Tag: africa

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Review: Born A Crime

Rating: 4.5 stars

I was very sceptical back when The Today Show replaced Jon Stewart with Trevor Noah, a comedian from South Africa, who very few had even heard of. He’s still nowhere near Jon Stewart, but over time I have come to appreciate Trevor Noah for his own unique brand of humor and wit.

For the past few years, I have not been a short story person, even less, a biography person. So a biography written in the form of short stories was something I had to think really about reading. As it happened, once I started, I flew through the pages. The memoir turned out to be a lesson in South African history that is hard to find in any history books.

“In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”

Born to a white father and a black mother, Trevor was illegal even before he was born. Forced to hide from public sight for the first few years of his life, he grew up alienated from other kids, hardly ever making any friends. That he chose to look back upon his life with humour and not bitterness, just shows how successful his mother was in bringing up a well-balanced human being under such adverse circumstances.

All through the book, the one thing that comes across loud and clear is Trevor’s love for his mother, and his acknowledgement of the sacrifices she made not only to have him, but to keep him as well. It is the story of a mother and a son, and their struggle to overcome all difficulties.

Despite all this, the book is not gloomy or depressing. It is in turns, funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, but not bleak. It makes you think, and it gives insight into the lives of a nation that is thought to be doing alright since the dark period of the apartheid ended. What everyone closes their eyes to, is the destruction apartheid left in its wake.

“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, ” And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.”

It boggles the mind how a handful of people, outnumbered by the natives five to one, managed to rule over the country, simply by dividing them and making them fight each other. This is the history that I want to know about. There is a lot in this book that resonates with me as a Pakistani too. After all, we may not have had it as bad as South Africa, but our country is also a product of colonial rule. Oh, and our parents also believed in not sparing the rod!

There’s a very funny story about Trevor’s friend Hitler, and it’s also a lesson in perspective. My son read the blurb and asked about it, and as I told him, I realized how valuable a lesson it is for him to learn! The book is full of such instances where you stop and think . About racism, about division, about language barriers, and about opportunities.

What I really want to do now, is to get an audio book, because I have a feeling it will be better in Trevor’s own voice.

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Review: Tangerine

Rating: 3 Stars

I have always been a fan of old movies. From Humphrey Bogart to Paul Newman, from Ingrid Bergman to Grace Kelly, I have watched more old movies than new ones. Among some of my most favourite movies, are old classics like Gaslight, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Rebecca, Rear Window and North By Northwest to name a few.

When I first got my hands on Tangerine, it reminded me of my love for old movies, particularly Hitchcock movies. I was really looking forward to losing myself in that old black and white world with mysterious characters who are all potential psychopaths. Sadly, I was quite disappointed with what I read.

The book starts off promisingly enough, with the narrative shifting between two women; one, who seems flaky and disturbed, and one, who seems obsessed and psychotic. Soon, however, it starts dragging and being repetitive. It became so boring that I was seriously thinking of not finishing it at all.

Halfway through, I had a fair idea of what was going to happen, and there were no surprises in the narrative. Everything was quite predictable, especially for thriller buffs like me.

Alice Shipley is a young woman, who has moved to Tangier with her new husband, John, and is finding the whole experience, being married and in a new country, very overwhelming. She seems to be very high-strung and nervous in crowds. Her condition has put a strain on her married life, and her husband seems to be drifting away from her.

When Lucy Mason, whom Alice hasn’t seen in more than a year, rings her bell, Alice is shocked and at a loss. After all, the two were best friends and roommates in college, but things happened that caused a rift between them. Lucy, however, is eager to get their old camaraderie back; and Alice is thankful to have a familiar face in the strange new world she has stepped into.

As Lucy starts to insinuate herself back in her life, Alice starts having the same uncomfortable feeling she used to have back in college. John, on the other hand, is becoming more and more distant. When he disappears without a trace, Alice starts having doubts about the reality of everything around her. Suddenly, she is not sure about anything; Tangier, Lucy or her own sanity.

The best thing about this book is the setting which is reminiscent of old suspense movies, and it would have worked if the book had been narrated by one of the women. Having multiple narrators is a double-edged sword, especially for thrillers, where you don’t want to give too much away, while keeping things interesting enough. In this instance, reading both perspectives leaves nothing to the imagination, and I was able to guess pretty much the whole story quite early on.

I gave this book three stars because the story itself is interesting, and Tangier appears like a living thing in front of your eyes. Too bad these were the only good things in the book for me.

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Review: Homegoing

Rating: 5 Stars

“Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.”

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is the kind of book that leaves its mark on the reader. It spans centuries and generations in only 300 pages. It reminded me so much of Alex Haley’s Roots, in that it takes your heart and shatters it into pieces. Of course, while Roots is like a full length movie, Homegoing is more like snapshots of a family’s journey through the centuries. It reads like fourteen short stories connected together by a familial thread.

I come from a country which used to be a British colony, and our history books are full of how the colonists came and exploited our resources and ruled us for centuries. Every kid knows of their atrocities and injustices. Yet, we can never even imagine the havoc they wreaked on Africa. The echoes of their evil are still heard all over the world, and the Africans are still paying for crimes committed centuries before they were even born.

Homegoing starts off as the story of two sisters, born from the same mother, who never meet in their lifetime, and whose destinies are as as different as night and day. One marries a white man, a slave trader, while the other becomes a slave. One stays in Africa, where her descendents struggle with their identity, while one is taken to America, where her descendents struggle to stay alive. As their stories play out, you are given a glimpse into American history itself.

The prose is beautiful, some lines so profound, that you have to come back and read them again and again.

“The need to call this thing ‘good’ and this thing ‘bad,’ this thing ‘white’ and this thing ‘black,’ was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.”

As one side of the family is challenged by the changes taking place in Africa, it is the other side, the slaves, who are going through trials that no human being should have to face. Yet, all characters are unique individuals, who fight their own battles and face their own challenges. You are shown many faces of bravery, many forms of resilience, and underneath it all, the strength of charcater and the will to change things for themselves and their children.

Even though the book ends on a hopeful note, it is heartbreaking to realize that things haven’t changed all that much over the centuries. The colour of your skin still makes a difference, and where you come from still matters. This book has left me with a heavy heart and a real sadness about how human race has failed to learn from the past.

I think this book is a must read for everyone.

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