, language, culture, religion, folklore (especially through the memorable tale of why the tortoise has a cracked shell, as told by the narrator's grandfather), as well as critiquing a slavish imitation of European-styled Catholicism or speaking solely English in formal situations. Religion and the age-old problem of religion being a tool of European imperialism to colonize Africa appear throughout, although Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie provides the reader with several examples of characters whose practice of Catholicism is not embedded in Western forms and prejudice against traditional religion. The Apparition of Aokpa, a Marian apparition that never received formal recognition from the Vatican, is one successful instance of Nigerian Catholicism seeking a separate identity rooted within Igbo culture, just as the use of singing in Igbo and the mixture of traditional elements and respect for the ways of the past exist side by side with someone as abhorrent as Eugene, Kambili's father, who sees Igbo religious traditions as heathenism.

Father Amadi, Aunty Ifeoma, and Kambili herself, to a certain extent, reveal the nuanced ways in which Christianity has become 'Africanized' in a way that does not denigrate or deny the importance of the ways of one's ancestors, something that is tied to crafting a larger 'ethnic' Igbo identity and Nigerian nationality. Eugene, unlike his sister and characters, looks down on his father for never converting to Catholicism, looks down on speaking Igbo in public or the singing in Igbo during Mass, and certainly favored emulation of British culture and social manners to become 'civilized.' In other words, Papa became 'confused' and in his endeavors to 'save' his family from moral condemnation, his tyrannical rule and physical abuse toward his family mirrored the political violence and military dictatorship of the Nigerian state. Much like the dictators and corrupt police, Eugene used force, manipulation, and fear to coerce his family and impose his will, eventually refusing to let the beautiful, delicate hibiscus of family and nation to thrive.

Like other multi-dimensional characters in this excellent novel, Eugene was quite critical of the corrupt dictatorship, and used his ownership of the Standard newspaper (and its editor, Ade Coke, later targeted by the state) to 'speak truth to power.' Similarly, Eugene's family, especially his children, learn to rebel against their tyrannical father (especially after much needed respites from home with Aunty Ifeoma and their cousins, which exposes them to their grandfather and broadens their perspectives) and before one knows it, begin to see the world through lens more inclusive, accepting, and defensive of a specifically and proudly Nigerian post-colonial state.

Although the future of the family is unclear (which is similar to the case of Nigeria, too), a positive future is hinted at by the novel's conclusion, and one can only hope the purple hibiscus, ixora and other flowers are planted in the garden. So, unlike, say, Chinua Achebe's timeless classic, Things Fall Apart, this is not quite a tragic hero story, but an optimistic look at the future of independent Nigeria, free to cultivate its own flowers and pursue a tomorrow in accordance with its own cultural values and thinking. Unfortunately, the novel does not delve into the dilemma of Aunty Ifeoma's life in the US (where she is forced to go with her family by the political turmoil and deteriorating economic conditions) nor foreshadow the dark conclusion and final act of rebellion, nor does it provide a lengthy backdrop for how Eugene turned against his father and Igbo past, even if doing so would lead one away from Kambili's narration. Yet, despite some criticisms or wishing for additional background information, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie deserves accolades for such a successful and realistic portrayal of an Igbo Nigerian upper-class teenager's world. If Achebe read this work, I am sure he would be proud of the flowering of Nigerian written literature since his youth.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

 

"Ifemelu shifted. Kelsey's knowing tone grated. Her headache was getting worse. She did not think the novel was about Africa at all. It was about Europe, or the longing for Europe, about the battered self-image of an Indian man born in Africa, who felt so wounded, so diminished, by not having been born European, a member of a race which he had elevated for their ability to create, that he turned his imagined personal insufficiencies into an impatient contempt for Africa, in his knowing haughty attitude to the African, he could become, even if only fleetingly, a European. She leaned back on her seat and said this in measured tones. Kelsey looked startled; she had not expected a mini-lecture. Then, she said kindly, 'Oh, well, I see why you would read the novel like that.'"

After reading the pure delight of Adichie's historical fiction, Half of a Yellow Sun, which told through literature the horrifying story of the Biafran war and, what some may consider, genocidal policies pursued by the Nigerian government to end the secession of Biafran through starvation as a weapon of mass destruction. If you can recall, I have blogged about that beautiful, well-researched and well-written novel, here. Americanah looks to the Nigerian immigrant experience in the United States and Britain, however, with little of the deep, well-researched historical detail of the various generals and dictators who caused unrest, university strikes, and economic turmoil, which prompted the novel's protagonists, secondary school lovebirds, Ifemelu and Obinze, to take their chances abroad in the US and UK. So, instead of a novel set entirely in Nigeria during the early postcolonial decades, Americanah focuses on two Nigerian experiences in a transnational, global world shaped by immigration, race, love, Westernization, and, beginning around page 190, takes a literary quip at Naipaul's A Bend in the River, a pro-imperialist, racist critique of Mobutu's rule of Zaire generalized for an entire continent, an entire 'race' (I wrote about Naipaul's novel, here and check this out). 

The novel also adopts an interesting, non-linear narrative structure. Each part of the novel is divided into it's focus on the life of Ifemelu or Obinze, and it often leaps backwards and forwards chronologically to explain or connect events in their lives, from Ifemelu's eventual move to the US, living with her Aunty Uju, traveling in the US, attending university, and dating a middle-class American black, Blaine, and a wealthy white American, returning to Nigeria, and, rediscovering Lagos, the metropolis of West Africa. Obinze, on the other hand, stays in Nigeria to finish university, struggles to find work, manages to make it to the UK through his mother, a university professor in Nigeria, his visa expires, and he is then deported back to Nigeria right before his sham marriage to a European Union citizen, a biracial woman of Angolan and Portuguese heritage. Personally, I found the transitions to different phases in the life of both characters confusing or too rapid, as if each event in the course of Ifemelu's life was just a long string of inevitability in succession. Don't get me wrong, I was enthralled by the novel and could not put it down, but the back-and-forth felt awkward and lacked a more flowing, gradual transition at times. Obinze's backstory, in my opinion, is slightly lacking, since I am still a little confused as to how he became a 'big man' in Lagos and acquired property after living a life of immigrant hardship in the UK, but in the last part of the novel, everything comes together and, for the most part, makes sense.

That said, the novel's quite compelling, particularly for the focus on race, hair and body politics for women of African descent, both in Africa and the US, and the topic of black immigration in the US, which is often overlooked or ignored by the focus on Latin American or Asian immigrants. Indeed, reading Ifemelu's thoughts and life story while in the US, I know from personal experience some of what she discusses. Furthermore, the use of a fictional race blog started by her, allows for Adichie's personal views on race to enter the text in some rather direct, obvious ways. I don't mind, however, since she's on point, on white liberal and white conservative racism in the US, and how the NAB (Non-American Black) perspective on race relations in the US is often eliminated or reduced to stereotypes of Black immigrants distancing themselves from 'race' and African-Americans (or, American blacks, as Adichie often refers to them in the novel). Clearly, some of the experiences of Ifemelu are autobiographical, because Adichie lived in the US for some time, too, attending Ivy League institutions while vividly experiencing and observing racial segregation, disproportional poverty, and the long, deep, historical roots of American racism. In addition, Adichie's relatively privileged Nigerian Igbo background is reflected in the two characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, who are not the poorest, most desperate Nigerians seeking a living in Europe or the US, but rather, come from educated and middle-class families, though the plight of Ifemelu's civil servant father's struggle to find work in the earlier part of the novel establishes her lower middle-class or working-class roots. Perfectly aware of this, Adichie likely engaged in critique of herself and privileged, educated abroad Nigerian returnees in Lagos, who, as Ifemelu sees in the Nigerpolitan club, consist of wealthy Nigerians who complain incessantly about how Lagos is not New York City, Nigerians do not cook or consume the same style of food as American and European peoples, and, last but certainly not least, Adichie critiques this dependence of the Nigerian elite on overpriced American and European styles and trends. Similarly, she criticizes the notion that black women, both American and Nigerian, feel pressured and compelled to relax or straighten their hair for employment or, just to be considered attractive (as well as the skin bleaching phenomenon, which Ifemelu notices in some Nigerian women whose whitened faces don't match the darker skin elsewhere on their bodies. 

Moreover, Ifemelu's on point blogs in the novel resonated with me, a fellow blogger who often writes about race. Her blogs are the keys to her career success: fellowship at Princeton, advertising profits from the blog and fan donations, conferences (which, as Adichie so knowingly wrote, consisted of Adichie lying to conference attendees at corporations and schools about American 'progress' on tackling racism since she knew none of these people read her blog, but in the desire to appear anti-racist, hired her to speak and congratulate mostly white audiences on their good work), and meeting her educated, middle-class American black lover, Blaine, who she has a serious relationship with after the disastrous end to her relationship with Curt, a wealthy white American whose conservative mother was racist (though not nearly as racist as the aunt of the children Ifemelu becomes a nanny to while attending university in Philadelphia, to finish her communications major). Her blogs, her voice and outlet to the world on her thoughts regarding race relations in the US and 21st century Lagos, also reveal the transnational, global links in the world wrought by increased communication. Advances in technology include the democratization of cellular phones in Nigeria beyond the wealthy, internet and computer usage, transnational immigration, and, perhaps most significantly for Ifemelu and Obinze, the vicissitudes in the economic conditions of Lagos. 

Reminiscent of a critique leveled against Lagos from a class on African Urban History I observed last semester, Lagos is either a heaven of capitalist entrepreneurial spirit, or a disgustingly unequal city illustrative of the lack of equity wrought by capitalism's iron fist. The widespread practice of government corruption that allows some 'big men' to establish monopolies and acquire extreme wealth indicates more of the latter, at least in my mind, since the shacks, poor quality roads, and exploitation or neglect of the dispossessed appears stark in the novel. Adichie's characters also experience the blackouts and expensive cost of living in what may be Africa's largest city. Nevertheless, Ifemelu defends Lagos as a city on its own terms, despite her initial sympathies with Nigerpolitan returnees and their condescension towards the city of their homeland. Lagos is Lagos, it is Nigeria, not New York, and it never will be. Thus, one sees some African and Nigerian nationalist sentiment in Adichie's characters, who strive to create their own identities instead of regurgitating Western cuisine, styles, and definitions of urban space and life. Equally important in the case of Ifemelu, acknowledging race and the importance for black women to accept their natural, God-given hair and bodies, shows common sense as well as some elements of Nigerian and African self-love and nationalist sympathies. 

Ultimately, Ifemelu escapes the "Americanah" identity of a Nigerian returnee who talks in an American accent, thinks the "American way is the best" and struggles to conform to dominant notions of American (or Western and European) superiority. Race and the immigrant experience of poverty, xenophobia, and cross-cultural learning teach Ifemelu and Obinze to not place American practices, literature, and lifestyles on a pedestal above that of their own local, Nigerian identities. This actually reminds me of a piece from The Guardian on Afropeans who, despite being raised or born in Europe, seem to be returning to the African nations of their parents, which Ifemelu and others also do in this novel, though they were raised in Nigeria before leaving for the US. Moreover, some of the scenes described resonated with me as beautiful reminders of the Francophone West African women who braid black hair in run-down shops, often in bad neighborhoods, and the racial microaggressions, disappointment after the charismatic, uplifting Obama campaign of 2008 (which plays a significant role for Ifemelu and Blaine's relationship, not only uniting many eager to see a black president and a 'changing America' but also restoring their relationship), and the vivid, moving descriptions of black immigrant family life in predominantly white towns, suburbs, and areas, such as Aunty Uju and Dike's life in small-town Massachusetts. Despite some slight problems, this is a brilliant, captivating novel, and hopefully it will reach out to Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans, as well as other African and black immigrant families, whose negative views toward African-Americans will be challenged by the honest dialogue of Ifemelu.

Thoughts on Woman At Point Zero

"I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute's life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet."

            Nawal El Saadawi’s novel, Woman at Point Zero, is an interesting look at sexism in Egyptian society. Though not a very strong novel in terms of literary merit, since it’s an endless list of terrible experiences with sexism and exploitation of women that hammers its nail on sexism repeatedly. Saadawi, famous Egyptian novelist, feminist, and doctor, criticizes female genital mutilation, the imprisonment of women through the institution of marriage, capitalist exploitation, and male pimps in the sex industry, nevertheless is lacking in style. A frame story, the novel consists of what seems to be Saadawi herself interviewing the prisoner, Firdaus, a former prostitute who murdered her violent pimp and resisted the imprisonment of women through Egyptian culture and society. There are numerous patterns and some attempts at literary merit, as well as several instances of righteous indignation on the part of Firdaus against her sexist employers, lovers, pimps, police, an Arab prince, and abusive parents and relatives.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that the novel’s main function is to relay several instances of sexism in Egyptian society. Believe me, I have no problem with reading about these often gruesome depictions of violence and patriarchy, but, the plot does not actually seem to have any artistic merit beyond depicting and shouting to the world that sexism is widespread in Egypt. However, it may also perpetuate the notion of Arab or Islamic exceptionalism in extreme patriarchal societies. That is unfair, racist, and also hypocritical when one considers widespread sexism in “Western” societies. But perhaps I am being unfair myself in a critique of the novel as lacking any substance beyond unveiling the oppression of women in 20^th century Egypt. That alone is revolutionary and worth supporting, especially in conjunction with the activism of Saadawi in her personal life.

Alex La Guma's A Walk in the Night

Alex La Guma's short novel, A Walk in the Night, is a fascinating read on Cape Town's colored District 6, early 1960s apartheid, and the destructive impact of racism and hatred on human society. Instead of writing a formal analysis or review, I shall dsecribe interesting aspects of La Guma's novel, featuring the unnecessary and immoral murder of a colored youth with kinky hair, white supremacy, the cosmopolitan world of Cape Town, and apartheid's negative effects on society, essentially driving violence and murder.

Cape Town's District 6, prior to it's forced evacuation of the "Colored" population under apartheid rule, which has been discussed in previous blog posts about "Mannenberg" or "Cape Town Fringe" by Abdullah Ibrahim, is the setting for the story. Though a "Colored" district where only mixed-race people are supposed to reside, an alcoholic and out of work Irish actor lives in a tenement with several impoverished Coloreds. District 6 also houses shebeens, restaurants (some owned by Indians or other Europeans, such as the Portuguese) and hosts international guests of color. In fact, Puerto Rican shipworkers from the US almost get in a brawl with Colored gangster-wannabes. In addition to European, Indian, and American workers seeking cheap thrills through South African prostitutes and bars, the white police officers possess a permanent volatile presence in the District. Though despised, Constable Raalt and his driver cruise around, harassing store owners and pedestrians, often out of rage at personal problems as well as their hatred for "hotnots," exacerbating relations between white and Colored South Africans under apartheid. Since the apartheid state required strict segregation of the races, pass laws, and white supervision and curtailment of non-white movement, the white police in District 6 operate like an occupying force, similar to their present role in many US African-American or Latino urban communities.

Cape Town, city of beauty and center of the Colored population, is important in terms of race relations because Coloreds outnumbered Black South Africans in this time. Indeed, the population of Cape Town is still mostly "Colored," yet in this novel, the "Colored" seem to be racialized as "black." Perhaps this varies with skin color and physical features, so that the kinky-haired Willieboy becomes a "hotnot," but one of the police officers refers to all the "Coloreds" as "hotnots," derived from "Hottentot," which refers to the indigenous peoples of the region, the Khoikhoi. Thus, distinctions between Black and Colored South Africans are not as apparent in this novel, perhaps due to the simple fact of a small Black population in Cape Town in the early 1960s, or because of the broadened definition of "black" during the anti-apartheid movement to foster unified resistance among the non-white populace. La Guma also came from a Communist Colored background, perhaps also impacting his racial identification with the Black majority in an effort to overturn centuries of division and self-hatred for the African heritage of South Africa's Colored. However, this was years before Black Consciousness, so perhaps I am reading too much into this. The professor of the course I was required to read this for definitely presented this way, though, describing everyone as "black" despite the differences in South Africa's racial structure.

The novel links the infidelity, racism, segregation, and labor exploitation. Michael Adonis, the character who murders the Irishman, is fired from his job by a white overseer, thereby turning his heart to hate of all whites. However, the exploitation and expropriation of Colored labor is another inherent part of apartheid's longevity. Though Black South African miners, domestics, and others are not present in the novel, the Marxist themes of exploitation of workers are present in Michael Adonis being terminated from his work, complete white control of the economy, and the lives of the numerous members of the community of the novel. The married couple living in the same building as are struggling to live while the mother becomes pregnant, representing hope for the future, nevertheless live a life of material poverty despite the laboriousness of the family. Likewise, Willieboy's life under an abusive father or the homeless acquaintance of Adonis, provide clear evidence of an underpaid, exploited, abused, subject people whose community is reduced to patron-client relations with whites, substandard housing, and crime. The excessive policing, more reminiscent of slave paddyrollers than any sense of protection or justice, exemplify the ruthlessness of apartheid and racial hatred within a broader system of capitalism.

However, hope for the future remains, despite the wrongful death of Willieboy and the ongoing existence of apartheid. La Guma ends with the following, "Franky Lorenzo slept on his back and snored peacefully. Beside him the woman, Grace, lay awake in the dark, restlessly waiting for the dawn and feeling the knot of life within her." Amazingly, La Guma ends on an optimistic note, despite Willieboy's death and Michael Adonis giving in to hate.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

"The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. 

I have shared a previous essay on Achebe's masterpiece in the early years of this blog, which can be accessed here for any interested party. It's based on an essay from a World Literature course in my senior year of high school. Emphasizing the obvious tragic hero elements of Okonkwo, the essay, in retrospect, is nothing revelatory or that interesting. However, since I was forced to re-read the text for a current course where I will have an exam on the novel, the obvious gender dynamics of the novel require critical lens. Unfortunately, due to a heavy workload for several classes, I cannot do justice to this novel's intersections of race, gender, and colonialism, but I am sure such analyses have already been completed. Nevertheless, Achebe's brilliantly crafted fiction avoids many of the common tropes of certain manifestations of Afrocentrism, which seem to romanticize pre-colonial Africa. Achebe shows vividly how patriarchal and problematic Ibo society was before colonialism, particularly in the leaving twin infants to die and other seemingly brutal rituals, in addition to extreme patriarchal social organization. His narration also facilitates a novel interspersed with oral tradition, song, and language, representing the continued legacy and relevance of ancient Ibo culture to the present.

Anyway, Achebe's essay on Conrad's Heart of Darkness is also worth reading and writing a post about, but I have not read that novella since high school. 

Ferdinand Oyono's Houseboy

“I could not hold myself from shaking as I watched. It was terrible. I thought of all the priests, all the pastors, all the white men, who come to save our souls and preach love of our neighbors. Is the white man’s neighbor only other white men? Who can go on believing the stuff we are served up in the churches when things happen like I saw today...”

Ferdinand Oyono's short novel, Housboy, is a brief exposé on the brutality of European colonialism in Cameroon. The protagonist, Toundi, dies but leaves a diary telling his life story, which is discovered by a Frenchman who then translate it into French, framing the novel. Sent in Dangan, Toundi, a houseboy, or domestic servant, grows up wanting to be like the whites, but gradually discovers the myths and lies of white European superiority constructed by colonial authorities. Soon, Toundi uncovers the sexual dalliances of Catholic officials, infidelity on the parts of whites, including the Commandant and the prison-director, Moreau, and the corrupt system of justice which relies on torture and exploitation of local peoples. Thus, the novel, published in 1956, is also part of the negritude literary movement because it criticizes European colonialism while defending local African cultural practices and history. For instance, Toundi begins to lose his fear and respect for the Commandant when he sees he is not circumcised like all men in his own community. Furthermore, the whites' hypocrisy and reliance on violence for exploitation, as well as the deviation from Christian morality, force Toundi to realize that the whites were  not nearly as good as he thought they were when he fled from his abusive father.

In the end, Toundi becomes a scapegoat for the theft of a cashbox from a white agricultural engineer by his African lover, Sophie. Toundi's tragic death, upon discovery of the excessive cruelty and savagery of the whites, challenges the myth of white supremacy. For instance, Africans are described as savage by whites for being polygamous, pagan, and culturally inferior, but white Europeans in Cameroon do the very things they attack as evidence of African barbarity. However, the diary of Toundi begins with the claim that his ancestors practiced cannibalism. From the little research I have done for classes or personal enrichment, the evidence for widespread cannibalism is largely a myth from 19th century white European writers about the Fang people of modern Gabon and Cameroon. White Europeans, wanting to find evidence for what was not there, insinuated that the Fang rituals and use of human bones for relics or their numerous military conflicts, were all driven by a desire for human flesh. In truth, there has yet to be any irrefutable evidence of cannibalism in Cameroon (or any other part of Africa). 

Anyway, if you want to read a short novel about colonialism in Cameroon, check out Houseboy. There is not too much character development, but it reveals a lot about contradictions of white colonialism, different concepts of gender for Cameroonians and Europeans, as well as providing a portrait of colonialism from an African's perspective. The segregated African township and white quarter, a hospital in Dangan known as "The Blackmen's grave," and violence and exploitation of Africans for increasing the wealth of whites are just some vivid examples of colonialism's dehumanizing character. Yet, there is victory in the end, despite the death of Toundi. His discovery, as well as the discovery by other blacks of Dangan about the hypocrisy of the whites, will eventually topple European rule and usher in the era of independence.

J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

"He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge enterprise of enlightenment? Nothing that he can see."

            J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is quite the read. Like previous novels, such as Waiting for the Barbarians, our protagonist, a college professor in Cape Town who falls in disgrace after an affair with a student gets out, like the civil magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians, becomes reduced to some of the most dehumanizing, alienating experiences one could face while simultaneously learning more about themselves and the human condition. Unlike the other novel, Disgrace is explicitly South Africa, and based on post-apartheid South Africa’s still horrid race relations. In addition, Coetzee’s novel serves as commentary on the post-apartheid state’s notorious crime rate, frequency of rape, and violence by poor black South Africans against white farmers. The ineptitude and corruption of the South African police, black rage and thugs from the still dispossessed, white racism and liberalism, sexism, animal rights, and any hope for reconciliation do not escape the novel unscathed. Indeed, the novel, published in 1999, expresses the sentiments of a white South African author disillusioned with his nation, yet still critical of white nationalist, right-wing racism. 

Nevertheless, Coetzee faced criticism and, according to some critics, his novel, focused entirely on the white college professor and his lesbian daughter, ignored the blacks’ humanity, who are portrayed as rapists, thugs, animals, savages, conniving, and suspicious. One must be skeptical of such claims regarding the author himself, whose intentions, based on his anti-apartheid stance in the past, as well as novels critical of imperialism and racism, merely represented the opinions of many white South Africans. Ettinger, the German farmer, for instance, is one of a dying breed since he believes that with his guns and barbed wire he can protect himself from the savage blacks in Eastern Cape. Other white farmers, due to the danger of assault and robbery, have already given up farming for the safety of gated communities in cities or fleeing South Africa altogether, something Coetzee himself also did by emigrating to Australia. Other white racists include the narrator himself, whose entire literary passion is based on European Romantic poetry and a conspicuous lack of interest or perhaps apathy regarding South African blacks, literary or otherwise. Indeed, the author also expresses opposition to what he terms “redistribution” or his daughter Lucy’s silence about her rape as a manifestation of white guilt over the history of apartheid and white oppression of the black majority. 

Thus, the college professor, who in some ways could be read as Coetzee, who taught at the University of Cape Town, is clearly racist and skeptical about forced “redistribution” by black “thugs” taking it upon themselves to “even the score” with whites by stealing everything and raping white women. Yes, one must oppose murder, but it is difficult to sympathize with the white South Africans whose entire existence for the 19^th and 20^th centuries in southern Africa was rooted in colonialism, theft, slavery, and apartheid. And the college professor overlooking the crimes against humanity committed by white South Africa against the black majority, as well as the present extreme poverty, rape, and assaults against blacks, presents another instance of his inability to truly see black South Africans as fellow people deserving as much of a right to live as whites like himself. The following quote below best indicates his (as well as Coetzee’s) disdain for the present state of South Africa:

"A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to ago around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them."

Here, David Lurie, our disgraced, sexist former professor of communications, clearly believes contemporary South Africa, one of the crime capitals of the world, is victimized by the proclaimed “socialist” or redistributive policies supposedly espoused by the African National Congress and other black political organizations across Africa. He may be correct that Lucy should not have kept silent about her rape and then agree to a marriage alliance with the scheming black former hired help, but now expanding, industrious farmer, Petrus, but her ability to understand her role as a white woman in the persisting unequal social conditions of South Africa place her in a better position than her father, who still wants to look after her despite not even truly knowing her (he was not even aware that she had an abortion in the past, nor does he ever imagine himself as the rape victim to truly be in her shoes or understand how his own love affair with Melanie Isaacs was akin to rape). Indeed, his opinion of her decision to not tell the police about the obvious fact she was raped is best stated by a letter he places under her door:

“I don't agree. I don't agree with what you are doing. Do you think that by meekly accepting what happened to you, you can set yourself apart from farmers like Ettinger? Do you think what happened here was an exam: if you come through, you get a diploma and safe conduct into the future, or a sign to paint on the door-lintel that will make the plague pass you by? That is not how vengeance works, Lucy. Vengeance is like a fire. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets."

            Therefore, David Lurie, though resembling the author in some ways, as well as being a white South African male endowed with all the privileges laden in those identities, should not be used to justify accusations of racism against Coetzee himself. His focus on the worldview of so many white South Africans while seemingly ignoring the humanity of blacks in the novel is also specious. One can see that his focus on the cruelty of society toward animals in the novel, especially dogs, may be perceived by some as placing the suffering and abject poverty of black South Africans as below that of animals. Furthermore, the text contains numerous references to “primitive” practices of the blacks such as muti and poking fun at the English spoken by Petrus, a middle-aged African hired help eager to takeover Lucy’s land. Indeed, blacks are not presented as “sophisticated” people. However, their humanity and inner thoughts, though not explicitly stated, remain absent referents for the white racist views of South Africans such as David Lurie. Indeed, Petrus’s enigmatic responses to Lurie regarding his knowledge of the perpetrators of the robbery, rape of his daughter, and nearly killing him, illumine his intelligence. Instead of showing deference for the whites or immediately giving up the youngest of the attackers, a relative of his second wife, Petrus later has the youth taken in on his own neighboring farm, even though he could be the father of Lucy’s future child. Petrus represents a new black South African peasantry no longer afraid of whites, reluctant to continue the old paternalism of relations between white landowners and black laborers. His intelligence, despite lacking formal education, as well as industriousness, pays off in terms of acquisition of additional property, tools and technology for modern agriculture. However, he defense of his rapist relation, Pollux, and views on marriage clearly show his patriarchal tendencies, as well as his suspected scheming in orchestrating an attack on Lucy solely to hasten his land grabs, clearly lead one to conclude he is far from an ideal, man. However, one could argue this best represents his humanity as David Lurie or Lucy, since, like whites, blacks in post-apartheid South Africa are just as culpable in the extreme deprivation and oppression of each other and other representatives of the animal kingdom, the hordes of unwanted animals that must be put to sleep by Bev Shaw. 

            Indeed, as one can clearly see, Petrus’s well-rounded character of hard-working, dedicated and skilled farmer contradicts the narrative of white South Africa of “savage” blacks. In spite of this, most blacks in the novel do not receive the same degree of development or even hints of their inner thoughts outwardly expressed. Furthermore, most of the characters are whites, which may be interpreted by some as reinforcing the white supremacist narrative of post-apartheid South Africa. In truth, Coetzee’s well-written, short novel best represents the disgraced state of humanity itself in the terrible conditions prevailing both in South Africa and abroad. His narrow lens in the text focusing on whites itself is a criticism of those views that perpetuate this aforementioned disgrace, whether its victimhood or perpetrators inflicting rape and other forms of violence on each other and animals around them. Moreover, this story also indicates Coetzee’s consistent critique of the state's role in upholding this disgrace, which is of course a result of internal decisions compounded by societal structures that enhance rape, racism, and other forms of disgrace. In the end, David Lurie accepts his disgrace by, in the opinion of this blogger, letting the dog he grew fond of be "put down" instead of prolonging its inevitable death and suffering. Likewise, one would like to think he finally accepts his disgrace by no longer exerting his force onto his daughter and others, allowing Lucy to make her own decisions about her rape, and the child born of it. David says it best:

 "In my own terms, I am being punished for what happened between myself and your daughter. I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?"

J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

"Let it at the very least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian."

J.M. Coetzee, the first author to win the Booker Prize twice, is one of South Africa's best known writers. A white man of Afrikaner descent, he is also one of few African writers to receive the Nobel Prize, in 2003. His short novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, has some unsurprising parallels with Beckett's Waiting for Godot in that the novel focuses on a frontier town of an empire preparing for a barbarian invasion that never comes. Much like Godot, the people of the town, partly due to propaganda and misinformation (in addition to excessive punitive measures taken, such as raids on the nomadic barbarians) from the Empire, actually fear an invasion by the united peoples of the desert and mountains beyond the frontier. The narrator, an unnamed magistrate comfortable in his middle aged, corpulent body and a life of peaceful relations with the "barbarian" nomads, he resists the Empire's warmongering and dehumanization of the barbarians, whose land the Empire seized unjustly during its own expansion anyway. 

The irony of it is the barbarians, despite the lies and insanity of Empire bureaucrats and military officials from the distant capital, never evinced any sign of military aggression. Indeed, when pursued and attacked by the foolish army led by Colonel Joll, the barbarians simply led them further and further into the desert and mountains during the winter months, letting nature take care of the true barbarians, the Empire. The civil magistrate of this frontier settlement nevertheless loses power, is publicly shamed and tortured, and imprisoned for several months after making an unauthorized visit to the barbarians in order to return a lover he took from the prisons, a young woman who was partly blinded due to the torturous practices of the Empire. The rest of the novel focuses on the suffering of the town and its abandonment by the military in the face of an expected "barbarian" invasion by nomadic peoples who never come. Indeed, at the novel's conclusion, one is forced to accept that everything that transpired was avoidable, but imperialism, which relies on dehumanization of the Other and fictional notions of nationalism which manifest in reality through an unnecessary military, created the conditions favorable for human self-destruction and violence.

Coetzee skillfully avoids the obvious flaw of presenting the narrator as a blameless, sinless individual forced into the Empire's genocidal mania. Though he resists futilely the Empire's torture and inhumane practices on barbarians, he also takes advantage of the so-called barbarians himself, essentially using one as a sex slave. The rest of the frontier town become complicit in the extreme actions taken by the Empire, including joining in the beating of captives and, when the narrator finds himself shackled, participating and cheering over his public beatings and suffering. In fact, at one point the soldiers who have taken over the town invite a child to beat 4 "barbarian" captives in the square! From all this one can see that Coetzee is exploring the nuances of human oppression by illustrating how even those who seem to be the "victors" or non-oppressed are also fundamentally worsened morally and socially by the extreme violence they partake in or accept as part of the human condition. This has striking relevance to the Holocaust, for instance, or, given Coetzee's South African origin, the history of white European colonialism and apartheid. Like the fictional, unnamed locale and empire in Waiting for the Barbarians,   the Cape Coast of South Africa was settled under the direction of the Dutch East India Company, which then blossomed into expansion of the Cape Coast colony at the expense of local Khoikhoi pastoralists, slavery, and trickery. 

These aforementioned raids and colonial land grabs led to later conflicts with the voortrekkers, whites from the Cape Coast who, traveling with wagons and animals, pushed further north until the new frontier led to border conflicts with the Xhosa peoples, and eventually, pushing further northeast until inevitable conflicts arose with other South African peoples, such as the Zulu in the 19th century. Though lacking the obvious political centralization of the Empire in Coetzee's novel, the white Boers or Afrikaners, adopting a semi-nomadic farming lifestyle while stealing land and resources from other peoples, formed Boer republics in the 19th century to escape British rule in the Cape Colony and continue the practice of slavery. Needless to say, white South Africans, represented by the Empire in Coetzee's novel, are the ones oppressing the "barbarians" who have been pushed gradually further and further into inhospitable land, representing the Khoikhoi, Xhosa, and other South African peoples. Where Coetzee complicates this narrative, however, is through the almost entirely focused plot on the people of the Empire, thoroughly exploring the nuances of their own oppression due to the Empire's mismanagement, abandonment, and desire to create war for the sake of perpetuating it's own existence. 

By taking advantage of the "barbarians" image as the despised and dangerous Other, the people of the town accept the necessity of war while at the same time becoming pawns of the Empire. Likewise, white South Africans, accepting white supremacy and the propaganda supporting their own cultural superiority (ignoring the fact that as a frontier settlement, the town the magistrate works in is distant from the imperial capital and more of a fusion of multiple frontier identities, like white South Africans multiple European, African and Asian influences) begin to internalize it and accept white rule and apartheid. However, Coetzee's novel has universal dimensions, since this story of human oppression pertains to human relationships beyond South Africa. The predilection for torture and excessive violence in the novel has obvious connotations to everything from the Holocaust to slavery, for instance. Furthermore, the narrator himself is reminiscent of Schindler and other non-Jews who resisted the Holocaust, while simultaneously bearing moral culpability since the narrator, like Schindler, also gained privileges and rights over the subjugated Other. 

Unfortunately, the "barbarians" of the novel are never fully explored. Their perspective on the history of relations between themselves and the Empire which seized their land, is never fleshed out, save for the lover taken by the magistrate who abandons him immediately when given the chance to return to her people. The barbarians encountered then, armed with short bows and ancient muskets, become vacuous shells of developed characters whose own culture and way of life as "barbarians" seems to focus entirely on subsistence and nothing else. Coetzee's troubling reduction of the barbarians to seemingly animal-like existence, though done through the lens of the narrator, nevertheless lacks the appropriate, nuanced approach to give depth to the barbarians. Indeed, all the reader really learns is that, due to the magistrate's amateur archaeology, there was a civilization in the region in the distant past with it's own script, the area used to be far more fertile but the lake near the settlement is becoming increasingly saltier and the land less arable, and the barbarians used the land previously for pasturage. The fact that there was a "civilization" in the region in the past inevitably conjures the story of Great Zimbabwe and the obvious fact of black civilizations and advanced cultures in southern Africa, a powerful contradicting factor in the historiography of southern Africa written by Afrikaners and whites of English descent, which necessitated a mythological history of ancient white or Semitic-speaking settlers who constructed the zimbabwes across Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  

However, since the novel's focus is on the Empire and the narrator as an official for the oppressive side, Coetzee's novel focuses on depicting the "barbarian heart" of the so-called civilized Empire. Interestingly, since the novel was published during apartheid and Coetzee himself opposed the insidious institution, the novel can also be read as Coetzee's critical self-reflection on white opposition to apartheid and apartheid's dehumanization of whites themselves, since the real barbarians quickly become the white oppressors and proponents of imperialism. Anyway, Coetzee's novel is fascinating and actually a dark comedy in its denouement, with the incoming marauding hordes of "barbarians" never coming. The actual prose is descriptive, accessible, and, since the novel's location is not rooted in any known time or continent, could be almost anywhere (though we know the barbarians have long hair and distinct eyes differing from those of the Empire). One does not have to read the novel through South African lens, but given Coetzee's own background and the contemporary system of apartheid when it was written, it certainly appears to be a powerful critique white-ruled South Africa and imperialism more broadly. Furthermore, Coetzee's novel explores the inner psyche of a person compelled to live in the most horrendous environment, with huge consequences for the narrator and everyone else. Nobody wins in war, nobody truly wins through racism or colonialism.

Another great quote!

"But my torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well, which very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it till it coughs and retches and flails and voids itself. They did not come to force the story out of me of what I had said to the barbarians and what the barbarians had said to me. So I had no chance to throw the high-sounding words I had ready in their faces. They came to my cell to show me the meaning of humanity, and in the space of an hour they showed me a great deal."

Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North

“Just because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way?”

Sudanese author Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, translated from Arabic to English by Denys Johnson-Davies, with some help from the author, is considered one of the greatest novels in the Arabic language for the 20th century. As someone trying to expand my fervor for world literature beyond Africa, Caribbean and African-American literature, Salih's novel seems like a great start, especially since it's also African literature in addition to Arab. Indeed, the novel is laden with references to folklore, poetry, and Islamic faith of the Arabic-speaking northern Sudan and the wider Arab world. Nevertheless, the novel also remains fundamentally African based on the dark skin of the Sudanese themselves and the plethora of stereotypes and experiences under colonialism that the novel's characters experience. Indeed, it blurs the distinction between "Arab" and "African" because of the intersecting identities possessed by characters such as Mustafa Sa'eed, the Sudanese intellectual who studies abroad in England, becomes a darling of the left because of his black skin, and uses his time there to "liberate Africa with his penis" by exacting vengeance for Kitchener's conquest of the Sudan, often related to sexual conquest because of the inherent gendered power dynamic and violent nature of European colonialism in Africa. Indeed, the novel's strong sexual overtones and openness, as well as criticism of female circumcision and patriarchy, made it controversial in Sudan.

The novel, though short and quite poetic in language and tone, especially regarding the beautiful metaphors and similes connecting the characters to nature and the Nile, uses an episodic structure that is initially confusing. The unnamed narrator, returning from England after studying poetry, meets a newcomer in his village along the Nile, Mustafa Sa'eed. The son of an Ababda man and a woman from the south, Mustafa Sa'eed lived his life independently and with an intellectual fervor quite remarkable, winning scholarships to study in Cairo and in England. His presence strikes a curiosity in the narrator, who, after hearing the man recite an English poem, insists on learning his life story. This leads to Mustafa telling an incomplete narrative of his life while leaving clues and pressure after death to ensure that the narrator uncovers the truth of his life for Mustafa's sons and posterity, since Mustafa's ego demands immortality. After Mustafa's death, the narrator receives his letter, a key to a secret room in the house, and guardianship of his sons and wife, a young woman, Hosna, who never uncovered Mustafa's secrets and was not interested in marriage afterwards. The rest of the novel consists of a sort of reversal of Heart of Darkness with the narrator traveling back to Khartoum from his village further north along on the Nile, encountering Bedouin, other drivers and soldiers, and eventually, an entire rural community where everyone breaks into communal feasting, dancing, and merriment. He also uncovers more of Mustafa's history while engaging with the people of the Sudan and discovering that “we shall pull down and we shall build, and we shall humble the sun itself to our will; and somehow we shall defeat poverty” (114).

Salih, a Sudanese person who studied in England himself, could likely be the narrator. The narrator, after criticizing the extreme, patriarchal and ignorant views of his fellow villages regarding an arranged marriage between Mustafa's widow and Wad Rayyes, an elderly man with a penchant for marrying different young women for sexual purposes, realizes he is in love with Hosna, this young woman, but fails to make a decisive stand and marry her to prevent her from being forced into a marriage with a lustful old man with horrendous views on gender. Indeed, during a scene of surprising but semi-hilarious discussion, the narrator's grandfather, Wad Rayyes, Bakri, and an elderly woman, all seniors, engage in a raunchy talk about sex where Wad Rayyes proudly lists off his sexual accomplishments, including the time he raped a slave (and yes, this novel is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but Wad Rayyes is over 70 by this point). His views are best summarized in the following quotation, “I swear to you, Hajj Ahmed,” said Wad Rayyes, “that if you’d had a taste of the women of Abyssinia and Nigeria you’d throw away your string of prayer-beads and give up praying--the thing between their thighs is like an upturned dish, all there for good or bad. We here lop it off and leave it like a piece of land that’s been stripped bare." Wad Rayyes correctly attacks the practice of genital mutilation, but still sees women as essentially property for reproduction and pleasure, even misquoting the Koran to justify it by mistaking "women" for "wealth" in "wealth and children." 

Despite the misogynistic views held by the men and reinforced or accepted by many women in the narrator's small village, the older woman participating in the discussion openly and unashamedly reveals her love life and which of her past husbands satisfied her the most, indicating the ways in which the environment, though inherently sexist, still allowed room for female autonomy and sexuality, just so much as it was done under the sanction of marriage. This, when added to the spirit and determination of the villagers as well as other poor, rural Sudanese exploited or neglected by the central government in Khartoum, contributes to the narrator feeling that "by the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe” (73). Their ability to persevere, or at least hope as much in the liberation of nightfall from the sun's indefatigable heat, displays an ability to make a decision and stand up for themselves, something the narrator finally does near the novel's conclusion:

“Then my mind cleared and my relationship to the river was determined. Though floating on the water, I was not part of it. I thought that if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born--without any volition of mine. All my life I had no chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning" (168).

Anywho, Season depicts all the strengths and flaws of human nature and Sudanese society while correctly criticizing European colonialism and racism. Furthermore, instead of the racism solidified by Europeans in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, this novel shows the reader the other side, where the narrator and Mustafa's travels along the Nile and to England reject racism and assumptions of European supremacy and uncover the natural compulsion toward life and humanity among the people of the Sudan. The novel is also interesting to read because of the masterful use of metaphors and poetic phrasing and makes constant references to poets, such as Abu Nuwas, and Arab folklore, such as the afreet or ifrit spirits. The novel is also quite comedic, despite the horrendous murder and suffering of the  characters. Mustafa, "the black Englishman," concocted lies of all sorts to play up to stereotypes of Africa and Arabs to bed as many white women as possible, going to such lengths as organizing his apartment in a harem-like bedroom and deliberately exaggerating and lying about African cultures. His misdirected desire to avenge Africa for European hegemony, manifested in the form of sleeping with various white women and having a disastrous impact on their lives, also causes Mustafa's own downfall after his marriage to Jean Morris. Simple sexual conquests from an invader from the South will not liberate Africa, but only further the conquest and control of female bodies, reinforcing patriarchy and colonialism.

Nevertheless, it's also interesting to see a story set on the Nile's other vast nations beyond Egypt, since the Sudan and Ethiopia have just as much of a claim and dependence on its affluence for sustaining life. Salih's accurate, poetic language conjures images of the desert, the Nile's bountiful waters, it's excesses as it inundates the land, and the mud and mud-brick homes of the villagers. He also depicts the conflicts between north and south, west and central in the novel by the marginalization and enslavement of darker-skinned, non-Arabic speakers from what is now South Sudan. Unfortunately, these dynamics are not fully explored, but Salih remains a constant critic of postcolonial Sudan's government corruption. Moreover, the novel's ambiguous ending for the narrator, in my mind, symbolizes the ambiguities of life and the problem of attaining balance between the north and south banks of the Nile, the West and the East. This duality, always ambiguous in Salih's novel, avoids making a pronounced denunciation of colonialism without likewise criticized local traditions, thereby echoing the crisis of the dichotomy in the lives of the narrator and Mustafa, two educated individuals caught between Sudan and England. 

The best part is the structure of the novel fits a frame story, like Arabian Nights. The intertextuality obviously extends to Heart of Darkness as well because of the symbolic importance of the river, Africans going to Europe and during the narrator's own traveling in the Sudan, he encounters the spontaneous celebration with rural peoples, depicted as savage in Europe's projection of barbarity on Africa, but seen as life-affirming by the African narrator. Moreover, Mustafa, while in Europe, finds the worst of himself, the darkness of his heart which Kurtz finds in the Congo. Salih wrote an excellent reverse Heart of Darkness.

 Great quotations

We were afraid,’ she said, ‘you’d bring back with you an uncircumcised infield for a wife.’

“Yes, that’s me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty Quarter, while my head is African land teems with a mischievous childishness.”

"Yes. Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that when I’m lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me.” 

“Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in our house and not in anyone else’s. The fact that they came to our land, I know not why, does that mean that we should poison our present and our future? Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we’ll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were--ordinary people--and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making.”

“And the river, the river but for which there would have been no beginning and no end, flows northwards, pays heed to nothing; a mountain may stand in its way so it turns eastwards; it may happen upon a deep depression so it turns westwards, but sooner or later it settles down in its irrevocable journey towards the sea in the north.”

“He built quite a legend of sort round himself--the handsome black man courted in Bohemian circles. It seems he was a show-piece exhibited by members of the aristocracy who in the twenties and early thirties were affecting liberalism. It is said he was a friend of Lord-this and Lord-that. He was also one of the darlings of the English left. That was bad luck for him, because it is said he was intelligent. There’s nothing in the whole world worse than leftist economists. Even his academic post--I don’t know exactly what it was--I had the impression he got for reasons of this kind. It was as though they wanted to say: Look how tolerant and liberal we are! This African is just like one of us! He has married a daughter of ours and works with us on an equal footing! If you only knew, this sort of European is no less evil than the madmen who believe in the supremacy of the white man in South Africa and in the southern states of America. The same exaggerated emotional energy bears either to the extreme right or to the extreme left. If only he had stuck to academic studies he’d have found real friends of all nationalities, and you’d have heard of him here. He would certainly have returned and benefited with his knowledge this country in which superstitions hold sway. And here you are now believing in superstitions of a new sort: the superstition of industrialization, the superstition of nationalization, the superstition of Arab unity, the superstition of African unity. Like children you believe that in the bowels of the earth lies a treasure you’ll attain by some miracle, and that you’ll solve all your difficulties and set up a Garden of Paradise. Fantasies. Waking dreams. Through facts, figures, and statistics you can accept your reality, live together with it, and attempt to bring about changes within the limits of your potentialities. It was within the capacity of a man like Mustafa Sa’eed to play a not inconsiderable role in furthering this if he had not been transformed into a buffoon at the hands of a small group of idiotic Englishmen.”

“Wad Rayyes, you’re mad. You’re old in years but you’ve got no sense. Women are women whether they’re in Egypt, the Sudan, Iraq or the land of Mumbo-jumbo. The black, the white, and the red-they’re all one and the same."

“I pictured Hosna Bint Mahmoud, Mustafa Sa’eed’s widow, a woman in her thirties, weeping under seventy-year-old Wad Rayyes. Her weeping would be made the subject of one of Wad Rayyes’s famous stories about his many women with which he regales the men of the village. The rage in my breast grew more savage. Unable to remain, I left; behind me I heart my grandfather calling but I did not turn round.”

“This woman is the offering Wad Rayyes wants to sacrifice at the edge of the grave, with which to bribe death and so gain a respite of a year or two.”

“The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven.”

“Her perfume and the silence were lost and nothing existed in the whole world except the lamentation of a woman for a husband she did not know, for a man who, spreading his sails, had voyaged off on the ocean in pursuit of a foreign mirage.”

When Mahmoud Wad Ahmed was brought in shackles to Kitchener after his defeat at the Battle of Atbara, Kitchener said to him, “Why have you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?” It was the intruder who said this to the person whose land it was, and the owner of the land bowed his head and said nothing. So let it be with me. In that court I hear the rattles of swords in Carthage and the clatter of the hooves of Allenby’s horses desecrating the ground of Jerusalem. The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say “Yes” in their language. They imported to use the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history. ‘I am no Othello. Othello was a lie.’”

"Ravish me, you African demon. Burn me in the fire of your temple, you black god. Let me twist and turn in your wild and impassioned rites."

“Owing to the monotony of their lives the people in our village make of every happy event however small an excuse for holding a sort of wedding party."

“Packets of cigarettes and boxes of sweets were passed round, and the bedouin women sang and danced, the night and the desert resounding with the echoes of a great feast, as though we were some tribe of genies. A feast without meaning, a mere desperate act that had sprung up impromptu like the small whirlwinds that rise up in the desert and then die.”

“He will not believe the facts about the new rulers of Africa, smooth of face, lupine of mouth, their hands gleaming with rings of precious stones, exuding perfume from their cheeks, in white, blue, black, and green suits of fine mohair and expensive silk rippling on their shoulders like the fur of Siamese cats, and with shoes that reflect the light from chandeliers and squeak as they tread on marble.”

"Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life, which is more dangerous to the future of Africa than imperialism itself.”

"And it was all without rhyme or reason. She accepted the stranger--why didn’t she accept Wad Rayyes?”

"There is no justice or moderation in the world. I feel bitterness and hatred, for after all those victims he crowned his life with yet another one, Hosna Bint Mahmound, the only woman I have ever loved.”

“The accused admits he killed his wife, but this does not make him responsible for all the incidents of suicide by women in the British Isles during the past ten years.”

"She was my destiny and in her lay my destruction, yet for me the whole world was not worth a mustard seed in comparison. I was the invader who had come from the South, and this was the icy battlefield from which I would not make a safe return.”

“Then my mind cleared and my relationship to the river was determined. Though floating on the water, I was not part of it. I thought that if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born--without any volition of mine. All my life I had no chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning.

"Unlike me she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all hankerings. I am south that yearns for the north and the ice."