Recent Books

“Hungochani: History of Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa by Marc Epprecht

An excellent historical documentary of sexuality in southern Africa. However sometimes you get the feeling that Epprecht is clutching at straws and some of his interpretations are ambiguous at best and I am compromise the cultural and personal objectivity.

The Kite Runner: By Khaled Hosseini - his first novel. Hosseini writes with such compassion and insight into the human condition.

A Thousands Splendid Suns: By Khaled Hosseini

A beautiful tragic story of pain and courage in Afganistan.

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Stuffed and Starved: Raj Patel

The global food industry laid bear. How the poor are starved in order for profit while consumers in the rich countries are squeezed and cheated into buying cheap poor quality fat saturated addictive food.

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The Black Jacobins: CLR James

Putting today’s Haiti in an historical context - the slave revolt which led to independence of the first African state -

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A Woman Alone: Bessie Head

I’ve read this so many times - Bessie always keeps me company in certain moments. There is always something new and even something old is comforting to read. I love the irraticness and inconsistencies, contradictions of Bessie along with her simple logic when deciding on the nature of human beings.

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Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rushed through this over a long weekend following Adichie’s winning the Orange Prize2007. This is an historical political novel that brings to life the realities of war and in particular the Biafran war. What stands out is the lack of knowledge of Nigerians during the war years of what was actually happening in Biafra. Life outside the war zone went on as normal. Another striking point raised in the book is the constant belief even in the face of what seemed like obvious loss, that Biafra would win the war and that Biafra would be an independent state. The third political point raised is that the notion of Biafra as a nation state by the Igbo people included what is today the Niger Delta and what the Igbo people described as the “minorities”. Biafra then was not just traditional Igbo land but also Ijaw, Ogoini, Effic and so on.

Adichie gives us three main characters, Ugwu the young servant boy, Olanna, daughter of a rich business man and Richard, English academic lover of Olanna’s sister, Kainene all of whose lives are interwoven together. The one criticism I have is that the characters lack depth and some how do not really feel wholly real and the dialogue often seems forced, it doesn’t flow and is disconnected. The books importance lies in it’s portrayal of the war, death, the lack of support from Europe and the US despite the dire situation the people of Biafra were facing, indiscriminate bombing of civilians and lack of medical supplies for the starving disease ridden civilian population. Half of a Yellow Sun reminded me of two previous Orange prize winners, last years “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith and Small Island by Andrea Levy in the sense that their characters also lacked depth and the language lacked a certain beauty and insight of the human condition - remembering that all three books were about relationships and the human condition. All three in that sense were disappointing.

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Reflections on Arab-Led Slavery of Africans by Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed).

Professor Prah sent me this book whilst I was still in SA and just starting to read about Arab slavery of Africans. The chapters are in French and English so unfortunately I was only able to read the English chapters (though each chapter does contain a summary in the other language).

The book itself was born out of a conference in Johannesburg in 2003 on Arab led slavery which concluded with a Declaration by participants. In the introduction Prah emphasises the necessity of engaging with Arab led slavery and moving away from the historical amnesia that most would prefer “both oppressor and victim”. This is an excellent introduction with chapters on Saharan slavery especially Mauritania which despite outlawing slavery 3 times still continues to turn a blind eye. Further chapters discuss slavery in East Africa, the Middle East and even Palestine where today there is a community of Palestinian Africans living in Jerusalem. The book does not set out to destroy relations but to rebuild and bring together Arabs and Africans by discussing the oppression and Arabisation of Africa and thereby beginning a process of healing and ending slavery that continues today.

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Women in South African History

Women in South African History traces the lives of South African women from the pre-colonial, pre-union period (mid 18th century) through to the post-apartheid beginnings and present day South Africa. It is written in four thematic parts: Women in the pre-colonial and pre-union periods; Women in early to mid-twentieth century South Africa; War: armed and mass struggle as gendered experiences; The 1990s and beyond: new identities, new victories, new struggles.

The book is a radical departure from the traditional history texts in that it uses a feminist analysis rather than the “more acceptable gender analysis” in it’s approach by examining “the ways in which gender intersects with race, culture, class and other forms of identity and location in South African history“. By including the present as part of history the book shows how the past and present are inextricably linked and thus better examines women’s experiences over the past 300 years. The experiences of women’s struggle and their continuing hazardous journeys towards liberation are expressed through the dual metaphors of “they move boulders” - challenges; and “they cross rivers” - dangers.

Women in South African History goes far beyond the many well known events and periods by feminizing those events and periods where women’s participation has never been acknowledged. In the chapter “Like three tongues in one mouth”: Tracing the elusive lives of slave women in (slavocratic) South Africa, Pumla Dineo Gqola, brings to life the slave women brought to South Africa from South East Asia, East Africa and Southern Africa. Despite the scarcity of historical and biographical narratives, Pumla is still able to document the lives of some slave women and more importantly the ways in which they resisted and revolted against their enslavement and their central role “to the historical constitution of Afrikaner society“. Other examples are women’s mass protests against carrying of passes in Bloemfontein and Potchefstroom in 1913; women’s involvement in the trade union movement during the 1930s; the participation of women in the ANC underground and military wing in the 1950s; township uprisings in the Eastern Cape in the 1970s and 1980s; naked women protests against lack of housing in Soweto in 1990; migrant women in Johannesburg and women learning to live with HIV/AIDS in present day South Africa.

The book concludes with a powerful essay by Yvette Abrahams in which she chronicles her experience of researching and writing on Sarah Bartman. Or rather searching for the REAL Sarah Bartman not the racialised sexualised object constructed by white male fantasies …a “living specimen of barbaric savage races” one who according to Lindfors [Courting the Hottentot Venus]
was willing to collaborate in her own degradation in order to earn more money…

she allowed herself to be exhibited indecently to the European public, and she persisted in this tawdy occupation for more than five years….. She may have been the victim of the cruelist kind of predatory ruthlessness, but her collusion in her own victimisation was unmistakeable…. he concludes
To put it plainly, she may have engaged in prostitution as well as exhibitionism. Her degradation may have been complete..

Abrahams tears these racist, sexist texts to pieces written not in the 1800s but in the 1980s. Men such as Lindfors were able to pass these lies off as academic text by so called intellectuals. Abrahams leads us through to the convincing conclusion that Sarah Bartman was a slave - a Khoekhoe slave woman. She does this by connecting her own personal herstory to that of the Khoekhoe. Born in the pre-colonial period of the 1780s, she must have had a Khoekhoe name and the only way she could have lost that name at that time was through slavery. Also the only way for her to move from her home in the Western Cape to England was as a slave. Sarah Bartman lied (that she willingly exhibited herself) because she was a slave and knew very well that her words would not be believed over that of a white man and the consequences of her telling the truth would have been too horrible to contemplate such as life imprisonment and even more degradation and abuse.

Abrahams again makes the absolute convincing statement without any hesitation or qualification that the “abuse and degradation” of Sarah Bartman was rape. Rape not only of Sarah but of the whole Khoekhoe nation. The white male racist, sexist texts she quotes in her essay are a form of “surrogate violence” against African women, Black women, Khoekhoe women and Sarah Bartman.

“Was it not rape of a symbolic sort to parade the degradation ad humiliation of auntie Sarah before me? Was it not a sexually violent act which expressed male power and my vulnerability to pain? Has not each male author I have brought before you been unable to resist the temptation of demonstrating their psychosexual power and auntie Sarah’s inability to resist?
In the place of false witness it is time to speak the truth. I name the posthumous abuse and degradation of auntie Sarah’s body, rape. The rape of her body is a rape of my mind.

As Abrahams writes, Sarah Bartman whose real name, real self was stolen like that of millions of other slaves and their descendants, is dead and therefore can no longer feel the pain. But she (Abrahams) feels it - I feel it and Black women throughout the world feel it. Every racist, sexist, misogynist text by whiteness against Black women is felt by me, by all of us. The symbolism of this sexual violence is explained by a more “refined and broader” definition of rape.

…the element of sexual abuse are the violation of a person’s integrity by force and/or threat of physical violence, dishonouring the ethic of mutuality and care in relationships of domination, and an infraction of one’s psycho-spiritual-sexual integrity. Sexual abuse is sacrilege of God’s spirit in each of us [Eugene, TM “If you get there before I do: A womanist ethical response to sexual violence and abuse. In J Grant (ed) Perspectives on womanist theology”

In reviewing South African Women in History, I chose to focus on Yvette Abrahams essay because the story of Sarah Bartman speaks to the book as a whole and speaks to me personally. It is both the beginning - pre-colonial and the present, continued racism but always resistance. Sarah Bartman’s agency was expressed in her act of survival against all odds. For me Sarah Bartman, Khoekhoe woman represents the loss that came with slavery and colonialism as well as the struggle for liberation and emancipation.

Women in South African History is a “transdisciplinary” interrogation of events and periods in the history of South Africa from a feminist perspective. The narratives bring to life the daughters of Africa in their quest for emancipation, sometimes at great cost to themselves and their families, particularly their children. But always there is an unflinching determination - choices are laid bare and the choice is still emancipation.

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The Atlantic Sound by Caryl Phillips

IN search of home, Phillips travels the route his parents took in the 1950s from the Caribbean to Dover on a banana boat; next stop Liverpool for traces of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and then onwards to Ghana and Elmina castle where he finds settler Americans living and downing Africa almost simultaneously - and on to Charleston in the US south and finally to a Black American community in Israel. Needless to say none of these places are home, and Phillips finds himself unable to connect with any of the people or the places - the familiarity of London is the only place he feels grounded without contradiction. Woven between his journeys around the world are the story of the slave trade and post abolition Britain.

Chimurenga 5 and 7

Imaginative Trespasser: Letters between Bessie Head , Patrick and Wendy Cullinan 1963-1977

Like many people I get very anxious when I travel. I heard somewhere that fear of flying was not about being 35,000 feet up in a metal tube but rather a mixture of the fear of being alone and fear of being with people - alone because you are probably either leaving friends and family or trying to get back to them and thats a lonely feeling. At the same time you are stuck with a bunch of strangers intimately locked up in this tube feeling disempowered - like being a back street seat driver but a whole lot worse. So those negative experiences you sometimes get on certain airlines and going through security check points with everything stuffed into one bag become huge nerve racking episodes in one’s life.

I finally made it to SA but without half my luggage. I am boycotting Virgin Airlines for ever more – never ever again. I hate them. 23kilos for a long haul flight? I get 30k travelling from Granada to London on Monarch. I had 40k – and at £32+ per kilo excess baggage well I will leave you to do the maths. The only choice then was to rearrange my luggage and send my extra k by unaccompanied baggage all of which took about 3 hours. To cut a long story short I arrived with no books, no shoes other than flip flops and my DM boots – great in 30c + heat. My books, yerba marte, photos and other bits and bobs should be here in about 1 weeks time. Oh and lets just mention the measly one drink, a tiny glass of wine and utterly disgusting food. Just for the record I was not the only one in this position - the whole Virgin concourse was filled with people rummaging around in suitcases trying to reduce their load to 23k and queuing up at the unaccompanied baggage counter.

So my first task the day after I arrived was to find something decent to read. I came away with a gem of a journal on contemporary South African culture called Botsotso – essays, short stories and poetry. Botsotso was started in 1994 by the Botsotso Jesters – a poetry performance group. It was originally published as part of the New Nation which no longer exists. One special thing about Botsotso is it accepts submissions in all South African language - a disadvantage for me but I appreciate the principle.

My other purchase was “Imaginative Trespasser” Letters between Bessie Head and Patrick and Wendy Cullinan: 1963 - 1977. I never heard of Patrick and Wendy Cullinan but the letters provide an insight into Bessie Heads thoughts and life during that period mostly in Botswana. I have only read about 10 pages so far but already my brain is ticking over with recognitions and affirmations. I see me, Spain, friends, race, poverty and imprisonment, the British Empire “To seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory” Sir Walter Raleigh.

Here’s an extract which has a familiar ring - on friendship and when friends are lost or left behind.

Friendship is like the part of you that is not very brave; and, if you have friends you find yourself rising to extraordinary heights of strength. You get up to crazy schemes; you talk crazy and it is as though with your friends you will fix up all the wrongs in the world. Suddenly, that happy, warm laughing world is shattered and you are left alone to face a horror too terrible to contemplate”

Not too bad for a couple of hours in a strange city.

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Have had to abandon 26a by Diane Evans - I cannot get into it which may be my present mood which is not into reading fiction. I need something inspirational to push me to think - to be creative and this book isnt doing that for me. I will return to it later when I am more relaxed.

Jay Sennett has chosent to use his journey from f2m to look at herself/himself and all the bits inbetween in a study of masculinity, whiteness, privillege. It is a journey I would like to take maybe one we should all take. By that I mean a journey through out inner most selves to discover what really lies below and a journey through the overt parts of our lives such as race, whiteness, blackness, privilege.

There is so much to say about Self - Organising man - liberating, courageous, honest, challenging, brilliant. `Have you ever yearned for the impossible or even the possible. To be someone else, to be somewhere else in mind and body, in sexuality, in life? To be in a different psychological and physical space?

The book raises so many questions about gender about identity and signifyers of gender. Is the penis the primary defining factor of maleness or gender consitution. What is sex? Is it simply penetration and how does that penetration take place? How gendered are we in our identities. When gender is dicotomised as simply female/male we restrict ourselves,our thoughts and our actions. Are you happy in your body? What does your body mean to you and how does it influence your identity. Self-Organising Men is a journey for the writers and the readers. A liberating self-discovery analysising the self and moving deep into that place - is it the heart or the soul, where ever it is it is hard to find and not often found.

The honesty of the testimonies reach out to the reader and contribute to the liberating nature of the book, the journey. One final note. As I read the testimonies and journeys of the contributors I felt that the discourse on gender and sexuality rasied in the book are entirely western and to largely white. (Jay’s publishing house, Homofactus Press is presently calling for submissions for an anthology of Trans communities of colour - “Tinting the Lens in Trans Communities”.) How should we in Africa engage in this discourse when we are still at a point of battling with LGBTs being illegal people. So much pain - so much hatred.

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I have abandoned Shelby for the time being to read Jay Sennett’s book “Self-organising Man” which I just received. Will return to Shelby at a later date

Tommie Shelby: We Who Are Dark

On Black Nationalism, black solidarity and black identity (in the US)!

The European Tribe: Caryl Phillips
Written in 1987, The European Tribe is based on a one year journey through Europe undertaken by Phillips starting in Gibralter “where Europe kisses Africa” and ending in Russia, its furtherest outpost before returning to his home in Britian. Through the journey, Phillips explores racism and xenophobia in Europe and concludes that Britain was really no different from the rest of Europe “exclusive in its attitude towards me”.

“The crisis of a second generaton black British community with no viable alternative to offer in either language or religion, will deepend in direct proportion to the viguour with which Britain tries to ignore the gross inequity of opportunity, thus further aggravating socio-cultural differencs by unwittingly encouraging people to waste prescious energy on the cultivation of conflict, energy which should be harnessed and used int eh cause of mutural understanding. I cannot write in Yoruba or Kikuyu, any more than a black youth born in Peckham or Middlesborough can hope to feel at home in the Addis Ababa or Kingston Jamaica.”

So where does that leave the second generation Asian, African and Caribbean citizens of Britian - they are neither there no here, excluced for their countries of origin and their country of birth. Denied by both “you are not Nigerian” “you are not British” you are black.

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I have had to abandon Ellroy also - just cannot get into LA Noir so it’s back on the shelf again. Sept 2nd 2006

I started reading detective novels about 5 years ago when I was on holiday in Barbados - well I started reading James Ellroy as I havent read any one else. My first was American Tabloid (the American gangsta underworld, assasination of JFK and corruption in the FBI, Cuba and more) which I couldnt put down and followed with The Cold Six Thousand which follows on from American Tabloid and then My Dark Places which is partly about his search for his mother’s murderer as well as an attempt to understand why. Very creepy stuff here.

LA Noir: The Lloyd Hokins Triology” Hopkins is described by Ellroy as

“my antidote to the sensitive candy-assed philosophizing private ey. I wanted to create a recognizably racist and reactionary cop and make his racism and reactionary tendencies casual attributes rather than defining characteristics = wanted to build a complex monument to a basically shitty guy - and I didnt care whether my readers liked Lloyd Hopkins - as long as they liked the book he was in………..You take Hopkins or leave him. You can dismiss him as a facist fuckhead or dig him as a vessel of urban torment. I dont care what you think of Hopkins. I hope you dig the book

Its a large book so I think I will be sometime in reading this one.

Ellroy Links

Ellroy.com
Ellroy Confidential
Salon Interview
Wikipedia

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Have had to abandon reading Arrow of God for the moment. Three Achebes in a row proved to much and I couldnt get into it so have completely changed tack and am now reading James Ellroy.

NO LONGER AT EASE - Achebe moves to the immediate post colonial period in Nigeria’s history. Okonkwo junior’s determination to stay on the straight and narrow begins to waiver as soon as he starts to work. Achebe shows how slippery the road to corruption is as Okonkwo finds himself trapped in his own arrogance and self-righteousness. His disdain for his own culture and heritage which runs along side his hatred of the colonial masters leaves Okonkwo in a no man’s land, alone and confused as he refuses the old ways and despite his good intentions, he finds it easy to slip into a lifestyle that is doomed towards one end - corruption.

Chinua Achebe links

No Longer at Ease

Crisis in the Soul

Two things stand out immediately for me in re-reading this book after so many years. The lesson in Igbo tradition and culture and the use of proverbs metaphors; that stubbornness, vanity, self-righteousness and refusal to adapt to the future will always lead to a bad ending. The protagonist, Okonkwo is a sad character who despite his constant striving to be perfect and to become one the village greats his lack of humanity and what Achebe calls, “denial of gentleness” lead to his eventual 7 year exile from his clan. Okonkwo’s greatest fear was to be seen as Agbala (woman) that is weak and a man with no “title” and throughout he carries nothing but disdain for women - even when it is his ‘motherland’ that welcomes and saves him during his exile. The irony is that his favourite child is his daughter Ezinma and he constantly wrestles with the fact that she was not born a man. In the end Okonkwo’s arrogance leads to his disgraceful death as he commits suicide, the greatest of shames and crimes in his clan. The novel also deals with the coming of the white man to Nigeria. Like an elephant set loose amongst pigeons, he tramples on the existing culture and traditions and in doing so causes divisions amongst villages and families as he assumes his way is best. August 21st 2006

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe. Achebe discusses his first novel and his feelings on Nigeria in last months World Service edition of World Book Club.

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On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I dont know why but I always feel self-conscious about writing book reviews but here goes. I read Zadie Smith’s first book, “White Teeth” in about 24 hours and raved about it. So much was familiar, the characters, the location, the situations. Not so with “On Beauty” but I still ran through it in about the same amount of time. Like White Teeth, Smith once again sets the story around two families although in the case of On Beauty they are set against each other in order to highlight the prejudices, lies and dysfunctions that exist within and between families. Smith manages to raise issues around racism, class, sexism, gender, inter racial marriage, infidelity, religious fundamentalism often with humour and always with an uncanny understanding of the frailties of human life. Not a great piece of literature but a great holiday read. August 2006

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For the past week I have been unpacking bags of books. Books I forgot I had. Lots of feely touchy going on between me and them. I decided I would like to re-read a few books so here is what I am dippping into at the moment. I am really reading 3 books at once - dipping into each as my mind takes me. “Literature of Africa” for inspiration and to relax my mind as well as fill it with fantasies; “The Future of Difference”, Essays on gender difference which is very academic so here I am really only dippping; and “Miscegnation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women” because I am present in many of the stories and it is good to reflect on these things from time to time - to remember that identy is a construct and is not fixed at least not for many of us in this world. July 31st 2006

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The Two Princes of Calabar by Randy Sparks - published by Harvard University Press, 2004

I originally bought this for my father’s birthday last year and he passed it on to me. The book is built around the story of two cousins from Old Calabar, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John who were themselves slave traders and relatives of the ruler of Old Calabar - Grandy King George. Their story begins in 1767 when they were captured by rival slave traders from neighbouring Duke Town and sold into slavery themselves. As they were educated - speaking and writing English- they were able to chronicle their stories.

The Two Princes is a story of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade told largely from the perspective of the African slave traders. Sparks has researched the traditions and customs of the Effik people as well as the log books and journals of those British captains of slaving ships that traded in Calabar. With this he has been able to present an “eyewitness” account of the slave trade in Calabar during the 18century. By the time the two “princes” returned to Calabar they had converted to methodism and despite their ordeal as slaves themsleves they returned to participating in the slave trade. July 2006

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Leading up to the elections in the DRC I thought it would be useful and interesting to return to “Patrice Lumumba” published by PANAF as part of their “Great Lives” series. First published in 1973, this particular edition is from 2002.

The book is built around a biography of Lumumba and discusses the Congo from when King Leopold of Belgium took the land for himself in 1862 following the Berlin Conference; the beginnings of monopoly capital in the country, their role in exploiting the resources and people; the lead up to independence in 1960 and the role of the multinationals, Beligum government and international forces that contributed to and plotted the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. 5th July 2006

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