I just read Binyavanga Wainaina, “How to Write About Africa,” at Granta 92. I dig this essay, but what do you all think?
[Addendum: YouTube of Djimon Honsou reading Wainaina's essay here.]
I am reminded of Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy, which is the story of the African “family” of Nettie, Celie’s sister in The Color Purple. As you know, Celie had been told her sister Nettie was dead, though Nettie had been writing to Celie for years, and these letters had been withheld and hidden from her by Mister, Celie’s abusive husband.
In truth, Nettie had gone to Africa with an African American missionary couple. In Possessing the Secret of Joy, Walker’s Africa is a monolithic body. The young African woman Tashi, of the Olinka tribe, has undergone genital mutilation, and she now lives in America. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read the novel, but I remember Walker’s tone being definitively one sided. All around, in other words, the tradition of female genital mutilation was oppressive, and this had much to do with taking away a mutilated woman’s ability to experience sexual pleasure. There is truth here, but I am also sure the issue has more dimensions to it. It’s akin to us “progressive” American women unilaterally imposing our ideas of feminism and judging the Muslim woman’s veil as total oppression when we know little to nothing of the traditions and experiences involved.
As for myself, this makes me think of the kinds of assumptions Filipino Americans make about the Philippines, its idyllic countryside, its traditions all left intact, its artifacts to be read as symbols. At our UCSC reading last year, Shirley Ancheta noted that for those Filipino Americans who have never been to the Philippines, the carabao is a very powerful symbol, almost mythological. Certainly, where carabao are beasts of burden, they are very important creatures. Much stronger than human beings, they enable the people to work the land, which obviously is crucial for people who live off the land. We understand then, why Manong Al Robles writes about the West Coast Pinoy agricultural workers as carabao, how Robles mythologizes them, and how American labor foremen dehumanize them.
I understand Ancheta’s perspective; going “home” is or can be a pilgrimage. Because we spend so much of our American lives misunderstood as foreigners, we do hope that upon “returning” to the “homeland,” we will be embraced by a people who understand us implicitly. Experientially, I do know this is not really the case, and I read this as well in Barack Obama’s section on Kenya in Dreams from My Father.
Briefly and very generally, I want to say a few things about Obama’s Dreams from My Father, which is non-fiction, and I believe, very cleanly well written and “literary.” In the section of this book dedicated to his first visit Kenya, he meets his complex and sprawling extended family, starting in Nairobi, and traveling into the traditional lands of his father and his father’s ancestors. In the meantime, the space between Nairobi and his father’s traditional lands is not a vast empty space, but populated with actual people with homes and families. Well, I could go on and on about this book, but for now will say that even though Obama writes from his point of view as an “outsider,” trying very hard to understand so many things, modes of operation and interaction, inheritances and responsibilities, that are otherwise implicit or given to everyone around him, I do not believe he oversimplifies “Africa,” or even Kenya and Kenyans here. In the meantime, not everything is implicit or understood; European colonialism has changed people, Western education has changed people.
And the same is true for us Filipino Americans. It’s not an easy combination, western living and thinking, and the traditional ways. To begin with, there is no one uniform tradition, and there is no one neat way of suturing these contradictions together. All this said, I believe Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay isn’t just indicting white people. That is, white people are not the only westerners who other. See, it’s so much easier to write First World Us and Third World Them. We have. They need what We have.
[Related reading on celebrities, aid, and Africa is the interview, "Questions for Dambisa Moyo: The Anti-Bono," in the NY Times here.]
Finally, I am interested in finding more ways of writing the complexities of our relationships between our “motherlands” and “adopted home countries,” our “mother tongues,” and our second (and third, and fourth, and so on) languages, our “traditional” selves and our modern selves, precisely because these aren’t neat binaries. I am interested in finding ways of encouraging good critical reading, such that readers and audiences can actually be open to discussing non-binaries. And I know the conversations can get messy, but that’s great, having to work at figuring it all out.
“…this makes me think of the kinds of assumptions Filipino Americans make about the Philippines, its idyllic countryside, its traditions all left intact, its artifacts to be read as symbols.”
Very interesting. As a person who has lived in the Philippines for a good sized chunk of my life, I found the typical Fil-Am assumption the younger generations have of the grass being greener in the Philippines (as opposed to the United States, or anywhere else in the world for that matter) to be based more on the “ideal” Philippines than the real Philippines. It’s as if they’re trying to compensate for having difficulty identifying a specific culture they belong to in this country and choose to focus on the country of their parents and grandparents. They seem amazed by the “traditions” and “culture” of the Philippines but they don’t realize that it’s just the traditions and the culture of the country. Granted, the traditions have been diluted over time, but they’re still there, just harder to see clearly over all the Western influences.
I never really thought about the symbol the carabao has for Filipino Americans, but what you wrote made a lot of sense. I’ll take it one step further and say the carabao symbolizes the hard lives and hard work many of the older generations had prior to migrating. It stands for the “old” Philippines, which is by no means gone, but a side of the world that most people in the US don’t get to see.
I’m having a hard time getting my point across today, but hopefully you understand what I’m saying.
WCS, re: to be based more on the “ideal” Philippines than the real Philippines.
Yes, that’s exactly it right there. Many of us were brought up in the USA with only our parents’ memories of what it was like “back home,” and this is where nostalgia comes in, right? Over time, or the longer they are away, the more idealized the image of the Philippines in their minds. So having grown up with our parents’ nostalgia being our primary source for what the Philippines is supposed to be like, we also come to picture this simple, lovely place stuck in time.
Re: the carabao as a symbol for the older generations prior to migrating, or an “older” Philippines. I think I get what you are saying.
You might be interested in reading “No Laughter Here” by Rita Williams-Garcia. It’s middle-grade fiction and the main character struggles with the typical middle school angst while trying to figure out why her best friend’s personality has changed so radically after a trip to Africa. Williams-Garcia deftly tackles very complex social and sexual issues from the perspective of a 13-14 year old. It’s an amazing book.
RE: carabao – that’s a good essay topic! It touches on everything from those carved teakwood cababao on the bookshelf to stories of carabao riders turning into poets through the wonder of education to seeing them up close in a rice paddy in Mindoro. My grandfather was a Philippine Scout and the troop’s heraldic symbol is a carabao head. In contrast to the domesticated carabao there’s the wild tamarao too… hrm. The idea of filtered nostalgia is really interesting too – it’s an issue in my writing for sure. You’ve got me all musey!
That was a good post. I read The Secret of Joy a long time ago. Funny, I still remember the secret: Resistance. But, I agree with your points, and I think that there is part of many of us who won’t let go of the complexities of life because we are so right in our ideas. Even the article on how to write about Africa suggests the larger issue without confronting it, even if there were an authentic story about the Congo or Zaire that was totally about child soldiers, or the brutality of the climate or anything like that, it would be hard for it to be written without many people looking at it as propaganda or driven by some underlying agenda.
Anyway, interesting place to come and visit.
Hey folks, thanks for your comments.
Bec, yeah the symbol of the carabao can be a very productive writing topic. Have you heard of the Military Order of the Carabao? http://www.carabao.org/ Here’s a clue: it’s an American military society which came into being around the time of the Philippine American War. So we Filipinos are not the only ones who view the carabao as this powerful symbol of various things.
Dwayne, welcome to this here blog. Thanks for your comment. I see what you mean about suggesting but not confronting the larger issue. I think ultimately this essay is not about all the issues the writer mentions as having been poorly represented in literature/arts/media but about the essentializing of complex social and historical phenomena into one sided figures that become caricatures?
Loving the essay, wondering what the Laotian American equivalent of this would look like. Noticing a few texts by some Southeast Asian Americans easily fall into this trap, but it’s impolite of me to name names.
I read this with particular interest, mind you, while reading the new DC comics series, Unknown Solider, which takes the classic World War 2 character and updates him to a figure in war torn Africa (Uganda, to be precise)
http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2008/11/14/unknown-soldier-1
Something interesting to mull. Thanks for pointing this one out.
Ha! I was gonna ask you to name names but you are right, it is impolite. I have a general idea what the trends are in Southeast Asian American literature and poetry, for those who fall into this “trap.” Hm, maybe I will use this essay for my upcoming Political Poetry class.