Coconut by Kopano Matlwa - Bookclub selection August 2010

Coconut is a debut novel by Kopano Matlwa, a young South African writer. Its a social commentary on how upward mobility is being defined in post-apartheid South Africa.

December 2009 Book Selection: Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona

Discussed on: 12/12/2009
Hosted by Stella Rupiah

Characters:
Mandisa – the narrator
Mxolisi – 1st born son
Lunga – 2nd born son
Siziwe – 3rd born daughter
Dwadwa –3rd husband – Siziwe’s father
Lungile – 2nd partner – Lunga’s father
China – 1st husband – Mxolisi’s father
Mama – Mandisa’s Mom
Makhulu – maternal grandma
Amy Elizabeth Biehl – An American student murdered in Guguletu



Synopsis:
On Wednesday, 25th August, 1993, in a township of Guguletu, South Africa, a young American woman Fulbright Scholar, Amy Elizabeth Biehl, was killed by a mob of young township youth. Amy was white. This event happened in real life.

The major questions that arose were how could the youth kill a well-intentioned foreign student, who was sympathetic to their cause, came to South Africa with the intention of being part of the solution to the problems plaguing the land at the time?

Through this novel, Sindiwe Magona attempts to explain the reality of the youth of Black South Africa at the time. Through fictitious characters, she recreates for the reader, the circumstance in which the black youth of 1993 were born in, parenting, opportunities and neighborhood set-up which inevitably created the right brew for violence. The story is told through the voice of Mandisa, the mother of one of the young men, Mxolisi who was part of the mob that killed Amy Biehl.
Mandisa was born in pre-Group areas act era where blacks lived in their native communities. As part of the Apartheid rule, the South African government instituted The Group Areas Act, which organized neighborhoods according the races, creating separate neighborhoods for blacks, whites, colored (bi-racial) and Indians. The process of moving the blacks from their communities to arid ghettos where folks from different towns and neighborhoods were mashed together. The ghettos had inadequate housing, poor school systems and social infrastructures. The process was dehumanizing, fueling the hate in the community towards the White government. The separate and unequal Department of Bantu of Education which is responsible for the black education system ill-prepares the children for productive citizenship. Mandisa, who is raised by very religious parents and a mother who heavily guards her virginity, remains focused on education and she gives the reader hope that she will somehow, through education make it out of poverty. However, despite being a virgin she turns up pregnant by her teenage boyfriend, China through their heavy petting. The confusion around the conception of Mxolisi shapes the relationship the Mandisa and China have with their child and each other. Forced into a loveless marriage through the dictates of religion and tradition, Mandisa and China shelve their dreams of education and prosperity and settle into the life of unskilled labor existence. China, runs away from his family never to be seen nor heard from again. Mandisa then meets Lungile, a fast talking man who fathers her second born son, Lungile. Later Mandisa marries Dwadwa with whom she bears her only daughter Siziwe.

Mxolisi grows into a young man with no education opportunities, a rebellious spirit which is encouraged by the community as part of the struggle against the Apartheid government. Mxolisi witnesses police brutality at a very young age and this shapes his view of the world. With the Soweto uprising, the youth of South Africa proved to be a very important weapon in the fight for liberation and freedom. School rebellions and looting are met with admiration in the black community. Open expression of hatred towards whites is encouraged, acts of vandalism and violence are applauded. Mxolisi and his friends, drop out of school, in their idleness and lack of parental daytime presence (since all adults worked out of the neighborhood as day laborers in the white neighborhoods) cause havoc in the community, looting, killing each other with little or no response from police since it was black on black crime. However, on this particular Wednesday, against all social rules that forbade whites from visiting the black ghettos, Amy Biehl drives into Guguletu, is seen by this mob. She is stabbed several times and dies. The police force is unleashed into the community to hunt down the killers; the community realizes the implication of killing an Abelungu woman. There is a clear acceptance that there is great value placed on the life a white woman rather than the black citizens. Some community members label Mandisa as the mother of a murderer, while the Anti-Apartheid movement (which is underground) view this as part of the struggle and hide Mxolisi from the police as a freedom fighter.
The death of Amy Biehl is part of the collateral damage of volatile situation that had been brewing for long time.

Discussion:

Sindiwe style of writing is riveting; she tells the story through the voice of Mandisa, Mxolisi’s mother who writes a letter to the mother of Amy Elizabeth Biehl explaining her son’s. She acknowledges the fact that when a homicide occurs there are two sets of victims, the murderer’s family and the murderer’s family are both in mourning. Without minimizing the pain the Biehl family felt, realizing the gravity of taking someone’s life, Sindiwe carefully creates Mxolisi’s reality. She is careful not to use Mxolisi’s background as an excuse but rather just states his life’s circumstances as a non-negotiable reality.

The rawness with which Sindiwe describes the feelings Mandisa has towards Mxolisi’s conception, a mother who inwardly loathes her own child because his arrival symbolized the falling apart of dreams touches the core of motherhood. Clearly, her loath does not translate into hate or lack of love for her son. Mxolisi birth also shows the role religion and culture play in perpetuating loveless marriages which in the long run don’t benefit the individuals. It’s clear that had Mandisa not married China, she could have returned to school and hopefully attained a higher level of education.

The bleakness of the future of Mxolisi’s generation made them perfect anti-apartheid fighters through defiance, anarchy and extreme violence (neck-lacing and rape). Their acts of violence were applauded. These are circumstances that worked while they are young, as a reader you are left to wonder what the adult version of Mxolisi looks like. True to form, without a proper educational foundation, these young freedom fighters are not positioned to reap the fruits of a black-led South Africa.

Sindiwe Magona, through Mother to Mother, has given future generations a comprehensive social commentary on the life of Young Black people in South Africa during the Apartheid era.

How does the book apply to present day South Africa?

Upon dismantling the Apartheid government in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela took the country through a cleansing phase through the Truth and Reconciliation process. This process allowed the perpetrators of violence (of ALL races) talk about what the crimes they committed, face their victims and in exchange be forgiven. Publically this allowed the country to move on through a peaceful transitional period. However, what this process failed to acknowledge was that there was a whole generation of vibrant black youth, full of hope for the future but are not in a position to participate in the newly won economical prosperity. Due to lack of education, they navigate through post apartheid South Africa as unskilled labor, unemployed watching foreign labor fill the huge skilled labor gaps. The only skill-set they have is violence. The South African government as part of their Truth and Reconciliation efforts did not embark on the necessary rehabilitation phase which would have given a large mass of young a chance to unlearn their violent response to societal challenges, and find other productive ways of contributing to society. As a result, South Africa is now labeled the ‘Rape Capital’ of the world; we have recently witness the manifestation of Xenophobia against fellow African immigrants and a surge in violent crimes.

Conclusion: The book club members loved this book. A lot of us identified with some of the characters in the story e.g. mother to child relationships, family reactions to teen pregnancies, the substandard Bantu educational system, forced marriages etc. This book comes highly recommended. Sindiwe Magona is a true African literary gem.

Other Works by Sindiwe Magona:
Push Push by Sindiwe Magona
Living, Loving and Lying awake at night by Sindiwe Magona
To my Children’s Children by Sindiwe Magona
Forced to Grow by Sindiwe Magona

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.