Zenzele: A Letter for my daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

A middle-class Zimbabwean girl is setting out for her undergraduate education at Harvard University in the USA. Traditionally when a child is traveling, tales of wisdom are shared with her in order to prepare her for the new life but in this case Zenzele’s mother, who has never been to America, decides to strengthen her daughter’s footing in the world but empowering her with tales of her background, tradition and culture. The mother does this in form of letters. She talks of her own courtship with her husband, her relationship with her mother in-law, the role of the Lobola ceremony when one is getting married. In the process she tackles some of Africa’s traditions, tells them with an authentic African woman’s voice which in turn brings dignity to the traditions. The author finds a delicate balance between a young woman’s yearning for life and experiences beyond her native Zimbabwe without trivializing the offerings and richness of her homeland. In the story of Mukoma Bryon, we see the other side of immigration gone sour, sadly, a very common occurance where an individual decides to disassociate with their culture and language returning to Africa as a caricature of themselves. This is a story of every young lady who has left her homeland in search of greener pastures. The home can be Mongolia, Alabama, Ireland, Tanzania or Zimbabwe. It’s a must have for every family library and truly ensures that the cord between mother and daughter truly remains uncut.

J. Nozipo Maraire wrote her debut novel while she was finishing her neurology residency at Yale. We stand in awe of her work, and we are impatiently looking forward to more of her work.

November 2007 Book selection - Scarlet Song by Mariama Ba

Scarlet Song by Mariama Ba

Scarlet Song is a tale of a clash of cultures through a marriage of Senegalese man, Ousmane Gueye to French woman Mireille De La Valle ( a daughter of a French diplomat in Senegal). Their romance starts in Senegal until the Mireille’s father finds out and sends her to France. They reunite in France and eventually get married. Upon their return to Senegal it becomes clear that the union is doomed as Ousmane settles back into his Senegalese culture and tradition, without any regard for his wife’s background. Yaya Khady, Ousmane’s mother does not approve of the union and encourages her son to take on a second wife, which is legal and acceptable in Islam. When Mireille gets wind of the what she perceives to be an ‘illicit’ relationship she has a nervous breakdown.
In this classic, Mariama Ba weaves a riveting story of an interracial relationship that is approached in a naïve way, almost eluding to the fact that interracial relationship can work if cultural differences are acknowledged and negotiated in a deliberate manner. Failure to do that can be tragic.
Mariama’s work was written in French, translated into English.

January 2009 Book Selection

The River and the Source by Margaret A. Ogola

A lot of literature coming out of Kenya is in the Kikuyu voice so it was refreshingly different to read the writings of a Luo woman. This book was our bookclub selection for January 2009. Here is what I thought of it. I think it was unfair that I could not help compare this book to Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) and The River Between (Ngugi wa Thiongo) -- they are all tales of generational changes due to the arrival of the Western Culture in Africa. The writer takes us on a journey through three generations of women. The first person we meet is the Great grand mother, the beautiful daughter of a chief, who married into another chief's family. The courtship, bride-price negotiations and finally taking of the bride process are amazing. Its full of prode and rich in tradition. Then we meet grandma who does not fair well in marriage and fortune so that once she gets a chance to convert, she willingly does so, in the process bringing her mother, daughter and nephew along. The daughter grows up to be educated in the European school system becomes a teacher, marries an educated man --- they raise a large Catholic family. The nephew (who by the way is in line to be the next chief) grows up to join the priesthood, is elevated to Bishop without looking back. The story ends with modern day urban Kenya following the VERY WESTERNIZED lifestyles of the fourth generation. The transformation is clear in the names --- we start the book with native names but after being i converterd into Catholicism we have names like Elizabeth, Veronica and it goes downhill from there onwards. By the time the book ends we have Becky and all these American sitcom names, it just leaves me shaking my head in amazement --- what happened here for a people just to abandon it all like that. What I found disturbing is the lack of critical political analysis of the choices that were being made by the characters in the book. The writer made it look like the Luo characters in these books were more than ready to embrace the Western culture although it was demoting their societal stature. How can one give up his royal thrown to be at the bottom of the new social order. Secondly, the book is written through the second world war and it shows how willing people were to fight for the colonial powers without really questioning what they were doing. The writer also takes us through the Mau-Mau freedom movement and has her characters taking an overly assimilated role without having anything stirred in them to join the liberation. If one did not have any prior information regarding the Kenyan liberation movement, you would be left to think that it was just a Kikuyu battle. It was a refreshing read in the sense that you somehow have a glimpse into the how some individuals were really drawn to the Western culture, the impact of those choices onto the generations to come... because it is clear that assimilation gave you access to education which created a place for you in the leadership class of post-colonialism Kenya. The speed at which this assimilation happened is disturbingly fast. Its is strangely true as this story reflects the reality of many African families I know. For that it is real and in that regard the writer presented a reality which made the book worth the read. Personally, the fact that this book was written by an African Woman makes it worth the read.

Our book selection for March 2009 is Unbowed - Memoir by Wangari Maathai. Everything The River and The Source lacks you can find it in Wangari's book. Saying all that to say that i personally find the River and the Source disturbingly shallow.

February 2009 Bookclub Selection

Marassa and Midnight by Morna Stuart

Marassa and Midnight, twin slave boys in their "Land of High Places," called Haiti, are separated when Marassa is bought and taken to Paris as the page to a marquis. Each twin feels lost without the other and desparately longs for a reunion. Midnight, in search of Marassa, runs away from his plantation and failing to find him hides deep in the jungle. Marassa, by a trick of fate, is brought back to his land, but finds that the plantation where he and Midnight had worked was destroyed on the "Night of the Flames" when the slaves rose up in revolt against their masters. The twins' courageous love for each other and their unending desire to be reunited plays a vital role in restoring peace to their Island, but only after thirty full moons of separation and adventure.
This appears to be the only book that Morna Stuart wrote. According to the back of the book cover, she is 'the last generation of a family born in India, [and] now lives in England where she as been a teacher and script writer for the B.B.C.' Used copies of Marassa and Midnight are available at Barnes and Noble and Bibliofind. It is also available in-print at Amazon-UK.

What do I think about this book?

Its an ideal book for junior high. Thats all i can say about that.

March Book Selection: Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

From the Jacket: Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya.

Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were uneducated. We see her studying with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government. She makes clear the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. We see how Maathai’s extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya’s government into the democracy in which she now serves as assistant minister for the environment and as a member of Parliament. And we are with her as she accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her “contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace.”

In Unbowed, Wangari Maathai offers an inspiring message of hope and prosperity through self-sufficiency.

April Book Selection: Brother, I am dying- Edwidge Danticat

From the Jacket:
From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.”

And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.

Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation.

Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.