An Author's HomeAn Ode and a Promise
It is Women’s History Month and so we gather to celebrate sisterhood and necessary delusion. BEWARE OF POTENTIAL SPOILERS.
So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ is a tender, one-sided conversation depicting the deep, platonic love between two women over the course of their lives. I say it’s a conversation because it begins to feel like someone specific is actively listening to this narration as the book goes on. The letter-writer describes the tragedies of one particular aspect of her life while relating the listener’s life in a way that is not quite a comparison but in admiration of how well the listener handled her own challenges.
Still, the letter-writer manages to restore the dignity of her own perspective by explaining why she reacted the way she did versus how people thought she would. She relates the times she found the courage to stand up for herself, what motivated that courage. She manages to show respect for both her own situation as well as her friend’s -the recipient’s- dilemma. Not only that, but she manages to give validity to both her resolution and the friend’s -even though they came to different solutions. It’s quite a mature kind of love that they share, as depicted by the letter.
One of the best things about this book was the palpable recognition of the other’s pain and dignity, the demonstrated (versus theorised) warmth between the two friends.
From what I’ve seen and read of African life, there is a certain taking for granted of the ways in which women experience struggle and pain. It is actually expected that a woman should have a hard life and that part of that endurance is her putting up with all kinds of behaviour from her husband as well as other members of the society. From the description of both lives, we see how they care for each other through societal expectations and norms and all the ways they show it over the years.
This book gave magnitude and acknowledgement to the struggles that the two women faced and did not treat pain as a given, a rite of passage or a noble cause. If you are not suffering nobly for the benefit of somebody else and your entire community, what are you doing with your life? is the tone in many societies. It is brutal how casual people are about a woman’s pain. For that reason alone, this was the right book to read for Women’s History Month.
At the same time, these days in the younger generations there is a whiff of disdain in the air for women who endure -even if the doctrine is still preached and lived. The letter-writer may be framed by some as enduring and ‘lacking self-respect’ but I didn’t see it that way. I thought she tackled her situation the way she could with the resources and obstacles she had. Her choice was what she could manage and she did not lie to herself about the concessions she was making. It is not for black African women to take the solution that seems impossible all the time. They, or we, are not machines -unaffected and constantly running at inhumane rates. And I think the letter writer depicted that in her own way. Sometimes you feel there is only so much you can do and so you act accordingly.
By the way, the letter-writer’s name is Ramatoulaye and the woman I call the listener is Aissatou. The book is set in Senegal, published around 1980.
What of necessary delusion? Here, I’m referring to Lauren Olamina’s inventing a religion to keep herself going through a horrific degradation of her society and environment in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. It reminded me of how black people typically get through hardship in certain environments. My apologies for the generalisation but I mean: I’ve seen people who had to overcome extreme conditions and then adapt to foreign environments act similarly. They set up what surviving would look like and mean to them and then they go forth, regardless of whatever else could go on or what they have to do to get there. That’s why we hold so fast to religions and supernatural beliefs, I suppose.
I’ve heard some black atheists ask why black people insist on believing in the spiritual. I understand it this way: the philosophy is you have to fortify a construct in your mind that you feel cannot fail you and you hold fast to it while also being prepared to do or learn whatever is necessary, forsaking anything that could bring that belief down because it is your fuel and it is how you can survive and keep laughing instead of collapsing from sheer exhaustion and trauma after incredibly difficult circumstances. Because it feels like a duty to not only make it to the other side but to also build something worthwhile where you land. At least this is how we seem to cope. Sometimes what you have to do sounds big and crazy to someone who doesn’t have to do it. But to you, it is simply what you have to do so you find yourself doing it. And it is your faith in whatever you’ve built up in your mind that allows you to do it. Perhaps that’s why to a lot of black people it is not about whether or not God is real, it’s that having a mighty mental construct has simply worked and what works becomes all that matters sometimes. But I digress.
Because of this theme of hope despite brutal circumstances, I found the book comforting because it ended up reading like a survival manual that is centered around how you build mental strength despite your weaknesses and your odds. It was also somewhat realistic because it took into account that Lauren would need other people -and the other people come with their quirks that need to be navigated. No one fits together so perfectly but usually some people will do. Nothing was unduly romanticised, I think, yet… so much hope.
The book brilliantly indicates how you reinforce your sanity during extreme times, and that there needs to be something bigger than just surviving that’s waiting for you at the end of a major struggle. There has to be a whole new mind, complete with beliefs that have replaced the old that did not hold. There has to be a whole new place to grow into, maybe. In the mind and, potentially, in the physical world. And however dangerous this new place could still be, what’s important is that it is promising to some extent and there are people to cultivate it with -whether or not they think exactly the same. That was the best thing about Lauren’s approach to her religion. It did not rob anyone of autonomy and people could take their time to absorb it or reject it altogether. What mattered most was that it worked for her and kept her going. I loved the theme of cooperation instead of domination. That is women at their best for you.
I could have more to say about this book -there’s also the uncanniness of the dates when the events happen, the prophecy of it all, as everyone says- but I want to read Parable of the Talents first.
I read Parable of the Sower in February right after putting it off for October. In the end, I realised it’s best to read the books I find challenging early on in the year. Last year, I put them off then didn’t read some of them at all and put pressure on the later months when I was supposed to be reflecting and rereading leisurely in December. Not doing that again.
#bookReview #bookReviews #books #fiction #MariamaBa #OctaviaEButler #ParableOfTheSower #Reading #SoLongALetter #WomenSHistoryMonth
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