Madness and Belonging

I've read quite a number of books in recent months.  I'm not going to share Read Reflections on each one of 'em - I may only mention them - and instead rather really opine on the ones I do review.

First up, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962).  The book's a thick read: 393 pages.  I took some time to finish it as I read it over the course of a busy schedule.  But I did finish it, and that's what counts because we tend to abandon books quite easily, especially when there's little time to devour said book plus said book makes for a tad boring read.  

Albeit, I do not abandon reads.  Well, I rarely do.  It might take me a while to start up a new read but once I've started I almost always see it through.  This could also attest to my reading for depth that goes beyond a story's plot.  I do close readings, building context as I go; I savour the brilliance of the written word, or even just the writer's unique method of story-telling - as a writer, I use every text I read as a basis for learning - every book has a quaint detail to it, and that is what keeps me reading to the very last line.  The quaintness could be a likeable detail or a not so likeable detail, depending on your reasons for reading.  As I've already mentioned, mine are many.  I'm a student of the arts, this may or may not be of influence.

I have to admit, though, Kesey's writing style is not my favoured style, nor is the narrative style he adopted.  It tends to be dreary and builds very slowly and even its climax is not much of a, er, climax.  With that said, the text as a critical reading on society is rich in insight and allows the reader to question a lot of what we have accepted as 1) normalcy and 2) insanity.  Who is the big shot that determines characteristics for either?  Who or what determines what stays and what goes?

At an even closer read you find that the text deals with many metaphors.  The setting is a mental hospital, for the most part.  The narrator, protagonist and all the other characters are constituents of this situation.  Some would read the text as a metaphor for norms, acceptance, rejection; for psychological ills; (contemporary) American society and on a greater platform for the human experience in society in general.  Kesey does a great job at not being explicit about this and at keeping the narratives based inside this asylum, where I might mention a matriarch heads.  Yup, this idea created quite the contestation in the literary/social critic parts of the world, from what I've studied.  Given that the book is published in the very early 60's before the era of pronounced feminism, and when women were largely the subordinate subjects of society; does make one wonder why Kesey set such an antagonist structure for his novel.  But again, if you ask enough questions measured against the contents of what Kesey implies within the narrative you'd come up with enough reasonable ideas as to why.  

I'm going off on a tangent...

The thing is, the text is rich.  If you love critically dissecting literature this one is a dream.  Read it along with Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation (1961) and with literature on the panoptical world.  On the ward of the hospital is a glass station where Nurse Ratched (the matriarch) stations to observe the patients - this is alluded to the panoticon in the sense of its purpose (designed for prisoners/inmates to be constantly conscious of being observed) - limiting personal freedom and constraining behaviour.
Also, the narrator suffers a history of colonial and imperial-induced violence to his identity, culture and familial community.  Read into this too, or at least pay mind to it in observing his character and narration.  The protagonist acts an an evasive character and saviour to the patients.  There are biblical and Christian connotations written to him too.  I read him as representing the instrument to anti-establishment.  He is eventually-- nah, I won't give it away, but I found his fate rather sad, given the role he had taken upon himself in this institution of social organisation, hierarchical dominance, emasculation, punishment and surveillance; of dementia and frontal lobotomies.  The other characters all represent some type of repressed identity, "otherness" - it's quite a triumphant read when you read it for a full and rich comprehension.

I'd go out on a limb and say the novel was written from an entirely masculinist perspective, rejecting all political correctness - and as feminist and womanist as my own perspective tends to be, I believe in being open to reading or hearing other narratives to make for complete reasoning of your own, allowing for measured critique or praise - views are verily misogynistic; and there is an act of sexual violation that alludes to "victory" (against turning man into machines) for the group of male patients.  The scene is violent, yet I read it as representative of all other global conquests performed the world over, in history, that was termed as the "rape" of continents or states by way of patriarchal language.

Well, I had written a much longer post than intended.  Hence I will only add one other Read Reflection, that of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951).  Holden Caulfield, what a grim character.  He really is.  Most everything is of the phony nature to him.  His narration is repetitive, exaggerated, inconsistent, and grim.  But there are reasons to all of this.  Andrew Blackman, author of On the Holloway Road, wrote a review to the book better than anything I could think up to sum up Holden and Salinger.  He really did.
Please do read it HERE.

Lessons for Africa from Africa

My concern for my Africa has grown over the last few months.  My interests span Africa's history, its current state and that of foreign involvement in the continent; all the Five W's and How reasons.  
We all know about Africa's history of relentless colonialism and imperialism and how these have affected the continent's current environment.  With a nearer gaze, we see too that Africa for the most part, has failed to derive any lessons from its past that reflect on-going and progressive expansion built on its previous cripplings.  Take industrialisation for example, it could never revolutionise because of the calculated denial to growth and development it faced under colonial rule.  However, the continent has not actualised any infrastructure to combat this, if economic growth and competitiveness is assumed to be of any concern.

All that aside, what's most visible about Africa right now is its lack of assertiveness, in leadership, governance and security.  And for this to materialise, as many experts point out, the continent needs to invest in capacity development -- this would help to actualise strategy that not only eradicates Africa's image of "needing aid" but would lead to stimulating and productive efforts in creating a collective wealth for the continent.  
Our challenges are socio-political and socio-economic, these stem from the Cold War era; and these are the very challenges that states were dealt with too post the Cold War.  Back then Africa was used as leverage for those states to pull themselves up again, is the continent going to assume this pawn-like role forever?  Africa was only ever "the plan" then - the strategic move - for the developed nation to bolster their ascendency into great-power status.

I feel that the "Third World" (I don't particularly fancy this term) is in good stead to concentrate on common development and prosperity, rising in synergy against the Western dominance that has hung heavy over them in past centuries.  Yes, globalisation is exploitative, but with a feasible framework Africa too, can derive benefits if it exceeds intelligently and strategically.  
I read about Africa's promising growth in the technology and banking sectors by new data released by the big credit rating agencies of the world.  The trade and investment avenue has the potential of scale and scope for African governments to become more pro-active risk managers, and to take a driving position. 
Loans are not the sort of change or path to growth Africa needs to employ, and it is exactly what Africa is gracefully excepting from countries like, say, China.  Rendering itself to future debt and a considerable disadvantage in the markets that have grown hyper-competitive in the face of globalisation and multilateralism.  
More than loans, Africa needs development in areas that would drive it to make use of its own resources to restore and build African economies; combat the escalating unemployment numbers; and improve conditions of living in Africa as a whole.  

What is the likelihood of this happening?  --It is possible, only if and when Africa gains the capacity to make good use of infrastructure and capital.  Which is the capitalist route of problem-solving but points as the best option for the land's current state.  The continent has an abundance of lessons it can work on solely based on its past, and that coupled with examples of other regions making good on their disenfranchised territories and environments.

something like an update

What a year!  Took up a challenge and here I am, at the end of its first year.  Another lesson to be taken, that things often seem intimidating but you'll never know your capacity for endurance and overcoming if you don't disregard the overwhelming and just decide to do.  

Also, it's not December 31 so I've little reason for being overly sentimental about the year that has passed.  I have yet to celebrate (which is not actually synonymous for partying in my case) my birthday for the year 2012.  That will happen soon though, as soon as November third.

Yesterday I borrowed a bunch of sombre books from the library.  I've never read Wuthering Heights, so that'll be crossed off of my to-read list.  I also took out biographies on Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar written by Plath herself.  Spent a great deal over the weekend dissecting the literature of Toni Morrison and Shakespeare - literature has so much depth, I wish more people would take the time to engage with it at a level deeper than mere surface reading.  I specifically looked at issues of gender and black identity.  Fun.  I'll blog more extensively upon these in the very near-near future.

:-)

Three of my favourite things at the moment:

Anne Carson's The Glass Essay,
Emeli Sandé's My Version of Events, and the narrative 
and subsequent literature of Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Love. Love. Love.  Learning, inspire/d, women.  Joy. 

 "For most of history, 
         Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

The reflection of read things

Andrew Blackman, author of On the Holloway Road, invited bloggers to write a post for his blog in his absence, from all communication for a month, I responded and he reciprocated.  
That's the long and short of it.  He liked my contribution and it has since been published on his site, HERE.  
My contribution is obviously going to be about what I love most, reading and books so, my read reflection for The God of Small Things, now one of my favourite novels, is up on Andrew's site.  Check it out!  Pick up the novel, too, you'll love it.  It's an enchanting read, if, or rather, when you get the gist of Roy's beautiful and plentiful meanings in the narrative.


It was a lovely blogging experience, hoping to do more of 'em in the future!

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Something enters your life.  And for the very brief moments you shared, you were drawn nearer to them and yet, you never received near than enough to completely know them.  Or to be taken by them.  You decide to take each moment as it comes until you reach the inevitable end as you notice things drawing to a close.  Most of the time, everything is almost predictable; you are never blown away or shocked by the unravelling of events.  The time has come and it is nearly over.  And you don’t even see it coming but they draw you so close, so intimately, that you’re holding your breath because you’re in that deep.  You feel that all things are about to explode and implode heavily upon your life, or moment.  Then they release you.  Suddenly.  Your mind and body remains shaken, as you try to make sense of it.  As you try to weave together some sense.  Attempting to tie together the bundles of loose ends but your hands are shaking too much for any coherence to develop.  You realise throughout that you’ve been given the bare minimum of details only so that they could pull you hither, but you knew nothing at all, really.  In hindsight, you realise now – it was just one chapter of enticement after the other.  That most of it was fabricated.  Delusions.  And you were unknowingly invited to travel along.  Journeying in the mind of an unstable person, someone who grew unsettled by an obsession that, if thought about rationally, never derived from romantic love.  A concert of jazz and classical tunes to fool all the more, kept being played, over and over. And now that it is all over, you’re yearning for so much more.

That’s exactly how I felt when I had finished reading South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992; 1998) by Haruki Murakami.  This passage sums up for me everything I feel Murakami was getting at and hoping to achieve from the reader:

 ‘Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea.  Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it.  The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don’t know it is raining’ (p. 213).

The novel reads average throughout, until the very last few pages when the events that had happened begin to make sense, or you realise how they don’t make any sense.  When you’re drawn into the protagonist's final thoughts, and you’re slowly developing a sense of how his mind works, his untied thoughts.  You read the final sentence and it hits that all along you’ve missed out on the clues that came clothed in the writer’s manner of foreshadowing tales that never reached closure; you don't catch on until the very end that the writer made nothing of them.  The loose ends.  The untied beginnings.  This could very well have been Murakami’s precise intention.

This was my first Murakami read (thank you to Taahir, who was kind enough to lend me his copy - it's his favourite Murakami read, by the way).  I am quite eager to measure this novel to his other works.  Riding on the feeling that swept across my literary heart as I traced the ending lines, a fan could have been born.


Read this interview by the Paris Review with Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182, conducted by John Wray about his fiction and self, about the characters he writes and their positioning.  It's all very telling.  I read it after reading this novel and it is rather revealing, adds an appreciation of sorts for some of the things I happened to overlook.  There's no mention of the novel I reflected on, though, but you get a pretty good idea of Murakami's literary work and style of writing.  What is striking from this interview are the similarities in characteristics between the writer and his protagonist in South of the Border, West of the Sun.  Enjoy!

So you want to be a writer

by Charles Bukowski

He starts off by saying, "if it doesn't come bursting out of you/ in spite of everything,/ don't do it."

It reads like a warning label, almost.  Cautions you against diving into the writing world.  The world of a writer who writes about things that don't exist, who may or may not be penning her own life onto pages for innumerable strangers to feed off of.  That world.  Where you have to tap into your innermost to create something that you will probably edit a million times over and still not be satisfied with its outcome; you eventually abandon the piece of work because you could not deal with it any longer.  The world where you doubt your capabilities most of the time and no matter the amount of compliments you receive regarding your prized pieces of writing you're still not fully convinced that you're 'cut out for this'.
It's not the easiest walk-in-the-park vocation to be consumed by.  I always maintain, whether to askers or to myself, that if I had a choice I would not write.  I do it because I don't know how not to. 
So, "unless being still would/ drive you to madness or/ suicide or murder,/ don't do it./ unless the sun inside you is/ burning your gut,/ don't do it..."

Questions for Inequality

Questions for Inequality

The above link takes you to a submission, written by me, for the online magazine, ITCH.

Read and enjoy, comment if you must.

White Lies

    by Stanley Motjuwadi


Humming Maggie.
Hit by a virus,
the Caucasian Craze,
sees horror in the mirror
Frantic and dutifully
she corrodes a sooty face,
braves a hot iron comb
on a shrubby scalp;
I look on.


I know pure white,
a white heart,
white, peace, ultimate virtue.
Angels are white
angels are good.
Me I'm black,
black as sin stuffed in a snuff-tin.
Lord, I've been brainwhitewashed.


But for Heaven's sake God,
just let me be,
Under cover of my darkness
let me crusade.
On a canvas stretching from here
to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha,
I'll daub a white devil.
Let me teach black truth.
That dark clouds aren't a sign of doom,
but hope.  Rain.  Life.
Let me unleash a volty bolt of black,
so all around may know right.
________


Upon reading this piece line for line it's easy to detect the essence of what the writer is conveying.  Simply put: that he wants to re-teach the old stereotype that has been ingrained in our minds and hearts that white is pure and black represents everything that is not.  Lies poignantly built up to the crescendo of declaration of truth in the last stanza.
He entices us with a story-telling verse in the first stanza, of Maggie.  We all know Maggie.  She's the woman who has taken to assimilating to the white aesthetic that has become the universal imprint for what belies beauty.  Maggie doesn't enjoy her own image, as she sits before the mirror - she prods and adds to her to change that image, to look more (white) beautiful.  Stanley does little as this is played out before him, except look on in disdain and perhaps, overcome with an unplaced sadness that will not allow him to say anything.
Stanley speaks for every one who is cast under this shadow of their blackness being ill-defined; who wishes to restore the dignity of a self that fights the daily battles of notions that are hard to die, to re-establish all of that and for the world to see the beauty that lies in darkness too.  To tame, re-take, and to reclaim it all.  
F. Fanon makes mention of this conditioned evil too, in Black Skin, White Masks (I mention this book a wholly lot, because it is the truth) - it's that inherent burden that every black-wearing skinned person wants to shed.  Trayvon Martin took this burden to his grave with a shot to the chest, only because he was wearing black skin.  So, maybe we should add Florida to Stanley's line of, "On a canvas stretching from here to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha, I'll daub a white devil."  And, some would argue Spar too, in the light of Jessica Leandra's racial slurs spewed at a black-skinned man who might not have been "a sign of doom" as she had feared.


This is a brief, surface interpretation of this text and I'm hoping that with the traces I've just laid out you will re-read the poem and make your own findings and draw ideological nuances from it - and perhaps, share them with me.

Wrote this to 'Fix You' by Coldplay

Just played the song and pen and paper happened...


When you try your best, but that smile summoned from a deep-seated place within is all that lays on the surface.  You're wearing your best one, dressed up and ready to cheer up those around you with what's really an empty, feigned happiness.  When your eyes are stinging from shedding so many tears and from your soul receiving no rest.  Because, even when you're tired, so tired that all you want to do is lay your head down, to sleep, but you can not.  And your body pains and it's weary, your mind is lacklustre and your speech is forced.
You need fixing.
When you don't want to tread around your words and build up metaphors to get them to comprehend your plight and you choose to rather be quiet, to be still about it.  Anxiety is building up in your bloodstream, like iron, and you feel it in climbing into your bones, it's escalating, reaching a crescendo until it collapses to a melancholic state - something they'd call 'depression' in some far away clinic.  You've learnt to deal with these bouts of overwhelming underwhelming feelings, they're familiar to you now, natural, they're all part of the package.
When you've got the support of dear loved ones but still, in the trenches of your being, it's not enough.
You need fixing.
When new friends awkwardly fumble about when they learn about your humanness.  When they assume a tequila shot or many lined up will resolve the unsettling in the pit of your stomach and all you can do is spew its contents from your gut when it fails, again, to solve anything.  When you know about and know of others, many others, who are walking the same, winding and dusty roads as you - you realise the prevalence of it all.  What has befallen us?  Tears stain our faces.  It could be worse.  We could be apathetic.