38  Zimbabwe – J Nozipo Maraire – Zenzele – August 2016 (Score 8.00)

This book made me feel ashamed. You will find out why as you review my comments made after I read the book “Zenzele – a letter for my daughter.

Amai Zenzele, the mother of the eponymous Zenzele and the author of this long letter, has made a point of keeping her children aware of the stories of their people as well as what they are going to learn about the rest of the world.

However, the younger generation are losing knowledge of their background, and even of the terms of respect traditionally used when speaking to older people. It is clear from the text that they have absorbed the worst from the West rather than the best.

We get a good impression of what village life was, and of the differences when the young go off to live in the towns – just as happens here when they leave home.

Zenzele complains to her mother about women changing their names to those of their husband when they marry, and what is known in the West as “bride price” but in their culture has a completely different meaning and intention from that. I think we have here another example of western colonialists being lazy and not taking the step of trying to understand the culture of those whose lands they have taken.

On page 64 the author makes a powerful plea for those who go to Europe to be educated and trained in whatever subjects, to return to their own country and apply their talents to help in improving things for those, both poor and better off, who have not had the same opportunities.

I believe that this should apply also to Western countries where so many people from the “provinces” move to the capital and so deprive their home areas of the benefits of their learning and talents.

This book, written as a letter, is really a wonderful essay which opened my eyes to things I had not even thought of. My knowledge of Black Africa’s past was of the ruins of Zimbabwe, the Benin bronzes, the resistance movement led by Chaka, and the “Scramble for Africa”. It made me feel ashamed. But then, outside maybe Japan, I know equally little of any continent other than Europe.

The episode with the dress at the dress shops was so shocking.

Chapter 11 is wonderful. Six year old Zenzele went with her mother to drop off her fourteen year old cousin at his boarding school. After leaving him they went to visit the little historic chapel nearby, and were astounded at the magnificent murals which decorate it. There were golden winged angels and cherubs, all with black bodies, black saints awaiting the arrival of Christ at his Second Coming, black John the Baptist, a black Christ, and a black God sheltering and blessing everything. There reactions are astounding. Zenzele even thought that Christ looked like her father when he smiled.

Amai Zenzele could now understand the biblical statement that we are all made in God’s image. She left the local Methodist church and joined the Orthodox Ethiopian Church where all the images are “of their likeness”, and the customs are rooted in her culture.

I scored this short book at 9.0.

37  India – Tabish Khair – The Bus Stopped – July 2016 (Score 4.78)

This book basically tells the story of a bus journey between two smallish towns in India, the passengers being a fairly motley group of people. Some are on the bus from the start of the journey to the end, while others get off at and intermediate stop, or get on at another.

We read of the lives of the bus driver, the conductor, a petty thief, a village woman carrying her dead baby, a Danish company representative (who may or may not be planning to bribe a senior government officer to buy the products the Dane wants to sell for his company), and a number of others, including a eunuch. This is the first time I have come across one in any book.

We see the way of life of well-off people, peasants, tenement dwellers and others. We learn from one chapter that eunuchs were once far up the social scale as a result of the Moghul invasion and could be in charge of the harem, or have a senior political position at court. Their decline started with the Victorian “values” introduced to India under the Raj. Now they are effectively untouchables, and are militantly trying to be brought up the social scale.

The language in the book is frequently rather robust. It may well be used by the characters represented, but it still seems unnecessary for this story. I found this book to be entertaining in a gentle way, and I scored it at 6.0.

36   Guadeloupe – Maryse Condé – Windward Heights – June 2016 (Score 5.55)

There was a coincidence immediately after I finished this book. I was reading “Half a Life” by V S Naipaul, published in 2001. On page 105 of that book Richard, the publisher of a book by the protagonist, Willie Chandran (an Indian immigrant to the UK) says “One day you might give us a new reading of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliffe was a half Indian child who was found near the docks of Liverpool”.

“Windward Heights” is such a book, published in French in 1995 and English in 1998.

Windward Heights is a re-imagining, in Cuba and Guadeloupe, of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights. At the time of the story a civil war was raging throughout Cuba.

The story opens with Melchier leading a procession, carrying the flag of Chango, his god. We are taken immediately to a much hotter, livelier and colourful world than our own, sometimes dreich and rainy one.

None of this was being enjoyed by the Captain General of Cuba, posted from Spain, Jose de Cépéro. He hated the locals, the freed slaves. De Cépéro had consulted Melchior on several occasions, knowing that Melchior had a reputation as a sorcerer, or “babalawo”. Later, Melchior went to visit Razyé whom he had agreed to initiate into the rites of Chango, before Razyé returned to Guadeloupe. Melchior was murdered on the night of the festival, outside the church of Santo Cristo, leaving Razyé bereft.

Razyé gave a clue to the origin of the whole story, and his character, when he described himself as having been “found on the barren heath and cliffs” as a young child, and named after them.

The story follows the general lines of the original, but with the required changes of character, locale, events etc to give it its new milieu. I enjoyed it, with a score of 7.5, and have put my copy of the original, not read for forty years, near the top of my pile for a re-read.