i read some doozies. great books that i simply have to recommend. one that left a big impression is Michela Wrong’s I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation. This is a pithy, glorious novel written from the perspective of the Eritrean people, as well in the voice of Italian colonialists. The mix of historical, political and cultural analysis revealed from the perspective of both oppressed and oppressor offers new insight into colonial Eritera, and all that colonialism left in its wake. She highlights the damage wrought by the US during the Cold War and constrasts their looting with the work of a British activist, Sylvia Pankhurst. Pankhurst took on the machinery of both the US and Britain to show the use and abuse heaped on Eritera by its so-called allies. Pankhurst’s activism is woven throughout the book, and it is refreshing to see her work given priority. Surely many a (male) historian has overlooked the contribution of a woman dismissed as a nutter. Sylvia’s son, Richard, has taken up the mantle and Wrong also includes his voice in her analysis of modern Eritera.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding and explaining the callousness of colonialism in Africa. It is also a useful primer on the Eritera-Ethiopian wars, which has great resonance today, particularly as Ethiopia is saber-rattling in Somalia and Sudan. It is one of the most beautifully written books I have encountered in a long, long time. Wrong is a first class writer, and her ability to uncover the good, the bad and the ugly within a country that holds a mystical spell for many Westerners is the book’s true strength.
I also read Abigail Thomas’s Three Dog Life in one sitting. A memoir, Thomas chronicles her life following a devastating accident that resulted in her husband’s traumatic brain injury. He was institutionalised with hallucinations and psychotic episodes. The injury erased any memories he had of their life together, and the story is about Thomas’s attempt to adjust to life without the man who was her husband and her coming to grips with the man he is now. She finds solace in her home, in her extended family, and in her dogs. She re-shaped her chaotic life into one of richness and beauty, facing her new reality with courage, mixed with bursts of anger, humility, patience and humour.
As I read Three Dog Life, the parallels with the women in my Rwanda research were hard to ignore (try as i did). Rwandan women, particularly those who identify as Tutsi survivors of the genocide (not all Tutsi choose the moniker of ’survivor’ although all have it thrust on them) have lost their ability to choose how they will cope with the changes brought by the loss of family, neighbours and other loved ones during the 1994 genocide. Instead, the government has decided to paint them with the broad brush strokes of victim. The victimhood of Tutsi survivors, particularly women, is the calling card of the government when it knocks on the doors of potential development partners. But these women have no agency, they exist only by virtue of their status as widows of genocide. Identity is thrust upon them, and the support they need, assuming they can even identify and articulate what it is they need to regain a sense of their pre-genocide lives, is lacking. Wrong’s novel also shows this. Just as Rwandans are nothing without the genocide, Eriterans are nothing without their colonial oppressors woven into their story.
A fun link is Columbia’s Africa 100 Best Books of the 20th Century: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/Afbks.html#list
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