nonfiction

I haven’t been posting about the books I have been reading but I’ll try and catch up here.

This is an interesting book about the unsuccessful slave revolt on the island of Jamaica, the events that led up to it and the aftermath that led to the abolition of slavery in the British empire.

Jamaica in the 18th century was a lucrative colony that produced much of the sugar that fed the British sweet tooth and fed enormous amounts of money into the British empire enabling, in many ways, the expansion of that empire. The sugar was produced in plantations that ringed the island (notably not in the interior mountains) and that were owned by fabulously wealthy planters most of whom lived in England. The sugar itself was grown and harvested by slaves mostly imported from Africa. The slaves outnumbered the white population by a factor of ten to one and order was maintained by a poorly trained militia and a single regiment of English soldiers.

Early 19th century England was undergoing rapid change with new technologies such as the railway, photography, telegraphy, and steam, and with an emerging middle class demanding political representation. There were changes in Jamaica too as Baptist missionaries arrived to try to bring Christianity to the slave population and raise their consciousness. A few of the slaves were ordained as Baptist ministers and assisted in bringing their form of Christianity to the slave population.

One of these was Samuael Sharpe. Sharpe’s personal charisma, combined with the social advantage of literacy, placed him in a leadership role among his people; trusted by his masters, he had some freedom of movement, which helped facilitate the events of Christmas 1831.

Sharpe’s access to information via his literacy led his followers to believe his claims that they had been set free by the king but that their masters were denying them their freedom. He organized what was to be a strike by the slaves under which they would not work until they were paid.

The strike took place over the Christmas period in 1831 and his hope for a nonviolent uprising quickly devolved into violence as plantations were burnt and guerrilla tactics ensued. It took five weeks to put down the rebellion and reprisals were swift. The rebellion caught the attention of abolitionist crusaders in England, though, and was used as ammunition in their attempt to reform parliament and push through legislation to end slavery in the British empire in 1833.

It’s an interesting book with a lot of detail. I think it’s about twice as long as it needs to be, though and reads sometimes like a scholarly text. If you have interest in Jamaica or the fight to end slavery, though, it’s worth a read.

Shadow Tag is a departure for Erdrich from the multi-generational stories of revenge set on North Dakota’s reservations. That isn’t to say it’s devoid of the Native American themes that permeate her many previous books. Both Irene and her husband, Gil, are of Indian heritage. Raised by a white mother, Gil clings to his paternal “mishmash of Klamath and Cree and landless Montana Chippewa.” Irene also grew up with a single mother, in her case a political activist who “dragged her to everything Ojibwe.”

Shadow Tag is a narrowly focused domestic tragedy, a linear narrative about a Minneapolis family on the verge of implosion in 2007. Erdrich’s portrait of this warped, obsessive relationship raises broader issues about art, privacy and identity.

Irene’s struggle to free herself from Gil results in various cat-and-mouse power plays. One of the more intriguing — and chilling — iterations of shadow tag starts when Irene discovers that Gil has been reading her diary. She starts a separate diary which she keeps in a safe deposit box and uses the diary that she knows Gil has been reading to manipulate his insecurities. She does this by planting supposedly confessional entries about the “real” fathers of their three children and vague suggestions that Gil might be right in suspecting her of having an affair.

Gil’s transgressions, it turns out, go way beyond compromising Irene’s privacy with his iconic series of invasive, often pornographic portraits of her that have brought him fame and fortune. Aggressive and controlling, he tries to make up for his outbursts of violence with lavish gifts. Irene, perpetually drunk on wine, is no better at protecting their children than herself. But the more she pulls away, the more Gil clings.

Erdrich captures not just Irene’s misery and the children’s lasting trauma but the often beguiling texture of domesticity — dinner, dishes, homework, bedtime. These hints of domesticity come among increasing levels of psychological breakdown. The end is a tragic combination of hate and love and a revelation about the narrator who describes it all.

I really like most of Erdrich’s books, but it took me a while to get into this one because it’s so different from what I expected. As with her other books, it’s very well written and a good read. I enjoyed it.

How Beautiful We Were, by Imbolo by Mbue, is deservedly listed as one of New York Time’s Ten Best Books of 2021. I really enjoyed it and I recommend it to all of you. It is a bit long, but is well-written and propulsive.

In October of 1980, in the fictional African village of Kosawa, representatives of an American oil company called Pexton have come to meet with the locals, whose children are dying. Nearby, the company’s oil pipelines and drilling sites have left the fields fallow and the water poisoned. The residents of Kosawa want the company gone and the land restored to what it was before Pexton showed up, decades ago. The company’s representatives say they’re doing everything they can, though their audience knows it’s a lie — Pexton has the support of the village head as well as the country’s dictator and, with it, impunity. Nothing will be done. But just as the meeting concludes, Konga, the village madman, bursts in. He’s got another idea: Until they get what they want, the villagers should hold Pexton’s men as prisoners.

Now you might expect this to be a story of a heroic fight between the virtuous, downtrodden natives and the heartless, moneygrubbing corporation but it’s not like that. There’s very little violence. Instead there’s a rather nuanced exploration of neocolonialism, the varying self-interests of those who might help or claim to help and the first, faltering steps of democracy.

Not long after the villagers of Kosawa kidnap Pexton’s representatives, a group of national soldiers show up asking questions about their whereabouts. It’s one of the narrative’s first — and least violent — confrontations between the state and the village, and an introduction to the myriad ways in which Kosawa’s residents must scheme in order to avoid the wrath of a government that would think nothing of wiping them out altogether. In the months and years that follow, the villagers try everything they can think of to get the oil company off their land. They meet with an American journalist, hoping that an article might change public (i.e., Western) sentiment in their favor; they travel to the capital to plead with the national government; they consider taking up arms; the work with an NGO that claims to want to help them.

The central moral and philosophical conflict of this novel boils down to one between those willing to trust Pexton to do what’s right, those who want to solicit the support of well-meaning American activists and those who see no difference between the two. “Someday, when you’re old, you’ll see that the ones who came to kill us and the ones who’ll run to save us are the same,” Konga says. “No matter their pretenses, they all arrive here believing they have the power to take from us or give to us whatever will satisfy their endless wants.”

The novel is kaleidoscopic in design, but one girl, Thula, becomes perhaps the closest thing to a protagonist. Early on, we see through her eyes, and the eyes of The Children (her age-mates, afforded their own chapters as a group), the impact of Pexton’s activities on the village. Thula’s younger brother, Juba, falls deathly ill. For a period, he even dies before being resuscitated by the village twins: a medium and a medicine man. Bursting with righteous fury, Thula and Juba’s father Malabo confronts the chief, Woja Beki. Then, with a group of young men, Malabo heads to Bézam, the capital, to demand answers and restitution — never to return.

This could be another story of the downtrodden Africans and their exploitation, but Mbue, avoids that trap. Some of the novel’s most thrilling sections are those that follow Thula as she fights to depose the dictator whose complicity has eviscerated her home. She and her age-mates, now grown, some of them with families of their own, reveal to the reader what it can look like to be a part of your country’s birth pangs. From so many angles, the beginning of African democracy can look like a stillbirth or miscarriage, but Mbue affords us a view from the inside where so many smaller miracles are at work, so many characters trying to find their own way to bring about a just government, the intricate, magnificent machinery operating in service to the ultimate miracle of a nation’s nativity.

I really enjoyed this book and I hope you will read it. Mbue is a gifted writer crafts a huge story with lots of pieces. It is profoundly affecting to watch the surviving children who were present for the first meeting with Pexton grow older over the decades, until they become parents and then grandparents, relating stories about what the village used to be. Give it a shot.

Rizzio is the retelling of the story of the murder of David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary Queen of Scots on March 9, 1566. It’s a story told over three days and it’s got plenty of action and momentum. There are a few brief nods to the recent past and immediate future, but for the most part context is jettisoned in favor of action. Mina brings a contemporary feel to the story with a kind of modern language which still manages to feel authentic.

She gets into the psychology of the murder, too. The murder takes place in the queen’s castle and home and the murderers, uncertain of exactly what they want to achieve, stay there. Essentially a prisoner in her own palace, following the brutal mass-stabbing of Rizzio by Lord Ruthven’s gang of Protestant nobles, Mary must persuade her husband, Lord Darnley, who was in on the plot at the start but now wonders if he is being edged out of it, that he is in as much danger as she is. At the same time, she must constantly try to second-guess the intentions of her unwelcome house guests, to look for chinks in their collective armor, and to get a sense of just how far they are prepared to go in order to get what they want.

It’s a quick read and well-written. It’s intended to be start of a series in which Scottish writers will re-imagine well-known stories of Scottish history. I look forward to reading some others.