Agnes Sam, the author of this collection, was a member of an Indian community in South Africa during apartheid. This situation, which was new to me, was apparently not so uncommon--there were even schools in South Africa founded specifically to train Indians, who were largely Hindu, into good Christian boys and girls. And, of course, this meant more than (sometimes forced) religious conversion. It also entailed becoming as European as possible in dress, speech, and activity, and facing social consequences otherwise.
That’s the setting of the title story, which is told from the perspective of a young Indian girl as she is repeatedly chastened at the Catholic school for writing the wrong things (she uses the term Hama, instead of the colonial Mother) and calling herself by her Indian rather than her Christian name. Between incidents at school, she recounts trials of her family as they try tointegrate into Afrikaaner society, but inevitably fail due to their low economic station and, it must be said, Hama’s desire NOT to be colonized, as demonstrated in the excerpt that begins this review. It is evident that Jesus is Indian--in fact that Jesus is all of the oppressed; less clear whether the oppressors will ever recognize him.
While many of the stories have little to no religious content, two of the best--the first two--do. The opener, High Heels, follows a schoolgirl, again at a Catholic school, as she tries to learn what’s behind a mysterious door in order to win a bet with a friend and obtain the titular high heels. It’s a story that balances the fear of colonization with the desire to be accepted and safe, but the ending, where it is discovered that the room is--SPOILER--a Hindu prayer room, upsets the balance and problematizes the high heels, and the desires that drove the girl to acquire them.
The other standout for me is about a woman at a prison camp--notably many of the protagonists in this collection aren’t identified as female and I got caught more than once defaulting incorrectly to a male. She has no communication with the outside world besides heavily censored letters and occasional visits, where speaking is not allowed, from her husband. She writes to a friend about her son, now a teenager who she hasn’t seen in a decade, and about her husband’s strange behavior, which she takes to mean he’s seeing someone else. The burden of not knowing is too much, and the woman breaks solidarity with the other prisoners--their only defense in their weakened position--which leads to a truly horrific outcome. But whether it could have been prevented is questionable.
The last third of the book lost me a little. I had a hard time understanding the point of Jellymouse or Maths, and the final story is barely a narrative at all; it is, rather, a tragic summation of the events that brought low-caste Indians to Africa in the first place. A mixed bag, but a fascinating look into a culture and time I didn’t know existed
No comments:
Post a Comment