ceclarke

Ultimately, this book was 3.5 stars for me. I have been hearing great things about it for years, and as I embark upon my own reading list on post-colonial Africa, I thought this would be a good place to start. It's clear that this is Fuller's first book, as it takes a while for her to establish a distinctive voice. The first half of the book is fairly forgettable, and can be summed up as such: her mother drinks and does something charming, thus marking her as one of those characters that populate memoir non-fiction. A Fuller baby dies in a tragic way. Something with animals. A reminder of her family's precarious position as whites living within a continent struggling to define itself after several centuries of colonialism. And yet, there really isn't much of a sense of Fuller herself, and how these memories impacted her at the time and later on in her life. I suppose I was expecting the type of introspection the characters had in one of my favorite books, also about the white experience in Africa, "The Poisonwood Bible." At about the halfway mark, however, Fuller starts to become aware of her own unique positionality, particularly in her essay regarding the changing population of her boarding school after the end of the war in Zimbabwe. Here we see her finally confront the prejudices held by the white African population. From there, things become more problematic for Fuller and her family. The most telling essay, "Touching the Ground," involves Fuller, now 14, interacting with a black familiar within their home, and becoming aware of the crushing poverty, hunger, and disease which her black compatriots must face. Unfortunately, at this point Fuller chooses to fast forward through the next four years, which could perhaps have been the most rich for the reader in terms of understanding Fuller's identity formation. I have already picked up the next book, "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness," as it tells her mother's life story. Nicola is indeed the most riveting figure of the book, the type of mother figure who no doubt would have driven a daughter raised within the pathologized American culture straight into therapy for years. Fuller's appreciation of her mother, of all aspects of her, both good and bad, is loving nonetheless. I look forward to this book, and hope that Fuller's voice will be much more consistent in telling her mother's story.

2022-12-08 17:47