Half a Life

"At home his life had been ruled by his mixed inheritance. It spoilt everything. Even the love he felt for his mother, which should have been pure, was full of the pain he felt for her circumstances."

Naipaul's Half a Life is really fixated on those half-and-half peoples, both in terms of caste and race. Willie Chandran, the protagonist, is born to a brahmin of the priestly caste who shames his family, all int he name of sacrifice like the Mahatma, by marrying a "backward" (Untouchable), from his college. Willie, named for the famous English writer, William Somerset Maugham, is trapped by this mixed-caste background, eventually fabricating his own identity as a college student in 1950s London. Befriending a "brown" Jamaican student, Willie participates in the multicultural bohemian Notting Hill parties, literary gatherings with an interesting cast of characters via his English friend, Roger, and experiences a changing London where the Notting Hill riots break out before his book, a collection of short stories, receives negative reviews in the press. 

One fan of his work, Ana, a mixed-race woman from Mozambique, which is never explicitly stated in the text, a second-rank Portuguese in the colonial setting, becomes close with Willie, who finds comfort with her. He later asks to return to Africa with her, spending 18 years helping manage her estate , seeing African prostitutes in the capital, finding pure satisfaction through an affair with a married "mixed-race" woman, and eventually realizing he was following in his father's path, a path of nondecision, not proclaiming and living life but trying to live someone else's life. These themes of disillusion, mimicry, and an near obsession over the "real" and the place of those caught between worlds, are hardly new to Naipaul's work, but the India of Willie and his  parents provides a new setting for Naipaulian worlds. The ease in which Willie enters the world of Ana and the second-rank Portuguese of Mozambique, mostly second-rank because of their partial African ancestry, and the historical colonial links between Portuguese Goa and the colony, illustrate this tension of the intermediary, the "mixed-race" caught between the fictional worlds of black and white, Brahmin and Untouchable.

One wishes Sarojini's character, the sister, and Marcus the West African were present in more of the book, but the most surprising thing about this novel is how it recycles older themes and settings but is still something different. There is a rich sense of humor in this tale, particularly in the London setting, and the numerous fake or lying characters, including the protagonist. In a sense, Half a Life is very similar to The Mimic Men: both feature uprooted characters of Indian origins who go off to a changing London, experience sexual frustration (although Willie finds the satisfaction that Ralph never discovers), commentary on the colonial peoples (Caribbean, Africa, and India), and the facades all peoples use to masque themselves (racial, colonial, political, sexual), to hide who they truly are. Half a Life, in that regard, is hardly a new or radical step in Naipaul's fiction, yet provides a surprisingly different take on Africa, still bearing Conradian aspects (the darkness, difficult tropical climate, the reversion of the colonial structures to the "bush") but finding commonality between India and Africa. 

One of My Worst Dining Experiences: The Africa Cafe in Cape Town

One of my worst restaurant experiences was undoubtedly at The Africa Cafe in Cape Town, South Africa. I only went because my mostly European housemates and neighbors planned it, and had I known better (or perhaps possessed more commonsense), I would have chosen to not go. Moving on, the restaurant itself featured various dishes from different regions of Africa, including some decent Ethiopian food and a delicious mango chicken dish from Tanzania. In addition to various dishes from each corner of the African continent, I had the misfortune of witnessing the underpaid waiters being forced to 'sing African songs' and dance for the overwhelmingly white clientele. 

It was offensive. No explanations about what language the 'African music' was sung in or specific cultural/ethnic origins for the stereotypical monolithic 'African culture' put on display, such as "African face paint" the servers offered to  do for customers. Of course, a restaurant like The Africa Cafe is meant to appeal to ignorant tourists who likely know very little about Africa (beyond media generalizations), but it was just horrendous. Again, the food was good (super expensive, but endless rounds, though lacking in vegetarian options for some of my party), but the problem of a presentation of a monolithic Africa was disgusting. It would be akin to going to a Europe Cafe in Paris, Berlin, or Rome featuring Bavarian dancing, Portuguese folk music, and Italian opera all thrown together with dishes ranging from ratatouille to borscht. The fact that such resturants don't exist in Europe reveals the persistence of stereotypical and ill-informed narratives of the African continent and its vast diversity, history, cultures.

In addition to my discomfort surrounding the above, a tragic mulatta Dominican-American young woman felt the need to point out my blackness (even though herself, her mother and other siblings, based on photos, all look black or mixed) since, besides the restaurant staff, I was the darkest person in the restaurant. To be more specific, she asked, "Why are you so black?" (Apparently the African sun had darkened my skin a few shades, too, so that likely contributed to her anti-black stance and discomfort. Perhaps I reminded her too much of her mother's African heritage and she couldn't stand to be reminded of it in the presence of white Europeans?) At first I misheard her, but the tragic mulatta repeated herself and what proceeded was certainly one of the strangest restaurant experiences.

 I was initially shocked, and, in retrospect, should have left immediately, but perhaps moved by pity for the tragic mulattoes I have encountered nearly everywhere, I somehow did not tell her off. It's such a pity, too, the young woman's mother is clearly of Afro-Dominican descent and if you saw her walking down the street in the US, one would probably assume she was African-American. And on other occasions she would play up her 'minority card' and "Latino" identity by asserting a connection to a large East Coast city even though she's from a comfortable suburban background. It was clear she struggles with her identity and, depending on the time and place, would cling to stereotypical notions of Dominican and people of color identities while distancing herself from blackness and its disadvantages. Indeed, much like white folks emulating what they see as black youth culture, she wants the 'coolness' of blackness without any of the burden and difficulties because of racism.

But hey, defensive othering is key to so much of Dominican othering of Haiti and Haitians. In order to put on airs and presumably make herself fit in well with our white European dining partners, she had to make jokes about blacks to make herself feel better, distinct, and closer to the elusive whiteness she can't quite grasp. It's really quite pathetic, and though it seemed like some of the Europeans at the table were a little uncomfortable with it (even the proponents of a type of colorblindness ideology prevalent among some whites in Germany and France), nobody said anything.

 But this is the reason I find myself so bored and more than slightly annoyed by tragic mulatto types. Most of them and their obsession with identifying with 'whiteness' and their 'white roots' is really about hiding from blackness and entering into a broadened ideal of whiteness that is on the rise in the US, honorary whiteness. If Bonilla-Silva and other sociologists are correct, honorary whiteness  and the acceptance of such groups under that label by elites and middle-class America will include many light-skinned and 'successful' biracials, light-skinned Latinos, East Asians, and perhaps Arabs and South Asians who aren't too visibly Muslim in today's post-9/11 AmeriKKKa. So, with this expansion of 'whiteness' in American race relations, the multiracial movement reveals its ultimate aim of gaining entry through the gates into their beloved whiteness. 

Oh well, predominantly white tourists can continue reveling in their ignorance and confused and self-hating Dominicans and 'multiracial' Americans can engage in defensive othering in a seemingly endless game for the foreseeable future. All's I'm saying is I am done with awkward and racist dinners and restaurant experiences. Just say no, or get the hell up and go!