African Literature

[flea]

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a charming book, with characters who feel real, a strong sense of place, and, though I'm hardly the expert, a firm grasp of African culture. But. But. I contrast it with the books written by black Africans that I have read: Oyono's Une Vie de Boy, Achebe's Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, Soyinka's Ake: The Years of Childhood (which is wonderful - it's an African Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood. (My mother taught African lit as a high school elective for a while - I perused her syllabus). And it's so completely different. Some if it is genre difference - all the African authors are consciously literary authors, and No. 1 Ladies' is lighter fare, and a mystery. If I didn't know that No. 1 Ladies was written by an elderly Scottish lawyer, would I be able to tell it wasn't written by an African? I think so. And so it falls into the category of books written by an outsider to the culture, and further, an outsider who makes the culture romantic, charming. It's set in contemporary Botswana, and there's only one glancing, non-specific mention of AIDS? I liked the book a great deal, but I don't respect myself for doing so. Am I being over-sensitive?

Baby news: we are the MASTER of rolling back to front. It happened very quickly over the weekend, and now she's so speedy and so agile that it's like she's always done it. You can hardly keep her on her back. But she seems to have forgotten how to do front to back now, and so gets frustrated marooned on her tummy, kicking idly.

Have I mentioned that I possibly have the charmingest most beautiful baby on the planet? She is so social!