Zimbabwe: "Nervous Conditions" by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nervous Conditions is more than a novel. It is an historical artifact, born of the life of the author and her peers growing up in the 1960s and 1970s as Africans in what was then Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. Ms. Dangarembga describes life on a family homestead in the eastern part of the country, near the border with Mozambique. Her descriptions are detailed enough that anthropologists could use the work as an example of field notes. She narrates death and birth rituals, elaborate kinship terminology, how to cook using flat stones around the fire, how children entertained themselves, and methods of familial judgment and control of the extended clan.

The protagonist is Tambudzai, a girl whose life we learn of from the time she is about 5 and through her second year of high school. The tensions of the novel are two-fold. The first lies in Tambu's determination to defy tradition and go to school, as far and as long as she can, despite cultural values that limit formal education to boys. The second is the racism in Rhodesia. In response, some Africans sought the benefits (education, access to employment, even tap water) offered by the colonial powers to "good Africans" who played the game by the whites' rules, even cowering or cringing to appear less than they were. The protagonist LIKES those benefits but realizes the costs, psychologically and physically. She will learn, and love learning, but will never again be happy in the dung-floored, thatched roof homestead where she played happily as a child and survived on a diet mostly of sadza (cooked cornmeal), vegetables, and occasional milk.

Tambudzai's uncle--her father's oldest brother--clings to his traditional, highly respected role as head of the family, which imposes tremendous financial and time burdens. He also incorporates, and somewhat imposes, the new Christian faith that made possible his own education in South Africa and England. His two children, Chido and Nyasha, straddle the tightrope between "African" and "English" after living in England during their grammar-school years.

The societal and family tensions heighten as Nyasha, increasingly analyzes and criticizes the power of the white government and the missionaries. In this, she challenges her father, who is headmaster at a Protestant missionary school. This is a quadruple crime: child challenging elder; female challenging male; person who questions Christianity questioning Christian teaching; and someone who rejects the English system challenging someone who accepts it.

The opening epigraph reminds us"The condition of native is a nervous condition," citing Franz Fanon's study of the negative psychological effects of colonization in The Wretched of the Earth. Affirming the truth of this, two women important in Tambudzai's life succumb to "nervous conditions" that now have DSM-5 codes: depression and bulimia/anorexia, although a white psychiatrist consulted by her relatives asserts that Africans "did not suffer in the way we described" (p.201).

Tambu herself endures but we mourn the fate of the many in Zimbabwe who, since this book appeared in 1988, have continued to suffer. One site I consulted considered this book one of the top dozen novels of Africa. I found it fascinating but it ended too quickly. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo appeared in May 2013 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This new work might provide the antidote I seek after the abrupt ending of Nervous Conditions.

Bolivia: "Andean Express" by Juan de Recacoechea

It's 1952 and Ricardo has just graduated from high school (note, in January, as that is when summer begins below the equator). He takes the train from La Paz, Bolivia to meet his parents for a beach vacation in Chile. Andean Express is a "film noir" novel of that journey, with deftly drawn characters, beautiful description of the (very) high Andean Plateau on the Bolivian side of the mountains, and cinematic dialogue, plot, and pacing.

The movie references are deliberate, from the title to quips in the text. Ricardo says at  one point that the journey resembles a Billy Wilder comedy. As of 1952, Wilder's films did not yet include Some Like it Hot or The Apartment, although he had made Ninotchka, Double Indemnity, and The Lost Weekend.  If anything, this book combines elements of all three of those film classics.

I cannot discuss the plot without creating spoilers. But the title reference to express deliberately evokes Agatha Christie, and parts of the story are similar to a transcontinental railway journey in one of Dick Francis's books, The Edge.

Descriptions of life of the time appear suddenly and are brief. Ricardo leaves the first class carriage for the second. De Recacoechea writes,

"There was a wide range of odors in second class despite the country air that penetrated the few open windows. Ricardo saw construction workers, contraband dealers, and illegal immigrants..." (p. 40)

The diversity of cast(e) includes the first class passengers, too, who range from a high-society mother travelling with her 18-year old daughter and the much older mine owner the girl has married, to a person introduced as a Franciscan priest who might or might not be travelling with a circus contortionist. We also meet a member of the Bolivian Congress, a nightclub owner, a retired madame, and a one-legged alcoholic. A poker game among the adult men is central to the action, and one is left wondering about who is directing all of these players.

Journey's end is Arica, a port town with regular departures for the U.S. and Europe. Ricardo and his family encounter some of his fellow passengers at a hotel.

"It was high season and the hotel mainly received businessmen from the south of the country, Peruvian and Bolivian tourists, government workers from Santiago, and the occasional military man with wife and children...At the head of the room was the orchestra, which consisted of a pianist with an ample mop of white hair, a violinist with a thin face, and a bored-looking accordionist...The band started up with a Viennese waltz and the conversation flowed pleasantly." (p. 157-158)

South American, European-tinted gentility to the end.

At 160 pages with significant leading between the lines, this makes a very enjoyable winter-by-the-fire read, with glimpses of a Bolivia of a half-a-century ago. For those who might be thinking of young readers, there is one scene that would generate an R rating in a real movie, for explicit sexuality.

Reflections on the voyage so far

Since mid-October, I've read about 20 books, or 10% toward the goal of about 200. So it seems time for a check-in.

I've learned (re-learned) at least five important truths that seem to apply nearly worldwide.

1) Mothers, at least in novels, do darn near everything to keep their families going. This is true in Wild Ginger, Children of the Jacaranda Tree, Guardian of the Word, This Earth of Mankind, Bone China, Masks, and others works. Step-mothers, not so much.

2) People of high wealth, at least as described by novelists of unknown wealth, live very insular lives. The high-wealth people in these books have almost no clue about the difficulties of daily living or about the anger and hatred that is often surrounding them. I saw this in Moth Smoke, Born of the Sun, The Unwanted, and Bone China. In these books, the wealthy relied on gates, barbed wire, thugs, guns, and more to preserve their life of  "privilege," with parties, imported goods, and very loose sexual mores (read, unpunished rape, widespread adultery, and the perception that access to prostitutes or gigolos is a sign of luxury).

3) People who are subjected to the power of the wealthy in one regime become tyrants--and often corrupt tyrants (one wonders if there is a non-corrupt tyrant?)--when they are handed any level of power by a new regime. This occurred in Wild Ginger, Children of the Jacaranda Tree, Krik? Krak!, Moth Smoke, and Autumn Quail.  Note that raising the "underclass" to power has been a strategy both of Communism and fundamentalist Islam, not to mention whatever "Papa Doc" was when he took over Haiti.

4) Networks of kinship usually help, but networks of friendship matter most in successful survival. Forming bonds of solidarity mattered to Muronga in Born of the Sun. Extensive networks built by Sundiata in his youth helped him prevail in Guardian of the Word. In The Unwanted, for all of her faults, Nguyen's mother has loyal friends who help her, some with more success than others, even when her own sister tolerates almost unbelievable cruelty.

5) There is widespread fear of "the other." This usually appears in complexities of how cultures treat people who are somehow different from whatever is determined to be the correct or powerful norm. It takes many forms, though. Nguyen in The Unwanted has lighter hair, eyes, and skin tones and is victimized. He still is "better off" than two girls in Nha trang, his town, whose American father(s) were black. Their own mother kicks them.

Bias against dark skin plays a disturbingly important role in Black Gold of the Sun, especially in Eshun's youth in England, and in Potiki and Born of the Sun.  Members of the De Silva clan in Bone China struggle to make a go of it in England, where their many accomplishments and social standing from Sri Lanka count for nothing because of their skin tone.

There are other types of discrimination, too. Sundiata in Guardian of the Word is tormented by his mother's co-wife because of his early lameness (Toko in Potiki is not, though he is also affected by weak legs and a heart defect). In Ghana, Eshun is treated differently because of his Englishness -- he was not Ghana-enough.  Rose in The Beggar Maid keenly feels the socio-economic class differences that separate her from others, even as she herself climbs that ladder through education and effort. Even the differences between people of Lithuanian, Polish and Belorussian language and heritage mattered, in the stories of Colours of the Native Country, because of long-standing animosities and centuries of experience fighting over control over resources.

I'll leave for another time my reflections on the gender politics revealed in these and future novels on my list. Be assured, they are as powerful as anything else. I'm in the middle of Nervous Conditions now, a novel about then-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In it one of the characters says,

"This business of womanhood is a heavy burden...How could it not be? Aren't we the ones who bear children?...When there are sacrifices to be made, you are the one who has to make them...And these days it is worse, with the poverty of blackness on one side and the weight of womanhood on the other. Aiwa! What will help you, my child, is to learn to carry your burdens with strength."  (p. 16)

While my life has been of ease and privilege in comparison, the advice to learn to carry your burdens with strength--to which I would add learn the strength of your friends--seems sound to me in any culture in any place at any time.

Vietnam: "The Unwanted" by Kien Nguyen

This memoir begins in 1972, with the fifth birthday party for a boy whose mother is a wealthy Vietnamese and whose American father has left. We know from the back cover that Nguyen came to the U.S. He tells us in the afterward that when he completed university and dental school, he began to wrestle with experiences and memories from the dreadful years from 1975 through 1984 when he emigrated. That wrestling resulted in this book, The Unwanted.

In 1975 Nguyen's mother tried to get her family out of the country at the last minute, but a series of circumstances that must be read to appreciate led to disaster on the roof of the U.S. Embassy, just as the North Vietnamese army marched into Saigon.  From there, every step became one of survival.

Nguyen's mother, siblings, and grandparents are "unwanted" because of his mother's entrepreneurial success (including banking) before the take-over by the Communists, and his grandfather's service in the South Vietnamese army. He and his younger brother are additionally "unwanted" by the culture at large and his aunt's family, in particular, because they are "half-breeds."

Several of the scenes in this memoir recall novelized versions of Communism's impact on family life as told in Wild Ginger, down to working at a fish market in bitter weather, often for very small pieces of change. His mother turns to exchanging her personal favors for help for her family, sells her blood to raise funds, and tries to start a little business in textiles, with very difficult consequences for the children when she is caught, and they are alone for many days. The nail-biting scenes at the end, as the family is granted permission to leave but must have several documents signed by petty officials, kept me up way past my bedtime in order to find out how they managed to meet the flight.

This work has led to reflections on several "big lessons" from the reading so far, about which I'll write separately. The short summary, though, is that people can do terrible things when they have unrestrained power over others, especially over others perceived as "different."  Building some kinds of natural restraints into governmental processes, social relations, religious mores, and elsewhere seems to be a major contribution of "civilization."

New Zealand: "Potiki" by Patricia Grace

Get this book!  It is an antidote to oppression and depression of other colonization stories read so far in this series. Potiki describes strengths of Maori culture, as it was lived in 20th century New Zealand (and one hopes, still is). The outcome of the major drama of the tale affirms that at least some times, right(ness) prevails.

Patricia Grace is, says the book cover, "of Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Toa, and Te Ati Awa descent," and her descriptions and use of language transported this reader to the shore where the family of Roimata and Hemi live, to the meeting house (wharenui) that holds their stories and the communal dining hall (wharekai) where their extended clan gathers for meals.

The editor's note says the name Potiki has dual meanings. The first is a demi-god named Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga and the second is the youngest child. In this tale, a child nicknamed Toko plays play central role as the potiki in both senses, as a special person who hears the stories of the past and foresees the changes in stories to come.

Carvings in the wharenui are visual memories of the past stories, going back centuries, and so are perhaps similar to religious icons in Western European tradition.  The importance of oral tradition and story-telling is emphasized in the entire book, with major clan meetings including storytelling, current affairs given meaning by reference to stories of the past, and children educated by collecting news articles to create a "book" that narrates important events in the family's life.

It is hard to select just a few passages to share as examples of Grace's writing. I've tabbed nearly every page. She reveals different voices and perspectives through several of the narrators we encounter. Here is Hemi, adoptive father of Toko, reflecting on cultural transitions that occurred in his lifetime (roughly since 1945, as the book appeared in 1986).

"Kids were different these days. They wanted knowledge of their own things, their own things first. They were proud and didn't hide their culture, and no one could bullshit them either.

In his day they had been expected to hide things, to pretend they weren't what they where...Funny how you came to see yourself in the mould that others put you in, and you began not to believe in yourself.  You began to believe that you should hide away in the old seaweed like a sand flea, and that all you could do when disturbed was hop about and hope you wouldn't get stood on. But of course you did get stood on."  (p. 65)

The tension in the novel is the desire of someone named Dolman, nicknamed Dollarman by Hemi and his relatives, to get access to the shore by going through the Maori community, even relocating the wharenui and the clan's cemetery. The people want none of that, not for love or money, as the saying goes. Dollarman says, "I really believe that you people...have come a long way..."  and Uncle Stan answers,

"Wrong again. We haven't come a long way at all. All we've done, many of us, is helped you , and people like you, get what you want. And we've been all left out of it in the end. We've helped build a country, all right. Worked in the factories, helped build the roads, helped educate its kids. We've looked after the sick, and we've helped the breweries and the motor firms to make their profits. We've helped export our crayfish and we've sent our songs and dances overseas..." (p. 93-94)

Dollarman is behind an act of arson intended to intimidate Hemi's group. The people put out the fire but the entire wharenui is burned, with the exception of one poupou (standing figure). Toko describes the destruction like this.

"The walls had fallen...taking and changing the tipuna of the people--the loving, warring, singing, talking, shouting, guardians of the night and day. Taking also the patterns belonging to the lives and deaths of people, the stories and histories of people, and the work of hands and minds. Taking the people's place of resting, their place of learning, of discussing, singing, dancing, joy, sorrow, renewal, and whanaungatanga. Taking the world inside which all else may be left behind, as dust is left on shoes beyond the door." (p. 136) 

The next-to-last chapter is called simply, "The Stories," and an omniscient narrator summarizes for us. Toko's older brother has learned the ancient carving art, remaking poupous for a rebuilt wharenui. We read
"The young man did not tell his story in words but gave it to the people as it was, chiselled into shape at the base of the tree.

It was an old story, an ancient story, only now there was a new phase to it, an old story beginning with the seed that is a tree. ...

It was a story that opened and put its seed into the time of remembering. It became a people story through wood, both people and wood being parented by the earth and sky so that the tree and the people are one." (p. 177) 

Toko, as Potiki, has the last word, which is in Maori. I don't trust Google to translate that but I trust that if I understood it, it would make me weep.


Quotations are from Grace, Patricia. 1986. Potiki. Honolulu: University of Hawai'1 Press.

Cuba: "Singing from the Well" by Reinaldo Arenas

Many of the books I get for this project come from the clearance shelf at Half Price Books. Perhaps they are affordable because they are so depressing that no one else wants to read them?  Singing from the Well is a now-recognized classic of Cuban literature, an example of magical realism in the Latin American style, and the first novel of a writer, Reinaldo Arenas, not much honored in his lifetime for his genius. It is, as most reviewers acknowledge, not for the faint of heart.

Arenas, who was born in 1943, wrote the first version of the novel in his early twenties. He revised it after landing in the U.S. on a boat from Mariel in 1980. It is thought to be at least semi-autobiographical. This book is also the first of five that Arenas wrote depicting the "secret history" of his country. Some commentators have said that the novel is an allegory for the Batista regime (overthrown, with Arenas' full participation, in 1959 to put Castro in power).

In this work a boy lives with his mother, grandparents, and an aunt in rural Cuba, in a region frequently shrouded in mist. Subsistence farming is the only way to get by. They all work the corn field; he is charged with rounding up the cattle at milking time and carrying water. The lyrical passages that mark Arenas' style describe the countryside and the boy's interaction with nature. This is not the most lyrical example but it give you some sense of the voice of the boy.

"...I can't see anything. Not even myself. I just squint into the big fog that splits open once in awhile and then closes right back up again, thicker and whiter than ever. And all I can hear is the sound of the birds singing uncertainly and flying off in lord knows what direction... The sound of the birds and Celestino whacking on the trunks of trees. And I don't worry anymore about how long it might take Celestino to write that poetry. Sometimes I don't want him to ever finish. I wish both of us could die and the poetry could keep going on and not ever finish." (p. 126).

Celestino is described as the boy's cousin, but might be his alter ego. We never know for sure. He writes poetry, actually carves it, onto the trunks of trees and later scratches it onto leaves because the grandfather has chopped down all the trees with of his grandson's crazy, suspicious words on them. The boy wishes for death because the brutal grandfather rules the family with a switch, sexually abuses his own daughters and the farm's draft animals, and shows no concern for anyone but himself. He is also the only adult male character in the novel. The neighbors know he is loco and avoid the entire family, further isolating them.

The grandson(s)--the boy and Celestino, who might actually be one person--live for poetry and nature and the pure freedom of being off on their own in the almost magical woods and scrub. They encounter or imagine witches, ghosts of their dead cousins, and real animals, birds and flowers. They build a "castle" of red mud and populate it with kings and queens made of the jars and containers they filch from their grandmother's storeroom. They swim in the river, pick the flowers and watch the clouds. It sounds like an idyll, except for that grandfather.

The grandfather exists to keep existing. His entire focus is on food production.The grandfather severely beats the boy for failing to be attentive enough at herding cattle, weeding corn, or hauling the buckets. His wife and daughters, the boy's mother and aunt, follow suit. They yell at the boy, throw boiling water at him, and commit other forms of emotional and physical abuse. His mother says several times, "I should have died before I was born rather than have a son like you."

In one of the very few examples of human tenderness in the novel, the boy's mother strokes his hair after he falls in the mud while carrying water from the well.  He treasures that memory and lies in the mud again just to recreate it. He so desperately wants nurturing in his life that he cares (repeatedly) for baby birds, either those nesting in the thatch roof of the house or a tree, or one he "rescues" from its nest to bring home and keep in his bed. Suffice it to say, that none of the adults around him notice anything about the boy other than an extra pair of hands to abuse and an extra mouth to feed.

If this is autobiography, then Arenas' departure to attend school in the city must have been an overwhelming relief. He went on to study literature and work in Havana before being condemned for his sexuality and later exiled to the U.S., where he committed suicide in 1990 rather than die from AIDS (with which he had been diagnosed). The 2000 movie Before Night Falls is based on his autobiography of the same title.

Belarus: "Colours of the Native Country: Stories by Byelorussian Writers"

This edited volume of stories translated from Byelorussian appeared in 1972 and spans roughly 1920 to the late 1960s.  It is not available commercially now, although interested readers might be able to request it via Inter-Library Loan. The copy I borrowed came from Harvard U.

The authors of these stories played by the rules in force in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of their time. The men are all strong, the women virtuous, the children above average. Men work in honest jobs on the railway, as official soldiers against the fascists (Germany in WWII) or later, as guerrilla forces ready to take a stand against the "capitalists" (Western Europe in the 60s). Women are left behind to bear children, toil the fields, grieve, or be killed by the enemy of the moment.

The tales read like fables, with stock characters played by people, not animals, and tidy, moralistic endings. The first story is an actual fable, with a not-so-wise crow and some migrating storks who really know something about arboriculture (the issue is a dying oak tree). A story about soldiers is one of the few with character development: A stolid big fellow reacts quite logically (if passive aggressively) to the continual sharp criticisms of his much smaller, impatient commanding officer. Near-disaster ensues but the big guy triumphs through his dedication to the well-being of the team.

Significant portions of the stories focus on Belarus's natural assets, including several major rivers. In a nation not much larger than the state of Kansas, two of those major rivers are separated by less than 200 km (about 125 miles), yet flow in opposite directions. The Pripyat near the southern border flows eastward to join the Dnieper, on its southward journey to the Black Sea. From roughly the center of the country, not too far from Minsk, the capital, the Neman (also called the Nyoman) starts a journey westward toward Lithuania and ultimately connects Belarus to the Baltic Sea.

The nation also has extensive forests, and several of the stories related directly or indirectly to woods. One of my favorite sections describes the trees the narrator observes along his walk to visit an unusual woman:

"There is a great deal in the autumn wood that interrupts one's quiet flow of thoughts...The leaves of the beautiful birch tree lay scattered around it in the shape of a remarkable fan, shining like tiny gold coins on grass still green...The leaves of the oaks make a soft dark-brown bed under their parent trees....A maple leaf, sparking like a star from out of another universe suddenly appears in front of me on the road...How did it get here? Ah! Over there--a little maple tree..." (p. 45, in a story called "A Plain Woman" by Ivan Shamyakin).

Modern Belarus is described by some as the last hold-out of the Soviet republics. Alexander Lukashenko is the strong man in power (since 1994) and various indexes put the country last among European nations for democracy and personal freedoms. In addition, the southeastern portion of the country remains severely affected by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The curious might want to check the blog of world-reader John Brookes, describing  The Trace of the Black Wind, his book of choice for Belarus.